International
South Africa is preparing to invest Ramaphosa for a second term as president
Cyril Ramaphosa will be inaugurated as president of South Africa for a second five-year term, in a solemn ceremony attended by about twenty African leaders and that will begin a new stage in the country’s history with an unprecedented Government of national unity.
“We have the investiture in the year in which we celebrate thirty years of freedom and democracy in our nation, which is a very important milestone,” the interim director general of Communications of the South African Government, Nomonde Mnukwa, told local media on Tuesday.
Under the slogan “Thirty years of democracy, collaboration and growth,” the event will be held at the Union Buildings, the headquarters of the Executive in Pretoria, and will be attended by 18 heads of state and government, as well as former presidents and delegations from many countries, according to the authorities.
Among the countries that will send high-level representatives are Namibia, Angola, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Esuatini (former Swaziland), Uganda, Nigeria, Burundi and Egypt, but also China and Cuba, whose vice president, Salvador Mesa, has already arrived in the country.
Representatives of organizations such as the African Union (AU), the UN and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), in addition to Palestine, whose cause has historically been supported by South Africa, will also attend.
After the beginning of the day with a program of cultural events starring local artists, the ceremony will take place in which Ramaphosa will be sworn in before the head of the South African Judiciary, magistrate Raymond Zondo.
During the event, for which the streets surrounding the enclosure will be cut, the National Defense Forces of South Africa (SADF) will carry out a greeting of 21 cannon salvos, accompanied by an Air Force flight, in addition to an inspection and a parade of troops.
Although it is a working day, buses will be chartered so that residents of different provinces can attend the ceremony, who will have to go through strict security controls.
The investiture will be the culmination of a process marked by uncertainty, after the African National Congress (CNA), in power since the establishment of democracy and the end of the racist ‘apartheid’ regime in 1994, lost for the first time the absolute majority in the elections of last May 29.
In those elections, the seventh generals of the country, the CNA achieved 40.18% of the votes, which translates into 159 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly (Lower House of Parliament), an insufficient victory that forced for the first time the historic formation to approach other parties to be able to govern.
That approach was felt last Friday in a marathon first session of the National Assembly after the elections, in which Ramaphosa was elected by 283 votes.
Hours before that election, John Steenhuisen, leader of the Democratic Alliance (AD, liberal center-right), until now the first force of the opposition, announced that he had reached an agreement with the ANC to form a “Government of national unity (GUN)”.
That formula was previously used by the country’s first black president, Nelson Mandela, when he came to power in 1994, when his party enjoyed an absolute majority and started from a position of strength, unlike the current weakness, which prevents him from forming a government alone.
As confirmed by the CNA on Monday, three other political forces have also agreed to join the government alliance: the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP, conservative and nationalist of the Zulu ethnic group), GOOD (social democrat) and Patriotic Alliance (AP, extreme right).
Thus, the investiture will be the starting signal for the formation of a Cabinet that should include members of the other parties of the coalition, although Ramaphosa, 71 years old and fifth president of the country, has not yet revealed the composition of the Executive.
After playing an important role in the negotiations that allowed the dismantling of ‘apartheid’, being a trade union leader and prospering in the private sector, Ramaphosa arrived in 2018 with the promise of change to end the corruption that tarnished the mandate of his predecessor, Jacob Zuma (2009-2018).
However, its popularity decreased due to the persistence of problems such as high unemployment (32.9%), crime, the energy crisis with constant blackouts and the extreme inequality that still weighs on the black population.
International
China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”
The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.
That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”
“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.
Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”
In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”
This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.
The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.
Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.
For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.
International
Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants
The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.
According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.
The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”
The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.
The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”
These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.
International
Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”
“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.
The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.
“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.
Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.
“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.
The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.
Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.
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