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Jurors in Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial will begin deliberations after hearing hours of closing arguments that portrayed the case in stark and irreconcilable terms. Credit... Adam Gray for The New York Times

Persons: Donald J, Adam Gray Organizations: The New York

It was time, the witness said, to tell the whole truth about the awful things he had done. Moments before testifying this week at an inquiry into one of South Africa’s deadliest residential fires, he pulled an investigator aside and said he needed to change his story. He was the one, he said, who had started the Aug. 31 blaze that engulfed a five-story building in downtown Johannesburg. After that confession at the inquiry, Mr. Mdlalose was arrested by the police, who are running a parallel criminal investigation into the fire, and charged with 76 counts of murder. While Mr. Mdlalose’s confession at the inquiry is inadmissible, prosecutors said, his confession will bolster the criminal investigation.

Persons: Sithembiso Mdlalose, Mdlalose Locations: Johannesburg

Up a stairwell with popcorn walls stained black, he found a hallway ceiling with jumbles of wires for illegal electrical connections. He rounded a corner, and suddenly he and the two men guiding him heard a high-pitched squeal that sounded like a wire whipping through the air. The two guides ducked and ran. Something is happening,” Mr. Hamman said. He took a few steps away, then caught sight of a small flame glowing from one of the wires strung overhead.

Persons: ” Mr, Hamman Locations: Johannesburg

☆ Madagascar Votes Amid Violence and Calls for Boycott
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-16 | by ( John Eligon | More About John Eligon | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

After weeks of political violence, voters on the island nation of Madagascar went to the polls on Thursday to elect a president, even though 10 of the 13 candidates called for a boycott, accusing the man they are vying to replace of unfairly tilting the process in his favor. Most of the 30 million residents of this nation off the southeastern coast of Africa live in poverty. A series of weather-related catastrophes in recent years have damaged the country’s agricultural production, its economic mainstay, increasing the humanitarian crisis. Political instability has been a defining feature of Madagascar’s elections over the years, and the 2018 race saw efforts by Russia to influence the outcome through the paramilitary organization the Wagner Group. It is unclear whether Russia has any involvement in this year’s election, or how much.

Persons: “, ”, Andoniaina Ratsimamanga Organizations: Wagner Locations: Madagascar, Africa, Russia

☆ Death of Political Activist in Zimbabwe Increases Fears of Crisis
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-14 | by ( John Eligon | More About John Eligon | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

An activist with Zimbabwe’s main opposition party was found dead on the side of a road in the capital, Harare, the police said on Tuesday. A party spokesman said he had been abducted while campaigning in a local election over the weekend. The death of the activist, Tapfumanei Masaya, is the latest in what opposition and civil society leaders say has been a string of violent episodes fueling a growing political crisis in the southern African nation since national elections were held in August. President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his governing ZANU-PF party maintained power in the August vote, despite doubts raised by regional and international observers about the election’s credibility. Mr. Masaya, 51, a pastor, was campaigning door to door on Saturday to promote a candidate along with other members of the political party Citizens Coalition for Change when multiple S.U.V.s pulled up and attackers jumped out and chased them, said Gift Ostallos Siziba, a spokesman for the party.

Persons: Tapfumanei Masaya, Emmerson Mnangagwa, Masaya, Ostallos Organizations: ZANU, Coalition Locations: Harare

Deadly Fire in Africa’s Richest City Exposed a Secret in Plain SightOfficials blame immigrants and liberal housing laws, but a Times investigation found the entrenched problems that turned downtown Johannesburg into a blighted tinderbox. Nov. 10, 2023Days after the fire, officials in Johannesburg reached for a well-worn script. So instead, they turned their attention to another government-owned property, Vannin Court. It’s an eight-story building where hundreds of people live without running water or power. “When people die in these buildings, it is the city of Johannesburg that gets blamed,” Kenny Kunene, a city official, told TV cameras minutes before the raid began.

Persons: It’s, ” Kenny Kunene, ” Organizations: Africa’s, Albert Locations: Johannesburg

☆ ‘More Than Just Rugby’: Championship Generates Harmony in South Africa
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-02 | by ( John Eligon | More About John Eligon | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The towering hall thundered with the euphoria of a nation where everyone seemed, for the moment, to have left their differences behind. The celebrants spoke Zulu, Sotho, Tswana, Afrikaans and English. They were Black and white, young and old, mining company managers and restaurant waitresses. They waved South African flags. They wore the same green-and-gold attire of their rugby heroes as they gathered at the Oliver Reginald Tambo airport in Johannesburg on Tuesday to welcome the team home from the championship game in France.

Persons: celebrants, Oliver Reginald Tambo Locations: Johannesburg, France, Tambo

An investigation by the South African government has concluded that weapons were not loaded onto a Russian vessel under American sanctions that docked near Cape Town last year, contradicting accusations by U.S. officials that South Africa had provided arms for the war in Ukraine, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Sunday. “The panel found no evidence that any cargo of weapons was loaded for export on to the ship, Lady R,” Mr. Ramaphosa said in a televised address, after an investigation commissioned by him and led by a retired judge. Mr. Ramaphosa had said that he would not release the entire report to protect classified information, but that a summary would be made public on Monday. It remains to be seen whether the findings will soothe the relationship between South Africa and the United States, which has reached its most tense period in years in large part because of the dispute over what happened when the Lady R, a commercial cargo ship, docked at a South African naval base under cover of night last December.

Persons: Cyril Ramaphosa, Lady R, Mr, Ramaphosa Organizations: South Locations: Russian, Cape Town, South Africa, Ukraine, United States

No one was in the dark about what was happening at 80 Albert Street. “I was really angry,” said Mpho Phalatse, who would go on to serve for just over a year as Johannesburg’s mayor. The building, she said, was “quite frankly, not habitable.”Neighbors were constantly complaining about the crime spilling out of it and the slumlords who had hijacked it. It was a city-owned building that had been essentially abandoned. A 2019 report by city inspectors showed scorched outlets and melted wires in the building’s rooms, clear fire hazards, all adding up to a steady drumbeat of increasingly worrisome signs.

Persons: ”, Mpho Phalatse Organizations: Albert Locations: Johannesburg

☆ Survivor of South Africa Fire Describes a Harrowing Escape
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-01 | by ( John Eligon | More About John Eligon | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

As Tom Mandala leaned out of the fifth-floor window of his burning apartment building in Johannesburg early Thursday, it felt as if the only decision left to make was how to die. He could turn around and dash for the stairs, but he would surely be overcome by the thick smoke and scorching flames, he figured. Or he could leap out of the window and end up splattered on the sidewalk below. The second option, he thought, would be the best way to ensure that his family back in Malawi would be able to recover his body. So, after about five minutes of agonizing deliberation, Mr. Mandala, 26, jumped.

Persons: Tom Mandala Locations: Johannesburg, Malawi

It may take time to determine what started an apartment fire in Johannesburg early Thursday morning and why more than 70 people died. But witness accounts, imagery of the blaze and a visit to the site in May indicate that the five-story building had a litany of major safety issues that made it vulnerable to a deadly fire. Preliminary evidence suggests the fire started on the ground floor, a local official said, and trapped many residents behind locked gates as it spread. While precise origin of the fire is unknown, some of the earliest flames were spotted in a courtyard behind the building where people were living.

Locations: Johannesburg

They arrived in desperation, unable to find anything better, safer or cheaper in a city with a severe shortage of affordable housing. They settled in a trash-choked building owned and neglected by the city of Johannesburg, paying “rent” to criminals. Flames devoured a structure that overcrowding, security gates, mounds of garbage and flimsy subdividing had turned into a death trap. Some victims leaped from upper windows of the five-story building rather than burn to death. And these urban squatter camps are routinely “hijacked,” residents say, by organized groups demanding payment.

Persons: Mgcini Locations: Johannesburg, South

The presidential election in Zimbabwe last week that kept the governing party in power and was widely criticized as dubious is likely to isolate the country further from the United States and other Western nations. But it has also exposed Zimbabwe to increased scrutiny and pressure from a surprising place: its neighbors in southern Africa. Before President Emmerson Mnangagwa was declared the winner of a second term on Saturday, the Southern African Development Community and the African Union publicly questioned the legitimacy of Zimbabwe’s elections for the first time. While Zimbabwe has chalked up criticism from the West as colonial gripes, condemnation from other leaders on the continent may not be so easily brushed off, analysts say, particularly when it comes from countries that have to absorb the effects of Zimbabwe’s economic and social turmoil. On Sunday, speaking for the first time since his victory, Mr. Mnangagwa dismissed his African critics.

Persons: Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mnangagwa Organizations: Southern African Development Community, African Union Locations: Zimbabwe, United States, Africa

☆ Incumbent Claims Victory in Zimbabwe Election Amid Fraud Accusations
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-26 | by ( John Eligon | More About John Eligon | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“We reject any result hastily assembled without proper verification,” Promise Mkwananzi, the party spokesman, wrote on Twitter shortly after the results were announced. Mr. Mugabe was removed in a coup in 2017 by Mr. Mnangagwa and his allies. The following year, Mr. Mnangagwa eked out a victory over Mr. Chamisa in an election, winning just over 50 percent of the vote. The Zimbabwean police drew global condemnation for arresting dozens of members of one of the country’s most respected election watchdogs on election night, accusing them of plotting to sow discord by releasing projected election results. The night after the raid, ZANU-PF officials offered their own election projections at a news conference, and drew no ire from the police.

Persons: “, Mnangagwa, Robert Mugabe, autocrat, Mugabe, Chamisa Organizations: Twitter, Mr, Zimbabwean, ZANU Locations: Zimbabwe, African

☆ Thousands Camp All Night to Vote, Leaving a Nation on Edge
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-24 | by ( John Eligon | More About John Eligon | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A chaotic presidential election left Zimbabweans anxiously awaiting the outcome on Thursday after thousands were forced to wait overnight to vote and the police arrested dozens of independent election observers tasked with ensuring a fair election. Voting in Zimbabwe, a nation of 16 million people in southern Africa, was supposed to run from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesday. But many polling stations, almost exclusively in urban areas that tend to favor opposition parties, had to stay open into Thursday because their ballots were not delivered until late the previous afternoon. For many, Mr. Mnangagwa has represented a continuation of his predecessor, Robert Mugabe, running an increasingly autocratic government that has failed to reverse a long-term economic crisis and isolating Zimbabwe from the West. Mr. Chamisa has sold himself as a fresh start and has vowed to re-engage with the world, particularly with the United States and Europe.

Persons: Emmerson Mnangagwa, Nelson Chamisa, Mnangagwa, Robert Mugabe, Chamisa Organizations: ZANU, Coalition Locations: Zimbabwe, Africa, United States, Europe

☆ What to Know as Zimbabwe Elects a President
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-23 | by ( John Eligon | More About John Eligon | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The police have cracked down on opponents of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, the incumbent, whose ZANU-PF party has governed the country since independence in 1980. Inconsistencies in voter rolls and confusion over polling sites have fueled accusations that the national electoral commission is in the party’s back pocket. Mr. Mnangagwa is poised for a big victory, they say, because he has set the country on track economically. But surveys suggest that many Zimbabweans have lost faith in their president. The clear front-runners are Mr. Mnangagwa, running in his second election, and Nelson Chamisa, who challenged Mr. Mnangagwa in 2018 and now leads a new party, Citizens Coalition for Change.

Persons: Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mnangagwa, ”, Vince Musewe, It’s, Nelson Chamisa Organizations: ZANU, The New York Times, Party, Citizens Coalition Locations: Africa, Harare, Zimbabwe’s, “

The hospital where Warren George worked as a nurse in Zimbabwe was so short of basic supplies, like plaster, that he could not make casts to treat people with broken bones. He soon sought to join the exodus of more than 4,000 nurses who have fled the southern African nation in the past two years. But the government has refused to give him and many others the documents they would need to work in, say, Britain or Canada. He says that he now earns only about $500 a month as a traveling nurse and has to pick up extra shifts on his days off to ensure his family has enough to eat. Zimbabweans are scheduled to go to the polls on Wednesday in only the second election since Robert Mugabe, the liberation leader turned strongman president, was ousted in a coup.

Persons: Warren George, Robert Mugabe Locations: Zimbabwe, Britain, Canada

☆ Jacob Zuma Released After Brief Return to Prison in South Africa
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-11 | by ( John Eligon | More About John Eligon | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Former President Jacob Zuma of South Africa returned to prison early Friday morning to continue serving a sentence for contempt, but was released almost immediately under a program to relieve overcrowding in the country’s jails, the authorities said. With his release under the program, it is unlikely that Mr. Zuma will serve more time in prison on the contempt charge. Political opponents accused the government, run by Mr. Zuma’s political party, of giving him preferential treatment, saying it had intentionally started to roll out the overcrowding program on the day he reported to jail. Mr. Zuma had served just two months of a 15-month sentence in 2021 for defying a court order to testify before a national inquiry on corruption when he was released on medical parole by the corrections commissioner at the time, a close political ally. But last year, an appeals court ruled that Mr. Zuma’s release was unlawful and that he had to return to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence, a decision upheld by the country’s highest judicial body last month.

Persons: Jacob Zuma of, Zuma Locations: Jacob Zuma of South Africa

☆ ‘Kill the Boer’ Song Fuels Backlash in South Africa and U.S.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-02 | by ( John Eligon | More About John Eligon | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Mr. Malema leads the Economic Freedom Fighters, a party that advocates taking white-owned land to give to Black South Africans. That has made his embrace of the chant all the more disturbing to some whites. Despite the words, the song should not be taken as a literal call to violence, according to Mr. Malema and veterans and historians of the anti-apartheid struggle. But the A.N.C., the liberation party that has governed South Africa since the beginning of multiracial democracy nearly 30 years ago, distanced itself from the song in 2012 — the same year it expelled Mr. Malema for his incendiary statements. The people singing those songs were not actually planning to march to Pretoria, nor did they really think that Mr. Mandela was about to be released, he said.

Persons: Donald J, Malema, Peter Mokaba, Bongani Ngqulunga, Nelson Mandela, Mandela Organizations: Trump, Economic, Fighters, Black, African National Congress, University of Johannesburg Locations: South Africa, United States, Pretoria

☆ South Africa’s President Says Putin Will Not Attend Diplomatic Summit
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-18 | by ( John Eligon | More About John Eligon | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

President Vladimir V. Putin will not attend a diplomatic summit in Johannesburg next month, South Africa’s president announced on Wednesday, a decision that allows the host nation to avoid the difficult predicament of whether to arrest the Russian leader, who is the subject of an international warrant. President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa had said in a court affidavit made public on Tuesday that his country would risk war with Russia if it arrested Mr. Putin at the summit. The decision for Mr. Putin not to attend was made “by mutual agreement,” according to a statement released by Mr. Ramaphosa’s office. Russia will instead be represented by its foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, the statement said. South African officials were forced to weigh that alliance against its relationship with Western partners, which has been strained lately because of South Africa’s refusal to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, Cyril Ramaphosa of, Mr, Sergey V, Lavrov Organizations: South Locations: Johannesburg, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, Russia, Ukraine

Oh my God.” “While watching the George Floyd trial, I noticed the differences and the importance of footage.” “This corner —” “When Stephon was murdered, we only had the officers’ footage. They handcuffed him after he was dead.” “Excessive force.” “Excessive force and lethal force after the fact of death. Anything that does not deal directly with the murder of George Floyd is irrelevant in my opinion.” “He’s 6 to 6 and a half feet tall. George Floyd is already dead.” “That’s right. I feel like it’s a bittersweet thing that’s happening watching the George Floyd trial.

Persons: ”, George Floyd, Stephon, ” “ Bro, ” “, “, Tiffany, Lora, Lora Dene King, Rodney Glen King, King, they’re, ” “ It’s, George Holliday, George Floyd’s, she’s, Wanda Johnson, I’m, Oscar Grant, ” “ Grant, Oscar, bro, Y’all, — ” “ —, let’s, God, Jesus Christ, Sequette Clark, Stephon Clark, ” “ Clark, Floyd, Chauvin wouldn’t, didn’t, “ Poppa’s, They’re, he’s, Rodney Kings, George Floyd — ”, We’re, don’t Organizations: “ Police Locations: Lora Dene, ”, Los Angeles, America

Derek Chauvin was found guilty of two counts of murder on Tuesday in the death of George Floyd, whose final breaths last May under the knee of Mr. Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, were captured on video, setting off months of protests against the police abuse of Black people. After deliberating for about 10 hours over two days following an emotional trial that lasted three weeks, the jury found Mr. Chauvin, who is white, guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for the killing of Mr. Floyd, a Black man, on a street corner last year on Memorial Day. Mr. Chauvin faces up to 40 years in prison when he is sentenced in the coming weeks but is likely to receive far less time. The presumptive sentence for second-degree murder is 12.5 years, according to Minnesota’s sentencing guidelines, although the state has asked for a higher sentence. The verdict was read in court and broadcast live to the nation on television, as the streets around the heavily fortified courthouse in downtown Minneapolis, ringed by razor wire and guarded by National Guard soldiers, filled with people awaiting the verdict.

Persons: Derek Chauvin, George Floyd, Chauvin, Floyd Organizations: National Guard Locations: Minneapolis

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