<p>Zambia is withholding 2.4 billion kwacha ($243 million) of the 5 billion kwacha owed to mining companies in tax refunds because the correct documentation has not been provided, the tax authority said on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Zambia&#8217;s government began paying up to 800 million kwacha a month in Value Added Tax refunds to mining companies in June, aiming to put an end to a long running dispute in which firms were owed about $700 million.</p>
<p>Some funds are being withheld because companies have not provided documents showing the export destination, Zambia Revenue Authority head Kingsley Chanda told reporters.</p>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads1"></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads0"></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Glencore&#8217;s Mopani Copper Mines, First Quantum Minerals, Barrick Gold and Vedanta Resources all have operations in Africa&#8217;s No.2 copper producer.</p>
<p>Chanda said low copper prices and the depreciation of the kwacha this year hit mining companies, leading to a 1 billion kwacha drop in expected tax collection.</p>
<p>Zambia is also withholding 40 million kwacha every month from South African-based exporters of petroleum products as they do not qualify for tax exemption under a regional agreement.</p>
<p>Most of the petroleum products coming from South Africa were initially imported from Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, countries that don&#8217;t have a trade agreement with Zambia, Chanda said.﻿</p>
<p> </p>


Zambia withholding $243 mn in tax refunds owed to mining firms

<p>Almost 300 members of Somalia&#8217;s federal parliament were sworn in on Tuesday, although parliament&#8217;s election of a new president to head the government was postponed.</p>
<p>The ceremony at least gives the chronically unstable Horn of Africa country a quorate assembly, four weeks after the conclusion of a month-long election conducted among 14,000 representative citizens.</p>
<p>The lawmakers were supposed to pick a new president on Wednesday, but the electoral commission said on Tuesday that the vote had been postponed to an as yet unspecified date.</p>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads1"></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads0"></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>&#8220;As you witnessed, 243 lawmakers and 38 upper house members have been sworn in,&#8221; Abdikarim haji Abdi, the chief secretary of Somalia’s federal parliament, told reporters at a police training camp in the capital Mogadishu, where the ceremony took place.</p>
<p>This left 32 members of the lower house still to be sworn in, because their elections either had not yet taken place or were disputed. In addition, 34 new seats in the upper house were only created by the electoral committee last week for the six federal states, in order to resolve a disagreement.</p>
<p>Once all the remaining seats are filled, the parliament will have a total complement of 347 legislators. However, the 281 already sworn-in are enough to be able to elect a president.</p>
<p>Plagued by Islamist militancy, famine and maritime piracy, Somalia has been at war for more than a quarter of a century, but diplomats and some citizens hope the current political process will help bring some stability.</p>
<p>Legislator Khalif Sheikh Abdullahi told Reuters before the swearing-in ceremony that the oldest MP would temporarily act as House speaker, in line with the constitution, until a full-time speaker was elected.</p>
<p>Somalia&#8217;s weak U.N.-backed government is dependent on foreign funds to pay the fledgling armed forces and a contingent of 22,000 African Union peacekeepers.</p>
<p>The outgoing parliament, elected in 2012, was picked by 135 elders. The government said threats from the al Qaeda-linked insurgents of al Shabaab made a one-person, one-vote election this year impossible, but that the choice of 14,000 representative electors did constitute progress towards democracy.﻿</p>
<p> </p>


Somalia swears in federal lawmakers who will pick future president

<p>Rwanda&#8217;s central bank on Wednesday lowered its key repo rate to 6.25 percent, from 6.50 percent, to help stimulate credit growth, Governor John Rwangombwa said.</p>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads1"></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads0"></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Rwangombwa said while moderate pressure was expected on inflation and the local currency, authorities needed &#8220;to give a signal &#8230; to the financial sector to continue supporting the financing of the economy.&#8221;</p>
<p>Last month, Rwanda&#8217;s year-on-year overall inflation declined to 6.4 percent from October&#8217;s 7.4 percent and the governor said the rate would likely stand at 6 percent in December.</p>
<p>Rwangombwa said credit to the private sector grew 7.4 percent in the first 11 months of this year, compared with 26.9 percent in the same period in 2015.﻿</p>
<p> </p>


South Africa introduces $260 a month national minimum wage

Rwandan central bank lowers key repo rate to stimulate lending

<p>U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has no meeting planned with Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou, a Trump spokeswoman said on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Sassou&#8217;s spokesman, Thierry Moungalla, earlier had said Sassou, a member of the African Union&#8217;s High Level Committee on Libya, and Trump were scheduled for a U.S. meeting on Tuesday to discuss the political turmoil in Libya and other African issues.</p>
<p>Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said there had never been a meeting scheduled and would not be one before Trump takes office on Jan. 20.</p>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads4"></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads3"></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads2"></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads1"></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads0"></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Trump has been holding a series of meetings at his home in Palm Beach, Florida, as well as Trump Tower in New York City as he prepares to assume the White House from Democratic U.S. President Barack Obama on Jan. 20. Most of the meetings have centered on possible candidates to serve in his administration, including his Cabinet.</p>
<p>Trump aides have said he is scheduled to meet this week with Elsa Murano, who served as undersecretary of agriculture for food safety under President George W. Bush and is a possible contender for agriculture secretary, although no date was given.﻿</p>
<p> </p>


No Trump meeting with Republic of Congo president

<p>More than 3,000 people in northeast Nigeria who were forced to flee the seven-year insurgency waged by Islamist militants have returned to their hometown following the reopening of major roads in the area, the army said on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Damasak &#8211; in the northwest of Borno, the state worst hit by the militants &#8211; was taken over by Boko Haram in late 2014, when it controlled an area the size of Belgium in northeast Nigeria. The insurgents were pushed out of the town by the army in July.</p>
<p>President Muhammadu Buhari said on Saturday that the army had taken back Boko Haram&#8217;s main camp in the Sambisa forest.</p>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads1"></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads0"></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>On Sunday, the government said it was reopening two roads between Borno&#8217;s capital, Maiduguri, and the northern towns of Damasak and Baga.</p>
<p>Army spokesman Sani Usman said more than 3,000 people used one of the roads to return to Damasak on Monday.</p>
<p>Reuters was unable to independently verify his statement.</p>
<p>&#8220;They were residents of Damasak displaced by the insurgency staying as refugees in the neighbouring Niger Republic and internally displaced people in Maiduguri,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Usman said the returnees went through military security checks when they arrived and were met by local government officials and community leaders.</p>
<p>More than two million people have been displaced during the insurgency as Boko Haram tries to establish an Islamic state, run using a strict interpretation of sharia, in the northeast. About 15,000 people have been killed.</p>
<p>After the announcement that the Sambisa camp had been taken, the Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai, said the former game reserve would be used as a military training base to prevent the insurgents returning.</p>
<p>Security analysts say Boko Haram split this year with one faction led by Abubakar Shekau operating from the Sambisa forest and the other, allied to Islamic State and led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi, based in the Lake Chad region.</p>
<p>Despite having been pushed back by a military offensive in the last few months, Boko Haram still stages suicide bombings in northeast Nigeria and in neighbouring Niger and Cameroon.﻿</p>
<p> </p>


3,000 people who fled Boko Haram return home

<p>Mozambique&#8217;s Renamo opposition party will cease all military operations against government forces for the next seven days to allow the public to enjoy New Year festivities, its leader Afonso Dhlakama said on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Rights groups estimate that dozens of people have been killed this year in tit-for-tat attacks between Renamo fighters and the ruling Frelimo government.</p>
<p>Renamo and Frelimo fought on opposing sides in a civil war from 1976 to 1992 in which a million people died.</p>
<p>Mozambique is on the verge of developing huge offshore gas reserves which could transform one of the world&#8217;s poorest countries into a middle-income state. Competition to control this newfound wealth could stir unrest, analysts say.</p>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads1"></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="teads-inread">
<div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads0"></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>“I announce the provisional cessation of military hostilities across the country as from midnight Tuesday,&#8221; Dhlakama, who is in hiding, told reporters by telephone.</p>
<p>&#8220;I took the initiative, I called the President of the Republic, Filipe Nyusi, and gave him the possibility to offer this provisional truce.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mediated peace talks collapsed earlier this month but Dhlakama said that he was willing to continue to dialogue with Nyusi following Monday&#8217;s productive telephone call.</p>
<p>Nyusi told reporters on Monday that he was &#8220;encouraged&#8221; by the conversation with Dhlakama and he described the provisional ceasefire as a &#8220;sign of hope for the whole country&#8221;.</p>
<p>Renamo has retained a militia since the end of the war and violence has intensified since Frelimo won a disputed election in 2014.</p>
<p>Renamo is demanding that it control six provinces where it won the most votes and the inclusion of its militia in the army and police. Frelimo has said that Renamo must disarm before any agreements can be reached.﻿</p>
<p> </p>


Mozambique's opposition agrees to 7-day truce

<p>South Africa&#8217;s power utility Eskom said on Tuesday the first unit of its Kusile coal-fired power plant has been connected to the grid, as it raises capacity to overcome electricity shortages in Africa&#8217;s most industrialised country.</p>
<p>Unit one of the Kusile plant will add 800 megawatts (MW) of power capacity. When fully completed, the plant will have total output of 4,800 MW, making it one of the largest coal-fired plants in the world, Eskom said.</p>
<p>Eskom has been in talks with Anglo American about supplying coal to the plant.﻿</p>
<p> </p>


Power boost for South Africa's grid

<p>Helping your children by investing for them could be seen as a luxury, but with the cost of education soaring, it’s looking more and more like a necessity. A <a href="http://city-press.news24.com/News/infographic-this-is-what-it-will-cost-to-educate-your-child-20160120">2016 report from City Press</a> indicated that education for a child starting Grade R in 2016 and matriculating in 2028 would cost approximately R253 000  at average fee-paying schools, R676 000  at upper-income former Model C schools, and R3.7 million  at private schools. And that’s just the bill before tertiary education.</p>
<p>Depending on the education choices you make for your children, it’s likely you might feel some financial stress once your children start school.</p>
<p>Remember that any saving or investment should align with short-, medium- and long-term goals. And know that these goals change over time. Paying for a child’s secondary or tertiary education would be a long-term goal when they’re a baby, says the US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, but a short-term one when they’re in the final year of high school.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The various savings options available to parents include the following:</p>
<p><strong>Unit trusts</strong></p>
<p>Unit trusts, either bought directly from the asset manager or through a Linked Investment Service Provider (LISP), offer a simple and generally cost-efficient way to get exposure to equities. If you have a long-term education saving goal, you would necessarily want to look at asset classes that have the best chance of outperforming inflation over the long term (given the fact that education inflation is much higher than consumer price inflation, it’s no use keeping your savings in cash because you will underperform against inflation over time). Equities have historically proven to be the best option for beating inflation.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Tax-free savings accounts</strong></p>
<p>A tax-free savings account can be opened in the name of a child, who will have their own R30 000 annual limit. The lifetime contribution limit of R500 000 can be ignored because this will only become an issue by the time they’re 16 (if you started contributing when they were born). By then, it is likely that this limit will have been increased. And with the power of compound interest, a relatively modest investment should more than cover the cost of your child’s education.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Education saving plans</strong></p>
<p>Education plans on offer by most financial services companies and insurers are typically endowment policies. With endowment policies, a monthly contribution is made for a specified period and a lump–sum amount is paid out at the end of the period. The minimum investment term is generally five years. For higher-income earners, endowments potentially offer greater tax efficiency because they are taxed at a flat rate of 30%.</p>
<p>Life cover is also important because you’d want whatever investments you’ve made for your children to be continued. Something like Discovery Life’s Global Education Protector will cover the cost of education (including tertiary studies globally) in the case of disability, severe illness or death.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Fundisa</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.fundisa.org.za/">Fundisa</a>, an education savings initiative by the government, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme and the Association for Savings and Investment South Africa, has the advantage of a top-up bonus annually as a reward. This can be as much as 25% of the amount saved per year, up to a maximum of R600 per child. The minimum contribution is R40 per month, and there is no maximum.</p>
<p>However, only the first R2 400 saved per year will qualify for that top-up bonus. Fundisa is designed for lower-income earners, and only learners whose families earn below R180 000 per year will qualify. This only applies to the learner (and their family), which makes it a compelling way to contribute to education savings for a child of a nanny or similar employee.</p>
<p>Any option that has the goal of providing for a child’s education is important because savings are ring-fenced for a specific purpose.</p>
<p>Make sure your children are part of the process of saving for their education (especially as they become older and more mathematically and economically literate). This is an invaluable teaching tool and is a real opportunity to instill lessons such as the value of money and the importance of saving.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>For more information on investing for retirement, speak to your financial adviser.</em></p>
<p><em>This article is part of an investment series by Discovery Invest. ﻿</em></p>


A head start for your children

<p>The United Nations Security Council failed on Friday to adopt a U.S.-drafted resolution to impose an arms embargo and further sanctions on South Sudan despite warnings by U.N. officials of a possible genocide in the world&#8217;s newest state.</p>
<p>There were seven votes in favor and eight abstentions. A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Russia, Britain or China to be adopted. Washington called for a vote on Friday knowing it would fail.</p>
<p>The United States could not even win over its ally Japan, which last month deployed troops to a U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. Japan, Russia, China,Angola, Malaysia, Venezuela, Egypt and Senegal all abstained.</p>
<p>&#8220;The council members who didn&#8217;t support this resolution are taking a big gamble that South Sudan&#8217;s leaders will not instigate a catastrophe,&#8221; said U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power. &#8220;It is the people of South Sudan who will pay an unbearable price.&#8221;</p>
<p>She said the United States was prepared to push for another vote on an arms embargo in the future.</p>
<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not in favor of using sanctions to exert pressure on developing countries,&#8221; China&#8217;s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Wu Haitao said. &#8220;There needs to be prudent actions with respect to embargoes and designations to avoid complicating the situation even further in South Sudan.&#8221;</p>
<p>The resolution had also proposed blacklisting South Sudan opposition figure Riek Machar, army chief Paul Malong andInformationMinister Michael Makuei.</p>
<p>Political rivalry between President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and Marchar, his former deputy, led in 2013 to civil war that often has followed ethnic lines. The pair signed a peace deal last year, but fighting has continued. Machar, a Nuer, fled in July and is now in South Africa. </p>
<p>&#8220;This resolution would not have been a panacea, we are not naive,&#8221; said Power, though she added that the measure would have cut arms sales to a state that &#8220;instead of feeding its people is amping up and arming up for an increasing ethnic conflict.&#8221;</p>
<p>U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday told the Security Council that he feared genocide was about to start in South Sudan unless immediate action is taken, renewing his months-long plea for an arms embargo.</p>
<div class="related-content group-one">South Sudan&#8217;s U.N. ambassador, Akuei Bona Malwal, said such descriptions were exaggerated and did not &#8220;reflect the reality on the ground.&#8221;</div>
<p>U.N. peacekeepers have been in South Sudan since the nation gained independence from Sudan in 2011, and there currently are some 13,700 U.N. troops and police in the country.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Bernadette Baum)﻿</p>


UN fails to broker arms embargo in South Sudan

<p>KINSHASA &#8211; Congolese politicians have agreed in principle to a deal under which President Joseph Kabila leaves office by the end of 2017, opposition leaders said on Friday, an unexpected breakthrough after dozens were killed in anti-government protests this week.</p>
<p>If the deal does succeed, it would be a major achievement for the Catholic church, which has been mediating talks in an attempt to prevent Democratic Republic of Congo sliding back into years of anarchy and civil war.</p>
<p>Pope Francis has heaped pressured on Kabila and the opposition to find a peacefulsolutionto the crisis in Congo.</p>
<div class="teads-inread" style="height: 0px; transition-duration: 0.5s;">
<div style="position: relative;">
<div class="teads-ui-components-label" style="display: none;">ADVERTISING</div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads1"></div>
<div class="teads-ui-components-credits" style="display: none;"><a href="http://inread-experience.teads.tv/" target="_blank">inRead invented by Teads</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="teads-inread" style="height: 0px; transition-duration: 0.5s;">
<div style="position: relative;">
<div class="teads-ui-components-label" style="display: none;">ADVERTISING</div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads0"></div>
<div class="teads-ui-components-credits" style="display: none;"><a href="http://inread-experience.teads.tv/" target="_blank">inRead invented by Teads</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>&#8220;At first glance, a miracle is possible and the bishops have won their bet,&#8221; Albert Moleka, former chief of staff to the leader of the main opposition bloc Etienne Tshisekedi, said.</p>
<p>    A government spokesman said the proposal would be presented to the full delegation at the talks on Friday afternoon, but he declined to comment on the specifics of the deal.</p>
<p>In return for Kabila staying on for another year, the constitution will not be changed to let him stand for a third term, a prime minister will be named from the main opposition bloc and Tshisekedi will oversee the deal&#8217;s implementation, opposition leaders Martin Fayulu and Jose Endundo told Reuters.</p>
<p>&#8220;Kabila stays for one year,&#8221; Fayulu said. &#8220;He will not try to stand for a new term.&#8221;</p>
<p>However, Kabila himself has so far said nothing and the parties have yet to sign the deal, which requires final approval by all delegates at the talks.</p>
<p>The negotiations could still be tough, with the opposition insisting on Friday that Kabila step down in time for elections to take place no later than November 2017.</p>
<p>Church leaders have presented these talks as a last ditch effort to prevent violence spinning out of control after a bloody week that saw protesters killed and deadly clashes between various ethnic militia across the country.</p>
<p>BLOODY PROTESTS</p>
<p>The head of the U.N. human rights agency said on Friday that Congolesesecurityforces had killed at least 40 people and arrested 460 in protests this week.</p>
<p>The violence has raised fears Congo is heading toward another major armed conflict, a risk that has prompted several donor nations to condemn Kabila for failing to stand down.</p>
<p>Millions were killed in wars between 1996 and 2003.</p>
<p>&#8220;Most of &#8230; (Kabila&#8217;s coalition) would welcome this (deal) because they’re under so much pressure,&#8221; said Pascal Kambale, a Congolese human rights lawyer working for the Open Society Foundations.</p>
<p>But Jean Marc Kabund, the secretary general of Congo&#8217;s largest opposition party, the UDPS, warned that the deal was not yet a sure thing.</p>
<p>&#8220;Today is the last day (of negotiations),&#8221; he told Reuters. &#8220;It&#8217;s make it or break it.&#8221;</p>
<div class="related-content group-one">A presidential election scheduled for last month had been postponed until at least April 2018 because of what the government said were delays registering voters. This deal would mean it must happen by the end of next year.</div>
<p>Kabila has declined to commit publicly to not changing the constitution to extend his term, leading many to conclude that this is what he secretly wants to do.</p>
<p>His allies have argued that he is committed to respecting the constitution but that promising to step down would make him a lame duck and possibly spark apowerstruggle that could put his life in danger.</p>
<p>His father, President Laurent Kabila, was assassinated by a bodyguard in 2001 and Congo has never had a peaceful transition of power.</p>
<p>It was not immediately clear how the wider population would react to an agreement. On Twitter, a leader of the youth activist group Filimbi, Floribert Anzuluni, said it constituted &#8220;high treason by everyone&#8221;.</p>
<p>However, many in the capital Kinshasa, who spoke to Reuters after the protests subsided, said they were tired of the violence and hoped for a negotiated settlement.</p>
<p>(Editing by Tim Cocks and Louise Ireland/Richard Balmforth)﻿</p>


Congo agrees to deal for Kabila to step down

<p><em>This article first appeared in Forbes Africa and is republished with its permission. Subscribe today by contacting Shanna Jacobsen <a href="mailto:Shanna.Jacobsen@abn360.com">Shanna.Jacobsen@abn360.com﻿</a>﻿</em>﻿</p>
<p>Call him unlucky or dodgy, whichever way you look at it, Zimbabwean financier and moneylender, Frank Buyanga, can fight.</p>
<p>He was trapped in his adopted country, South Africa, after Interpol issued him with a so-called ‘red notice’ in February 2012. This is issued to a person subject to an arrest warrant or one who is required to serve a sentence. He fought,  using the law, to clear his name. He is now free to travel and do business at home.</p>
<p>At the root of it all was his money-lending business in Zimbabwe. Buyanga’s borrowers secured their loans with their homes. Every now and again, defaulters refused to give up their houses, leading to litigation and growing disgruntlement. The government called the loans a sham.</p>
<p>“The police made sure I was absent by arresting me. By me being absent, all these complainants were able to go and lie to the courts, police and judges. To some extent, they were successful because I wasn’t around to defend my position because I was busy fighting a criminal case. There was no element of criminality in any of my transactions,” says Buyanga.</p>
<p>His lawyer Nick Kaufman fought tooth and nail for the matter to be resolved.</p>
<p>“Frank is a colorful character. People don’t like success stories, especially from people who show their wealth,” said Kaufman, an international lawyer who has represented Muammar Gaddafi’s children and the Democratic Republic of Congo leader, Jean-Pierre Bemba, against war crimes, when interviewed by FORBES AFRICA in 2012.</p>
<p>“It’s a serious defamation of character, when you have somebody who is presumed innocent then his photograph appears with the likes of Osama bin Laden and his henchmen, then that in itself has an effect on a legitimate businessman who is trying to conduct activities,” he said.</p>
<p>Kaufman argued that the red notice offends the Interpol constitution in that it was tainted by political motives and offended the rules of Interpol in that it was essentially designed to coerce a resolution to what was effectively a civil case.</p>
<p>They won.</p>
<p>Buyanga says he later received a two-page letter, signed by the chief law officer in the attorney general’s office, Chris Mutangadura, reversing the notice.</p>
<p>“There was a lot of pressure from my side for the issue to be resolved. The National Prosecuting Authority was incorrectly advised in terms of how they came to the decision of putting me on the Interpol red notice. I think they realized that,” says Buyanga.</p>
<p>Able to travel freely, Buyanga continued with business in the country of his father’s birth.</p>
<p>“If I had it my way, I would sell all my businesses in Zimbabwe and go on holiday for the rest of my life. The problem is that, in that country, nobody can afford my businesses&#8230; I wouldn’t be sticking around there for these headaches,” he says.</p>
<p>In a limping economy, short of hard cash, people are reliant on lending; but problems that caused his red notice still persist.</p>
<p>As you read this, Buyanga has an arrest warrant out for him in Zimbabwe. He also has more than 200 cases before the courts brought forward by people who borrowed money from his company, Hamilton Finance. Most of these are him against “squatters”, as he calls them, living in his properties. He has been labeled a “loan shark” by some, yet others defend his business principles.</p>
<p>“We live in Africa which is still developing… whenever you do something that has some sort of relevance; people automatically look at you like a crook…,” says Kaufman.</p>
<p>Buyanga, the son of a former Zimbabwean civil servant, who was born in London, owns a Rolls Royce, Lamborghinis, an Aston Martin DB9 and others. He lives in a luxury flat at the Michelangelo Towers, in the heart of Sandton, near Johannesburg, and rubs shoulders with celebs, like former Liverpool and England footballer John Barnes.</p>
<p>“Four years ago, I was driving to Durban and my friend and I were following each other driving Lamborghinis. Police stopped us on the [highway] and said ‘can you put me in whatever you are doing, I know you are doing drugs’… this is the perception of people. Sometime ago, I was driving to Harare in an Aston Martin and a cop stopped me and said ‘I am not going to search you, tell me what you are carrying because you probably have gold in there. It’s a mental illness among our people,” he says.</p>
<p>Buyanga has been a subject of investigation for the past 25 years but has never been found guilty for any crime. Yet, if you google him, hundreds of articles of fraud pop up, including an arrest warrant for failure to attend court for conspiracy to fraud in the UK.</p>
<p>“I am not wanted in the UK, because my lawyers have been dealing with that issue. I don’t even know what the merits of the case in the UK are… My lawyers have asked for the Crown Prosecution in the UK to provide them with a file for the facts of that matter which they haven’t done. I have problems even here in South Africa. It doesn’t matter where you are… I follow the constitution in every country I am a resident at,” he says.</p>
<p>“I make sure we pay our taxes, we create employment. Persistence, drive, initiative is the only way I survive in Zimbabwe.”</p>
<p>The entrepreneur says he had his first company, in the UK, when he was 18 years old and he is not about to let anything pull him down.</p>
<p>“My dad and I started Summit Trading, a company that traded commodities. In 1999, I started Fercl Trading, an exporting company to the Middle East and Africa from the UK, at 19 years old,” he says.</p>
<p>In 2000, property was cheap in Zimbabwe because of the political unrest and economic downturn; Buyanga took advantage of this.</p>
<p>“I started buying property because it was cheap at the time. I used to go to auctions and buy and now I have hundreds of properties.”</p>
<p>He is also invested in business in South Africa in mining, finance, infrastructure, and consultancy. He also does business across the continent.</p>
<p>Lawsuits are breathing down his neck, but Buyanga lives to fight another day.﻿</p>


The tale of a Zimbabwean entrepreneur who has seen it all

<p>When he talks, people listen; when he moves money, markets react and when he invests, many follow. He is Christo Wiese, Africa’s third richest man after Aliko Dangote and Nicky Oppenheimer &amp; family, according to FORBES’ list of Africa’s 50 richest, and the creator of Africa’s largest retail store. He is ever busy as he adds to his $6.5 billion fortune, but his last investment raised a few eyebrows.</p>
<p>As we meet, Wiese is dressed in black pants and a black sweater; you may mistake him for an ordinary bloke on the street in Cape Town, South Africa. But, there is nothing ordinary about this man when it comes to business. His creation, Shoprite, earns revenue of $9.9 billion a year, at a time when retail is struggling. Steinhoff, the parent company of Wiese’s retail company PEP, brings in $11.8 billion. Combined, they net almost $2 billion in annual profits, operate more than 9,000 stores in 30 countries and employ over 200,000 people. He made his fortune from smart investments that earned him billions. So, why is he looking to venture into Africa’s glittering, but struggling, diamond industry?</p>
<p>The family businesses, Cream Magenta 140 Proprietary Ltd. and Metcap 14 Proprietary Ltd., bought close to 50 million shares (23.54% each) in diamond company Trans Hex. This adds up to a dominant stake of just over 47%.</p>
<p>This isn’t entirely new territory for the risk taker. Wiese was in diamond mining in the late 1990s through an investment in Ocean Diamond Mining Holdings (ODM). He sold ODM to Namibian-based diamond miner Namco.</p>
<p>“I used to be in the diamond industry 40 years ago and the opportunity arose to acquire a controlling stake in Trans Hex which is one of the junior diamond mining companies and one I think has potential,” says Wiese. </p>
<p>The cold fact is South Africa’s once thriving diamond industry is suffering atrophy. It has no more than 200 diamond beneficiators remaining from a historical peak of about 4,500 and a decline in investment, according toMining Weekly.</p>
<p>“Rough-diamond prices are too high for manufacturers, who cannot profitably polish goods at such levels. Polished-diamond prices have declined, in turn, reducing demand for diamonds from South African mines, as well as throughout the world,” it says, quoting World Federation of Diamond Bourses president Ernie Blom.</p>
<p>Trans Hex has not been immune. Their 2016 results suffered heavily from a sharp decline in rough diamond prices.</p>
<p>“The diamond market was severely impacted by excess stocks in the polishing industry and a resultant decline in demand for rough diamond. Average prices received for rough thus decline by 23.5% year-on-year. As a result, the Lower Orange River operations, which are earning the end of their reserves, moved into loss overall,” says Bernard van Rooyen, Trans Hex Chairman in the company financials.</p>
<p>Piet Viljoen, Alternate Director at Trans Hex, says its share price has come under pressure but the business has tried to ride the storm.</p>
<p>“The problem creates value in a very lumpy way. It earns a lot of money one year and then makes big losses the next year… so its share price doesn’t seem to go anywhere ever, that’s why it creates the impression that the business is under pressure,” he says.</p>
<p>Viljoen says it helps to have shareholders like Wiese who have vision.</p>
<p>“The shareholder reference can act as a provider of capital when the business needs it, do acquisitions or to fund projects.”</p>
<p>Trans Hex Group incurred a disappointing loss of R100.8 million ($7.3 million) and Viljoen has called it “a difficult year” but Wiese is optimistic.</p>
<p>“It is going well, except the exchange rate is not in favor of diamond exports because the rand is stagnant. With the diamond industry, you are not running a shop where you always know what your sales are going to be,” says Wiese.</p>
<p>Wiese is known for taking risks and smart investments. More than 60% of his wealth is in Shoprite and Steinhoff, while another 30% or so comes from his shares of investment company, Brait. His stock in Tradehold, a real estate firm, accounts for much of the remaining 10%. He has made investments in the United Kingdom (UK) such as clothing retailer New Look and gym chain Virgin Active. He says there is no secret behind the success.</p>
<p>“In this company, we have always had a philosophy, in terms of which we run our group of companies. These are the five pillars as we call it; faith, positive thinking, enthusiasm, compassion and hard work. Hard work is probably important but you’ve got to be a positive person and able to put teams together and motivate them. I am not a person running the business, I play a different role. The good business leaders like Whitey Basson and Markus Jooste are people who can put teams together, motivate them and steer them in the right direction,” he says.</p>
<p>There have been several enormous setbacks like the currency upset in 1985 when the rand lost about 50% of its value in less than a year, Brexit, which badly affected the share price, and great disappointments in people. It is wealth that hasn’t come easy.</p>
<p>“Oh yes, plenty [of bad investments]. I can’t even remember the worst one but there are many adventurous investments that just didn’t work out. I am heavily invested in wine farming and that’s not a very big lucrative business but it gives other pleasures such as the beauty of it…”</p>
<p>“A man’s true wealth is the good he does in the world,” goes the proverb. According to Wiese, success is more than how much money you have, it is about whether you can look at yourself in the mirror and say maybe it’s very small but my contribution made life or the world a slightly better place. Following this mantra, he is helping the poor gain title deeds to their homes. He is a sponsor of the Free Market Foundation, which is working with First National Bank to give people land tenure, and gave more than 100 title deeds to residents of Ngwathe, a municipality in South Africa’s Free State province.</p>
<p>“The Free Market Foundation looked at South Africa and found that there are between seven and 11 million households where the occupants own the structure on the land by they do not own the land, so they launched an initiative cooperating with the local, provincial governments to give people title to their homes. My family decided to get involved in that to make financial contributions in order to help people to acquire the title deeds to their homes,” he says.</p>
<p>“It is an enormously important thing for people to have a sense of ownership. People that are used to owning things do not realize how much it adds to a person’s dignity if he can say ‘this is my home. It may be a modest little home, but it’s my home and I can leave it to my children and be assured they have a roof over their heads.’”</p>
<p>Wiese says positivity rules his life.</p>
<p>“If you are positive about life, you ignore the unfair criticism. A lot of the criticism is totally justified but you don’t focus on either the nice things people say to you or about you too much or equally you don’t concern yourself too much about the bad things people say…”</p>
<p>“I don’t remember anything bad people say. I always say to entrepreneurs, ‘if you start rising above the average, you become a target’. People say, ‘but that guy is not cleverer than I am, why does he make a success and I’m so clever and I don’t make the same financial successes?’ You have to know you will have people tear you down; it’s part of the game,” says Wiese.</p>
<p>We leave him preparing to jet off to the UK for meetings. Some may not understand his decision to dive back into diamonds, but Wiese seems to see money where others don’t. Maybe the smart investor should take a look at the diamond business.﻿</p>


Why Billionaire Christo Wiese is ploughing millions into diamonds

<p><em>This article first appeared in Forbes Africa and is republished with its permission. Subscribe today by contacting Shanna Jacobsen <a href="mailto:Shanna.Jacobsen@abn360.com">Shanna.Jacobsen@abn360.com﻿</a>﻿</em>﻿</p>
<p>He dreams big yet it all started in a small corner. It was in a corner of the dusty streets of Mafikeng in the North West province of South Africa where he first drew a crowd, in school theater, at the age of six.</p>
<p>He’s broken barriers, filled the 20,000-capacity Dome, in 2015, and this year, he’s pushed it further by attracting around 36,000 fans to Orlando Stadium in Soweto – most football teams fail to do this. He’s proved that nothing you put your mind to do is impossible.</p>
<p>This is Refiloe Maele Phoolo, known as Cassper Nyovest to the world. Rapping is his game.</p>
<p>He steps out of a minibus with his entourage, they stop for a selfie, and I’ve noticed how spruce his style is: a bandana, a R500,000 ($37,000) watch, gold neck chain and all-white outfit. A closer look at Cassper reveals puffy eyes; he is exhausted from back-to-back performances.</p>
<p>Cassper is best known for his hit song,Doc Shebeleza, and his ponytail that he cut off not long ago.</p>
<p>“It kind of made me look like a gimmick; there are certain things that hold you back. When you are animated it makes it too difficult to grow up. It was time to take it off because I am more mature now,” he says.</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t want to be this version of myself forever, I want to get better.”</p>
<p>All of this didn’t come easy.</p>
<p>The 26-year-old was born into a family of teachers, where education was important, yet he doesn’t have a qualification beyond school. He dropped out of school in grade 10, at the age of 16. His parents didn’t approve.</p>
<p>“It was a very emotional part of my life, and theirs as well because they are passionate about education. I sat them down and said look I’m not saying I wanna quit school and sit at the corners and smoke weed and drink my life away. I want to work, on my dream and my purpose,” he says.</p>
<p>Luckily they understood.  </p>
<p>“I understand that school is very important, I wouldn’t say that school wasn’t for me but it’s just that my path was a little bit different from the normal life and what my parents thought I would do.”</p>
<p>He had a plan up his sleeve and went to the big city of Johannesburg for music.</p>
<p>“I was signed to a label called Impact Sound under Thabiso Tsotetsi; he didn’t wanna be associated with a child who dropped out of school so he watched from a distance. That’s when HHP, a fellow artist, saw me and we did a songWamo Tseba Mtho,” says Cassper.   </p>
<p>After two years of struggle in Johannesburg, he moved back home.</p>
<p>“My grandmother gave me a mattress because I didn’t have anywhere to sleep and it took a very long time for anything to happen.”</p>
<p>“Nobody cares who you are, people function by the monopoly of those who know each other, pull each other up, it’s not even about talents, it’s about connections and who you know,” says Cassper.</p>
<p>He used his sister’s last R100 ($7.50), meant for a transport fare, to buy himself a return ticket to Johannesburg.</p>
<p>Things started to turn around. Cassper started his career with Childhood Gangsters, a group he started with his friends. When it disbanded, he went to launch his solo career and produced the hitsGusheshe,MalomeandMama I Made It. He also shared stages with international artists Kid Cudi, Kendrick Lamar, Nas, Wizkid and Wiz Khalifa.</p>
<p>The rapper also started his own record label, Family Tree, the same year he released his debut album,Tsholofelo– a taste of sweet success followed by a string of awards.</p>
<p>“Artists get only eight percent of their record sales, [it’s the] industry standard, and 50 percent of their show money. I didn’t want that, I wanted 100 percent of everything,” he says. </p>
<p>His favorite line: “God is good all the time and all the time God is good.”</p>
<p>It hasn’t always been good for Cassper who was involved in a public fight with fellow South African artist Kiernan Jordan Forbes, known as AKA, which led to both artists recording diss tracks about each other. Much to the public’s surprise, after Cassper’s show at Orlando Stadium, a picture went viral on social media of the two artists congratulating each other.</p>
<p>“Kiernan and I have been cool for a while now. We didn’t even know what we were fighting for and it didn’t make sense anymore. We were just talking how the fight was pathetic and it was over and we had to move on. We couldn’t believe how far we had made it in our careers. Every time we see each other we greet, so that picture for me wasn’t like the moment everybody made it out to be.”</p>
<p>“Kids really look up to us and they would do anything and everything that we do. If I’m always in the paper for doing some dumb stuff, what am I teaching them?” he says.</p>
<p>A few months ago, Cassper was accused by his idol, Kanye West, of stealing his floating stage idea. The rapper denies this.</p>
<p>“I did that stage last year at the Dome before Kanye did his show. How could I possibly have stolen his idea? I just think that it’s great that my idol knows my name and we’ll have something to talk about the day we meet. For me, it was a compliment no matter how it came out.”</p>
<p>Cassper has been through a lot of bad publicity in his career; he says negativity is a thing of the past.</p>
<p>“I can’t deal with fights. I just become a person I’m not,” he says.</p>
<p>Cassper says getting to the top is the easy part; staying there is harder.</p>
<p>“The hardest part is maintaining the same spot. In South Africa, people move on very quickly and they forget and what you have done in your career doesn’t matter in South Africa.”</p>
<p>His worst fear is to be forgotten.</p>
<p>“I don’t ever want to get to a place where nobody knows who I am, where I’m not celebrated  and people don’t love me as much as they do right now, I don’t ever wanna get to that place.”</p>
<p>Even though Cassper fell short of filling up the 40,000-seat stadium by just a few thousand it did not dampen his sense of accomplishment and musical bravery. In 2017, he’s looking to fill up the 94,000-seat FNB stadium.</p>
<p>“At the Dome I lost R3 million ($220,000) but the concept was not to make money but to shift culture. The value was not in money but an investment… I want to get to a point where an artist can walk away with R8 million ($600,000) a show.”</p>
<p>“South African hip-hop is the biggest music. We are African hip-hop,” says Cassper.</p>
<p>Love him or hate him, what is clear is that Cassper has shaken up the music industry.</p>
<p>“Maybe I should start acting broke now coz my success turned the game into a cold heart”. These are the lyrics from his popular hitMalome.</p>
<p>“Me and my dad never have one-on-ones anymore” are lyrics directed at his father who separated with his mother, at the same time when his 19-year-old brother died in an accident.</p>
<p>“When my brother passed away, it was a sad time for my family and it was also the first time someone from my immediate family died. Then my parents separated so, at the age of 15, I had to grow up and be a man of the house,” says Cassper.</p>
<p>According to Cassper, South African artists are far from famous.</p>
<p>“The only guy who’s actually gaining traction is Black Coffee; he has a following that’s growing all over the world. But when I travel the world I perform for mostly South Africans. I just had my first show in Germany, for Germans, who liked my music. Before that we’d create our own shows.”</p>
<p>“As much as we’re making it look like we’re flourishing out there, in the US, we are very far. But we’re fighting and I think our time will come.”</p>
<p>He is too humble to offer any estimation of how much he has banked this year.</p>
<p>“When I started to make money I mentioned it too much to my fans and then I became the guy with a lot of money. I’ve learned that it creates a wall between me and my crowd because they don’t see me as one of their own anymore. It’s a big mistake that I made at a very early stage in my career,” he says.</p>
<p>“I’ve also lost too much but it happens to a lot of us who don’t know what to do with money. I posted everything I did and everything I bought.”</p>
<p>According to reports, the rapper makes R120,000 ($9,000) a show, excluding accommodation, flight and his entourage.</p>
<p>One of his challenges is getting his music played on radio; he asked his 685,000 followers on Twitter to help him get his new songAbashweplayed.</p>
<p>“Please help me push it. I still don’t understand why I don’t get radio airplay so I need my fans to requestAbashwe. Hope that will help.”</p>
<p>He’s got this far without radio; imagine where he’ll get to if his songs are on the airwaves. ﻿</p>


South African rapper Cassper Nyovest continues to break barriers

<div id="article-byline">KINSHASA &#8211; Congolese politicians have agreed in principle to a deal under which President Joseph Kabila leaves office by the end of 2017, opposition leaders said on Friday, an unexpected breakthrough after dozens were killed in anti-government protests this week.</div>
<p>In return, the constitution cannot be changed to let Kabila stand for a third term, a prime minister will be named from the main opposition bloc and its leader Etienne Tshisekedi will oversee the implementation of the deal, Martin Fayulu and Jose Endundo told Reuters.</p>
<p>“Kabila stays for one year,” Fayulu said. “He will not try to stand for a new term.”</p>
<div class="teads-inread" style="height: 0px; transition-duration: 0.5s;">
<div style="position: relative;">
<div class="teads-ui-components-label" style="display: none;">ADVERTISING</div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads1"></div>
<div class="teads-ui-components-credits" style="display: none;"><a href="http://inread-experience.teads.tv/" target="_blank">inRead invented by Teads</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="teads-inread" style="height: 0px; transition-duration: 0.5s;">
<div style="position: relative;">
<div class="teads-ui-components-label" style="display: none;">ADVERTISING</div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads0"></div>
<div class="teads-ui-components-credits" style="display: none;"><a href="http://inread-experience.teads.tv/" target="_blank">inRead invented by Teads</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>A government spokesman declined to comment on the specifics of the deal, which requires final approval by all the delegates at negotiations mediated by Democratic Republic of Congo&#8217;s (DRC) Catholic Church.</p>
<p>Kabila&#8217;s mandate expired on Tuesday but he has remained inofficeas a presidential election scheduled for last month was postponed until at least April 2018 because of what the government said were delays registering voters.</p>
<p>He has declined to commit publicly to not changing the constitution, leading to accusations that he is trying to cling to power.</p>
<p>Human Rights Watch said security forces killed at least 34 people during protests on Tuesday against Kabila’s failure to step down at the end of his second and final elected term. DRC has never had a peaceful transition of power.</p>
<p>(Editing by Louise Ireland)﻿</p>


Congo steps closer to deal for Kabila to leave office

<p>The U.S. dollar rally may have sucked the air out of emerging market assets, but funds will return next year, Herald Van Der Linde, HSBC&#8217;s head of equity strategy for Asia, said on Friday.</p>
<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve got <a href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/.DXY" target="_blank" class="inline_quotes" data-gdsid="586968" data-inline-quote-symbol=".DXY">this strong dollar rally</a>; we&#8217;ve got expectations of inflation coming through in the U.S.; we see the U.S. markets rallying. A lot of that money [is flowing] back into the U.S. on very high expectations of the new administration coming in,&#8221; Van Der Linde told CNBC&#8217;s &#8220;Squawk Box&#8221; on Friday. &#8220;But what you see is that rally starts to show a little bit of age.&#8221;</p>
<div class="teads-inread" style="height: 0px; transition-duration: 0.5s;">
<div style="position: relative;">
<div class="teads-ui-components-label" style="display: none;">ADVERTISING</div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads0"></div>
<div class="teads-ui-components-credits" style="display: none;"><a href="http://inread-experience.teads.tv/" target="_blank">inRead invented by Teads</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>The dollar has surged in the wake of <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank">Donald Trump</a>&#8216;s surprise election win in the U.S. and as the U.S. Federal Reserve surprised markets at its meeting last week by indicating it would likely hike rates three times next year, a faster rate of tightening than the widely expected two times.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s spurred hefty outflows from emerging markets as a stronger dollar and <a href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/US10Y" target="_blank" class="inline_quotes" data-gdsid="5093160" data-inline-quote-symbol="US10Y">higher U.S. rates</a> have dimmed the allure of riskier assets in developing countries. In addition, emerging-market companies&#8217; ability to service dollar-denominated debt will be dented.</p>
<div class="group-container ">
<div class="group" itemprop="articleBody">
<p>But Van Der Linde noted that the rallies in both the greenback and U.S. bond yields have stalled in late December, adding that not only were expectations for stronger U.S. growth already priced in, but that those expectations may also be getting too high.</p>
<p>&#8220;As that momentum slows in the dollar and U.S. bond market, I think what you&#8217;re going to see is some rotation back into emerging markets,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>However, Van Der Linde noted that the trade cycle globally remained &#8220;extremely weak,&#8221; with protectionism on the rise, and advised being selective, particularly in Asia.</p>
<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re going to focus on markets where there&#8217;s a large domestic component available in the markets and not so much on the export cycle, because the export cycle is simply very weak across the region,&#8221; spurring HSBC&#8217;s preference for India, Indonesia and China plays, he said.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="group-container last">
<div class="embed-container image" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject">He also expected that dividend-yield and consumer-staple plays would do well, noting that while they had been in favour for the past couple years, they&#8217;d lost popularity over the past few months.</div>
<div class="group" itemprop="articleBody">
<p>In addition, he pointed to plays on themes that weren&#8217;t sensitive to global and macro developments, such as financial inclusion, automation, changes in retail formats and the Asian defense industry.</p>
<p>That suggested plays on large-capitalization banks in Indonesia and India, selected consumer names, with defense plays in China, South Korea and Singapore.﻿</p>
</div>
</div>


Funds to return to emerging markets in 2017 – HSBC

<div id="article-byline">KINSHASA &#8211; Congo authorities swept through the southeastern mining hub of Lubumbashi on Thursday making dozens of arrests, local activists said, after at least 34 people died in protests against President Joseph Kabila.</div>
<p>Lubumbashi mayor Jean Oscar Sanguza told Reuters it was a &#8220;sweep up&#8221; operation targeting &#8220;criminals and bandits&#8221;, and that security forces were looking for arms. But local activists said they arrested young men suspected of supporting the opposition.</p>
<p>&#8220;As soon as you go by on the road and you&#8217;re a young man, you&#8217;re in a group of two or three, they (security forces) take you,&#8221; said Jean Claude Baka, regional head of activist group ASADHO, estimating 50 arrests since Thursday morning.</p>
<div class="teads-inread" style="height: 0px; transition-duration: 0.5s;">
<div style="position: relative;">
<div class="teads-ui-components-label" style="display: none;">ADVERTISING</div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads1"></div>
<div class="teads-ui-components-credits" style="display: none;"><a href="http://inread-experience.teads.tv/" target="_blank">inRead invented by Teads</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="teads-inread" style="height: 0px; transition-duration: 0.5s;">
<div style="position: relative;">
<div class="teads-ui-components-label" style="display: none;">ADVERTISING</div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads0"></div>
<div class="teads-ui-components-credits" style="display: none;"><a href="http://inread-experience.teads.tv/" target="_blank">inRead invented by Teads</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday that security forces in Democratic Republic of Congo had killed at least 34 people during protests this week against Kabila, who stayed in power despite his mandate running out on Tuesday with no fresh election organized.</p>
<p>Congo&#8217;s capital Kinshasa and other cities were convulsed by violent demonstrations on Tuesday against Kabila, who has been in power since his father Laurent was shot dead in 2001.</p>
<p>The protests, and a spate of disparate clashes between ethnic militias this week, have raised fears Congo is heading towards another major armed conflict. Millions were killed in wars in the massive central African nation between 1996 and 2003. The country has never had a peaceful transition of power.</p>
<p>In a bid to avoid that, talks between pro- and anti-Kabila politicians, facilitated by the Catholic Church, took place on Thursday, but it is unclear what they can achieve. The opposition has said a deal is possible only if Kabila commits publicly to stepping down and holds an election next year.</p>
<p>Jean Pierre Muteba, another Lubumbashi activist, put the numbers arrested there since Tuesday&#8217;s protests at 400.</p>
<p>ETHNIC VIOLENCE WORSENS</p>
<p>Western powers have condemned both Kabila&#8217;s failure to step down and the subsequent violent crackdown on protests, with former colonial master Belgium, France and Britain all warning of changed relationships with Congo. The U.S. has also condemned the arrests of protesters and the failure to hold elections.</p>
<p>The constitution bars Kabila from standing for a new term but his government says it cannot organize the presidential election, originally scheduled for last month, until at least April 2018 due to delays in registering millions of voters.</p>
<p>Opposition leaders say the delay is a ploy by Kabila to cling to power and ultimately change the constitution to run again. Kabila denies this but has declined to commit to not changing the constitution.</p>
<p>The government says 22 people were killed in the clashes nationwide, including a police officer, most of them by stray bullets or while looting.</p>
<div class="related-content group-one">As the state&#8217;s legitimacy weakens, simmering conflicts are flaring up between armed groups in this vast, forested country of 70 million people and more than 200 ethnic groups.</div>
<p>Fighting in the eastern province of North Kivu on Thursday between Hutu and Nande ethnic militia killed 17 civilians and a police officer, army spokesman Captain Guillaume Djike said.</p>
<p>And at least six people were killed and 150 wounded this week in clashes between Pygmies and Bantus in southeastern Congo, a local activist said.</p>
<p>(Editing by Tom Heneghan)﻿</p>


Dozens arrested in deadly anti-Kabila protests

<p>LAGOS &#8211; Nigerian authorities are involved in negotiations aimed at securing the release of some of the more than 200 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014 in the northeastern Nigerian town of Chibok, the president&#8217;s spokesman said on Thursday.</p>
<p>His comments, posted on Twitter, came in response to reports in Nigeria&#8217;s media that some of the girls had been released by the Islamist militant group, which he said were untrue.</p>
<p>&#8220;The negotiations are ongoing and the Department of State Service, DSS is full of optimism that they will be successful,&#8221; Garba Shehu, a spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari, said in a tweet.</p>
<div class="teads-inread" style="height: 0px; transition-duration: 0.5s;">
<div style="position: relative;">
<div class="teads-ui-components-label" style="display: none;">ADVERTISING</div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads1"></div>
<div class="teads-ui-components-credits" style="display: none;"><a href="http://inread-experience.teads.tv/" target="_blank">inRead invented by Teads</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="teads-inread" style="height: 0px; transition-duration: 0.5s;">
<div style="position: relative;">
<div class="teads-ui-components-label" style="display: none;">ADVERTISING</div>
<div class="teads-player" id="teads0"></div>
<div class="teads-ui-components-credits" style="display: none;"><a href="http://inread-experience.teads.tv/" target="_blank">inRead invented by Teads</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>&#8220;To my friends spreading the news of a further release of Chibok Girls, we are not there yet,&#8221; he tweeted.</p>
<p>Around 270 girls were taken in April 2014 from their school in Chibok, Borno state, where Boko Haram has waged a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic state, killing more than 15,000 people and displacing over two million.</p>
<p>Dozens escaped in the initial melee, but more than 200 girls remained missing until October when 21 of the girls were freed following mediation by Switzerland and the International Red Cross.</p>
<p>The jihadist group has kidnapped hundreds of men, women and children but the kidnapping of the Chibok girls brought worldwide attention to the group.</p>
<p>The Nigerian military has in recent weeks been carrying out a large-scale offensive in the Sambisa forest, Boko Haram&#8217;s vast northeastern woodland stronghold.</p>
<div class="related-content group-one">A military spokesman, in a statement issued late on Wednesday, said the army had rescued 1,880 people during operations in the forest over the past week. Reuters was unable to independently verify the claim.</div>
<p>(Reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram, editing by G Crosse)﻿</p>


News

Zambia withholding $243 mn in tax refunds owed to mining firms

Somalia swears in federal lawmakers who will pick future president

Rwandan central bank lowers key repo rate to stimulate lending

No Trump meeting with Republic of Congo president

3,000 people who fled Boko Haram return home

Mozambique's opposition agrees to 7-day truce

Power boost for South Africa's grid

A head start for your children

UN fails to broker arms embargo in South Sudan

Congo agrees to deal for Kabila to step down

The tale of a Zimbabwean entrepreneur who has seen it all

Why Billionaire Christo Wiese is ploughing millions into diamonds

South African rapper Cassper Nyovest continues to break barriers

Congo steps closer to deal for Kabila to leave office

Funds to return to emerging markets in 2017 – HSBC

Dozens arrested in deadly anti-Kabila protests

More Chibok girls could be released

News Tips

Advertise With Us

News

Zambia withholding $243 mn in tax refunds owed to mining firms

Somalia swears in federal lawmakers who will pick future president

Rwandan central bank lowers key repo rate to stimulate lending

No Trump meeting with Republic of Congo president

3,000 people who fled Boko Haram return home

Mozambique's opposition agrees to 7-day truce

Power boost for South Africa's grid

A head start for your children

UN fails to broker arms embargo in South Sudan

Congo agrees to deal for Kabila to step down

The tale of a Zimbabwean entrepreneur who has seen it all

Why Billionaire Christo Wiese is ploughing millions into diamonds

South African rapper Cassper Nyovest continues to break barriers

Congo steps closer to deal for Kabila to leave office

Funds to return to emerging markets in 2017 – HSBC

Dozens arrested in deadly anti-Kabila protests

More Chibok girls could be released

News Tips

Advertise With Us

Newsletters