Jerome Starkey

French vow revenge for Islamist uranium mine raid in Niger | The Times

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent, and Charles Bremmer

President Hollande vowed to “annihilate” Islamic militants who killed at least 26 people and took an unknown number of hostages yesterday in two co-ordinated attacks in northern Niger.

At least 63 people were injured when car bombs struck a military base and a uranium mine, thought to be guarded by French special forces.

France, which is heavily dependent on nuclear power, gets almost a third of its uranium from the remote desert mines, which have been plagued by kidnappings and attacks. Officials said that the plant was shut down last night after suffering serious damage from the blasts.

Mr Hollande said that he would back “all the efforts of Niger” to resolve the hostage crisis, and his Government urged French citizens to exercise extreme caution if they were moving around the country. “We will not intervene in Niger as we did in Mali, but we have the same willingness to co-operate to fight against terrorism,” he said. “Everybody should know that we will let nothing pass.”

The first blast, about 5.30am, struck a military base in Agadez, an ancient Tuareg trading post 600 miles north-east of the capital, Niamey. Witnesses said that they heard an explosion followed by automatic gunfire. At least 18 soldiers and a civilian were killed, as well as four of the attackers, Niger’s Interior Minister, Abdou Labo, said. “A fifth bomber has locked himself up in an office with several trainee officers as hostages.”

Last night Mahamadou Karidjo, the Defence Minister, said that the last militant had been “neutralised”. He said that about 50 people were injured and put the Agadez death toll at 20.

The second explosion came minutes later, inside the French-run uranium mine at Arlit, 150 miles farther north, as employees queued to start work. Survivors said a man in military uniform detonated a 4x4 vehicle inside the security perimeter of the Somair plant, in which the French nuclear giant Areva is the majority owner. A witness said that the attacker sped through security gates when they were opened to let in a truck carrying workers.

Areva said that one person died and 14 employees were being treated at a nearby hospital. (Read more…)

Uganda’s President Museveni shuts papers over claims he will hand power to son

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

Armed police continued a crackdown on Uganda’s free press yesterday despite court orders to stop, after media outlets reported claims that President Museveni hopes to hand power to his son.

Officers armed with AK47s closed three newspapers, two radio stations and three weekly magazines on Monday and declared their premises crime scenes, after they reported allegations of a plot to assassinate top officials who opposed the succession.

“They are intimidating us,” said Tom Mshindi, chief operating officer of the Nation Media Group, whose Daily Monitor was among the papers shut down. “They are saying regardless of the truth or the importance of a story, there are certain things that should be out of bounds.” Mr Museveni has ruled since 1986. His son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, was fast-tracked to the rank of Brigadier-General and commands the special forces, having attended Britain’s Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

The succession is a matter of intense speculation in Uganda. The country’s constitution prohibits candidates running for president if they are 75 or older. Mr Museveni, whose date of birth is a matter of debate, says that he will be 72 in 2016, when the country next votes.

The crackdown on newspapers began earlier this month after theDaily Monitor published excerpts from a letter written by the country’s spy chief, David Sejusa, in which he claimed that there was a plot to kill him and the Prime Minister. He said that their lives were in danger because they had opposed the “Muhoozi project”. The letter, to the head of Uganda’s Internal Security Organisation, claimed that the Inspector General of Police was planning “to assassinate people who disagree with this so-called family project of holding onto power in perpetuity”. (Read more…)

Women are offered freedom amid purge on militants | The Times

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

Scores of women held by Nigeria’s security forces could soon be released after President Goodluck Jonathan offered an amnesty to females jailed in connection with the militant group Boko Haram.

It is the latest in a series of olive branches that his Government has extended to the Islamist rebels while simultaneously pursuing a brutal military offensive. More than 2,000 troops were deployed to the remote northeast of the country last week after President Jonathan declared a state of emergency and ordered airstrikes to restore “the territorial integrity” of his oil-rich country.

Obama snubs Kenya’s new president | The Times

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

Kenya’s new president Uhuru Kenyatta suffered his most significant snub since taking office, after President Obama announced an African tour that will not include the country of his ancestors.

President Obama, whose grandmother, half-brother and best man all live in Kenya, will come tantalisingly close when he lands in Tanzania, on Kenya’s southern border, but he has ruled out a trip to East Africa’s hub and the region’s largest economy.

A Kenyan government spokesman insisted they were “fine” with Washington’s decision, but Western officials said it was based on President Kenyatta’s forthcoming trial at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. (Read more…)

Mother met by Kenyan riot police as she marks son’s unsolved death

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

The mother of a British aristocrat beaten to death in a Kenyan police station was met by a riot squad bearing rifles yesterday as she tried to place flowers on the spot where her son was fatally injured.

Hilary Monson’s son, Alexander, 28, suffered a blow to the head after he was arrested outside a nightclub in Diani, on the coast, last year. Police alleged that he had marijuana and took him to Ukundu police station. The next morning he was taken unconscious from the police station to Palm Beach hospital, where he died.

No one has been arrested and an official police inquiry cleared officers in the station of any blame for Mr Monson’s death.

Mrs Monson, who was divorced from her son’s father, now the 12th Baron Monson, in 1996, marked the first anniversary of the unsolved murder by scattering 365 roses between the police station and the hospital.

Paramilitary officers from the General Service Unit of the Kenyan police tried to block Mrs Monson, 59, as she approached the police station, but backed down amid anger from human rights groups.

Wearing a black dress with words, “A mother’s love never dies” printed in the local language, Mrs Monson laid a handful of red and white roses on the booking desk and pushed some through the grille on to the concrete floor where her son was discovered frothing at the mouth and unconscious.

“There are lots of people who suffer horrendous things in exactly the same way, but who don’t have a way to protest,” she said. “People just disappear, it happens all the time. I owe it to Alexander, and to the country, to stand up.”

Rights groups have accused the Kenyan police of killing with impunity. “They are getting away with murder,” said Khelef Khalifa, a director of Muhuri, a respected local rights group. “The police don’t obey the law, and they can’t investigate themselves.”

The police told hospital staff that Mr Monson had suffered a drugs overdose but two post-mortem examinations found no sign of substance abuse. They found that Mr Monson had massive trauma to the head and died of a brain clot. There was also abrasion to his arm, suggesting a struggle, and swelling in his groin.“The fact is he walked into the police station himself,” Mrs Monson, 59, said. “His condition, in the book, was described as normal. Then at 9 o’clock the next morning he was in a coma from which he never recovered … He was handcuffed to the bed where I watched him die.”

Yesterday two squads of the GSU also guarded the hospital where Mr Monson died. His mother said she was told they were “for my own protection”. She said the district police chief appealed for her to be patient, because the case was still being investigated. Mr Monson’s father has also vowed to seek justice for his son. Lord Monson, who lives in London, hired private investigators after Mr Monson died, and has said he has a “shrewd idea” of who dealt the fatal blows. (Read more…)

Airstrikes cut short militants’ supplies as Nigeria takes on al-Qaeda

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

Nigerian troops began choking supply lines into suspected terrorist hide outs yesterday, as a massive military assault against al-Qaeda-linked militants entered a fifth deadly day.

Senior military officials said a campaign of airstrikes had scattered Boko Haram fighters, who were running short of supplies, as hundreds of civilians sought refuge along the borders with Chad and Cameroon. (Read more…)

War crimina's wife 'biggest stumbling block' to peace deal

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Ivory Coast, was on the brink of becoming a university fellow — immune from charges of murder and rape — but his wife talked him out of a deal to stand down after a contested election, according to Raila Odinga, Kenya’s former Prime Minister.

About 3,000 people were killed when President Gbagbo refused to step down after losing an election in 2010. At least 150 women and girls were raped, during six months of political clashes.

Mr Gbagbo was eventually arrested, with his wife Simone, when French commandos stormed their palace, in April 2011, and he is facing trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Mr Odinga, who led African Union efforts to broker a peace deal, said Mr Gbagbo could have spared himself a prison cell, and very nearly did, were it not for the whisperings of his wife.

He said President Gbagbo had agreed to a deal under which he would leave Ivory Coast for a job at Boston University, as a fellow of its African Presidential Centre.

“We offered him a lot of goodies to go,” Mr Odinga said. “There was this offer for him to go to Boston University. He would not have to go to the Hague.”

Alassane Outtara, the rival candidate whose supporters clashed with Mr Gbagbo’s, had agreed to incorporate “25 per cent of Gbagbo’s people” into his administration as part of a deal, in January 2011, which could have cut short the bloodshed by almost three months, Mr Odinga said.

“He had agreed to leave,” he added, “but he went and talked to the wife, and she refused. Each time he talked to the wife, he came back a different person. She was the biggest stumbling block.” (Read more…)

We must invest in people, says President Mahama of Ghana

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

Africa’s future rests on investing in its one billion people, the President of Ghana said yesterday.

John Mahama said that a commodities boom, driven by Chinese demand, had fuelled the continent’s economies, but he said that future investment should focus on people and jobs.

Building human capital would determine “whether we sustain the growth we are seeing”, he said.

His remarks chimed with Pravin Gordhan, the South African Finance Minister, who emphasised the need to improve the calibre of his country’s graduates. (Read more…)

Sub-Saharan Africa is a land of opportunities

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

When the dust settled and the shooting stopped, the bodies of 34 miners lay crumpled in the dirt: killed by police for seeking better pay.

The massacre last year outside a British-owned platinum mine in South Africa was the bloody and disastrous nadir of a labour dispute, which continues to haunt the continent’s largest economy. It was also, by some distance, the bleakest reminder of the risks of doing business in Africa.

Lonmin, which owns the Marikana mine, lost three quarters of its value.

Yet Lonmin’s experience remains gracefully anomalous. African growth is set to far outpace most of the rest of the world, reaching more than 5 per cent by 2015, according to the World Bank. It is still viewed as the continent of opportunity and is attracting attention from some of the world’s largest investors — many of whom strongly believe that Africa has no more risks than other emerging markets.

“There is an absolute tsunami of businesses looking to come in,” according to Aly-Khan Satchu, the chief executive of Rich Management, a stock exchange data company based in Nairobi. “What we are witnessing is the convergence of Africa with the rest of the world, driven by the information and communications revolution.”

End of funding shows South Africa’s coming of age | The Times

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent and Lucy Bannerman

Britain is to stop giving financial aid to South Africa after deciding it is “ready to fund its own development”.

Justine Greening, the International Development Secretary, will make the announcement today at The Times CEO Africa Summit in Central London.

South Africa remains one of the world’s most unequal countries, with crippling levels of youth unemployment and a sixfold gap between black and white household incomes. However, trade with the UK is now worth £10.5 billion, making South Africa Britain’s 24th largest trading partner.

Ms Greening said the decision to stop aid to Africa’s biggest economy was based on “enormous progress” made since the end of apartheid almost 20 years ago.

“It is now the region’s economic powerhouse and Britain’s biggest trading partner in Africa,” she said. “I have agreed with my South African counterparts that South Africa is now in a position to fund its own development.”

Existing programmes will be drawn to a close by the end of 2015.

“It is right that our relationship changes to one of mutual co-operation and trade, one that is focused on delivering benefits for the people of Britain and South Africa as well as for Africa as a whole,” Ms Greening said. (Read more…)

UK company provoked massacre of miners, says Zuma | The Times

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

President Zuma of South Africa has accused a British-owned mining company of provoking one of his country’s deadliest episodes, when police opened fire on striking mineworkers, leaving 34 people dead.

The massacre at Marikana, 60 miles (96km) outside Johannesburg, was the worst police killing since the end of apartheid. An official commission of inquiry heard that police who opened fire last year were ill prepared, poorly led and trigger-happy. Survivors, and a lone policeman, claimed wounded men were shot dead in cold blood.

Yet Mr Zuma said it was Lonmin Plc, which owns the platinum mine, that should shoulder most of the blame. “What happened in Marikana? The company did provoke that,” he told Peter Hain, the former British minister, who returned to the country of his childhood for the BBC Two programme This World.

A senior Lonmin executive wrote to the South African Government three days before the massacre, urging it to “bring its might to bear” on the strikers in order to “bring the situation under control”. Simon Scott, the chief executive of Lonmin, denied that they had asked the Government to use force. A spokesman declined to comment on Mr Zuma’s remarks. (Read more…)

Villagers burnt as militant amnesty fails

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent and Jonathan Clayton in Lagos

Almost 200 people are thought to have been killed in a remote northeastern corner of Nigeria during four hours of clashes between state security forces and the banned Islamic militants Boko Haram.

Witnesses said that dozens of homes and a market were burnt to the ground in Baga, a fishing community close to the border with Chad, as the two sides traded rocket-propelled grenades and machinegun fire.

Local officials said that 185 people including civilians, soldiers and militants had died, days after President Jonathan took steps to grant Boko Haram an amnesty.

Villagers said that the soldiers had deliberately started the fires, which left dozens of bodies burnt beyond recognition.

Up to 3,000 people are thought to have been killed by the al-Qaeda-linked group, which attacked police stations, newspaper offices and churches in an attempt to impose Islamic law. They killed 186 people in one incident last year, with a series of coordinated attacks in Kano State, in the north of the country.

Yet despite earlier misgivings, President Jonathan made conciliatory overtures last week, when he appointed a 26-member panel to explore how the Government could offer Boko Haram an amnesty.

The Christian Association of Nigeria called the move “sinful”, while a prominent rights activist and a Salafist cleric both rejected their nominations, claiming that the Government was not sincere. Datti Ahmed, a Salafist preacher, said that the Government would not honour their commitments. (Read more…)

From our correspondent

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

The house smelt a bit musty. That was the first clue. Then the ceiling started leaking and I heard a scuttling in the loft, but it took me a while to know my foe.

I had been away for two weeks and it was the rainy season, so I didn’t suspect anything sinister when I woke before dawn to a dripping sound. I threw a towel at the puddle, to dampen the sound, and rolled back into bed.

Daylight, and my nose, told a very different story. The liquid seeping through the ceiling was a dark, viscous brown and it reeked of something terrible. The drips had splashed against my pillow and a bookcase, and and its residue was sticky. Rat urine, perhaps?

If only. A cat could deal with that.

“Something’s peeing through my roof,” I told my neighbour, a safari guide, feeling quite perplexed.

“Hyrax,” he said, with a knowing grin. “I’ll lend you the trap.” He had just repainted his house, he said, after a colony of these giant gerbils gave his sitting room the same treatment.

Hyrax come in two main flavours: tree and rock. Both weigh up to 9lb, and live in colonies of up to 80 strong. Their closest relatives are elephants — they certainly seem to urinate enough.

They have evolved the habit of always micturating in one place. This has proved invaluable for scientists, who found layers of congealed urine dating back 55,000 years and used it as a record of the creatures’ changing diet and the climate. It’s less helpful when they are in your roof.

The metal trap — designed to capture them alive — was about the size of a carry-on bag, with a pedal-operated trap-door. We baited it with carrots and lodged it in the loft.

At 5.50am the next day the dripping started again. It seemed that the hyrax had a routine, and the trap hadn’t worked. They urinate at dusk, as well.

Downstairs, at my desk, the problem was worse. The puddle in my bedroom had dripped through the floorboards on to the books and papers below. My peace and goodwill to all wildlife was fast wearing out, and I stepped outside for some air.

That’s when I saw him. Perched on the eaves of the roof, watching me, without a care in the world. You think he’s cute? I thought he’d make a nice hat. (Read more…)