WASHINGTON, LELEMUKU.COM - Before the new coronavirus began spreading around the world, Serra Sowers was thinking about what she would do after high school.
The 17-year-old from Florida had planned to visit seven colleges this spring to help her decide where to continue her education.
In the United States, high school students often visit colleges and universities they might attend before they officially seek admission. But like so many things during Sowers’ final year of high school, the coronavirus pandemic has pushed the process online.
Sowershas had to depend on virtual visits, learning about schools through video meetings with college officials.
Her mother, Ebru Ural, says she worries how the pandemic might affect her daughter’s college experience itself in a few short months.
“We’re dealing with the unknown, and we’re trying to make such a huge decision. She invested the better part of the last year trying to earn acceptance to these institutions,” Ural said, but “we really don’t know what we’re buying right now.”
The pandemic has affected plans for millions of students, both in the United States and overseas. Many are making virtual visits to schools while dealing with concerns about paying for a college education in an economic downturn. They also are wondering whether college campuses will even reopen by late summer.
Boston University, for example, has already canceled all "in-person summer activities" at its main campus. And the university’s plan for dealing with the pandemic states that if health officials say it is unsafe to re-open this year, it may wait until January 2021.
Earlier this month, Harvard University’s president said Harvard is considering several possible plans of action. Yet the future is still very unclear. Oregon State University and University of Arizona officials have expressed hope their schools would re-open, but shared similar concerns about what the future holds.
In efforts to keep student enrollment numbers up, colleges are offering interactive one-on-one online meetings, using video services like Zoom. Hundreds of schools have given families more time to decide by delaying the date of their first required payment from May 1 to June 1.
In addition, the Associate Press reports that the two leading college admissions tests – the SAT and the ACT – have been cancelled. So a growing number of schools are removing admissions test requirements for students entering college.
But for all the schools’ efforts, many families say it is difficult to look forward when students are still finishing high school from home.
Opinion studies have found that large numbers of American high school seniors plan to spend at least a year working or traveling before attending college.
Studies also have shown that many Americans may decide against the first-choice school on their list of colleges because it is too costly. Others say they would feel safer attending a school closer to home.
About 3.7 million American students are expected to graduate from high school this year. Nearly70 percent expected to start college in the late summer.
Lauren Kohler of Connecticut was planning to spend her high school’s spring break visiting three universities. They are the University of South Carolina, Florida State University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Kohler visited South Carolina last year. But now the 18-year-old is depending on virtual visits and friends’ experiences to learn about Florida State. She also recently walked around an empty UMass Amherst campus.
“I’m a big believer that you can walk on a campus and say, ‘This is my school,’ or ‘This is not my school,’” said Kohler. “It really depends on the feeling and the type of people that are there.”
Grace Malloy of Oregon did get a chance to visit to Long Island University Post in New York. But her spring break visits to Nebraska Wesleyan University and the University of Northern Colorado were canceled.
Malloy also wanted to see six other schools. Now she is worried she will not know how to reduce the number of choices on her list.
“Decision-making is not my strong suit,” she said after completing her third virtual visit of the week. (VOA)
HARARE, LELEMUKU.COM - A tragic airline crash with far-reaching consequences, cataclysmic cyclones that may be a harbinger of the future, the death of an African icon and a new leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize. These African stories captured the world's attention in 2019, and look to influence events on the continent in 2020.
The battles against extremist violence and Ebola will also continue to be major campaigns in Africa in the coming year.
The crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa in March killed all 157 passengers and crew. The disaster, which claimed the lives of a large number of U.N. officials, involved a Boeing 737 Max jet and came just five months after a similar crash in Indonesia of the same aircraft.
Boeing was inundated with questions about the safety of its plane. After initially claiming that it was safe, the company was forced to ground the plane after many countries refused to let it fly in their airspace. In December Boeing announced that it would suspend production of the jet.
The air crash was a trial for Ethiopia's reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who later in the year won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for achieving peace with neighboring Eritrea. But Abiy is challenged by often violent ethnic rivalries in his country and elections set for May 2020 will be crucial, analysts say.
Cyclone Idai ripped into Mozambique in March, killing more than 1,300 people, making it “one of the worst weather-related disasters ever to hit the southern hemisphere,” according to the U.N. A month later Cyclone Kenneth roared into northern Mozambique, killing more than 50 people.
This was the first time in recorded history that Mozambique had two major cyclones, prompting some to worry that the country, with a 1,000-mile Indian Ocean coastline, may be prone to more storms as a result of climate change.
Across Mozambique more than 2.5 million people remain in urgent need of assistance, according to the U.N. Mozambique also starts 2020 troubled by ongoing attacks on vehicles in the country's central area and by Islamic extremist attacks in the country's north.
Extremist violence continues to vex Africa from the east to the west.
2019 began with extremist violence. In Kenya in January, insurgents launched an assault on a luxury hotel and shopping complex in Nairobi that killed at least 14 people.
The year came to an end with extremist attacks across the continent.
A bomb in Somalia killed 78 people, including many university students, in the capital, Mogadishu, on Dec. 28, the deadliest attack in years. Somalia's al-Shabab, allied to al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for the bombing.
In Nigeria extremists linked to the Islamic State group circulated a video showing 11 hostages, most of them Christians, being executed. They were thought to be killed on Christmas Day. The extremist group, which calls itself the Islamic State West Africa Province, said the captives were executed as revenge for the killing of Islamic State group leaders in Iraq and Syria in October.
In northern Burkina Faso, jihadists killed 35 civilians, most of them women, and ensuing clashes with security forces left 80 jihadists dead, the West African nation's president announced Dec. 24. That attack came weeks after an attack on a convoy carrying employees of a Canadian mining company in which at least 37 civilians were killed in the country's east. Both attacks were by groups numbering close to 100, indicating the presence of relatively large, well-organized extremist groups.
“The startling deterioration of the security situation in Burkina Faso has been a major development in 2019,” said Alex Vines, director of the Africa program at Chatham House, the British think tank. “There's been a dramatic spike in extremist attacks.”
Frequent attacks in Burkina Faso's north and east already have displaced more than a half million people, according to the United Nations. While Burkina Faso's military has received training from both former colonizer France and the United States, it starts 2020 with little progress in halting the surge in extremist violence.
Congo starts the year waging a different kind of war, a campaign against Ebola, which has killed more than 2,200 people since August 2018. The medical effort to control the second deadliest Ebola outbreak in history has been severely hampered since the start by the presence of several armed groups in eastern Congo, the epicenter of the epidemic. It was hoped that new vaccines would help control the outbreak more quickly, but the violence has hampered those efforts.
Congo's President Felix Tshisekedi, elected in 2019, said in November that he was optimistic that the Ebola outbreak would be ended before 2020, but the epidemic continues throughout eastern Congo.
South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa, re-elected in 2019, said in a New Year's statement that the need to boost his country's ailing economy and create jobs is his biggest challenge for 2020. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, also re-elected, has said that his government has controlled the rebellion by Boko Haram extremists, but violence continues to plague the country's northeast.
Zimbabwe's longtime ruler, Robert Mugabe, died at age 95 in September. Mugabe, the guerrilla leader who fought to end white-minority rule in Rhodesia and then ruled independent Zimbabwe from 1980 until 2017, left a mixed legacy of liberation, repression and economic ruin.
Zimbabwe begins the new year with severe economic problems including inflation estimated at more than 300% and widespread hunger. In an emergency appeal at the end of December, the U.N.'s World Food Program said that even though the southern African country had suffered a drought, Zimbabwe's food shortages are a ‘man-made” disaster, laying the blame squarely with President Emmerson Mnangagwa's government.
The once-prosperous country staggered to 2020 with power shortages lasting up to 19 hours per day and large parts of the capital, Harare, a city of some 2 million people, going without running water. (VOA)
WASHINGTON, LELEMUKU.COM - U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said he looks forward to debating his eventual Democratic opponent when he runs for re-election next year, but bashed the independent commission that for decades has arranged the logistics of the debates as politically aligned against him.
"The problem is that the so-called Commission on Presidential Debates is stacked with Trump Haters &Never Trumpers," the Republican president said on Twitter. "3 years ago they were forced to publicly apologize for modulating my microphone in the first debate" against the Democratic nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
As President, the debates are up to me," Trump tweeted, "and there are many options, including doing them directly &avoiding the nasty politics of this very biased Commission. I will make a decision at an appropriate time but in the meantime, the Commission on Presidential Debates is not authorized to speak for me (or R's)!"
Still, Trump said he looks "very much forward to debating whoever the lucky person is who stumbles across the finish line in the little watched Do Nothing Democrat Debates. My record is so good on the Economy and all else, including debating, that perhaps I would consider more than 3 debates."
The commission, created in 1987 by the Republican and Democratic parties to oversee the quadrennial presidential and vice presidential debates, is overseen by prominent Democrats and Republicans and other public figures. Its current three co-chairs are Frank Fahrenkopf, a former Republican national chairman; Dorothy Ridings, chief executive of the Council of Federations of charitable groups, and Kenneth Wollack, a former president of the National Democratic Institute, a non-governmental organization that promotes democracy worldwide.
The commission has already announced plans for three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate next September and October in the weeks ahead of the Nov. 3 national election, with all of them on U.S. university campuses.
The commission acknowledged that in the first 2016 Trump-Clinton debate, "there were issues regarding Donald Trump's audio that affected the sound level in the debate hall," but not on the nationally televised broadcast, which 80 million people watched, the most ever for a presidential debate. The commission did not, as Trump said, apologize for the audio problem in the debate hall.
In response to Trump's tweets Monday, the commission said, "The televised general election debates are an important part of our democratic process. Since 1988, the Commission on Presidential Debates has conducted 30 general election presidential and vice presidential debates. Our record is one of fairness, balance and non-partisanship." (VOA)
PRETORIA, LELEMUKU.COM - At least 60 people have been killed and more than 1,000 have fled their homes after heavy rains caused flooding and mudslides along South Africa's eastern coast, authorities said on Wednesday.
Most of the deaths were in KwaZulu-Natal province. Flooding also killed at least three people in neighboring Eastern Cape province, state broadcaster SABC said.
The rains mainly hit areas around the port city of Durban. Multiple dwellings collapsed in mudslides, said Robert McKenzie, a KwaZulu-Natal Emergency Medical Services spokesman.
Rescue workers were digging through collapsed buildings on Wednesday.
Victor da Silva, a resident of the coastal town of Amanzimtoti, said his family managed to evacuate before the floods destroyed their home and cars.
"On Monday, the water was just crazy. And yesterday morning I got here, everything was fine, my garage was still here, the other part of the house was still here, and it just couldn't stop raining," Da Silva said. "And then an hour and a half later, everything poof (vanished) because the rain just hasn't stopped.
Authorities in southern Tanzania ordered evacuations of residents from low-lying areas and the closure of schools and offices ahead of landfall of Tropical Cyclone Kenneth on neighboring Mozambique’s coast on Thursday.
"We've decided to evacuate all residents of valleys and other low-lying areas and we advise them to seek refuge at public spaces," Mtwara regional commissioner Gelasius Byakanwa, told reporters.
Johan Fourie said he fled his home in Amanzimtoti, Kwazulu-Natal, just before part of it collapsed.
"I nearly lost my life, and my neighbor, I believe, is in hospital," Fourie told eNCA television.
The region had been hit by heavy rains for days, but authorities did not foresee the extent of the downpour late on Monday, said Lennox Mabaso, a spokesman for the provincial Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs department.
"As a result, there was flooding and some structures were undermined and collapsed on people," Mabaso said.
Some people were swept away by the water, he added. President Cyril Ramaphosa visited affected communities in KwaZulu-Natal on Wednesday and was expected in the Eastern Cape in the next few days.
"This is partly what climate change is about, that it just hits when we least expect it," he said.
Last week, 13 people were killed during an Easter service in KwaZulu-Natal when a church wall collapsed after days of heavy rains and strong winds. (VOA)
HARARE, LELEMUKU.COM - A Zimbabwean-born software engineer, Hope Ndhlovu, has won the 2019 World Bank Youth Summit Award for developing an application designed to make it easy for people to use public transport in Africa.
The Bulawayo-born young man, who studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Harvard University in United States (US), was among hundreds of people who submitted their Apps for consideration at the World Bank Summitt 2019.
In a message posted on his social media platforms, Ndhlovu wrote, “I had the honor and privilege of pitching my startup Tuverl at the World Bank Youth Summit Pitch Competition Finals in Washington DC, earlier this week. We were 1 of 5 team finalists selected from a pool of 885 applicants from 98 countries.
“My team finished on 1st place and won … It was such a humbling experience for our vision at Tuverl to be validated by the World Bank and the hundreds vibrant young people from around the world who attended the conference.”
Ndhlovu did his secondary education at Mpopoma High School in Bulawayo. (VOA)
HARARE, LELEMUKU.COM - The family of the late former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has appointed his daughter, Bona Mugabe-Chikore, as the executor of his estate amid the conspicuous absence of the late politician’s sons during the administration of the estate at the Harare High Court on Thursday.
Unlike South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela who wrote a will in 2004 and amended it in 2008 with instructions to distribute at least US$4,1 million to his family, staff, the ruling African National Congress and former schools, the late Zimbabwean strongman, who died September 6THin Singapore after a long battle with prostate cancer, did not write a will, according to his family.
Mugabe was toppled in a defacto military coup in November 2017 having ruled the country since independence in 1980.
The Mugabe family lawyer, Terrence Hussein, told VOA Zimbabwe Service that the other children are outside the country but had given written consent that Bona should be appointed executor as per Zimbabwean laws since the late leader did not leave a will.
Former first lady, Grace Mugabe, attended the meeting with the Master of the High Court Eldard Mutasa.
Hussein said, “This is a normal meeting that happens after the death of a person. It is called by the Master of the High Court, and it is called an edict meeting. In that meeting the master sets out the guidelines and parameters of how the estate will be run. He will also appoint an executor who would then do the business of stepping into the shoes of the deceased person and then apportioning how their estate would be wound up and who the beneficiaries will be and how much they will get.”
Hussein confirmed that though Bona had submitted the provisional list of some of the assets left behind by her father, it is going to be a long process.The late president is said to have left behind assets that include US$10 million in cash, 10 cars, a farm, three houses and several housing stands.
Reached by VOA Zimbabwe,Bona Chikore simply said, “No comment.” Other family sources are claiming that the money Mugabe left is only US$7 million.
Former first lady Grace Mugabe is listed as the sole surviving spouse, while Bona, Robert Junior, Bellarmine Chatunga and Russel Gorereza are listed as the surviving children. Russel is the late president’s stepson from the Mrs. Mugabe’s first marriage to Stanley Goreraza.
Where Are Mugabe's Billions?
A leaked diplomatic cable from the American embassy in Harare in 2001 published by WikiLeaks, a website that functions as a clearinghouse for classified or state secrets, said unverified assets linkedto Mugabe amounted to more than US$1 billion in Zimbabwe and overseas.
The cable read:“The full extent of President Mugabe’s assets are unknown, but are rumored to exceed US$1 billion in value, the majority of which are likely invested outside Zimbabwe. Inside Zimbabwe, the bulk of Mugabe’s assets are reported to be in the form of real property -- he and his wife have six residences, including a multi-story mansion still under construction in Harare, in addition to a number of farms around the country.”
A lawsuit filed in Singapore also provided a small glimpse into the wealth of the Mugabe’s. A villa was bought in 2008 by a company called Cross Global and sold in 2010 to a Taiwanese-born South African Hsieh Ping Sung believed to have been a one-time Mugabe confidant and front. The Mugabes sued both Cross Global and Hsieh in 2014 claiming ownership, arguing in court papers that the businessman was just a front. TheMugab’s also admitted to buying another house in neighboring South Africa.
When Washington and the European Union imposed targeted sanctions on him, Mugabe openly challenged them to seize any of his assets outside, saying he had none. Mrs. Mugabe also told party supporters in 2015 that her husband was a man of little means who was just passionate about the suffering of Zimbabweans.
Blue Roof Mansion
The Mugabes’ most prized asset is the so-called Blue Roof Mansion located in Borrowdale Brooke, Harare. A then Yugoslavia-based company, Energoproject, constructed the 25-bedroomed house. The architectural design is Chinese. In 1999, the ruling Zanu-PF party bought the 12-hactare plot and donated it to Mugabe for his retirement home. The Mugabes later bought out and forced out some five families at adjacent properties to construct the mansion.
When Mugabe died, it emerged that the property was still listed in the name of the ruling Zanu-PF party.
Zanu-PF secretary for administration Obert Mpofu, who once threatened to turn the house into a museum, told VOA Zimbabwe Service that the property is now being transferred to the family.
“The latest is that the Blue Roof is being transferred to the late president's family. The process started a few weeks ago and I am sure by now it’s almost concluded or it’s about to be concluded.”
Hussein also confirmed the pending transfer. “I do understand that that process is in the pipeline. I don't believe it's completed yet but I do understand that it is in the pipeline and it is being attended to.”
Constitutional law expert and University of Zimbabwe law Professor, Lovemore Madhuku, says Mrs. Mugabe under Zimbabwe’s inheritance laws is entitled to the mansion.
“The asset that is called the matrimonial home means where he was staying with his wife, that one is taken by the spouse. If the spouse was married, in this case we know that she was married in terms of the Marriage Act, she would get the matrimonial house. Therefore, if the matrimonial home is the Blue Roof, then that means it goes to Mrs. Grace Mugabe.
“Even those who are married under customary law, every surviving wife gets the assets belonging to them in terms of where they were staying. If it is a matrimonial home. The rest of the properties are shared. So even if there is no will, the matrimonial home is a very straightforward distribution of assets.”
Mugabe Multiple Farm Owner
According to the papers submitted to the High Court, the Mugabe family says he owned only one farm,Highfield Farm in Norton, south of the capital Harare, that he bought commercially. But government sources have linked him to more than 10 farms namely:Gushungo Estates (4 046 hectares) in Mazowe; Gushungo Dairies (1 000 hectares); Iron Mask Estate in Mazowe (1 046 hectares); Sigaru Farm in Mazowe (873 hectares); Gwebi Wood (1 200 hectares) in Mazowe; Gwina Farm in Mazowe (1 445 hectares); Leverdale Farm in Banket (1 488 hectares);) and in Norton, they own Cressydale Estate (676 hectares); Tankatara Farm (575 hectares); John O’Groat Farm (760 hectares); Clifford Farm (1 050 hectares) and Bassiville (1 200 hectares), putting the land holding of Mugabe’s family to about 16 000 hectares.
Hussein though says Mugabe was a “modest man” and was not a multiple farm owner. Asked about the alleged multiple farms,“Well there again goes those myths - produce them (farms), show us that they were in his name. Show us that he was allocated them. Nobody is able to come forward with them. So once again, those are myths that were being peddled. But the good thing about it is the truth always prevails.”
Sources close to the former First Family though say some of the farms are listed in the names of his children and widow. Professor Madhuku says trying to tie those properties to the former President is difficult.
“Those are not the assets of President Mugabe. His assets are the assets that belong to him in terms of ownership. If an asset is registered in the name of someone else, then the presumption is that that other person is the owner. Those properties ought to not even be talked about; they should not even be addressed. If for example there is a farm, which is an immovable property registered in the name of someone else tied to a child or spouse that property belongs to that person. It's not his assets.”
Mrs. Mugabe, according to Madhuku, will also inherit the lion’s share of the properties.
However, the government is threatening to seize some of the farms saying it is going to implement a one-family-one-farm policy. Critics of the government say the policy is designed to target the former first lady who allegedly riled the government after refusing to have the late national hero to be interred at the National Heroes Acre in Harare - reserved for the country’s most illustrious individuals.
Though Mugabe’s close allies claim that he lived a modest life, his family is said to have secretly amassed vast wealth, with his widow and children owning Rolls Royces, Porsche and Range Rovers. The Mugabe family also has a stake in the struggling Gushungo Holdings, trading as Alpha Omega Dairy (Pvt Ltd).
Mrs. Mugabe also owns AmaiMugabe Junior School, aprivate school in Mazowe. The extent of the Mugabes’ wealth was also revealed in 2015 when the former first lady sued a Lebanese executiveJamal Joseph Ahmed. (VOA)
HARARE, LELEMUKU.COM - A Zimbabwean politician, who fled the country when the Zimbabwe Defence Force staged a defacto military coup that led to the toppling of former president Robert Mugabe, has started campaigning for the 2023 presidential election, in what is viewed by some observers as the rise of a faction of the party once led by former First Lady, Grace Mugabe.
The campaign #TysonWabantu Movement, kick-started today in Zimbabwe’s second largest city, Bulawayo, comprising mainly of young people, who believe that former Zanu PF secretary for administration, Saviour Kasukuwere, should lead the nation instead of President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his colleague that are regarded by the movement as too old to revive the southern African nation with an almost comatose economy.
Butho Ngwenya, a former Zanu PF activist who is leading the campaign in the city, says they believe that Kasukuwere is the right person to lead Zimbabwe as he is “young, experienced in governmental issues and liked by most people”.
He says Kasukuwere, who was also Zimbabwe’s Youth Minister and was sought by the Zimbabwe Defence Force in 2017 when the army seized power and forced Mugabe to resign, is expected to return home soon to spearhead the campaign nationwide.
Kasukuwere was among some senior Zanu PF leaders that fled two years ago as the army claimed that they had usurped presidential powers in conjunction with the then first lady and wanted former State Security Minister Sydney Sekeramayi to succeed Mugabe.
The president had sacked his deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who fled to South Africa and then came back to take the presidential post after the long-time Zimbabwean leader was toppled.
Zanu PF supporters say Kasukuwere and his #TysonWabantu Movement are wasting time as Mnangagwa is expected to win the 2023 presidential poll.
Zanu PF spokesperson Simon Khaya Moyo and Information Secretary Nick Mangwana were unavailable for comment as they were not responding to calls on their mobile phones. Kasukuwere’s pseudonym is Tyson.
Ngwenya says they hope to convince Zimbabweans that Kasukuwere is fit for the presidential post. (VOA)
