By RYAN LENORA BROWN | Politico Magazine

Peter Moyo heard the police before he saw them—first the heavy thud of boots puncturing the early morning silence, then the sharp crack of his door being kicked open. Before he even opened his eyes, they had filled the crowded room where he slept in Johannesburg’s Central Methodist Church, screaming at the residents to follow them out.

In the din of voices, he could make out one word again and again, barbed and angry: kwerekwere, they spat. Dirty foreigner.

“They were grabbing people, kicking them in the stomach and yelling, ‘this isn’t Zimbabwe. You can’t stay here anymore,’” he said. “It felt like a war.”

I met Moyo, a wiry man given to expansive hand gestures, a week and a half after the police raid, sitting on a plastic lawn chair behind a Chinese wholesale mall west of the city. In the parched field all around him stood a neat rows of canvas tents erected last month to take in victims of the xenophobic violence ricocheting across Johannesburg.

For weeks, I’d been filling notebooks with the stories of those people. There was the Zimbabwean woman who told me of how, as she watched a machete-wielding mob advance on her shack, her gaze snagged on one of her neighbors, a man she spoke to every day, his eyes suddenly wild and vengeful. And there were the Bengali cousins I followed through the ruins of their looted grocery store, crunching over a pulp of glass shards and banana peels as they surveyed what could be salvaged. “There’s money here, but there’s also too much hate,” another Zimbabwean woman told me as she sat waiting for a bus to take her back to her home country. “It’s not a good place to make a life.”

What happened to Moyo and the 600 other refugees staying in Central Methodist, however, marked a new pivot in the story. Their attackers, after all, weren’t machete-wielding vigilantes, but the very people called in to stop them. “The police and the army are meant to be neutral, but the problem is many of them are xenophobic too,” Moyo said. “They want us out just like everyone else.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ … z3bSa7xAGR

“The police and the army are meant to be neutral, but the problem is many of them are xenophobic too,” Moyo said. “They want us out just like everyone else.” … Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ … 18334.html […]

Felix Kiprono and Malia Obama

By Todd Leopold

(CNN) – Felix Kiprono, a lawyer in Nairobi, Kenya, has his eye on someone special: President Obama’s daughter Malia.

His offer to win her hand? Fifty cows, 70 sheep and 30 goats.

“People might say I am after the family’s money, which is not the case. My love is real,” he told the Nairobian newspaper.

Moreover, he adds, he’s been faithful to his beloved since he first became aware of her.

“I got interested in her in 2008,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t dated anyone since and promise to be faithful to her. I have shared this with my family and they are willing to help me raise the bride price.”

He’s currently working on a letter to announce his intentions and plans to give it to the local U.S. Embassy.

According to prices on Africa Farming, Kiprono’s offer could be worth in excess of $90,000.

There are some issues, of course. For one, Malia Obama is 16. For another, she’ll have to develop a taste for village life.

“Ours will be a simple life. I will teach Malia how to milk a cow, cook ugali (a porridge) and prepare mursik (a sour milk) like any other Kalenjin woman,” he said.

Who says you can’t put a price on love?

[…]

By Charles Schaefer

[There are] signs of a renewed power struggle between the party’s Central Committee and a group of senior ethnic Tigrean revolutionaries that were sidelined in 2000 after the Eritrean-Ethiopian War, according to René Lefort, a longtime observer of Ethiopia. Moreover, Lefort suggested that a younger generation is also struggling to assume power. On top of this, the puppet parties that the EPRDF created as a facade of decentralization have assumed enormous power themselves. Amid all the political wrangling, the military is becoming an industrial and economic leviathan, a “deep state” similar to Egypt’s military.

The election, therefore, is a screen obscuring the real contest, which will be decided within the EPRDF between those four power blocs. No person or clique has emerged within the EPRDF to unseat Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, who, though often depicted as the EPRDF’s ineffectual figurehead, will likely remain prime minister. Desalegn’s experience serving under Zenawi should not be underestimated. It was also under his watch as chief party whip that Parliament passed the set of laws that essentially gave the EPRDF unchecked powers in 2009.

[This is a condensed version of a longer article]

Charles Schaefer is professor of history and chair of the International Studies Department at Valparaiso University. He has written on Ethiopian elections since 1992 as an election observer, post-election analyst and country specialist. […]

THERE are a total of 250 Ethiopians in various prisons in the country, Deputy Minister for Home Affairs, Mr Pereira Silima has said.

There are 68 in Kilimanjaro, 34 in Lindi, 70 in Tanga, 22 in Mbeya, 39 in Morogoro, one in Mwanza and 12 in Mara. Mr Silima was responding to a question from Ms Amina Clement (Koani-CCM), who sought to know how many Ethiopian illegal immigrants have been arrested and where they are being held.

She also asked to know steps taken after the illegal immigrants have completed serving their sentences. Deputy Minister Silima said so far 96 illegal immigrants have completed their sentences out of whom 91 are Ethiopians waiting for procedures to be complete before they can be deported back to their country.

He said previously the government would work with Kenyan government through the immigration department, to deport Ethiopians through Kenya by road but due to security fears this is not possible.

“The next step after the illegal immigrants complete their sentences is to deport them back to their country as directed by courts.

Initially we would use road transport through Kenya but due to security fears this is not possible, so we now use air transport,” he explained.

Mr Silima said there is a big wave of illegal immigrants from Ethiopia passing through Tanzania going to South Africa, which started in 2007.

He said a number of strategies are being employed by the government including boosting security along the country’s borders, taking to court and deporting illegal immigrants.

He said these steps have reduced the number of illegal immigrants passing through the country to other nations including South Africa.

He added that the government is also looking to provide working equipments to security personnel working along borders to bolster efforts to curb illegal immigrants from crossing into the country. […]