BALI, INDONESIA — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his Chinese counterpart Saturday that China’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine is complicating U.S.-Chinese relations at a time when they are already beset by rifts and enmity over numerous other issues. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi blamed the U.S. for the downturn in relations and said American policy has been derailed by what he called a misperception of China as a threat.

“Many people believe that the United States is suffering from a China-phobia,” the Chinese foreign minister said, according to a Chinese statement. “If such threat-expansion is allowed to grow, U.S. policy toward China will be a dead end with no way out.”

The top U.S. diplomat—now in Bangkok where he is expected to talk about the situation in Myanmar—said he conveyed “the deep concerns of the United States regarding Beijing’s increasingly provocative rhetoric and activity toward Taiwan.”

Blinken also noted he addressed U.S. concerns over Beijing’s use of the strategic South China Sea, the repression of freedom in Hong Kong, forced labor, the treatment of ethnic and religious minorities in Tibet, and the genocide in Xinjiang.

Additionally, the U.S. secretary of state said that he and Wang discussed ways in which there could be more cooperation between the two countries in areas such as climate crisis, food security, global health and counternarcotics.

For his part, Wang said China and the United States need to work together to ensure that their relationship will continue to move forward along the right track.

“This is part of an ongoing, and I think important, series of conversations with our Chinese counterparts across the government to make sure that we are responsibly managing the relationship,” a senior State Department official said Thursday, adding that the relationship has “different aspects to it, from profound competition being at the heart [but also] elements of cooperation, and there are elements of contestation.”

Blinken’s meeting with the Chinese foreign minister is their first in-person since the chief U.S. diplomat unveiled the Biden administration’s strategy to outcompete the rival superpower. In his remarks at the time, Blinken said the U.S. was not seeking to decouple from China and the relationship between the world’s two largest economies was not a zero-sum game.

On Friday, the G-20 talks were dominated by discussion of the war in Ukraine and its impact on energy and food supplies.

Indonesia, as the meeting’s host country, called on ministers to “find a way forward” in discussing the war and its impact on rising food and energy prices.

“It is our responsibility to end the war sooner rather than later and settle our differences at the negotiating table, not at the battlefield,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said at the opening of the meeting, invoking the U.N. charter to urge multilateralism and trust.

Foreign ministers shared concerns about getting grain shipments out of Ukraine and avoiding devastating food shortages in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. But talks were marked by sharp tension: Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sat at the same table but did not speak directly.

Source: Voice of America

JOHANNESBURG — How did a popular period drama on Chinese TV help lead to the theft and brutal slaughter of millions of donkeys in Africa?

It all started when fans of the show “Empresses in the Palace” saw the aristocratic characters using a traditional Chinese medicine called ejiao, which is made from donkey skin, Simon Pope, who works for U.K.-based charity the Donkey Sanctuary, told VOA.

“It was all set in the (Chinese) imperial court and at a certain time of the day the ladies of the court would all say, ‘Let’s have some ejiao,’” said Pope. Ejiao, also called donkey glue, is used as medicine or as a tonic for health and beauty in China.

“As a result of this program the demand for ejiao just literally went through the roof,” he said of the show first broadcast in 2011. “The problem was China simply does not have enough donkeys to be able to meet demand.”

The Chinese started looking for donkeys abroad, particularly in Africa where they’re used as a beast of burden by rural communities from Mali to Zimbabwe to Tanzania. When locals didn’t want to sell, thefts started, with distressed farmers finding their precious donkeys skinned and left to rot on the veld.

China needs about 5 million donkeys a year to produce and meet the demand for ejiao, and about 2 million of these come from China’s own population of the animals. Of the remaining 3 million or more sourced abroad, the Donkey Sanctuary estimates that between 25% and 35% are stolen.

Now, years into the trade, populations are down, and some African countries are fighting back. Tanzania last month banned donkey slaughter for the skin trade, saying the country’s donkey population was at risk of becoming extinct. Other African countries including Nigeria have also introduced bans on donkey slaughter or exports of the animal.

“I think the message that’s going to China, from Africa in particular, is that our donkeys are too valuable an asset to have them skinned and shipped off to China to have them made into medicine. Our donkeys are not for sale,” said Pope. However, he noted that because of China’s economic clout on the continent and massive investment in infrastructure, other nations are loath to push back against the trade.

South Africa allows the butchering of donkeys but only at two licensed slaughterhouses and with a quota of 12,000 a year. Authorities here have been cracking down on the illegal trade in recent years, so criminal syndicates have gone underground, especially since COVID, said Grace de Lange, an inspector with the National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA) in South Africa.

Now South African donkeys are being smuggled into Lesotho, a tiny mountainous kingdom surrounded by South Africa.

“We are not sure exactly what the link is and how they’re getting it out – maybe easier from Lesotho,” she told VOA.

“We’ve had meetings with (the) government in Lesotho and they’re also investigating. … It’s going to the Chinese market,” she said, adding that authorities have also intercepted skins in warehouses and at the airport.

While small-time local criminals have been prosecuted after being arrested transporting the animals, the Chinese running the large syndicates are usually harder to get to, de Lange says.

Marosi Molomo, director of livestock services at Lesotho’s Ministry of Agriculture, responded to VOA’s questions about the donkey trade moving to Lesotho via text message saying: “It’s not possible to give an answer without evidence.”

Requests for comment from the Chinese embassies and consulates in both Lesotho and South Africa went unanswered.

De Lange said the animals are often slaughtered in a particularly cruel way. They are stunned with hammers or have their throats slit but are sometimes still alive when skinned.

“They’d actually been slaughtered in the most horrific manner,” she said.

Francis Nkosi, who works on a farm outside Johannesburg caring for some of the donkeys rescued from the skin trade, explained why the animal is so vital in Africa’s rural areas.

“Donkeys in our culture, they’re like transport. They help us,” he said as he fed fresh hay to Oscar and Presley, two of his charges who were rescued – in terrible condition – by the NSPCA last year on their way to slaughter across the border in Lesotho.

“If people get sick sometimes, we don’t have a car. We don’t have a transport. You can use the donkeys to transport some people to the hospital,” he added.

De Lange said she’s seen that donkey “numbers are dwindling” in the rural communities where she works and, for Pope, one major concern is how losing their donkeys has socioeconomic effects for many.

In some countries, “children had been pulled out of school and they were having to do the work previously the donkey was having to do,” Pope said.

While some argue Africa should set up donkey farms and benefit financially that way, Pope points out that China has tried mass farming the animals and been largely unsuccessful. Unlike other farm animals, donkeys can only produce one foal a year.

Ejiao has been used as medicine for the last two millennia, and in modern-day China it is available in various edible forms intended to aid circulation and help with aches and pains.

“Demand for donkey glue in China has affected communities halfway across the globe,” according to an article about the product in China’s state publication China Daily.

“The issue is sensitive, simply because some of these countries depend on the donkey as a working beast in both agriculture and transportation,” it said. “But this is also the reality of a tightening global network of supply and demand, and the fearsome power of being one of the largest consumer markets on Earth.”

The donkey skin trade has also become a conduit for other criminal activity, according to an investigation by the Donkey Sanctuary and researchers at the University of Oxford published in May. The report found donkey skins easily available for purchase online and that websites selling the product were also often offering endangered wildlife for sale and even illicit drugs.

There is a “vast online network of organized criminals offering donkey skins for sale, often alongside other illegal wildlife products including rhino horns, pangolin scales, elephant ivory and tiger hides,” the Donkey Sanctuary said.

Source: Voice of America

President Cyril Ramaphosa will on Wednesday attend the mass funeral service for the 21 young people who died last week in East London in the Eastern Cape.

The teenagers – some as young as 13 – passed away at the Enyobeni Tavern in Scenery Park, East London in the early hours of Sunday, 26 June 2022.

According to the Presidency, the President will be joined by Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane and provincial and local government leaders in comforting the families of the deceased youth.

The service will take place at Scenery Park Sports Field, East London from 09:00.

In his weekly letter to the nation on Monday, President Ramaphosa called on civil society, government and communities to come together to fight the scourge of underage drinking in South Africa.

The President said the growing trend of underage drinking is not only illegal but also psychologically and physically detrimental.

“The increased social acceptability of young people drinking alcohol has become a serious problem in a country where the majority of the drinking population are already classified by the World Health Organisation as binge drinkers.

“Alcohol use amongst adolescents is associated with impaired function, absenteeism from learning, alcohol-related injuries, suicidal thoughts and attempts, and risky behaviour,” he said.

Source: South African Government News Agency

President Cyril Ramaphosa has welcomed a ruling by the high court in the Sivuka vs Ramaphosa civil matter which relates to the events of at Lonmin Mine at Marikana in the North West where striking miners tragically lost their lives.

The matter was brought to the high court by family members of those miners and sought to have President Ramaphosa – who was part of the Lonmin Mine board at the time – bare legal duty for the events that transpired on that day.

The High Court in Johannesburg handed down judgement on the matter last week.

In a statement, the Presidency clarified pertinent matters in that judgement.

“First, the high court agreed with the President’s arguments and held that the plaintiffs had not established that the President bore any legal duty in relation to the Marikana tragedy. Furthermore, the court made no finding that the President was in fact the cause of harmful conduct.

“Second, the court rejected the plaintiff’s argument that certain email communications from President Ramaphosa sought to call for the murder of the striking workers. The judgement stated that the plaintiffs’ argument against the President ‘is not only far-fetched but also irreconcilable within the context of the email communication contents as a whole…,” the Presidency said.

Furthermore, the Presidency said the court proceedings were “not a trial and…the court was merely engaged in a legal debate regarding the plaintiffs’ allegations” against President Ramaphosa.

“[The] high court agreed with the President that there was no factual basis pleaded for the allegation that collusion between the President, the government and the senior police would have led to deaths of workers.

“[On] the allegations that the President Ramaphosa owed a duty of care to the plaintiffs due to his role as director of Lonmin, the high court agreed with the President that the allegation was incorrect as a matter of law. In the judgment the court said, “… The allegations pleaded do not show that the first defendant owed the plaintiffs legal duties, and he therefore cannot in law incur liability to the plaintiffs in delict in his capacity as director of Lonmin, or ‘in pursuit of his personal interests and those of Lonmin’,” the Presidency said.

The Presidency said the events of the tragic day remain a sorrow for the country.

“The tragic events of August 2012 in Marikana that led to the death of 34 people remain one of the most distressing moments of the post democratic era and a blight in South Africa’s contemporary history that will be forever etched in our hearts and minds.

“10 years later our hearts still go out to families who lost their loved ones. The violence and the killings that occurred should have never happened. We are still resolute and united in our condemnation of the brutal acts we witnessed,” the Presidency said.

Source: South African Government News Agency

KwaZulu-Natal Social Development MEC, Nonhlanhla Khoza, has urged society to unite against the continued murder of women in the province.

“It is imperative for the communities not to be silent, but isolate all those involved in gender-based violence (GBV) cases,” Khoza said.

Khoza made the call outside the Camperdown Magistrate’s Court, where police officer Mthokozisi Nene made a brief appearance in connection with the death of his wife.

Nene, 44, allegedly shot and killed his wife Thobeka MaMsomi Nene during an argument at their family home in Inchanga, west of Durban, two weeks ago.

Khoza, including Member of the Provincial Legislature James Nxumalo, the deceased’s two daughters and community members, were among the people who attended the court case on Monday.

The MEC said men should lead from the front in all campaigns aimed at curbing the scourge of GBV.

Nene was denied bail and the case was postponed to 13 July 2022.

Khoza applauded the court for denying bail to Nene, saying that such people should remain in custody for the duration of the hearing of their court cases.

“We were pleased that they considered a lot of aspects in this case. It is clear that the murder was premeditated. We are saddened by this situation, where children lost their mother at the hands of their father,” Khoza said.

She added that it was unthinkable that anyone would consider taking the life of their partner, especially a person who is supposed to provide support to the family.

“A police officer also has a responsibility to protect the community, but this one was heartless. He took the law into his own hands and allegedly shot dead an innocent woman in full view of her children,” the MEC said.

She expressed concern at Nene’s lack of remorse in court, as he had not surrendered the firearm he allegedly used to murder his wife to the police.

“We are disturbed that our children have been robbed of a teacher, but our social workers will provide school children, the deceased’s biological children and the family with psycho-social support. We are pleased that the community has come together to oppose bail for this man. We will continue to monitor this case until it comes to an end,” she said.

Nxumalo urged law enforcement agencies to do everything within their powers to ensure that the perpetrator of this heinous crime remains in prison.

“He has to face the full might of the law,” Nxumalo said, adding that she wants men who commit GBV to be held responsible and the killing of women and children avoided.

Source: South African Government News Agency

The Warden police seek information with regard to a body of an unknown person found on 30 June 2022 at about 17:00, 20km away from Warden to Vrede on the R103 road near Rooikop Farm School.

On the mentioned date and time an unknown adult African male aged between 25 to 30 years was found by a member of the community who was burning grass on the side of the road near Rooikop Farm. The deceased was clothed with a blue track top, black denim jeans and white sneakers.

The deceased had no visible injuries but there is suspicion that he was knocked down by a vehicle that didn’t stop after the accident. No documentation was found on his possession to identify the deceased and he was taken to Harrismith state mortuary.

Any person with information regarding this incident to contact Warrant Officer Hlatswayo on number 082 455 6164 of Warden Detectives or call Crime Stop on 08600 10111 or by using MySAPS app.

Source: South African Police Service