South Africa’s former President Jacob Zuma has been involved in a car crash but was unhurt.
A drunk driver collided with his “official armoured state vehicle” on Thursday evening, police have said.
But a leading member of his uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party alleged that he had been targeted.
He has been suspended by the governing African National Congress (ANC) and is campaigning for the MK ahead of May’s general election.
Mr Zuma was in the car, along with his official protection team, when it was hit on a road in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal at about 18:40 local time (16:40 GMT) on Thursday.
“No-one was injured, including members of the Presidential Protection Services. The former president was evacuated and taken to his residence,” a brief police statement said.
A 51-year-old man has been arrested for “drunken driving as well as… reckless and negligent driving”.
The MK’s party’s head of elections, Musa Mkhize, has told public broadcaster SABC that he thought the crash was deliberate rather than an accident.
“Unfortunately, we have been waiting for it to happen. The president was warned that before the day of the elections, he would be lying in the hospital. Thanks to the Presidential Protection Unit members who managed to keep the president safe,” he is quoted by News24 as saying.
Mr Zuma, 81, served as president from 2009 until 2018, when he had to step down because of corruption allegations, which he denies. As a former president, he is entitled to have an official protection team.
The crash happened on the same day that the country’s electoral commission said that Mr Zuma was barred from running as a candidate in the 29 May general election. It is believed that his 15-month jail sentence given in 2021 for contempt of court constitutionally excludes him.
Some opinion polls have suggested that the ANC’s share of the vote could fall below 50% for the first time in 30 years.
The MK, which was only recently formed, could dent some of its support, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal where Mr Zuma is very influential.
A selection of the week’s best photos from across the continent and beyond:
On Wednesday, Sufi Muslims in Cairo prepare to perform their famous “whirling” dance, where a series of turns is said to lift them to a spiritually heightened state. [Fareed Kotb/Getty Images]
Elsewhere in Egypt’s capital city, Muslims observing the holy month of Ramadan break their fast with an enormous “iftar” street party. [Khaled Desouki/AFP]
This joyful duo are captured enjoying iftar on Friday – this time in a Somali refugee camp. [Hodan Mohamed Abdullahi/Getty Images]
Thousands of miles away at the prestigious Art Basel fair in Hong Kong, paintings by Nigerian artist Babajide Olatunji catch a visitor’s eye [Peter Parks/Getty Images]
Cameroonian singer-songwriter Irma Pany poses for a portrait of her own on Wednesday. [Joel Saget/AFP]
While a different type of artists command attention on Saturday at the closing ceremony of the 13th African Games in Accra, Ghana. [Monirul Bhuiyan/AFP]
Colourful characters are also snapped in Nairobi, Kenya, where city-dwellers celebrate the Hindu festival, Holi. [Thomas Mukoya/Reuters]
The East African nation also hosts a World Rally Championship on Wednesday, in the south-western town of Naivasha. [Massimo Bettiol/Getty Images]
South Africa play an international friendly match Algeria on Tuesday – and mark one of three goals with a sleepy celebration. [Billel Bensalem/Getty Images]
Also motionless are these unlucky fish, who wind up in a Zimbabwean trader’s net on Sunday. [KB Mpofu/Reuters]
(Bloomberg) — South Africa’s main opposition party will resist forming a coalition with the ruling African National Congress in order to govern the country should it need to.
Most Read from Bloomberg
“We don’t want to be in government with the ANC,” John Steenhuisen, the Democratic Alliance’s leader, said Thursday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “I don’t think we’re going to solve the country’s problems by having the same people who are responsible for the economic crisis, the social crisis, and the infrastructure crisis sitting around the table.”
South Africa is on the cusp of an era of national coalition politics after elections scheduled for May 29. Opinion polls suggest the ANC will lose its overall majority for the first time since it came to power at the end of apartheid 30 years ago.
Steenhuisen, 48, has spearheaded the formation of a bloc of 11 opposition parties that aims to form a coalition government after the vote. Members of the Multi Party Charter have ruled out working with the ANC or the populist Economic Freedom Fighters, currently the third-biggest group, and polls show they’ll collectively struggle to obtain even 40% support. A survey by the Social Research Foundation indicates that an ANC-DA tie-up would be the one favored by most South Africans.
The DA, which espouses market-friendly policies, currently controls the Western Cape — the only province not run by the ANC — and won 21% of the vote in the last national election in 2019. It has also wrested control of several major towns in municipal elections by forming alliances with other parties, but some of those coalitions have proved unstable, with power changing hands several times and some services griding to a halt.
Steenhuisen called new “popcorn” parties that split the opposition vote “the biggest threat” to reducing the ANC’s majority.
“That’s why I’m saying in this election, vote for the DA — first prize. But if you’re not going to vote for the DA, vote for the Multi Party Charter parties.”
The DA head said former President Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party differs from other new ones because it had a leader with significant name recognition and that it has already made inroads in by-elections.
Read more: South Africa’s ANC Dismisses Rival Zuma Party as a Nuisance
“They’re devouring the ANC and what does that do?,” Steenhuisen said. “It helps lower the ANC’s majority and give the Multi Party Charter an even better chance of being able to get into government in places like KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, and nationally.”
A survey released by the SRF this month shows support for the DA is slipping in the Western Cape, and that it may be forced into a coalition in the province, though it’s likely to remain by far the biggest party in the region.
Read More: South Africa’s DA May Lose Majority in Western Cape, SRF Says
The DA faced internal turmoil when Mmusi Maimane, its first Black leader, exited in 2019 and a number of its other senior Black members followed suit, with some of them taking issue with the DA’s policy on race. While the municipalities it controls are regarded as being among the country’s better-run, its top leadership is predominantly White and it has struggled to increase support among the Black majority.
Asked whether South Africans would be hesitant to vote for a party in which a majority of parliamentarians are White, Steenhuisen said citizens want politicians who can address service-provision problems and lift the poor out of poverty.
“People in this election are not looking for the color of the cat — they’re looking at who’s going to catch the mouse,” he said. “You don’t need to be a poor Black South African to get up every morning as I do and fight for a better life for those people.”
Among the policy proposals outlined in the DA’s manifesto are the scrapping of race-based economic redress — a cornerstone of ANC policy — and converting a temporary monthly stipend that was introduced to cushion the unemployed against the impact of the coronavirus pandemic into a permanent job seekers grant at an additional cost of 39.6 billion rand ($1.95 billion).
It also favors breaking the monopoly of state power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., whose failure to adequately maintain its plants and invest in new generation capacity has led to years of rolling blackouts. The DA would instead increase investment in electricity transmission.
–With assistance from Gordon Bell.
(Updates with comment from Steenhuisen in sixth paragraph.)
South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) has failed in a legal bid to stop a newly formed party, backed by ex-President Jacob Zuma, from running in May’s general election.
The uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party takes its name from the now-disbanded armed wing of the ANC.
It is thought that Mr Zuma’s backing of the MK could affect the ANC’s support.
The electoral court rejected the ANC’s argument that the party had not met the official registration criteria.
The ANC, which some polls predict could lose its majority when South Africans vote on 29 May, has also instigated separate legal proceedings against MK. It accuses the MK of copyright infringement.
Few had heard of him a year ago, and now he is set to become president.
Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s extraordinary rise caps a rollercoaster period in Senegalese politics that caught many off-guard.
Months in jail alongside ally and kingmaker Ousmane Sonko ended suddenly, with the pair released the week before the presidential election.
Now Mr Clean, as he’s nicknamed, must get to work on the sweeping reforms he has promised.
“Methodical” and “modest” are words often used to describe the 44-year-old tax collector.
Mr Faye fondly recalls his rural upbringing in Ndiaganiao, where he says he returns every Sunday to work the land.
His love and respect for village life is matched by his deep distrust of Senegal’s elites and establishment politics.
“He’s never been a minister and wasn’t a statesman so critics question his lack of experience,” analyst Alioune Tine tells the BBC.
“But, from Faye’s point of view, the insiders who’ve run the country since 1960 have made some catastrophic failures.”
Fighting poverty, injustice and corruption are top of Mr Faye’s agenda. While working at the Treasury, he and Mr Sonko created a union taskforce to tackle graft.
Gas, oil, fishing and defence deals must all be negotiated to better serve the Senegalese people, says Mr Faye.
He is ushering in an era of “sovereignty” and “rupture” as opposed to more of the same, he told voters, and that is especially true of ties to France.
Senegal’s president-elect says he will drop the much-criticised CFA franc currency, which is pegged to the euro and backed by former colonial power France.
Mr Faye wants to replace it with a new Senegalese, or regional West African, currency, although this will not be easy.
“He will have to deal with the reality of the budget to begin with… But I see that he has a lot of ambition,” former Prime Minister Aminata Touré, who served under outgoing President Macky Sall, tells the BBC.
Strengthening judicial independence and creating jobs for Senegal’s large young population are also key priorities for Mr Faye – neither of which “President Sall paid much attention to and it caught up with him”, Ms Touré adds.
She is not the only political heavyweight to have thrown her support behind the 44-year-old – former President Abdoulaye Wade did the same just two days before Sunday’s vote.
It is a remarkable turnaround for Mr Faye who spent the last 11 months in prison on charges of insurrection, and many more years before that in his ally’s shadow.
‘Bassirou is me’
Bassirou Diomaye Faye was announced in February as the so-called “Plan B” candidate, replacing the charismatic opposition firebrand Ousmane Sonko. “I would even say that he has more integrity than me,” Mr Sonko said proudly.
Both men founded the now-disbanded Pastef party, both men are tax collectors, and both men found themselves jailed last year on charges they said were politically motivated.
Mr Sonko ended up being convicted of two offences, which meant he was barred from the election, so Mr Faye stepped in.
“Bassirou is me,” Mr Sonko told supporters recently. “They are two sides of the same coin,” Pastef colleague Moustapha Sarré agrees.
This has led to criticism that Mr Faye is merely “president by default”.
Not so, says analyst Mr Tine. But the pair’s relationship could usher in a new style of leadership.
“Maybe they will establish a tandem and break away from the hyper-presidential model of having an all-powerful head of state.”
“Sonko is of course the uncontested leader of Pastef – an icon, even… [But] the two have had a [dynamic of] complicity and collusion.”
Once upon a time, Mr Faye wanted nothing to do with politics. “It never crossed my mind,” he said in 2019 while recalling his childhood.
One of Mr Faye’s heroes is the late Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop – whose work is seen as a precursor to Afrocentrism. Both are seen as left-wing cheerleaders for pan-Africanism.
As early results came in on Monday showing Mr Faye was set for victory, people in the capital, Dakar, celebrated by honking car horns and singing to loud music.
The reaction from international markets was less jubilant, with Senegal’s dollar bonds falling to their lowest level in five months. Reuters news agency reports that investors are concerned that Mr Faye’s presidency may wind down the country’s business-friendly policies.
The election was originally due last month but Mr Sall postponed it just hours before campaigning was set to begin, triggering deadly opposition protests and a democratic crisis.
Most candidates had very little time to prepare once the new election date was set – but Mr Faye had just over a week after being freed from jail.
Despite the shortened campaign period, Senegal’s citizens were adamant they would turn out and use their vote, Christopher Fomunyoh – of the National Democratic Institute for international affairs – told BBC Newsday.
“Senegal is in the process of confirming that democracies can self-correct and come out stronger and more resilient.”
And the true test for Senegal’s clean-up guy has only just begun.
JOHANNESBURG, March 25 (Reuters) – South Africa’s second most popular party the Democratic Alliance (DA) would consider a deal with the ruling African National Congress should the ANC fail to get the majority it needs to retain power in May elections, its leader said on Monday.
Pollsters expect the ANC to lose its legislative majority on May 29 for the first time since Nelson Mandela took power at the end of apartheid 30 years ago, with voters unhappy with poor service delivery, joblessness, crime and power cuts.
If that happens, President Cyril Ramaphosa or a successor for the top job would be unable to stay on without a coalition, since South Africa’s parliament elects the president.
“It would depend which ANC you’re dealing with and what their programme of action is,” DA leader John Steenhuisen said, declining to disclose whether any talks had already taken place.
“I’m not ruling out anything, depending on what the election results are.”
The ANC’s Deputy Party Secretary Nomvula Mokonyane told Reuters earlier this month the party was not considering a coalition government with other parties, and that she did not think a power-sharing deal would work.
The DA has banded together with smaller parties to try to capture the more than 50% of the vote needed to take power.
They include the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party, long a bitter rival of the ANC, as well as Freedom Front Plus, which appeals to rural white South Africans who feel politically marginalised since the fall of apartheid, and Action SA, which has built a platform on a tough anti-immigration stance and appeals to working and middle class voters.
“It’s a long shot,” Steenhuisen said. He added that if the opposition coalition did not win, his priority would be to prevent the Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) getting a seat on the executive.
The DA is seen as a pro-business party, whereas businesses and wealthy individuals dislike the EFF, which is popular with poor, Black South Africans. The EFF promises to nationalise industries and fix inequalities in land ownership.
“I won’t sit back and just watch the country handed over to the radical Socialists,” Steenhuisen said. “If the (opposition coalition) doesn’t get over the line, we may have to look at making what is the least worst option.”
If in power, the DA would seek to pursue its policy of privatising the power sector rather than rely on state provider Eskom, and eliminating red tape to make it easier for the private sector to operate, Steenhuisen said.
He reiterated the DA policy of abandoning the ANC’s flagship Black empowerment scheme in favour of one focused solely on reducing poverty, regardless of skin colour.
Race is a divisive issue in South Africa, and the DA is still seen by many as the party of white privilege.
“I don’t buy that,” Steenhuisen said. “The biggest beneficiaries of good, clean, accountable government are poor, marginalised South Africans.” (Editing by Barbara Lewis)
For the last six years Penson Mlotshwa has been carrying a gun with him wherever he goes in the South African city of Johannesburg. To the shops, restaurants and even the gym.
His gun has become an extension of him as the country battles record levels of crime.
“I’m not a fortune teller – I never know when I will be attacked,” the YouTube content creator told the BBC.
“Unfortunately, I’ve had to use my gun multiple times to protect myself,” he sighs, explaining how a man wanting his wallet pulled a knife on him after dinner one night.
He drew his gun and made the mugger hand over the pocket knife, which he threw in the gutter. He did not fire the weapon.
Mr Mlotshwa says his guns – he would not disclose how many he owned – are strictly for protection, a job he feels the police and government have failed dismally at.
Johannesburg resident Lynette Oxley agrees and says such dangers must be faced head on.
Lynette Oxley from Girls on Fire says she would rather buy a new gun than a pair of shoes
She has set up an initiative to train women to protect themselves through gun ownership.
“I’d rather buy a new gun, than a pair of shoes,” the 57-year-old Johannesburg resident, who owns 12 firearms, told the BBC.
Her organisation, Girls on Fire, mostly helps women who have been raped, attacked, robbed, or experienced some level of violence. The country’s rate of sexual violence is among the highest in the world.
One woman joined up after her husband was shot in front of her – she was pregnant at the time – and her six-year-old child during a home robbery.
“People are realising that we are on our own,” says Ms Oxley, a gun instructor.
“Gun culture in South Africa is about self-defence and necessity.”
South African law states that most people with a gun licence can carry a firearm if it is concealed.
There are more than 2.7 million legal gun owners in South Africa, according to a 2021 survey by Gun Free South Africa (GFSA) – roughly 8% of the adult population.
When it comes to the war against crime, South Africa’s police do appear to be losing. The murder rate in the country reached a 20-year high and guns are the weapon of choice.
Adele Kirsten, the director of GFSA, told the BBC of her concerns that crime was not only increasing in South Africa, but the “nature of gun violence” was changing.
Mass shootings and assassinations are becoming a “feature” of South Africa, she says.
Last year the country was rocked when 10 members of the same family were shot dead in an attack on their home near the city of Pietermaritzburg. The youngest victim was only 13 years old.
“Owning a gun is choosing to be an active participant in your own rescue” “, Source: Gideon Joubert, Source description: Private security and firearms consultant, Image: Gideon Joubert
Many of these crimes are carried out by illegal firearms – of which there are some 2.35 million in circulation, according to GFSA.
One of the sources of these illegal guns is the very institution meant to protect civilians – the police.
This was illustrated by the infamous case of ex-police officer Christiaan Prinsloo.
Between 2007 and 2015, he sold about 2,000 guns to gangs. These firearms have been linked to more than 1,000 murders and the deaths of 89 children.
To fill this security vacuum more people than ever are taking their safety into their own hands.
In South Africa for a person to get a gun licence they need to be over the age of 21, go through extensive training, do multiple tests and show proof of mental competency.
It can be a long and tedious process.
Despite this, over the past decade the number of gun-licence applications has quadrupled, according to an investigation by South African news site News24.
This is a big worry for Ms Kirsten, who wants fewer such weapons on the streets: “When you reduce gun availability, you reduce gun deaths.”
Gideon Joubert, a firearms consultant, told the BBC that the rise in gun ownership was a natural consequence of the lack of security.
“Owning a gun is choosing to be an active participant in your own rescue,” he says.
The 38-year-old, who also is active in the sports shooting sector, says the relationship South Africans have with their firearms is “complex and multifaceted”.
“I see a gun as the ultimate representation of my ability as a free citizen to take the final responsibility for my own safety,” he says.
Many South Africans feel the police are failing to protect them
Gun culture is influenced by the violent history of the country, which was under white-minority rule until 1994. Black people could not legally obtain guns until 1983.
European colonisers brought guns to the country in the early 1600s. Afrikaners, white descendants of Dutch settlers, adopted a unique frontier gun-owning identity, that is still present today.
In the 1980s the Soviet bloc sent thousands of AK-47s to anti-apartheid groups, and it became a symbol of liberation.
Legal gun ownership jumped by 40% between 1986 and 1996 at a time of instability and uncertainty in the country, according to a report by GFSA.
Much of this was driven by the white minority’s fear of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) taking power, the GFSA says.
The ANC has now been in power for 30 years – and in elections in May could lose its outright majority in parliament for the first time since apartheid ended.
People are once again reaching for firearms, but the face of gun culture has slightly shifted.
Mr Joubert says the typical South African gun owner used to be “mid-30s, white, male, and generally Afrikaans”. Now it is more “diverse”.
Women are increasingly turning to guns in a bid to protect themselves
In 2014 women made up 19% of gunowners in South Africa, according to a report conducted by the policy and research unit of South Africa’s Civilian Secretariat for Police Service.
Though the type of people who own guns may be changing, Ms Kirsten believes vestiges of the colonial gun mentality remain, especially among older white males.
“They think their gun is the last thing between them and the ‘Wild West’,” she says, a reference to their lack of faith in the black-majority government.
It is clear that more people are turning to private security companies, instead of the police, for protection.
In the last decade private security firms have increased by more than 40% because of demand, according to a Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (PSIRA) report cited by a recent parliamentary committee.
One person who has taken to heart the need to protect herself is Tzu-Hui Chang, a 25-year-old Taiwanese-born South African.
She told the BBC the first time she saw her father with a gun was when they moved to the country when she was a toddler.
“He would have it strapped to his chest every time he picked me up from kindergarten,” she says.
The constant fear of attack forced the family to adopt South Africa’s gun culture, despite coming from a country that is averse to firearms.
Ms Chang says she is in the process of trying to get her gun licence.
“If I didn’t live in South Africa, I wouldn’t even consider getting a gun,” she says.
For Mr Mlotshwa owning a gun in South Africa is a no-brainer. He fondly refers to his firearms as his “monsters” who will always be there to protect his family.
This is an updated version of a story first published on Dec. 25, 2022. The original video can be viewed here.
Tonight we want to introduce you to a musician named Sona Jobarteh, who introduced us to the beautiful sound and story of a centuries-old instrument called the kora. It’s a string instrument from West Africa, part of a musical tradition that dates back to a 13th-century empire, and has been passed down strictly from father to son, man to man in a special set of families ever since. As we first reported last fall, Sona Jobarteh was born into one of those families, called griots.. the daughter of a Gambian father and a British mother. After hundreds of years of men, she is the first woman to master the kora. In her performances around the world — and in her work off-stage — she says she is keeping tradition alive.. through the very act of breaking it.
Take a listen, as we did, to Sona Jobarteh as she plays the kora. With its 21 strings, played by just four fingers, two on each hand, it has a sound both foreign and familiar.
Lesley Stahl: To me, it’s like a harp. What do you compare it to?
Sona Jobarteh: I don’t actually compare it to anything because it’s normal for me, right? I compare other things to the kora.
Sona Jobarteh
The song Sona played for us, called “Jarabi,” is a traditional love song sung in the Mandinka language. The tradition goes back to the 1200s, when a kingdom called the Mali Empire reigned over a large swath of West Africa, the territory of several modern-day countries. The musicians and storytellers in the empire were men called griots, who counseled kings, resolved conflicts and passed the legends down orally through the centuries. Women in griot families were singers, but it was only men who were allowed to play the instruments.
That is, until Sona Jobarteh. At 39, she has become one of the foremost kora players in the world, performing with her band across Europe, West Africa, and here in the United States, as we saw in one packed theater outside Boston.
Sona Jobarteh: This is music when you hear it, it still, to this day, carries this feeling of the empire at its– at its greatest. You get that feeling of royalty, you get that feeling of, you know, something that you’re so proud about.
Lesley Stahl: What I think about with you is that you have broken tradition.
Sona Jobarteh: It’s not the way I see myself, mainly because of the fact of — believing that tradition has to evolve. Traditions are not stagnant. They are things that grow with humanity, with socie– society, and they always have. At one time, this instrument was not around. And then it became invented and it became something modern. And yet, now it’s considered traditional. So in terms of me being female, this is a very central and important adaptation the tradition must take in order to be able to be relevant to our new society.
Sona Jobarteh comes to the griot tradition as both insider and outsider. Her mother is a British artist. Her father, the son of a legendary Gambian kora player whose griot family pedigree traces back to the 13th century. Though her parents’ relationship didn’t last, Sona grew up in both worlds, the U.K. and her grandfather’s family compound in the Gambia, where she says her grandmother urged her to embrace her griot heritage which, as a girl, meant singing.
Sona Jobarteh: She used to keep telling me, you know, “You have to sing.” And I never wanted to sing. I hated singing with a passion.
Lesley Stahl: Why? You have the perfect voice.
Sona Jobarteh: — didn’t like it. Never liked it. And so–
Lesley Stahl: But your grandmother knew you had great voice.
Sona Jobarteh: I don’t think she heard it much because I refused. And I was a very stubborn child (LAUGH) when it came to that. I would sit there for, “Nnnnn.”
Sona Jobarteh plays the kora
But Sona was drawn to the kora, and as a little kid, no one seemed to mind her learning some of the basics. She thinks her grandmother may have even liked the idea. In the U.K., though, she studied a different musical tradition — classical cello — and she excelled, winning a scholarship at age 14 to a prestigious music boarding school.
Lesley Stahl: Were you one of the very few biracial kids in the school?
Sona Jobarteh: The only person of color in the first school.
Lesley Stahl: The only person?
Sona Jobarteh: Yes.
Sona Jobarteh: I was incredibly shy as a student. I never talked. That’s my own way of surviving those years, I would say.
Lesley Stahl: Were you sad? Was it a tough time?
Sona Jobarteh: Yes. It was a very tough time, yeah. Yeah. Happiness was not a major part of it.
But she did find one point of connection to her life in the Gambia.
Sona Jobarteh: The library in the school had a kora there, hanging on the wall. So I would be always looking at this thing. And then, one day, I decided to– to take it off the wall. It was a total mess, as you can imagine. So what I started doing wasevery time I get a little bit of time where the place is quiet, I would take it off the wall, fix a string, put it back. And I was doing it hoping nobody was gonna notice I keep taking it off the wall. And there was one lady who was one of the late, late night workers. She said, “Why don’t you take it to your room? And you can keep it there and just work on it.”
Lesley Stahl: She’s your hero.
Sona Jobarteh: –and I had the permission. It became my sanity.
And her calling. At 17, she decided she needed to study the kora properly, which meant taking a personal risk: appealing to her father to pass the tradition down to her, his daughter, as his father had to him. They hadn’t spent much time together, as Sanjally Jobarteh had been living and performing mostly abroad.
Sanjally Jobarteh
Lesley Stahl: For years and years and years, kora playing was passed father to son–
Sanjally Jobarteh: Mm-hm.
Lesley Stahl: –father to son.
Sanjally Jobarteh: Exactly.
Lesley Stahl: And along comes your daughter–
Sanjally Jobarteh: Yeah.
Lesley Stahl: Sona.
Sanjally Jobarteh: Yeah.
Lesley Stahl: Did she say, “Dad, will you teach me?”
Sanjally Jobarteh: Yeah, she said, “What I really want to learn is the kora.”
Lesley Stahl: But girls didn’t play the kora at that point.
Sanjally Jobarteh: What I told her– I said, “I would like– if I close my eyes, I don’t have to know the difference, is it a man or a woman.”
Lesley Stahl: Ooh.
Sanjally Jobarteh: “If you can do that for me.”
Lesley Stahl: You just immediately said, “Okay?”
Sanjally Jobarteh: I just immediately said, “Okay.”
Lesley Stahl: You never hesitated?
Sanjally Jobarteh: I never hesitated, no.
Sona Jobarteh: “I don’t want you to get distracted with this whole idea of being female. Don’t let that get into your head. Don’t let it dis– distract you. Your ambition needs to be a good kora player. Not female kora player, just a good kora player.” And so that was my challenge at the beginning.
Lesley Stahl: How hard did she work?
Sanjally Jobarteh: She worked very, very hard.
She started performing, sometimes with her father and then with her own band. She got acceptance first in Europe. And then back in the Gambia with a song and video she released in 2015 to celebrate 50 years of Gambian independence. It’s become the country’s unofficial national anthem, with more than 24 million views on YouTube.
Minus the dancers, we found the Gambia much as Sona’s video depicted it. A tiny country on Africa’s west coast, it’s a former British colony that’s predominantly Muslim. Pre-colonial culture runs deep here. Sona Jobarteh’s name and heritage carry weight and she’s leaning into that ancient griot role of cultural leader to advocate for what she calls her purpose in life outside music: creating a new model of African education. She has founded a small school called the Gambia Academy, where students study dance, drumming, kora of course, and another traditional griot instrument called the balafon.
Sona Jobarteh: The music gets the most attention because everyone sees it and likes and enjoys it. But they are learning all the same subjects as any other school is learning– your math, your science, your geography, your history, all these things. However, how is that imparted to you?
Sona believes most education in Africa has been so deeply rooted in colonial models that its message to children is that their own legacy is somehow backward.
Sona Jobarteh: So they feel to do things properly, “We’re gonna do it in this way.” And this– but “this way” is always very much a European way. My challenge is now can you get the same output, successful output, if we actually create– change the cultural orientation at the heart and center of the education system?
Borry and Rohy
So the students here wear traditional African uniforms. And Gambian culture is celebrated. Rohy and Borry have been coming to the school since it opened seveb years ago. Here there are no restrictions by gender or pedigree. Rohy is learning to play the kora and Borry is in the advanced balafon class.
Borry: I like it. It makes me feel very happy when I’m playing.
Lesley Stahl: Are you griot?
Rohy: No.
Lesley Stahl: Are you griot?
Borry: No.
Lesley Stahl: And– you’re female. Look at you both laughing, because you know what I’m talking about.
Rohy & Borry: Yeah.
Lesley Stahl: Won’t that be awfully difficult?
Rohy: You know, what a man can do, a woman also can do it. Yeah. So I’m not from a griot family, but I love to play kora. And when you love something, you can do it.
Lesley Stahl: Are you getting pushback from within the society?
Sona Jobarteh: Yes. Of course. Especially from older generations. But– it doesn’t matter.
Playing the complex West African instrument called the kora | 60 Minutes
06:11
Sona’s first album was a mix of traditional and new songs. Her latest, which we saw her rehearsing with her band, is all original music. She writes all the parts herself — including songs about education, women and her own identity. And she sings them in Mandinka.
Sona Jobarteh: For me, when I sing in my own language, when I sing in the language that belongs to the Gambia, there is– I’m giving you a sense of pride that you never have before, that your language is as valuable.
Sona Jobarteh: When I can go to an international audience and I can have the whole audience in Germany, Spain, America, all over the world, and they’re singing Mandinka?
The power, she says, of music.
Sona Jobarteh: It becomes a universal language. I can talk with anybody from anywhere in the world using music. I can’t do that in any other form.
And she’s doing one more thing, passing the tradition down to her 15-year-old son Sidiki, a talented balafon player. And next link from the griot past to its future.
Lesley Stahl: You had said to her, “When I close my eyes, I don’t want to hear a female kora player.”
Sanjally Jobarteh: No.
Lesley Stahl: “I want to hear a great…”
Sanjally Jobarteh: “…kora player.” Yeah.
Lesley Stahl: Okay, so close your eyes and tell us what you hear.
Sanjally Jobarteh: I hear (LAUGH) a great, great, great kora player.
Sanjally Jobarteh: I’m very, very proud. Definitely.
Sona Jobarteh: Thank you so much.
In May, Sona Jobarteh was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Berklee School of Music, together with Usher and Roberta Flack. And her school, The Gambia Academy, is breaking ground this summer on a new and expanded campus.
Produced by Shari Finkelstein. Associate producers, Collette Richards and Braden Cleveland Bergan. Broadcast Associate, Wren Woodson. Edited by Daniel J. Glucksman.
Lesley Stahl
One of America’s most recognized and experienced broadcast journalists, Lesley Stahl has been a 60 Minutes correspondent since 1991.
A selection of the best photos from the African continent and beyond.
We’re through! South African players celebrate reaching the knockout stage after beating Italy 3-2 at the Fifa Women’s World Cup in New Zealand on Wednesday.
On Sunday, an official sets up a polling station in a school in the Central African Republic ahead of a referendum to amend the constitution which will open the door to a third term for President Faustin Archange Touadera.
Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II celebrates 30 years since he was crowned king of Uganda’s Buganda people on Monday…
These musicians perform as part of the celebrations.
The previous day across the continent in Morocco, thousands gather in the city of M’diq on a public holiday celebrating the 24th anniversary of King Mohammed VI’s accession to the throne.
Men showcasing their Tuareg culture at the Sebeiba Festival on Saturday in Djanet, Algeria.
On Thursday, protestors supporting the junta leaders demonstrate in Niamey. It is also Niger’s Independence Day.
Migrants from Eritrea and Ethiopia are rescued from a fiberglass boat in distress by the Spanish NGO Open Arms, off the Libyan coast on Wednesday.
Cameroon’s Raymondo Nkwemy Tchomfa (2nd R) and Appolinaire Yinra (R) celebrate their respective 3rd and 1st place at the long jump men’s final on Tuesday at the 9th Francophone Games in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Thousands of Kenyans turn up to have their eye scanned on Tuesday as part of a programme by cryptocurrency company Worldcoin.
A “voodoo wrestler” whispers incantations over his opponent during a fight in a schoolyard in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday…
Maitresse Libondans poses for a photograph on the same day. “Voodoo wrestling” – a combat sport featuring traditional prayers and magic charms – is extremely popular in DR Congo.
Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), celebrates the 10th anniversary of the party on Saturday in Johannesburg, South Africa.
While Nigeria’s Dele Sosimi performs on Saturday at the Womad Festival in the UK.
A man attempts to start a generator during one of South Africa’s frequent power outages on Wednesday.
Despite his dismal performance in school and divisive nature, the firebrand leader of South Africa’s second-largest opposition party, Julius Malema, has become a symbol of success for his legion of supporters.
This is largely because he has built from scratch his own political party, the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which has become a political force that cannot be ignored 10 years after he founded it.
At the same time, Mr Malema has graduated from university with a BA in communication and African languages, and an honours degree in philosophy.
The 42-year-old is currently registered for a master’s degree at the highly respected Witwatersrand University.
Few thought he would achieve this – after all, he was the subject of ridicule when his final-year school results were leaked in 2008, showing that he barely scraped through with a below average pass.
An outspoken and controversial politician accused of promoting hate speech, he faced insults about his poor mathematics and woodwork results but said he did not let those define him because he “had no aspirations of being a carpenter but wanted to be an activist and politician”.
He previously admitted to failing two grades in high school because he “got too excited after joining Cosas” – the Congress of South African Students movement which had been formed to fight the racist system of apartheid.
White-minority rule ended in 1994, when the African National Congress (ANC) – which was at the forefront of the campaign against apartheid – won South Africa’s first democratic election.
Now Mr Malema is seen as something of a trendsetter, with an increasing number of politicians and celebrities finishing school while others are furthering their studies, though none have cited him as an inspiration .
“It is only through education that we’ll be able to reclaim black pride,” Mr Malema once said.
Earlier this year, Mr Malema told his supporters that they had to have a matric (school-leaving) certificate, if they wanted to be party leaders.
“We can’t be worse than the ANC… Go back to school if you want to lead the EFF or the country.”
Around 60% of South Africans live below the poverty line
Youth unemployment in South Africa is currently at a shocking 51% and young people, particularly unemployed graduates, are desperate for better opportunities.
“I have a teaching degree but I have been sitting at home, relying on a government grant because there are not enough vacancies for inexperienced job seekers,” said Nobesuthu Khoza, who graduated four years ago.
Many young people disagree with Mr Malema’s style of politics – which has led to fist-fights in parliament, and attempts to prevent President Cyril Ramaphosa from delivering keynote speeches – but they still respect him.
“I’ll be voting for the first time in 2024 and I think the EFF is a popular choice for most young people in this country but I don’t like the party’s disruptive behaviour in parliament,” said Siyabonga Mvelase, a university student based in Johannesburg.
This disruptive behaviour has also occurred in some South African cities, including the economic heartland of Johannesburg, where Mr Malema and his EFF have emerged as political kingmakers.
This comes after the ANC lost its outright majority in local elections in 2021, resulting in coalitions being formed to govern cities such as Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria.
The EFF has often held the balance of power, making and breaking coalition governments.
This has led to accusations that Mr Malema – like other politicians – is playing political games rather than focusing on the need to tackle the myriad problems facing residents, from bad roads to high crime.
Some analysts believe that this will cost Mr Malema votes in next year’s general election. The latest Ipsos opinion poll puts the party’s support at around 13%, a slight increase from the 11% it obtained in the last election in 2019 but still a distant third nationwide.
He has been repeatedly accused of hate speech. He’s been dragged to court by civil rights group AfriForum after the organisation filed a complaint to have the two songs Dubul’ibhunu (Shoot the Boer) and Biza a ma’fire brigade (Call the Fire Brigade) declared hate speech and unfair discrimination.
But the poll also records a slump in the ANC’s support, from 57.5% in the election to around 50%, raising the prospect of a coalition government at national level – and Mr Malema becoming a political kingmaker there too.
Derided by his critics as a populist and a political demagogue, Mr Malema was once the leader of the youth wing of the ANC, where he played a pivotal role in catapulting Jacob Zuma to the presidency but later the two fell out, leading to Mr Malema’s expulsion. As EFF leader, he was a major figure in the anti-Zuma campaign after the then president was accused of corruption.
Many believed that his expulsion in 2012 meant that his political career was buried, but what later that year became known as the Marikana massacre – the police killing of 34 mineworkers striking for better pay – gave birth to the EFF.
Mr Malema was the first politician to visit the Lonmin-owned platinum mine, portraying himself as the champion of poor workers and launching the EFF in 2013, with a pledge to nationalise key sectors of the economy – including mines and banks.
The killing of the mineworkers was the worst atrocity committed by police since apartheid ended
On Wednesday, he returned to a settlement near the mine, where poor people live, as part of events to mark the EFF’s 10th anniversary.
The party slaughtered 15 cows and brewed traditional sorghum beer to “appease the ancestors”.
“We were born the moment the blood of the workers was soaked in this land,” said Mr Malema to the thousands of his supporters who had gathered to hear him speak.
“Today, we are here to dance and celebrate so that the enemy looking at us from a distance must feel the chest pains because they said the EFF would not last, but we are still here 10 years down the line,” he added.
Known in the EFF as the commander-in-chief, Mr Malema has promised to keep fighting for “economic freedom” – something that most black people have not attained almost three decades after the end of white-minority rule.
His critics say that his policies, especially nationalisation, are widely discredited, and will lead to economic disaster – not freedom.
Voters will give their verdict in next year’s general election, but for now Mr Malema is in buoyant mood, holding on Saturday a “festival of the poorest of the poor” as the climax of the EFF’s 10th anniversary celebrations.
