Nelson Mandela’s childhood village shows how the ANC risks losing its grip on power
The green rolling hills of Nelson Mandela’s childhood village Qunu are now a dry pale brown.
The clear streams are muddied and the families sustained by their crops and livestock are hungry. The picture of rural simplicity Mandela detailed in his autobiography A Long Walk to Freedom has tipped into deprivation.
Over a decade since his death, his cherished hometown is now another impoverished village in the Eastern Cape – the poorest province in South Africa.
Mandela’s childhood home is off the N2 motorway, the longest-numbered national route in the country.
There are no signs to alert the trucks and cars whizzing past that the humble red-bricked house off the side of the road belongs to the man who led South Africa to freedom.
Not only the place of Mandela’s earliest childhood memories, but where he is now buried.
Just across the road, 29-year-old Babalo reminisces about the days the South African flag would be hoisted to signal Mandela’s return. Behind him, the white flagpole is stark and bare.
“Everything was nice when you saw him – when he was around. You used to get inside the house and he would give us sweets and money,” Babalo tells us wistfully.
His face darkens as he says: “The freedom was still alive but now everything is not good at all.”
Babalo says he will not be voting in this election. This is the most consequential election in South Africa since Mandela and his party, the African National Congress (ANC), won the country’s first free and democratic vote in 1994, ending 45 years of oppressive Apartheid rule.
Mandela’s childhood home in Qunu where he is now buried
The hills of Qunu are dry
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Why the ANC matters to South Africa
There is growing discontent with the ANC-led government and the soaring levels of unemployment, power cuts and corruption scandals that have marked the last decade.
Thirty years on, the ANC is at risk of losing its grip on power with polls indicating the party may get less than 50% of the vote.
“I used to vote for the ANC but now I struggle because I don’t see my vote – I don’t feel the fruits. I still live with poverty and unemployment. There is no change and that is why I stopped voting,” says Babalo.
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Zinhle washes clothes with dirty puddle water
Deeper into the fields that face Mandela’s home, an older lady wearing a faded ANC T-shirt is gathering maize from a field framed by withered crops and collecting dried cow dung to heat her pot.
“We are going to vote for the ANC because we have always voted for the party but we are aggrieved,” says 67-year-old Nobongile Geledwane.
“We don’t have water as we speak, I have just come from the river – we share water with pigs. We don’t have government houses. We are hungry. We cannot plough. Things are bad.”
Older ladies in Qunu support the ANC but feel they need more from the governing party
Older women cooking with dried cow dung
The ANC runs the Eastern Cape province where many remote villages struggle with access to running water and functioning clinics. Schools that are meant to provide schoolchildren with meals under the National Nutrition Programme that Mandela introduced in 1994 go weeks without offering children food.
In November, the South African Human Rights Commission found that child hunger in the Eastern Cape qualifies as a disaster and should be declared as such under the Disaster Management Act.
Across the state, mothers are having to give their children water from muddy puddles and contaminated water sources.
A statue of Mandela in a nearby empty museum
An ANC poster over Qunu
In the backyard of Mandela’s Qunu home, a mother of two washes her children’s clothes with water from a nearby dirty puddle.
I ask her where she drinks from and she points to the same puddle.
“We drink with the cows and pigs,” says 30-year-old Zinhle.
“I was born in the year of change – supposedly. I don’t see any change. I see that difficultness is getting more difficult.”
World
Fire rips through arms depot deep inside Russia after huge Ukrainian drone attack – as Zelenskyy prepares to meet Trump
A fire has ripped through a Russian missile depot in the Tver region deep inside the country after it was targeted in a Ukrainian drone attack, the defence ministry in Moscow has said.
Footage shows a second Ukrainian drone attack on the southwestern Russian region of Krasnodar also triggered a fire and caused a series of explosions.
Russia’s defence ministry has claimed its forces shot down 101 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory and occupied Crimea during the overnight attacks.
The drone strikes were carried out as Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskky said he is hoping to meet Donald Trump next week when he travels to the US – where he will present US President Joe Biden with a “victory plan” in relation to the war.
An explosion after the drone strike on the arms depot in Krasnodar
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s foreign minister said Russia appears to be planning strikes on Ukrainian nuclear facilities before the winter.
Posts on local Telegram channels said a Ukrainian drone attack struck an arms depot near the town of Toropets, in Russia’s Tver region – which is about 380 kilometres (240 miles) northwest of Moscow and about 500 kilometres (300 miles) from the Ukrainian border on Saturday.
Russian authorities closed a 100-kilometre (62-mile) stretch of a highway and evacuated passengers from a nearby rail station.
The depot appeared to be just miles from a Russian weapons arsenal storing missiles, bombs and ammunition in Tver that was struck by Ukrainian drones early Wednesday, injuring 13 people and also causing a huge fire.
Flames rise after the strike on the Tver region on Wednesday. Pic: Reuters
Meanwhile, at least 1,200 people were evacuated from Russia’s southwestern Krasnodar region after an ammunition depot and missile arsenal were struck in the second drone attack overnight, the local governor has said.
Most of those evacuated were staying with friends and relatives, Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of Krasnodar region, said on the Telegram messaging app.
There were no immediate reports of casualties in either Tver or Krasnodar.
Ukraine warning of attacks on nuclear sites
It comes as Kyiv is urging the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Ukraine’s allies to establish permanent monitoring missions at the country’s nuclear plants as it warns they could be targeted in Russian attacks.
“In particular, it concerns open distribution devices at (nuclear power plants and) transmission substations, critical for the safe operation of nuclear energy,” foreign minister Andriy Sybiha wrote on X.
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A mushroom cloud rises after the drone strike on Toropets in the Tver region. Pic: Reuters
Zelenskyy prepares for US trip
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian leader has said he plans to meet Republican presidential candidate Mr Trump on either Thursday or Friday next week.
During the trip, Mr Zelenskyy will present Mr Biden with a so-called victory plan as he hopes to bring about an end to the conflict.
Volodymr Zelenskyy with Donald Trump in 2020. Pic: Reuters
The Ukrainian president has said the plan will include long-range striking capabilities and other weapons long sought by Kyiv, and will serve as the basis for any future negotiation with Russia.
He is also expected to push Washington to lift restrictions on long-range missile strikes inside Russia.
Mr Zelenskyy will attend sessions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly and also plans to meet vice president Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate in this year’s US election, in separate meetings on 26 September.
The developments come as three sources have told Reuters that Iran did not include mobile launchers with the close-range ballistic missiles that Washington has accused Tehran of delivering to Russia for use against Ukraine.
The sources – a European diplomat, a European intelligence official and a US official – said it was not clear why Iran did not supply launchers with the Fath-360 missiles, raising questions about when and if the weapons will be operational.
At least 44 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon and Gaza in the last 24 hours.
A strike on the Lebanese capital Beirut killed at least 31 people including three children and seven women, the country’s health minister Firas Abiad said.
Fifteen of the 68 wounded in the attack remain in hospital.
Ali Harake, the head of the rescue team searching through the rubble, told Sky News his team is still looking for between 17 and 18 missing people – though he fears none have survived.
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‘I think the missing people are dead’
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It is understood two apartment blocks in a densely populated southern neighbourhood collapsed in the strike – the deadliest attack on Beirut in decades.
Top Hezbollah commanders are believed to have been meeting in the basement of one of the buildings.
Hezbollah has confirmed two of its senior commanders, Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wahbi, died in the strike while an Israeli military spokesperson said that at least 16 Hezbollah militants were killed.
Wahbi oversaw the military operations of the Radwan special forces – a commando unit that seeks to infiltrate and carry out attacks in Israel – until early 2024. Aqil was also a top commander for the Iran-backed group.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas has described the killing of Aqil as a “crime” and a “folly”, adding Israel will “pay the price”.
Read more: Israeli airstrike on Beirut causes more shock to a country already rocked to its core
Meanwhile, at least 13 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza City, according to a local report.
The strikes are believed to have hit several schools sheltering displaced people in the southern part of the city.
Inside a school, that was sheltering displaced people, after it was hit by an Israeli strike this morning. Pic: Reuters
The street outside the school. Pic: Reuters
The strikes come after Hezbollah launched one of its most intense bombardments of northern Israel in nearly a year of fighting, largely targeting Israeli military sites.
Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system intercepted most of the Katyusha rockets.
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Hezbollah said its latest wave of rocket attacks was a response to past Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon.
It came days after mass explosions of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies killed at least 37 people, including two children. Some 2,900 others were wounded in the assault which has been widely attributed to Israel.
The Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut came as the Lebanese caretaker government was having an emergency meeting to discuss the previous two days of pager and radio explosions.
It caused yet more shock in a nation which considers itself battle-hardened after years of strife, disaster and wars.
But Lebanon has been truly rocked to its core by the string of attacks over the past few days.
“These are war crimes,” one Lebanese minister told us.
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Watch Yalda Hakim’s interview with Lebanon’s energy minister
The Israeli military said it had targeted and killed a senior Hezbollah military commander. They named him as Ibrahim Aqil – a man with a $7m US bounty on his head.
He’s been on the US most wanted list for more than forty years after being accused of being involved in the bombing of the US embassy and US marine barracks in 1983 which killed hundreds.
But the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahieh is a heavily populated crowded residential area and packed with shops, markets, and high-rise apartments.
The strike appeared to have flattened an entire block, flipping cars and leaving other vehicles covered in a heavy blanket of thick dust and rubble.
Damage caused by an Israeli air attack on a southern suburb of Beirut. Pic: AP
Several people could be seen in video footage filmed by neighbours, trapped under piles of rubble.
The Lebanese health authority keeps on updating the number of people killed in the strike, with the latest figures reaching 14.
There are more than 60 injured, with some of those believed to be in critical condition. Children are said to be among the dead, missing and injured.
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Aftermath of IDF strike on Lebanon
‘Our actions speak for themselves’
The Israeli military immediately claimed success – saying that, along with Aqil, the strike had wiped out about 10 of his elite Radwan Force.
According to an IDF spokesman, who did not provide any evidence, Aqil’s team had been planning an attack into northern Israel similar to the Hamas attack on 7 October.
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a very short statement on X, saying: “Our goals are clear and our actions speak for themselves.”
Both the prime minister and defence minister have vowed to restore security to the north of Israel so the 60,000 residents who have fled the cross-border attacks can return to their homes.
An estimated 120,000 Lebanese have also been forced out of their homes along the border.
The airstrike in the capital is the second in Beirut in two months – both, according to the IDF, targeted at senior Hezbollah commanders.
According to sources being quoted in Lebanese media, the Hezbollah group of senior leaders was meeting in an underground basement of a large housing block when the missile penetrated.
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‘Things are escalating by the minute’
It is unlikely to be seen as a justifiable precision attack – or a “targeted strike”, as described by the Israeli military – if the Lebanese government ministers’ reactions are anything to go by.
We spoke to several as they arrived for their emergency cabinet meeting in the hour before the attack.
They were already incensed by the back-to-back coordinated booby trap explosions of communication devices across the country. Israel has yet to confirm or deny its involvement in the blasts.
Speaking about the pager and radio explosions across Lebanon earlier this week, the country’s environment minister and head of its disaster management committee Nasser Yassin said: “It’s genocidal, it’s indiscriminate and a violation of international humanitarian law and every other law.
“We have an insane leadership on the southern end of our borders who don’t want to be indicted by the International Court of Justice.”
The head of the country’s disaster management committee, Nasser Yassin
The information minister Ziad Makary called the explosions of communication devices “a new crime… it’s a war crime and not something that would pass easily trying to kill three thousand or four thousand civilians as we see them”.
The information minister Ziad Makary
And Amin Salam, the economy minister, warned: “Things are escalating by the minute.
“There’s more tension, more provocation. We have been doing our best to get to a peaceful solution but the escalation is unprecedented.
“It’s an act of terror, regardless of who was targeted.”
Most intense border fighting in nearly a year
The airstrike in Beirut came after a marked increase in cross-border exchanges – the most intense in nearly a year.
The Israeli military said Hezbollah had spent the early part of the day firing nearly 200 rockets across the border into Israel.
Many of them were intercepted by the Iron Dome defence system.
This followed the Israeli bombing of more than 50 targets in the south of Lebanon overnight – which the IDF said hit launchers and weapons stores.
The Israeli military is suffering losses too – there were two funerals today for Israeli soldiers killed on their northern border – but it’s Hezbollah which seems to be paying a far heavier price right now.
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Iran mulls next move as fears of war grow
Israel’s history of secret operations
Hezbollah unilaterally entered this latest war on 8 October, much to the frustration of Lebanon’s caretaker government, and a day after the Hamas attack on southern Israel.
Hezbollah have repeatedly said their actions are in support of Gaza and have continued to insist they will only stop once there’s a ceasefire.
But right now, the fighting group allied to Iran – and designated a terror group by the US and UK – appears to be very much on the backfoot after three attacks in four days.
Meanwhile, Israel is ploughing on despite the cries of indignation and condemnation from the international community.
Additional reporting from Beirut with camera Jake Britton, specialist producer Chris Cunningham and Lebanon producers Jihad Jineid and Sami Zein.
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