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It was a joyful day 30 years ago in a South Africa that had enjoyed very few.

It was the first truly democratic election, and the black majority – for so long the victims of the wretched oppression imposed by apartheid – finally had their say.

And how they spoke!

I watched them queue in Soweto in the sunshine, dancing and singing as they waited. And it was a long wait.

Mark Austin reporting in South Africa shortly after Mandela's historic 1994 election win
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Mark Austin reporting in South Africa shortly after Mandela’s historic 1994 election win

The system couldn’t cope. South Africa wasn’t used to everyone being able to vote. But wait they did, long into the night to cast their first ever vote… for a black party… led by a black man… the black man who had fought for and led and carried the African National Congress (ANC) to this moment.

One grandmother told me that she could “die happy now” because “I know my children and my children’s children will no longer be without a vote in their own country”.

But today, I have to say, Nelson Mandela would be turning in his grave. His ANC has been humiliated at the polls.

Observers look on as election results are displayed at the Results Operation Centre (ROC) in Midrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, Friday May 31, 2024. Pic:AP
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Election results on display in Johannesburg. Pic: AP

Electoral workers empties the ballot box during the counting at Itireleng informal settlement in Pretoria, South Africa, Wednesday, May 29, 2024, during the general elections. AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
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Vote counting in Pretoria. Pic: AP

After the ANC victory in 1994 (they won with 62% of the vote) I interviewed Mandela. He spoke of course of his rainbow nation, but said it would not be easy.

Decades of apartheid meant poverty, exclusion and a lack of hope and, above all, education that would take years to even begin to address.

“Don’t judge us in five or 10 years,” he told me. “It will take 20 years, 30 years, a generation and more to get things done.”

Well, 30 years on things may be better, but the lives of the black majority in this great country have certainly not been transformed.

Some have, of course. But many still struggle with the daily reality of poverty, poor sanitation, hopeless infrastructure, endless power crises and unemployment. A third are jobless and that is no way to win votes.

Read more:
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Inside Mandela’s childhood home – now another impoverished village

MK Party supporters celebrate in the middle of the street in Mahlbnathini village in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, on Thursday May 30, 2024. MK Party is currently leading in the provincial poll against the ANC, who've held the stronghold in the province for the last 20 years. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
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uMkhonto weSizwe party supporters celebrating on Thursday after provincial poll results show their party leading. Pic: AP

And the corruption eats away at the fabric of society. Corruption at almost every level of government has seen businesspeople plunder state resources and political leaders fill their own pockets.

And today we see Mandela’s ANC paying the price. They are struggling to muster even 40% of the vote.

They will fall hopelessly short of a majority for the first time and will have to do deals to rule this country in a coalition of opposing forces. It will be difficult, turbulent and uncertain for the people.

And it is the most bitter of ironies that one party they may well have to deal with is the new party of an old president, Jacob Zuma, who was forced to quit in 2018 after a string of corruption scandals.

Zuma joined the uMkhonto weSizwe party in January to campaign against the current president, Cyril Ramaphosa, who he said was a proxy for South Africa’s wealthy whites.

FILE PHOTO: South African president Cyril Ramaphosa casts his vote during the South African elections in Soweto, South Africa May 29, 2024 REUTERS/Oupa Nkosi/File Photo
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Cyril Ramaphosa, the president, casting his vote this week. Pic: Reuters

I met Ramaphosa several times in the early nineties. He was a union leader and senior negotiator during the talks that ended apartheid.

He was highly thought of and also a great friend of Nelson Mandela. Mandela always thought Ramaphosa would be president one day – he would be disappointed by the way it has turned out.

Surviving this catastrophic result would be a good outcome for Ramaphosa.

Globally, the ANC has chosen its role. It seeks a world where developing countries have more influence, where US power should be curbed and where China and Russia are its friends and partners. Its legal actions against Israel have won support among some, but contempt from others.

But while Mandela would be bitterly disappointed at the failure of the ANC to transform from liberation movement to a truly effective government for the people, he would no doubt be reassured that a still fledgling democracy was working. The people of South Africa have done what democracies do and, if not exactly turfing out the ANC, they have delivered a message of dissatisfaction.

But right now, a period of political turbulence is just what South Africa does not need. It needs political stability and a government intent on tackling corruption, inequality and crime. It needs hope and optimism and – dare I say it for fear of over-romanticising things – another Nelson Mandela.

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

Four more arrests have been made by French police investigating the Louvre museum heist.

Two men and two women from the Paris region were detained on Tuesday, prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.

Ms Beccuau’s statement did not say what role the quartet are suspected of having played in the robbery. The two men are aged 38 and 39, and the two women are aged 31 and 40.

They are being interrogated by police, who can hold them for questioning for 96 hours.

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Louvre: How ‘heist of the century’ unfolded

The latest arrests come after investigating magistrates filed preliminary charges against three men and one woman who were arrested last month.

Some of the French Crown Jewels, worth an estimated £76m, were stolen in the audacious October raid.

The haul – which included a diamond and emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels linked to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amelie and Hortense, and Empress Eugenie’s pearl and diamond tiara – has not been recovered.

The heist was pulled off in mere minutes last month – and took place while the Louvre was open to visitors, raising doubts over the credibility of the world’s most-visited museum as a guardian for its priceless works.

On Sunday 19 October, two men used a stolen furniture lift to access the second floor Galerie d’Apollon.

They then cracked open display cases with angle grinders before escaping with their loot and fleeing on the back of two scooters driven by accomplices.

Read more:
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Gallery closed as structure in ‘dire state’

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Moment thieves escape Louvre in jewel heist

The Paris prosecutor previously said the robbery appeared to be the work of small-time criminals rather than professional gangsters.

Speaking shortly after the heist, art detective Arthur Brand told Sky News that detectives faced a “race against time” to recover the stolen treasure.

“These crown jewels are so famous, you just cannot sell them,” Mr Brand said. “The only thing they can do is melt the silver and gold down, dismantle the diamonds, try to cut them. That’s the way they will probably disappear forever.

“They [the police] have a week. If they catch the thieves, the stuff might still be there. If it takes longer, the loot is probably gone and dismantled. It’s a race against time.”

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump’s peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump's peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

Washington woke up this morning to a flurry of developments on Ukraine.

It was the middle of the night in DC when a tweet dropped from Ukraine’s national security advisor, Rustem Umerov.

He said that the US and Ukraine had reached a “common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva.”

He added that Volodymyr Zelenskyy would travel to America “at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump”.

Ukraine latest: ‘Delicate’ deal details must be sorted, White House says

By sunrise in Washington, a US official was using similar but not identical language to frame progress.

The official, speaking anonymously to US media, said that Ukraine had “agreed” to Trump’s peace proposal “with some minor details to be worked out”.

More on Donald Trump

In parallel, it’s emerged that talks have been taking place in Abu Dhabi. The Americans claim to have met both Russian and Ukrainian officials there, though the Russians have not confirmed attendance.

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Peace deal ‘agreement’: What we know

“I have nothing to say. We are following the media reports,” Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, told Russian state media.

Trump is due to travel to his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago tonight, where he will remain until Sunday.

He set a deadline of Thursday – Thanksgiving – for some sort of agreement on his plan.

We know the plan has been changed from its original form, but it’s clear that Zelenskyy wants to be seen to agree to something quickly – that would go down well with President Trump.

Read more:
US hails ‘tremendous progress’ on Ukraine peace plan

In full: Europe’s 28-point counter proposal

My sense is that Zelenskyy will try to get to Mar-a-Lago as soon as he can. Before Thursday would be a push but would meet Trump’s deadline.

It will then be left for the Russians to state their position on the revised document.

All indications are that they will reject it. But maybe the secret Abu Dhabi talks will yield something.

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid distribution group, has said it will permanently cease operations.

Set up as an alternative to United Nations aid programmes in May, GHF’s executive director John Acree said on Monday that it “succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans”.

The foundation had already closed down aid distribution sites after US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan was agreed by Hamas and Israel in October.

The GHF which began operations in Gaza after an Israeli blockade of food deliveries, lasting nearly three months, was criticised by Palestinians, aid workers and health officials who said it forced people to risk their lives to reach the sites.

File pic: Reuters
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File pic: Reuters

According to witnesses and videos posted to social media, Israeli soldiers repeatedly opened fire at the sites, killing hundreds. The IDF denied this, saying it only fired warning shots as a crowd-control measure or if its troops were in danger.

In July, analysis from Sky News’ Data and Forensics team found that aid distributions by GHF were associated with a significant increase in deaths.

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Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open

MSF – also known as Doctors Without Borders – said in a report in August that the GHF sites “morphed into a laboratory of cruelty,” and described scenes there as “orchestrated killing”.

More on Gaza

‘We are proud,’ says GHF director

Mr Acree said in a statement through the GHF’s website that “from the outset, GHF’s goal was to meet an urgent need” and to hand over a successful aid operation to “the broader international community”.

The GHF would hand over its work to the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center in Israel overseeing the Gaza ceasefire.

“We are winding down our operations as we have succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans,” Mr Acree said.

File pic: Reuters
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File pic: Reuters

The GHF director added: “At a critical juncture, we are proud to have been the only aid operation that reliably and safely provided free meals directly to Palestinian people in Gaza, at scale and without diversion.

“From our very first day of operations, our mission was singular: feed civilians in desperate need. We built a new model that worked, saved lives, and restored dignity to civilians in Gaza.”

According to the GHF website, the group distributed more than three million food boxes, totalling 187 million meals, and supplied 1.1 million packs of Ready-to-Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) for malnourished children.

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Hamas welcomes GHF closure

In a statement, Hamas welcomed the closure of GHF and accused it of being a project that “engineered starvation” in partnership with Israel.

A Hamas spokesperson said: “Since its entry into the Gaza Strip, this foundation was part of the occupation’s security system, which adopted distribution mechanisms entirely disconnected from humanitarian principles, and created dangerous and degrading conditions for the dignity of the starving Palestinian people during their attempts to obtain a piece of bread, resulting in the killing and injury of thousands, through sniper operations and deliberate killing.”

They also called on international legal bodies to hold “this foundation and its officers accountable for their crimes against our people”.

US state department deputy spokesperson Tommy Piggot also said on X that the aid group “shared valuable lessons learned with us and our partners”.

“GHF’s model, in which Hamas could no longer loot and profit from stealing aid, played a huge role in getting Hamas to the table and achieving a ceasefire,” he added.

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