Day: June 14, 2021

Employment and Labour Minister issues new direction with regard to vaccination in the workplace
Employers should find a reasonable resolution that accommodates all parties where employees refuse to be vaccinated for medical and constitutional grounds. This is contained in the new consolidated direction on occupational health and safety measures in certain workplaces which was gazetted by the Minister of Employment and Labour, Thulas Nxesi.
“The key principle of these guidelines is that employers and employees should treat each other with mutual respect. A premium is placed on public health imperatives, the constitutional rights of employees and the efficient operation of the employer’s business,” reads the guidelines.
Constitutional grounds could be the right to bodily integrity in section 12(2) and the right to freedom of religion, belief and opinion in section 13 of the Constitution. Medical grounds refer to issues of an immediate allergic reaction of any severity to a previous dose or a known (diagnosed) allergy to a component of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The Consolidated OHS Direction now requires an employer to include in its risk assessment whether it intends to make vaccinations compulsory. This is a three-step enquiry:
• Firstly, it must make that assessment taking into account the operational requirements of the workplace. This means that the Direction does not make the vaccinations mandatory, but every employer must take into account its general duties under the Occupational Health Safety Act, 85 of 1993 to provide a working environment that is safe and without risk to the health of his employees and persons other than those in his employment who may be directly affected by his activities are not thereby exposed to hazards to their health or safety.
• Secondly, if the employer decides to make it mandatory once the risk assessment has been conducted, it must then identify which of its employees will be required to be vaccinated. In determining whether an employee can be required to be vaccinated, the employer must identify those employees whose work poses a risk of transmission or a risk of severe COVID-19 disease or death due to their age or comorbidities. In other words, not every employee poses such a risk – for example workers who work from home or whose work is such that they do not come into close working contact with other workers or the public.
• Thirdly, having identified the employees who are required to be vaccinated, it must amend its plan to include the measures to implement the vaccination of those employees as and when COVID-19 vaccines become available in respect of those employees, taking into account the Guidelines set out in Annexure C of the June 2021 version of the Direction. Given the phased nature of the National Vaccination Programme based on criteria determined by NDOH from time to time, an employer may only make it an obligation once the employee becomes eligible under the programme for vaccination and has been registered on the Electronic Vaccination Data System and given a date for vaccination.

“What is critical is that we need to balance the needs and to take the dictates of collective bargaining and the need to keep employees healthy and businesses running. The Labour Relations Act emphasises the primacy of collective agreements. These guidelines are not intended as a substitute for collective agreements or agreed procedures between employers, their employer organisations and trade unions,” said Minister Nxesi.
This might include an adjustment that permits the employee to work offsite or at home or in isolation within the workplace such as an office or a warehouse or working outside of ordinary working hours. In instances of limited contact with others in the workplace, it might include a requirement that the employee wears an N95 mask.

Source: Government of South Africa

The new chief of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) says U.N. peacekeepers are being blocked from accessing some sensitive areas, despite an agreement by South Sudan’s government to cooperate with the mission.
Nicholas Haysom was appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres earlier this year to oversee the activities of 14,500 U.N. soldiers and 2,000 police in the country.
In an exclusive interview with VOA’s “South Sudan in Focus” program, Haysom said U.N. peacekeepers are not able to patrol in Western Equatoria and Western Bahr El Ghazal states, due to a lack of consent from the South Sudan government.

In September 2020, Chinese UNMISS troops were prevented from traveling to Lobonok village, east of the capital, Juba, where civilians were under attack from both government forces and the rebels of the National Salvation Front.
The government of South Sudan and the U.N. signed a status of force agreement on August 8, 2011, to allow U.N. peacekeepers to operate in the country. The agreement requires South Sudan to give consent to peacekeepers for their activities. But Haysom said getting a consent from the host country is still problematic in some cases.
‘’This has been an issue we have been engaging with the host country for some time. We now have a situation where we can more or less reach about 90% of the country provided we follow a particular route, which is not a permit-based approach, but a notification approach,” he said.
Intercommunal violence
Despite the peacekeepers’ presence, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights warned earlier this year that internal communal violence is threatening to engulf parts of Central Equatoria, Jonglei, Warrap and Lakes states.

South Sudan has also witnessed a recent spike in road ambushes by unidentified groups and fighting between government forces and rebels of the National Salvation Front in parts of the Central Equatoria state.
Haysom said negotiations, not military intervention, is key to ending such violence in South Sudan.
“Quite frankly, political agreements between communities are more effective than the guns and gun powder required to effect an end to intercommunal violence,” he said.
The U.N. top diplomat in South Sudan said the U.N. Security Council directed the mission this year to develop a three year-strategic vision to prevent a return to civil war; to support durable peace at the local and national levels; to support inclusive and accountable governance and free and fair peaceful elections.
Haysom said UNMISS is planning to step up patrols between Juba and Nimule to deter security threats on the main supply route linking South Sudan Uganda and Kenya.
But he said protection of civilians is the responsibility of the state adding that the United Nations can only come in to fill a vacuum.
“First of all, you would need to appreciate the responsibility for protecting civilians doesn’t rest with the UN. It rests with the host country,” he said. “A host country is expected to protect its own citizens. We play a supplementary role particularly it [state] is incapable or unable to do it.”
Haysom said South Sudan’s leaders should work towards creating a national vision for achieving peace and prosperity.
“You know, provided things move forward, the international community I think will increasingly engage and that would be an improvement. Provided things move forward, it will create an atmosphere in which we can build trust between the parties,” he said.

Source: Voice of America

For Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, who comprise more than 40% of their country’s population and most of the people in the Tigray region, the city of Axum is the holiest of places.

They believe it to be home to the Ark of the Covenant, or the original Ten Commandments, and the birthplace of Ethiopian Christianity.

“I would die to protect this church,” said Alem Gebreslase, a 24-year-old parishioner, on Sunday at the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, one of the oldest churches in Ethiopia and Axum’s center or worship. “But God will protect the Ark.”
In past years, pilgrims and tourists would flock to Axum to pray, visit historical sites and snap pictures. Last year, when the coronavirus pandemic swept the world, most stayed away. Then in November 2020, war broke out and visitors stopped coming almost completely.

The war, primarily between the Ethiopian National Defense Force and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, includes Eritrean forces fighting against the TPLF, and militias on both sides.

The violence began in November 2020 when TPLF forces attacked federal military bases in Tigray and Ethiopian forces swept through the region.

In the first month of conflict, Eritrean troops killed hundreds of civilians in Axum, according to Amnesty International.
In Axum, locals described those early days of violence, with details varying from mass shootings to house-to-house raids. Consistent in every person’s story, however, were descriptions of so many bodies.

“Besides the soaring death toll,” Amnesty International said in a February statement, “Axum’s residents were plunged into days of collective trauma amid violence, mourning and mass burials.”

In recent months, Axum has quieted, with violence mostly taking place in the countryside. The city has also begun hosting different kinds of visitors. Families displaced by war in their villages and small towns have come in droves, crowding into empty schoolhouses and on the grounds of the church.

“The situation has become reversed,” said Aygdu, a 57-year-old Axum merchant who gave only his nickname for security reasons. “People were fleeing from the city to the countryside. Now they are fleeing from the country to the city.”
Along the roadsides in remote areas outside of Axum, hundreds of Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers could be seen in trucks, buses and cars over the weekend. In the city of Axum, Ethiopian federal forces patrolled the streets, enforcing a strict nightly curfew.

In the churchyard early Sunday, a mother of five begged for small amounts of money, saying she just arrived in Axum the day before, when troops entered her town.

“I have no other place to go,” she said.

A city strained

At a restaurant in town that serves traditional Ethiopian food, beers and sodas, Aygdu, the merchant, said the influx of displaced families has forced people to open their businesses, despite sporadic violence.

The church and the schools appear crowded with displaced families, he said, but there are also many households hosting relatives, straining the budgets in a town that has been in economic free-fall for more than a year. Prices of basic food items have doubled, he added.

“We may feel it’s dangerous,” he explained, “But if we don’t open our shops, we may die from hunger.”

In the early days of conflict, locals say businesses, homes and public services were looted and hundreds of civilians were killed. Aygdu’s furniture supply store was looted along with his house, he said.

“Even my television and bed were taken,” he said.

Hospitals overwhelmed

Hospitals and health care centers across the region have also been looted, according to Axum University’s Referral Hospital’s administrative director, Zemichael Weldegebriel.

“We are trying to support poor communities,” he said in his office on Thursday. “But the health care we can provide is not meeting their requirements.”

His hospital, which is supposed to take the worst cases from an area where 3.5 million people live, he said, is now taking every kind of case, because most local health care centers were either damaged or robbed until their cupboards were nearly bare.

People are still dying from war injuries, he added, but mortality rates have also gone up for people who have never been victims of bombs or bullets. More women are dying in childbirth, more children are malnourished, and more injuries and sicknesses are fatal because of late or substandard care, he said.

Essential medicines are missing and agents to conduct medical tests are largely not available, he explained. Free replacement medicine is provided by the federal government, but he said local supply centers are mostly out of stock.
And the war wounded keep coming. “In seven months, we have never been out of patients,” he said.

In a ward filled with the wounded, Nigusse Tadele, 29, said he was hurrying out of the house as bombs drew nearer. A blast hit near him and his next memory was waking up at a clinic where his injured toes became infected before he could get to the hospital.

More than a month later, he has lost his toes and lays in a cot in Axum, waiting to recover and return to his work as a government agriculture worker, he said.

“They may suspect there are TPLF supporters in our village,” he said, considering why he was hit. “But I haven’t seen any military camp.”

Source: Voice of America

In South Africa, a group called Afriforum has launched self-defense training for white commercial farmers. The group says the farmers are vulnerable to attacks, which it says are driven by tensions over unequal farmland distribution more than 25 years after the end of apartheid.

South African farmer Shernice Potgieter, a young single mother, lived in a tranquil, remote rural farmhouse with her daughter, Denise, and two dogs for eight years.

That peaceful existence was shattered on a summer morning when she returned home after dropping Denise off at school.

Potgieter recalls horror when two men emerged from the cornfield, tied her up and ransacked her farmhouse.

“This is the passage where they made me lay down,” she said pointing an area on her farm. “I had to lay [sic] here so that I couldn’t see outside. When it started, I just thought to myself, ‘Today I’m losing my life.’ When I saw them coming for me, the first reaction was, ‘Today I am going to die.’ I was worried about my daughter and what would happen to her, say something would’ve happened to me.”

While Potgieter survived the ordeal, Afrikaner rights group Afriforum says 59 white farmers were killed in 2020 alone, a 30% increase in fatalities from 2019.

Although the motive for these attacks has not always been attributed to racial tensions, Afriforum says most perpetrators are Black.

In January, the group began a self-defense program for commercial farmers, the majority of them white Afrikaners.

Afriforum legal and risk manager Marnus Kemfer described the substance and goal of the training.

“The first aspect of the training will be how to use a firearm. We showed them how to use this firearm in and around the house. We then also issued them with digital radio, we actually give them training in how exactly to utilize this radio. In the end, we want all of these farmers and their neighbors to have an effective communication network,” Kemfer said.
Tensions spiked in October 2020 when a white farmer was killed and his body found tied to a pole in the town of Senekal, in the eastern part of the Free State province.

The incident heightened racial tensions in the area, and politically-motivated protests followed.

Racial anger, observers say, is fueled by the fact that white farmers still own 70% of South Africa’s commercial farms 27 years after the end of apartheid.

Groups representing white farmers, like Transvaal Agricultural Union South Africa (TLU SA), accuse authorities of failing to protect them.

Black farmers also have been victimized by these attacks, but to a lesser degree, says the farmers union.

Chris Van Zyl, the chairman of the Transvaal union, emphasized the need for farmers to defend themselves against these criminal acts.

“We cannot expect that the police will ensure 24 hours, seven days a week presence in areas which is troubled by violent criminals. The local inhabitants need to organize themselves and they must be trained to enable them to withstand a violent, criminal attack,” Van Zyl said.

South Africa’s national police declined several requests for an interview, but police statistics show 49 white farmers were killed between April 2019 and April 2020. That’s out of more than 21,000 murders nationwide — where the majority of the victims are Black.

President Cyril Ramaphosa last year urged South Africans not to rally communities along racial lines.

In March, the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters party accused Afriforum of being racist for opposing farmland expropriation without compensation.

Afriforum says it is extending a helping hand to whomever needs guidance and assistance irrespective of race.

Source: Voice of America