South Africa

Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla’s resignation comes amid an investigation into her role in luring South Africans to fight for Russia in war on Ukraine.

A daughter of former South African President Jacob Zuma has resigned from parliament amid allegations that she lured 17 men to fight as mercenaries in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla’s resignation on Friday comes after police said she was under investigation for her alleged role in luring South Africans to Russia. The police announcement came after a group of men aged 20 to 39 ended up on the front lines of the conflict in Ukraine.

Zuma-Sambudla had served as a member of parliament since June 2024 for uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), an opposition party created by her father in 2023 following his expulsion from South Africa’s then-governing African National Congress.

“The national officials have accepted comrade Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla’s decision to resign and support her efforts to ensure that these young South Africans are brought back safely to their families,” the MK Party’s national chairperson, Nkosinathi Nhleko, told a news conference.

MK officials said Zuma-Sambudla’s resignation was voluntary and that her departure from the National Assembly and all other public roles was effective immediately.

The MK’s Nhleko also said that the party was not involved in luring the men to Russia and that Zuma-Sambudla’s resignation was not an admission of guilt, but added that MK would help support the families of the men stranded in Ukraine.

Zuma-Sambudla was present at the news conference but did not speak, and has not publicly responded to the accusations from her half-sister.

South Africa’s government said earlier this month that 17 of its citizens were stuck in Ukraine’s Donbas region after being tricked into fighting for mercenary forces under the pretext of lucrative employment contracts.

Then, last weekend, police said they would investigate Zuma-Sambudla after her half-sister made a formal request for the probe into her and two other people.

According to police, an affidavit submitted by Zuma-Sambudla’s half-sister, Nkosazana Bonganini Zuma-Mncube, alleged that Zuma-Sambudla and two other people tricked the South Africans into fighting by promising to provide them with security training in Russia. The identities of the other two people were unclear.

The affidavit alleges the South Africans were handed over to a Russian mercenary group and forced to fight in the conflict. It also says that eight of the 17 men were members of Zuma-Sambudla’s and Zuma-Mncube’s extended family.

South African presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya told Al Jazeera that the government had received “distress calls” from the group caught up in the Ukraine war, and authorities were “working ever so quietly” at all levels “to secure their safe return”.

“But also, there is an investigation that is ongoing, that’s looking at how they were recruited, who was involved, and what were they promised?” Magwenya said.

On Thursday, Jordan became the latest country to rebuke Russia for recruiting its citizens to fight, following the killing of two Jordanian nationals.

While Jordan did not specifically reference Russia’s war on Ukraine, the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it would “take all available measures” to end the further recruitment of Jordanians, and called for Moscow to terminate the contracts of its currently enlisted citizens.

Ukraine says Moscow has recruited at least 18,000 foreign fighters from 128 countries, according to figures shared by Ukrainian Brigadier General Dmytro Usov, who also said that almost 3,400 foreigners have died fighting for Russia.

Michael Appel, reporting for Al Jazeera from Johannesburg, said Zuma-Sambudla is seen as a divisive political figure in South Africa, and is already facing “serious charges” related to unrest in South Africa in 2021 that led to the deaths of hundreds of people.

She has denied any wrongdoing in that case and has pleaded not guilty to inciting violence through social media posts.

South Africa secured a declaration from the rest of the G20, despite United States objections.

Washington boycotted the meeting over President Donald Trump’s accusations that South Africa persecutes its white minority, a claim widely rejected.

The document calls for more funding for renewable energy, fairer critical mineral supply chains and debt relief for poorer nations.

The first G20 summit on African soil broke with tradition by releasing the document at the start.

And there was no ceremonial handover between the outgoing South African and incoming American chairs.

Also, can Britain’s Labour government satisfy both businesses and households?

Plus, the weight-loss drug booming industry.

Heads of state from the world’s most powerful countries gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa, over the weekend for a summit that had been billed, under South Africa’s G20 presidency, as a turning point for addressing debt distress across the Global South.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa had consistently framed the issue as central to his agenda, arguing that spiralling repayment costs have left governments, particularly in Africa, with little room to fund essential services like healthcare and education.

But despite repeated pledges – including in the leaders’ summit declaration to “strengthen the implementation of the G20 Common Framework” – South Africa did not deliver any new proposals for easing fiscal constraints in indebted nations.

Hopes that world leaders would use the G20 summit to tackle sovereign debt distress were further dashed when United States President Donald Trump, at odds with South Africa over domestic policies, skipped the meeting altogether amid Washington’s retreat from multilateralism.

The summit also marked the close of a brief period of Global South leadership in the G20, following presidencies held by Indonesia in 2022, India in 2023, and Brazil in 2024. The US is set to assume the G20 presidency on December 1.

Debt ‘vulnerabilities’

The G20 – which consists of 19 advanced and emerging economies, the European Union and the African Union – represents 85 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) and roughly two-thirds of the world’s population.

In October, G20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs met in Washington and agreed to a consensus statement on debt.

“We recognise that a high level of debt is one of the obstacles to inclusive growth in many developing economies, which limits their ability to invest in infrastructure, disaster resilience, healthcare, education and other development needs,” the statement said.

It also pledged to “reaffirm our commitment to support efforts by low- and middle-income countries to address debt vulnerabilities in an effective, comprehensive and systematic manner”.

The communique committed to improving the much-criticised Common Framework, a mechanism launched by the G20 five years ago to accelerate and simplify debt restructuring – when countries have to reprofile debts they can no longer afford to repay.

Elsewhere, the statement advocated for greater transparency around debt reporting and more lending from regional development banks.

Record-high debt levels

According to the Institute of International Finance, a banking industry association, total debt in developing countries rose to a record high of $109 trillion by mid-2025.

In recent years, COVID-19, climate shocks and rising food prices have forced many poor countries to rely on debt to stabilise their economies, crowding out other investments. For instance, the United Nations recently calculated that more than 40 percent of African governments spend more on servicing debt than they do on healthcare.

Africa also faces high borrowing costs. In 2023, bond yields – the interest on government debt – averaged 6.8 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 9.8 percent in Africa.

Meanwhile, Africa collectively needs $143bn every year in climate finance to meet its Paris Agreement goals. In 2022, it received approximately $44bn.

At the same time, countries on the continent spent almost $90bn servicing external debt in 2024.

No progress

Shortly before the release of the G20’s final communique, 165 charities condemned the group’s slow progress on debt sustainability and urged President Ramaphosa to implement reforms before transferring the G20 presidency over to the US in December.

“While this year’s G20 has been put forward as an ‘African G20’, there is no evidence that any progress has been made on the debt crisis facing Africa and many other countries worldwide during the South African presidency,” the group said in a letter.

The missive called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to sell its gold reserves and set up a debt relief fund for distressed governments. It also backed the creation of a ‘borrowers club’ to facilitate cooperation among low-income countries.

The call for a unified debtor body reflects growing frustration with existing frameworks, notably the Paris Club, in which mostly Western governments, but not China, have exerted undue influence over the repayment policies of debtor nations.

In May 2020, the G20 launched a multibillion-dollar repayment pause to help poor countries cope with the COVID‑19 crisis. Known as the Debt Service Suspension Initiative, the programme is continuing to provide relief to some participating countries.

The launch of the Common Framework, soon afterwards, was designed to coordinate debt relief among all creditors. At the time, the initiative was hailed as a breakthrough, bringing together the Paris Club, China and private creditors to help prevent a full-blown debt crisis in developing countries.

But coordinating equal treatment, including government lenders, commercial banks, and bondholders, has made the process slow and prone to setbacks.

To date, none of the countries that joined the Common Framework – Ethiopia, Zambia, Ghana, and Chad – have completed their debt restructuring deals.

And even then, the programme has relieved just 7 percent of the debt costs for the four participating nations, according to ONE Campaign, an advocacy group.

‘Outmanoeuvred’

In March, South Africa convened an expert panel – headed by a former finance minister and a former Kenyan central banker – to explore how to assist heavily indebted low-income countries, particularly in Africa.

In a report released earlier this month, the panel echoed many of the ideas put forward by the 165 charities that wrote to Ramaphosa in October, calling for measures like an IMF-backed special debt fund and the formation of a debtors’ club.

But the experts’ proposals “weren’t even acknowledged at the leaders’ summit”, Kevin Gallagher, director of Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center, told Al Jazeera. He said that the G20 presidency “failed to address the scale of the global debt problem”.

“Ultimately,” Gallagher added, “South Africa was outmanoeuvred by larger, more economically important members of the G20 who saw little benefit to themselves in reforming the international financial architecture on debt.”

‘Double whammy’ of debt

In the early 2000s, the IMF, World Bank and some Paris Club creditors cancelled more than $75bn of debt – roughly 40 percent of external obligations – under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative.

Since then, however, many developing countries have slipped back into the red. After the 2008 financial crisis, private creditors poured money into low-income economies, steadily replacing the cheaper loans once offered by institutions like the World Bank.

Between 2020 and 2025, almost 40 percent of external public debt repayments from lower-income countries went to commercial lenders. Just one-third went to multilateral institutions, according to Debt Justice, a United Kingdom-based charity.

China has also emerged as the world’s largest single creditor, especially in the Global South, committing more than $472bn through its policy banks – such as the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank – between 2008 and 2024.

“On top of debt becoming more expensive over the past 10 or 15 years, there is now a wider universe of lenders that developing countries have turned to,” says Iolanda Fresnillo, a policy and advocacy manager at Eurodad, a civil society organisation.

“It’s been a double whammy. Debt is now costlier and harder to resolve,” she said, noting the difficulty of coordinating creditors in a restructuring. Protracted debt crises slow growth by squeezing public investment.

Overcoming these hurdles is made harder when creditors pursue competing commercial interests. Fresnillo says an independent debt-restructuring body, designed to shorten negotiation times and limit economic costs, could help.

In September, the head of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Rebeca Grynspan, said, “There is no permanent institution or system that is there all the time dealing with debt restructuring … maybe we can create new momentum.”

However, talk of an international sovereign debt restructuring mechanism isn’t new. The IMF spearheaded a push for a neutral body – which would be akin to a US bankruptcy court – in the late 1990s.

The Fund’s proposed restructuring mechanism faced swift pushback. Major creditor countries, particularly the US, opposed ceding power to an international body that could override its legal system and weaken protections for US investors.

Still, “the need for this type of international solution is obvious”, says Fresnillo. “Having a basic set of rules, as opposed to an ad hoc negotiation for every new debt crisis, should be a bare minimum.”

She added that “adopting a global standard on taxing transnational corporations could also guarantee a baseline of revenues for low-income countries. But with multilateral cooperation so weak right now, I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

Africa’s first-ever Group of 20 (G20) summit – and the first boycotted by a prominent member – has wrapped up.

Host South Africa hailed it as a success, as a declaration was agreed covering a wide range of issues.

But what’s next for the G20?

Presenter: Imran Khan

Guests:

Thembisa Fakude – Director of Africa Asia Dialogues (Afrasid) in Johannesburg

Richard Weitz – Senior non-resident associate fellow at the NATO Defense College in Washington, DC

Omar Ashour – Professor of strategic studies and international security at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies

World leaders broke with tradition and quickly adopted a new declaration at the start of the G20 summit, despite pressure from the Trump administration to avoid a leaders’ declaration in the absence of an American delegation.

When US President Donald Trump declared that South Africa “should not even be” in the G20 and then took to Truth Social on November 7 to announce that no American official would attend this year’s summit in Johannesburg on account of a so-called “genocide” of white farmers in the country, I was not surprised. His outburst was not an exception but the latest expression of a long Western tradition of disciplining African sovereignty. Western leaders have long tried to shut down African agency through mischaracterisations, from branding Congolese nationalist Patrice Lumumba a “Soviet puppet” to calling anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela a “terrorist”, and Trump’s assault on South Africa falls squarely into that pattern.

As Africa pushes for a stronger voice in global governance, the Trump administration has intensified efforts to isolate Pretoria. South Africa’s growing diplomatic assertiveness, from BRICS expansion to climate finance negotiations, has challenged conservative assumptions that global leadership belongs exclusively to the West.

On February 7, Trump signed an executive order halting US aid to South Africa. He alleged that the government’s land expropriation policy discriminates against white farmers and amounts to uncompensated confiscation. Nothing could be further from the truth. South African law permits expropriation only through due process and compensation, with limited exceptions set out in the Constitution. Trump’s claims ignore this legal reality, revealing a deliberate preference for distortion over fact.

Soon after, the administration amplified its rollout of a refugee admissions policy that privileged Afrikaners, citing once again discredited claims of government persecution. What is clear is that Washington has deliberately heightened tensions with Pretoria, searching for any pretext to cast South Africa as an adversary. This selective compassion, extended only to white South Africans, exposes a racialised hierarchy of concern that has long shaped conservative engagement with the continent.

Yet, for months, South African officials have firmly rejected these claims, pointing to judicial rulings, official statistics, and constitutional safeguards that show no evidence of systematic persecution, let alone a “genocide” of white farmers. Indeed, as independent experts repeatedly confirmed, there is no credible evidence whatsoever to support the claim that white farmers in South Africa are being systematically targeted as part of a campaign of genocide. Their rebuttals highlight a basic imbalance: Pretoria is operating through verifiable data and institutional process, while Washington relies on exaggeration and ideological grievance.

At the same time, as host of this year’s G20 Summit, Pretoria is using the platform to champion a more cooperative and equitable global order. For South Africa, chairing the G20 is not only symbolic, but strategic, an attempt to expand the influence of countries long excluded from shaping the rules of global governance.

Trump’s G20 boycott embodies a transnational crusade shaped by Christian righteousness. Trump’s rhetoric reduces South Africa to a moral backdrop for American authority rather than recognising it as a sovereign partner with legitimate aspirations. The boycott also mirrors a wider effort to discredit multilateral institutions that dilute American exceptionalism.

This stance is rooted in a long evangelical-imperial tradition, one that fused theology with empire and cast Western dominance as divinely sanctioned. The belief that Africa required Western moral rescue emerged in the nineteenth century, when European missionaries declared it a Christian duty to civilise and redeem the continent. The wording has changed, but the logic endures, recasting African political agency as a civilisational error rather than a legitimate expression of sovereignty. This moralised paternalism did not disappear with decolonisation. It simply adapted, resurfacing whenever African nations assert themselves on the world stage.

American evangelical and conservative Christian networks wield significant influence inside the Republican Party. Their political and media ecosystem, featuring Fox News and the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), routinely frames multilateral institutions, global aid, and international law as subordinate to American sovereignty and Christian civilisation. These networks shape not only rhetoric but policy, turning fringe narratives into foreign policy priorities.

They also amplify unproven claims of Christian persecution abroad, particularly in countries such as Nigeria and Ethiopia, to legitimise American political and military interference. Trump’s fixation with South Africa follows the same script: a fabricated crisis crafted to thrill, galvanise, and reassure a conservative Christian base. South Africa becomes another stage for this performance.

In this distorted narrative, South Africa is not a constitutional democracy acting through strong, independent courts and institutions. Instead, Africa’s most developed country is stripped of its standing and portrayed as a flawed civilisation in need of Western correction. For conservative Christian nationalists, African decision-making is not autonomous agency but a supervised privilege granted only when African decisions align with Western priorities.

By casting South Africa as illegitimate in the G20, invoking false claims of genocide and land seizures, and penalising Pretoria’s ICJ case with aid cuts, Trump asserts that only the West can define global legitimacy and moral authority, a worldview anchored in Christian-nationalist authority. Trump’s crusade is punishment, not principle, and it seeks to deter African autonomy itself.

On many occasions, I have walked the streets of Alexandra, a Johannesburg township shaped by apartheid’s spatial design, where inequality remains brutally vivid. Alexandra squeezes more than one million residents into barely 800 hectares (about 2,000 acres). A significant portion of its informal housing sits on the floodplain of the Jukskei River, where settlements crowd narrow pathways and fragile infrastructure. Here, the consequences of structural inequality are unmistakable, yet they vanish entirely within Trump’s constructed crisis.

These communities sit only a few kilometres from Sandton, a spacious, leafy, and affluent suburb that is home to some of the country’s most expensive properties. The vast and entrenched gulf between these adjacent lands is essentially a living symbol of the profound inequality Trump is willing to overlook and legitimise as a global norm, built on selective moral outrage and racialised indifference.

In Alexandra, the struggle for dignity, equality, and inclusion is not a religious American fantasy, but a practical quest for the rights that apartheid and wider global injustice sought to deny. Their struggle mirrors the wider global fight against structures that concentrate wealth and power in a few hands. They, too, deserve better.

This is the human condition Trump’s pseudo-morality refuses to acknowledge. This is why South Africa’s global leadership matters.

Earlier this year, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa commissioned a landmark G20 Global Inequality Report, chaired by Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. It found that the world’s richest 1 percent have captured more than 40 percent of new wealth since 2000 and that more than 80 percent of humanity now lives in conditions the World Bank classifies as high inequality.

The Johannesburg G20 Summit seeks to reform multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, to confront a global financial system that sidelines developing countries and perpetuates economic injustice. While South Africa turns to recognised multilateral tools such as the ICJ and G20 reform, the US has moved in the opposite direction.

Under Trump, Washington has sanctioned the International Criminal Court, abandoned key UN bodies, and rejected scrutiny from UN human rights experts, reflecting a Christian-nationalist doctrine that treats American power as inherently absolute and answerable to no one.

South Africa offers an alternative vision rooted in global cooperation, shared responsibility, equality, and adherence to international law, a vision that unsettles those invested in unilateral power. The US recasts decolonisation as sin, African equality as disruption, and American dominance as divinely ordained. Trump’s attacks reveal how deeply this worldview still shapes American foreign policy.

Yet the world has moved beyond colonial binaries. African self-determination can no longer be framed as immoral. Human rights are universal, and dignity belongs to us all.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Entity called Al-Majd Europe taking families on buses out of Gaza to Israel’s Ramon Airport – and then to unknown destinations.

A Palestinian man who says he left Gaza through a shadowy organisation that has landed 153 people in South Africa without documentation describes the process set up to encourage more Palestinians to leave the devastated enclave.

The man, whose identity remains anonymous due to security concerns, told Al Jazeera there was “strong coordination” between the Al-Majd Europe group and the Israeli army on such displacements.

He said the process seemed “routine” and included a thorough search of personal belongings before he was put on a bus that moved through southern Gaza’s Israeli-controlled Karem Abu Salem crossing (which Israelis call Kerem Shalom) into southern Israel and the Ramon Airport.

At Ramon, “since there is no recognition by [Israel] of a Palestinian state, they did not stamp our passports,” the Palestinian man said.

A Romanian aircraft took the group to Kenya, a transit country. He said there appeared to be some coordination between Al-Majd Europe and the Kenyan authorities.

None of the passengers knew which country they would end up in, he said, adding that there were at least three people coordinating from inside Gaza while several Palestinian citizens of Israel carried out the rest of the network communication from outside the enclave.

Initially, there was an online registration, followed by a screening process. The man said he paid $6,000 to get himself and two family members out of Gaza.

“The payments are made through bank applications to the accounts of individual persons, not to an institution,” he said.

The first group he knew about left Gaza for Indonesia in June while the transfer of a second group to an unknown location was delayed before it received a call to leave in August.

The Palestinians on board Friday’s flight to South Africa were made to pay $1,500 to $5,000 per person to leave Gaza. They were allowed to bring only a phone, some money and a backpack.

Mysterious operation

Al-Majd Europe has been moving people using unofficial channels facilitated by the Israeli military. It has been demanding payments from Palestinians to leave Gaza. But it is unclear who is behind its operations.

The group claims it was founded in 2010 in Germany, but its website was registered only this year. The website shows images generated by artificial intelligence of its executives with no credible contact details. The website provides no office location, which is in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem.

Al Jazeera spoke to another Palestinian man who identified himself only as Omar in WhatsApp text messages. He said an Al-Majd Europe representative told him a passport and a birth certificate would be required to be accepted for a flight and there would be an initial charge of $2,500 per person as a down payment.

Omar, however, said his request for a transfer out of Gaza was rejected by the representative because the group did not accept solo travellers.

Speaking from az-Zawayda in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said Palestinians in Gaza have been hearing more about the operation and some are driven to consider it due to the “unbearable living situation” after two years of Israeli bombardments and ground operations.

“The education system in Gaza has also collapsed, so some Palestinians feel there is no future for them and their children,” she said.

The Israeli military acknowledged “facilitating” transfers of Palestinians out of Gaza, which is part of the “voluntary departure” policy for Palestinians that is backed by Israel and the United States.

The Israeli army established a unit in March to further encourage and facilitate this policy after obtaining approval from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet.

Concerns have been raised about a ‘humanitarian organisation’ that flew people from Gaza to South Africa. Inquiries into Al-Majd Europe revealed a website based in Iceland, crypto payments and AI images showing ‘executives.’ The company didn’t respond when asked to comment.

Questions have been raised over how hundreds of Palestinians were able to leave Gaza, board a plane in Israel, and arrive in South Africa without departure stamps in their passports or indication of their intended destination.

Cape Town, South Africa – On an August evening in 1977, 30‑year‑old Steve Biko was on his way back from an aborted secret meeting with an anti-apartheid activist in Cape Town, taking the 12‑hour drive back home to King William’s Town. But it was a journey the resistance fighter would never finish, for he was arrested and, less than a month later, was dead.

Against the backdrop of increasingly harsh racist laws in South Africa, Biko, a bold and forthright youth leader, had emerged as one of the loudest voices calling for change and Black self-determination.

A famously charming and eloquent speaker, he was often touted as Nelson Mandela’s likely successor in the struggle for freedom after the core of the anti-apartheid leadership was jailed in the 1960s.

But his popularity also made him a prime target of the apartheid regime, which put him under banning orders that severely restricted his movement, political activities, and associations; imprisoned him for his political activism; and ultimately caused his death in detention – a case that continues to resonate decades later, largely because none of the perpetrators have ever been brought to justice.

On September 12 this year, 48 years after Biko died, South Africa’s Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi ordered a new inquest into his death. The hearing resumed at the Eastern Cape High Court on Wednesday before being postponed to January 30.

There are “two persons of interest” implicated in Biko’s death who are still alive, according to the country’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), which aims to determine whether there is enough evidence that he was murdered, and therefore grounds to prosecute his killers.

While Biko’s family has welcomed the hearings, the long wait for justice has been frustrating, especially for his children.

“There is no such thing as joy in dealing with the case of murder,” Nkosinathi Biko, Biko’s eldest son, who was six at the time of his father’s death, told Al Jazeera. “Death is full and final, and no outcome will be restorative of the lost life.”

The Biko inquest is one of several probes into suspicious apartheid-era deaths that South Africa’s justice minister reopened this year. The inquiries are part of the government’s plan to address past atrocities and provide closure to families of the deceased, the NPA says.

But analysts note that the inquest comes amid growing public pressure on the government to bring about the justice it promised 30 years ago, as a new judicial inquiry is also probing allegations that South Africa’s democratic government intentionally blocked prosecutions of apartheid-era crimes.

Biko: ‘The spark that lit a fire’

Steve Biko was a medical student and national youth leader who, in the late 1960s, pioneered the philosophy of Black Consciousness, which encouraged Black people to reclaim their pride and unity by rejecting racial oppression and valuing their own identity and culture.

The philosophy inspired a generation of young activists to take up the struggle against apartheid, pushed forward by the belief that South Africa’s future lay in a socialist economy with a more equal distribution of wealth.

In his writings, Biko said he was inspired by the African independence struggles that emerged in the 1950s and suggested that South Africa had yet to offer its “great gift” to the world: “a more human face”.

By 1972, Biko’s student organisation had spawned a political wing to unify various Black Consciousness groups under one voice. A year later, he was officially banned by the government. Yet, he continued to covertly expand his philosophy and political organising among youth movements across the country.

In August 1977, despite the banning order still being in effect, Biko had travelled to Cape Town with a fellow activist to meet another anti-apartheid leader, though the meeting was aborted over safety concerns, and the duo left.

According to some reports, Biko heavily disguised himself for the road journey back east, but his attempts at going unnoticed were to no avail: When the car reached the outskirts of King William’s Town on August 18, police stopped them at a roadblock – and Biko was discovered.

The two were taken into custody separately, with Biko arrested under the Terrorism Act and first held at a local police station in Port Elizabeth before being transferred to a facility in the same city where members of the police’s “special branch” – notorious for enforcing apartheid through torture and extrajudicial killings – were based. For weeks in detention, he was stripped and manacled and, as was later discovered, tortured.

On September 12, the apartheid authorities announced that Biko had died in detention in Pretoria, some 1,200km (746 miles) away from where he was arrested and held. The minister of justice and police alleged he had died following a hunger strike, a claim immediately decried as false, as Biko had previously publicly stated that if that was ever cited as a cause of his death, it would be a lie.

Weeks later, an independent autopsy conducted at the request of the Biko family found he had died of severe brain damage due to injuries inflicted during his detention. Following these revelations, authorities launched an investigation. But the inquest cleared the police of any wrongdoing.

Saths Cooper, who was a student activist alongside Biko, remembers the moment he found out about his friend’s death. Cooper was in an isolation block on Robben Island – the prison that also held Mandela – where he spent more than five years with other political prisoners who had taken part in the 1976 student revolt.

“The news stilled us into silence,” the 75-year-old told Al Jazeera, recalling Biko’s provocatively “Socratic” style of engagement and echoing Mandela’s description of Biko as an inspiration. “Living, he was the spark that lit a veld fire across South Africa,” Mandela said in 2002. “His message to the youth and students was simple and clear: Black is Beautiful! Be proud of your Blackness! And with that, he inspired our youth to shed themselves of the sense of inferiority they were born into as a result of more than 300 years of white rule.”

After initial shock at the news of Biko’s death, “then the questions flowed of what had occurred,” Cooper recalled, “to which we had no answers.”

About 20,000 people, including Black and white anti-apartheid activists and Western diplomats, attended Biko’s funeral in King Williams Town on September 25. The day included a five-hour service, powerful speeches and freedom songs. Though police disrupted the service and arrested some mourners, it marked the first large political funeral in South Africa.

His death sparked international condemnation, including expression of “concern” from Pretoria’s allies, the US and the UK. It also led to a United Nations arms embargo against South Africa in November 1977.

Three years later, the British singer Peter Gabriel released a song in his honour, and in 1987, his life was depicted in the film Cry Freedom, in which Biko was played by Denzel Washington.

Nevertheless, Biko’s stature did nothing to hasten justice.

‘The unfinished business of the TRC’

Under the apartheid regime, any further investigation into Biko’s death was effectively put to rest for decades following the official 1977 inquest.

Then in 1996, two years after the end of apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to investigate past rights violations, with apartheid-era perpetrators given the opportunity to disclose their crimes and apply for amnesty from prosecution.

Former security police officers Major Harold Snyman, Captain Daniel Siebert, Warrant Officer Ruben Marx, Warrant Officer Jacobus Beneke and Sergeant Gideon Nieuwoudt – the five men suspected of killing Biko – applied for amnesty.

At TRC hearings the following year, the men said that Biko had died days after what they called “a scuffle” with the police at the Sanlam Building in Port Elizabeth, while he was held in shackles and handcuffs. Up to that point, the commission heard, Biko had spent several days in a cell – naked, they claimed, in order to prevent him from taking his life.

In the decades since, it’s come to light that after being badly beaten at the Sanlam Building on September 6 and 7, Biko suffered a brain haemorrhage and was examined by apartheid government doctors, who said they found nothing wrong with him. Days later, on September 11, the police decided to transfer him to a prison hospital hours away in Pretoria. Still naked and shackled, Biko was put in the back of a van and moved. Although he was examined in Pretoria, it was too late, and Biko died on September 12 alone in his cell.

Despite admitting to beating Biko with a hose pipe and noticing his disoriented, slurred speech, the former officers claimed at the TRC that they had no indication of the severity of his injuries. Therefore, they saw nothing wrong with transporting him 1,200km away.

Eventually, the men were denied amnesty in 1999, partly for their lack of full disclosure of the events that caused Biko’s death. The suspected killers, some of whom have since died, were recommended for prosecution by the commission.

However, like most TRC cases, the prosecutions never materialised.

“The Biko case, along with others, must be viewed as the delayed activation of the unfinished business of the TRC – a matter that is a national imperative if we are to instigate a culture of accountability in South Africa,” Nkosinathi, now 54, said of the reopened inquest into his father’s death.

Though the scope of the Biko inquest has not been publicly stated, Gabriel Crouse, a political analyst and fellow with the South African Institute for Race Relations, worries that it will not examine new evidence, but that its goal will simply be to decisively determine whether Biko was murdered.

If this is the case, it would leave many questions unresolved, he says. For example, who pressured the initial forensic pathologist to declare a hunger strike as the cause of death; who ordered Biko’s killing; and what was the official chain of command?

‘The worms are among us’

Although the Biko inquest has renewed hope among his family that some of the perpetrators of his death will finally be brought to justice, analysts warn that the process may reveal uncomfortable truths about the nation’s past – including possible collusion between South Africa’s current government and the apartheid regime.

Nkosinathi now heads a foundation that promotes his father’s legacy. He points out that it is only pressure on the government that brought about this moment.

Months before the Biko inquest reopened, President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered the establishment of a commission of inquiry into whether previous governments led by his African National Congress (ANC) party intentionally suppressed investigations and prosecutions of apartheid-era crimes.

His move in April came after 25 survivors and relatives of victims of apartheid-era crimes launched a court case against his government in January, seeking damages.

The allegations of probes being blocked go back more than a decade. In 2015, former national prosecutions chief Vusi Pikoli caused a stir when he submitted an affidavit in a court case about the death of anti-apartheid fighter Nokuthula Simelane, in which he blamed the stalled cases on senior government officials interfering in the work of the NPA.

Former President Thabo Mbeki, who was head of state during Pikoli’s tenure, has denied that any such political interference took place. But the judicial inquiry, announced in April and now under way, lists former senior officials among those it considers interested parties.

The inquiry will look at why so few of the 300 cases that the TRC referred to the NPA for prosecution, including Biko’s, have been investigated in the last two decades.

“That it has become necessary to have to look into such an allegation tells much about how the huge sacrifice that was made for our democracy has been betrayed,” Nkosinathi told Al Jazeera.

Cooper believes the delayed prosecutions are a result of a compromise made by the apartheid regime and the ANC to conceal one another’s offences, including alleged cases of freedom fighters colluding with the white minority government.

“It’s justice clearly denied,” Cooper said, adding that he once questioned TRC commissioners about why they had concealed the names of rumoured apartheid-era collaborators who went on to work in the new democratic government. “The response was, ‘Broer, it’ll open a can of worms,’” Cooper told Al Jazeera.

“I see one of the commissioners died, the other is around, and when I see him, I say, ‘There’s no more can of worms, the worms are among us.’”

Like Cooper, political analyst Crouse also believes some kind of “backdoor deal” was struck following the transition from apartheid to democracy in 1994.

Many political actors failed to apply for amnesty, he says, despite prima facie evidence of their guilt. “And so it became very apparent that white Afrikaner supremacists and Black ANC liberationists, some from both camps, had gotten together and said, ‘Let’s both keep each other’s secrets and go forward into the new South Africa on that basis,’” he said.

Pikoli’s 2015 affidavit seems to echo such analysis. In his document, Pikoli recalls a meeting in 2006, where former ministers grilled him about the prosecution of suspects implicated in the attempted murder of Mbeki’s former chief of staff, Frank Chikane. Pikoli does not specify what the ministers objected to but says it became clear they did not want the suspects prosecuted “due to their fear of opening the door to prosecutions of ANC members, including government officials.”

A plea bargain was struck with the suspects while Pikoli was on leave in July 2007, as part of which the suspects refused to reveal the masterminds behind the compilation of a hit-list targeting activists. Pikoli believes a court trial would have forced them to disclose more details.

‘A stress test’ for democratic South Africa

Mariam Jooma Carikci, an independent researcher who has written extensively about the failure of justice in the democratic era, believes the official inquiry into the hundreds of unprosecuted TRC cases, including Biko’s, is “a stress test” of democratic South Africa’s honesty.

“For three decades we treated reconciliation as an end in itself – truth commissions instead of prosecutions, memorials instead of justice,” she said.

She sees Biko’s ideas continuing to flourish in today’s student movements, for example, in the #FeesMustFall campaign that called for free university tuition and the decolonisation of education in 2015.

“You see his echo in decolonisation debates and student movements, but the truest honour is policy – land, work, education, healthcare – designed around human worth, not investor or political comfort,” Jooma Carikci said.

While the country waits to hear the outcomes of the Biko inquest and the wider TRC inquiry, Nkosinathi Biko remains haunted by constant reminders of his father.

His younger brother Samora, who recently turned 50, looks exactly like Biko, he says, but being only two at the time of his death, “he was unfortunate not to have had memories of his father because of what happened.”

Meanwhile, for the country in general, Nkosinathi sees connections between Biko’s death and the 2012 Marikana massacre, during which police shot and killed 34 striking miners – the highest death toll from police aggression in democratic South Africa.

In his mind, the image of police opening fire on unarmed protesting workers echoes the country’s dark history – a sign that the state brutality that ended his father’s life has spilled over into democratic South Africa.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — President Trump says that his government will boycott the Group of 20 summit this month in South Africa over his claims that a white minority group there is being violently persecuted. Those claims have been widely rejected.

Trump announced Friday on social media that no U.S. government official will attend the Nov. 22-23 summit in Johannesburg “as long as these Human Rights abuses continue.” South Africa’s Black-led government has been a regular target for Trump since he returned to office.

In February, Trump issued an executive order stopping U.S. financial assistance to South Africa, citing its treatment of the Afrikaner white minority. His administration has also prioritized Afrikaners for refugee status in the U.S. and says they will be given most of the 7,500 places available this fiscal year.

The South African government — and some Afrikaners themselves — say Trump’s claims of persecution are baseless.

Descendants of European settlers

Afrikaners are South Africans who are descended mainly from Dutch but also French and German colonial settlers who first came to the country in the 17th century.

Afrikaners were at the heart of the apartheid system of white minority rule from 1948-94, leading to decades of hostility between them and South Africa’s Black majority. But Afrikaners are not a homogenous group, and some fought against apartheid. There are an estimated 2.7 million Afrikaners in South Africa’s population of 62 million.

Afrikaners are divided over Trump’s claims. Some say they face discrimination, but a group of leading Afrikaner business figures and academics said in an open letter last month that “the narrative that casts Afrikaners as victims of racial persecution in post-apartheid South Africa” is misleading.

Afrikaners’ Dutch-derived language is widely spoken in South Africa and is one of the country’s 12 official languages. Afrikaners are represented in every aspect of society. Afrikaners are some of South Africa’s richest entrepreneurs and some of its most successful sports stars, and also serve in government. Most are largely committed to South Africa’s multiracial democracy.

Trump claims they’re being ‘killed and slaughtered’

Trump asserted that Afrikaners “are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated.” The president’s comments are in reference to a relatively small number of attacks on Afrikaner farmers that he and others claim are racially motivated.

Trump has also pointed to a highly contentious law introduced by the South African government that allows land to be appropriated from private owners without compensation. Some Afrikaners fear that law is aimed at removing them from their land in favor of South Africa’s poor Black majority. Many South Africans, including opposition parties, have criticized the law, but it hasn’t led to land confiscations.

Trump first made baseless claims of widespread killing of white South African farmers and land seizures during his first term in response to allegations aired on conservative media personality Tucker Carlson’s former show on Fox News. Trump ordered then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to look into the allegations, but nothing came of any investigation.

South Africa rejects the claims

The South African government said in response to Trump’s social media post that his claims were “not substantiated by fact.” It has said that Trump’s criticism of South Africa over Afrikaners is a result of misinformation because it misses the context that Black farmers and farmworkers are also killed in rural attacks, which make up a tiny percentage of the country’s high violent crime rate.

There were more than 26,000 homicides in South Africa in 2024. Of those, 37 were farm murders, according to an Afrikaner lobby group that tracks them. Experts on rural attacks in South Africa have said the overriding motive for the violent farm invasions is robbery, not race.

Other pressure on South Africa

Trump said it is a “total disgrace” that the G-20 summit — a meeting of the leaders of the 19 top rich and developing economies, the European Union and the African Union — is being held in South Africa. He had already said he wouldn’t attend, and Vice President JD Vance was due to go in his place. The U.S. will take on the rotating presidency of the G-20 after South Africa.

Trump also said in a speech last week that South Africa should be thrown out of the G-20.

Trump’s criticism of Africa’s most developed economy has gone beyond the issue of Afrikaners. His executive order in February said South Africa had taken “aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies,” specifically with its decision to accuse Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza at the United Nations’ top court.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio boycotted a G-20 foreign ministers meeting in South Africa in February after deriding the host country’s G-20 slogan of “solidarity, equality and sustainability” as “DEI and climate change.”

Imray writes for the Associated Press.

Trump calls it a ‘disgrace’ that South Africa is hosting the G20, reiterates debunked claims of a ‘genocide’ against white farmers.

President Donald Trump has said no United States officials will attend this year’s Group of 20 (G20) summit in South Africa, citing the country’s treatment of white farmers.

Writing on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump said it was a “total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa”.

“Afrikaners (People who are descended from Dutch settlers, and also French and German immigrants) are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated,” Trump wrote, reiterating claims that have been rejected by authorities in South Africa.

“No US Government Official will attend as long as these Human Rights abuses continue. I look forward to hosting the 2026 G20 in Miami, Florida!” he added.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has repeatedly claimed that white South Africans are being persecuted in the Black-majority country, a claim rejected by South Africa’s government and top Afrikaner officials.

Trump had already said on Wednesday that he would not attend the summit – which will see the heads of states from the world’s leading and emerging economies gather in Johannesburg on November 22 and 23 – as he also called for South Africa to be thrown out of the G20.

US Vice President JD Vance had been expected to attend the meeting in place of the president. But a person familiar with Vance’s plans told The Associated Press news agency that he will no longer travel to South Africa.

Tensions first arose between the US and South Africa after President Cyril Ramaphosa introduced a new law in January seeking to address land ownership disparities, which have left three-quarters of privately owned land in the hands of the white minority more than three decades after the end of apartheid.

The new legislation makes it easier for the state to expropriate land, which Ramaphosa insists does not amount to confiscation, but creates a framework for fair redistribution by allowing authorities to take land without compensation in exceptional circumstances, such as when a site has been abandoned.

Shortly after the introduction of the Expropriation Act, Trump accused South Africa of “confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY”.

“The United States won’t stand for it, we will act,” he said.

In May, Trump granted asylum to 59 white South Africans as part of a resettlement programme that Washington described as giving sanctuary after racial discrimination.

The same month, when Trump met with President Ramaphosa in the White House, he ambushed him with the claim that a “genocide” is taking place against white Afrikaners in his country.

Ramaphosa denied the allegations, telling Trump “if there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you, these three gentlemen would not be here”, pointing to three white South African men present – professional golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, and South Africa’s richest man, Johann Rupert.

South African historian Saul Dubow, professor of Commonwealth history at the University of Cambridge, previously told Al Jazeera that there is no merit to “Trump’s fantasy claims of white genocide”.

Dubow suggested that Trump may be more angry about South Africa’s genocide case filed against Israel in the International Court of Justice over its war on Gaza.

Nonetheless, the Trump administration has maintained its claim of widespread persecution. On October 30, the White House indicated that most new refugees admitted to the US will be white South Africans, as it slashed the number of people it will admit annually to just 7,500.

“The admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa pursuant to Executive Order 14204 and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands,” the White House said.

India’s women post 298-7 in Navi Mumbai before bowling South Africa out for 246 to claim the 2025 Cricket World Cup.

India’s women have lifted the Cricket World Cup for the first time after beating South Africa by 52 runs in Navi Mumbai, India.

Reaching the final for a third time, Harmanpreet Kaur’s side dominated the contest from the off at DY Patil Stadium on Sunday, although South Africa captain Laura Wolvaardt did her best to spoil the hosts’ party in the run chase.

Replying to India’s 298-7, Wolvaardt led from the off and totalled 101 off 98 when she was eventually caught in the deep off the bowling off Deepti Sharma, who finished with 5-39.

The support was not there for Wolvaardt, unlike that enjoyed throughout a team effort with the bat by India, as South Africa regularly lost wickets at the other end before being bowled out for 246 in the 46th over.

Wolvaardt’s heroic effort added to the century she scored in the semifinal win against England on Thursday. She is only the second player to achieve the feat of the back-to-back centuries at this stage of the competition after Alyssa Healy did so in Australia’s victorious run in the 2022 edition.

Neither team has lifted the trophy; indeed, this was South Africa’s first final.

India had come close twice before, reaching the final in 2005 and 2017, losing to Australia and England, respectively.

This was also the first women’s World Cup final that did not involve either Australia or England, the former being the record winners with seven victories to their name.

Having been put in, after a long delay due to rain, India posted the second-highest total in a women’s World Cup final. But they will feel they should have comfortably cleared 300, having reached 151-1 at the halfway stage of their innings.

Opener Smriti Mandhana’s 45 meant the India batter finished with 434 runs for the tournament.

It puts her top of India’s list of run scorers at a World Cup ahead of Mithali Raj, who registered 409 in the 2017 edition.

The limelight on the day belonged to her opening partner, however, as Shafali Verma struck 87 off 78.

Deepti Sharma’s run-a-ball 58 kept the momentum going through the middle over, while Richa Ghosh thumped two sixes in an innings of 34 off 24 late on that marked the best strike-rate of the innings.

South Africa started the chase solidly enough, the opening pair bringing up the fifty partnership in the 10th over. The loss of Tazmin Brits, run out by a brilliant piece of fielding by Amanjot Kaur for 23, started a wobble, though.

Anneke Bosch pushed back a painful six-ball duck before being trapped LBW by Sree Charani.

Verma then came to the party with the ball, picking up Sune Luus and Marizanne Kapp to leave South Africa reeling on 123-4 in the 23rd over.

When Sinalo Jafta fell in the 30th with her side 148-5, it was difficult to see a way back for a team hoping to be the first senior side from their country to lift a major International Cricket Council (ICC) title.

By the time Wolvaardt’s innings was done, India’s women knew they were about to go one better than their male counterparts, who similarly hosted the 2023 edition only to be denied by Australia in the final.

Follow our live build-up, team news, score and text commentary stream from the final in Navi Mumbai at 09:30 GMT.