The committee that investigated attacks on Terrain Hotel, a luxurious facility for expatriates in Juba, where foreign humanitarian workers, mainly Americans, were raped by members of the South Sudanese army (SPLA) said it has presented to South Sudan President Salva Kiir the outcome of the investigation.

Matison Otoromoi, the chairperson of the investigation committee formed by President Kiir in July to unearth circumstances under which government forces attacked the hotel, killed a local journalist on ethnic grounds and raped women and looted properties, said their work is comprehensive.

“This is the final phase of our work and what is now left is to address the public on how we conducted our work,” said Otoromoi, who is also the Deputy Minister of Justice.

Terrain Hotel was attacked on July 11 by gunmen believed to be government soldiers. Despite being close to United Nations peacekeeping base in Juba, there was no rescue from the blue helmet men.

An intervention by National Security Services of South Sudan ended the looting and harassment several hours later. The incident occurred on the last day of fierce battle between government forces loyal to President Kiir and soldiers loyal to former first vice president Riek Machar.

Machar fled the capital on July 11, according to his aides, after the rival forces reportedly continued to violate a cessation of hostilities.

Otoromoi did not say if their report will lead to any criminal charges against government soldiers.

Stories Continues after ad

The Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) has joined several political activists linked to the Africa National Congress (ANC) and called for South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma to be sacked.

He had ‘failed the test’ of leadership and South Africa needed to hold to account those who were ‘looting’ state resources, it said.

Mr Zuma has been dogged by allegations of corruption for more than a decade.

The call by the NMF, which is run by colleagues of South Africa’s first black president, is the latest sign of growing discontent with his rule.

Its intervention came as a court began hearing a bid by Mr Zuma’s legal team to prevent the release of a report by former anti-corruption chief Thuli Madonsela.

She investigated allegations that he let the wealthy Gupta family wield undue influence in his government. Both Mr Zuma and the Guptas have denied any wrongdoing.

In a statement entitled ‘Time to account for crippling the state’, the NMF said the governing African National Congress (ANC) needed to take steps to put the government back in “safe and capable hands”.

“Twenty years since Nelson Mandela signed South Africa’s constitution into law and as the third anniversary of his passing approaches, it is painful for us at the Nelson Mandela Foundation to bear witness to the wheels coming off the vehicle of our state,” the NMF added.

Mr Mandela spent more than 27 years in prison for fighting white-minority rule and became South Africa’s first democratically elected leader in 1994. He stepped down five years later and died in December 2013 at the age of 95.

The NMF said South Africa’s democracy was now under a ‘real threat’, with key government institutions being used to advance ‘private interests’.

“We are reaping the results of a political trend of personalising matters of state around a single individual leader. This in a constitutional democracy is to be deplored,” it added.

Ms Madonsela’s investigation was triggered by allegations in March by Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas that the Gupta family had made ‘a mockery of our hard-earned democracy’ by offering him the finance minister’s post last year.

Mr Jonas said he rejected the offer; the Guptas accused him of political point-scoring.

Former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor also alleged that the family offered her the powerful public enterprise minister’s post in 2010 in exchange for business favours.

Ms Mentor alleged that Mr Zuma was in another part of the Gupta’s family home in Johannesburg when the offer was made. Mr Zuma’s office said at the time that he had no ‘recollection’ of Ms Mentor, while the family strongly denied her allegation.

Ms Mentor and opposition parties, including the Democratic Alliance (DA) and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), are challenging Mr Zuma in court, insisting that the report be released.

Mr Zuma’s court action prevented Ms Madonsela from publishing the report before she stepped down as public protector at the end of her term last month.

He said it would be unlawful to release the report as he had not been given enough time to respond to the allegations.

This was the second time Ms Madonsela investigated Mr Zuma during her seven-year term.

In March, South Africa’s highest court upheld her findings that Mr Zuma “unduly benefited” from government money used to upgrade his private rural home.

It led to widespread calls for Mr Zuma to resign, but he survived a DA-sponsored impeachment vote in parliament after ANC MPs rallied behind him.

The president is also at the centre of another case and is trying to overturn a unanimous ruling of a High Court that he should stand trial on 783 counts of corruption in relation to an arms deal negotiated in 1999.

Stories Continues after ad

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has sacked Kenyan Lt Gen Johnson Mogoa Kimani Ondieki, the commander of the UN force in South Sudan after a report said it had failed to protect civilians in July.

The report backed claims by aid workers that the UN troops refused to respond when government soldiers attacked an international aid compound in Juba.

In the fighting between the army and former rebels, a local journalist was killed and aid workers were raped.

The clashes derailed efforts to form a unity government and end the civil war.

The fighting began with clashes between President Salva Kiir’s guards and bodyguards of the sacked Vice-President Riek Machar.

Mr Ban “has asked for the immediate replacement of the force commander”, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric announced.

The independent special investigation into the violence on 8-11 July in South Sudan’s capital was commissioned by the UN.

In three days of fighting, at least 73 people were killed, including more than 20 internally displaced people who had sought UN protection. Two peacekeepers also died.

Among the targets of the attack by government troops were a UN peacekeeping base, known as UN House, and the nearby Terrain Camp.

The report found that ‘a lack of leadership on the part of key senior mission (UNMISS) personnel culminated in a chaotic and ineffective response to the violence’.

It said the peacekeepers ‘did not operate under a unified command, resulting in multiple and sometimes conflicting orders to the four troop contingents from China, Ethiopia, Nepal and India, and ultimately under-using the more than 1,800 infantry troops at UN House’.

“This included at least two instances in which the Chinese battalion abandoned some of its defensive positions,” the document said.

It also said a Nepalese police unit had ‘performed inadequately’ in its efforts stop looting.

During the attack on Terrain camp, the report said that “civilians were subjected to and witnessed gross human rights violations, including murder, intimidation, sexual violence and acts amounting to torture perpetrated by armed government soldiers”.

UNMISS has 16,000 peacekeepers deployed in South Sudan.

Both President Kiir’s and Mr Machar’s followers have been accused of perpetrating atrocities during the country’s bitter civil conflict.

More than 2.5 million people in South Sudan have been displaced since the fighting first began in December 2013.

Stories Continues after ad

Many countries including Nigeria and Tanzania have pledged support for the International Criminal Court following the announced withdrawal by three African nations, but Kenya, which the tribunal is investigating, was sharply critical and questioned its long-term survival.

Many in the General Assembly called for talks between the ICC and the African Union in hopes of addressing the continent’s concerns and reversing the decisions to leave by Burundi, South Africa and Gambia.

Kenyan Ambassador Tom Amolo didn’t say whether his country would also leave, but he told the 193-member world body that his country was monitoring the withdrawals “with very keen interest.”

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, as well as Senegal, the first country to ratify the Rome Statute that established the court, and Tanzania reiterated their support for the ICC, stressing the court’s importance in combatting impunity for the world’s most atrocious crimes, including genocide.

The ICC has been accused of bias by some African leaders because since the Rome treaty came into force in 2002, only four people have been convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Three were from Congo and one from Mali. So far, it has indicted only suspects from Africa, and of the 10 full-scale investigations currently underway, nine are in Africa and only one elsewhere — in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

But the ICC is expanding its global reach. It is currently conducting 10 so-called preliminary examinations — probes to establish whether to open a full investigation — in countries including Afghanistan, Ukraine and Colombia, as well as the Palestinian territories and alleged crimes by British forces in Iraq.

ICC President Judge Silvia Fernandez de Gurmendi, presenting the court’s annual report to the assembly, said two trials are under way and another is set to start soon. And following convictions, she said, proceedings for reparations for victims are under way in four cases.

But Kenya’s Amolo called the ICC’s “dismal output of tangible results … disheartening and simply confounding.”

He accused the court of having lower standards than national courts and warned that “something radical and urgent must be done if this court is to stand any chance of long-term survival as a viable and credible international institution.”

The ICC indicted Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on charges of crimes against humanity for 2007 post-election violence in which more than 1,000 died. The case collapsed because of what the ICC prosecutor called threats to witnesses, bribery and lack of cooperation by Kenya’s government, but it remains open.

Amolo said African countries “have tried to engage constructively” with the ICC with little success.

Tanzania’s U.N. Ambassador Tuvako Manongi said the court’s “particularly tumultuous relationship with Africa … has engendered fear of an African exodus from the court.”

But he said “that need not be the case,” pointing to the African Union’s commitment to justice and the rule of law.

Manongi called for “confidence building measures” on how the ICC functions and interacts with the 124 countries that have ratified the Rome Statute.

“All too often avoidable misunderstandings, when left unattended or dismissed as inconsequential, grow into regrettable outcomes,” he said. “Lectures and claims of high moral ground from outside the continent are unhelpful.”

Senegal’s Minister Counsellor Abdoulaye Barro called for dialogue and expressed hope “that a consensus can be found so that Africa will continue to play a major role in the fight against impunity.”

New Zealand’s U.N. Ambassador Gerard von Bohemen said “better engagement” with the AU and African nations is needed. And he expressed hope that in the coming year, before the withdrawals take effect, “there is room for meaningful dialogue on a potential resolution and to provide for a pathway back to the court.”

Joao Vale de Almeida, the European Union’s U.N. envoy, put the challenge succinctly: “The world needs the ICC, and the ICC needs all countries to support it.

Stories Continues after ad