Notices by Zecharias Zelalem (zekuzelalem@dair-community.social), page 2

General Tadesse Birru assigned four paratroopers to serve as bodyguards during Mandela's stay in Ethiopia. One of them was this man, Captain Guta Dinka, 90 years young today. Captain Guta foiled a plot to assassinate Mandela in Ethiopia. He had been approached by a turncoat, who introduced him to agents of South Africa's apartheid government in Ethiopia, who offered him 2,000£ (worth about 53k£ today) and a comfortable life in the UK if he murdered Mandela & provided photo evidence of the act.

Instead, Captain Guta reported the plot to his superiors who arrested all involved. The agents, who Captain Guta described as "a white man and an African," were deported to Kenya, their local accomplice was detained.

Captain Guta first revealed details of the plot to a host of international media outlets, first in 2013 and has hosted journalists numerous times ever since.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220717-former-ethiopian-military-officer-reveals-plot-to-kill-mandela-during-military-training/amp/

Mandela left Ethiopia safely, but had only returned to South Africa incognito for a few months, when he was detained. He would stay behind bars for 27 years.

US diplomat and CIA spy Donald Rickard revealed just prior to his death in 2016, that the CIA had tracked Mandela's movements and passed them on to the Apartheid regime which arrested him. He said they did so because they feared he would facilitate the spread of communist ideology across Africa.

And that is that.

This shocking 3 minute Al Jazeera video report features xenophobic rallies, calling for mass deportation of "dirty" Rohingya refugees from Indonesia. The YouTube comment section is also very revelatory. It's not a good look. Pro Palestinian solidarity is pointless, if it is held alongside hate rallies that fuel the spread of hate speech and misinformation targeting survivors of genocide.

Protect the "Palestinians" you have at home first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws5gHm8lTvM

I don't know who needs to hear this (nobody in the fediverse thank God), but speaking up for Palestinians doesn't excuse deplorable conduct. Atrocity deniers, xenophobes and other terrible people, a Palestinian flag won't cover up your shame.

Indonesia has seen numerous mass rallies condemning Israel and calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. But the spike in pro Gaza sentiments in Indonesia, have coincided with rampant and violent anti Rohingya xenophobia in the country.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/27/indonesian-students-evict-rohingya-from-shelter-demanding-deportation

Mastodon penetration in Africa remains poor, and I'm not aware if that will ever change. There are numerous factors including language, culture, poor internet quality in certain countries and the general difficulty everyone has when adapting to Mastodon. The need for safe, clean platforms not at the mercy of legal requests from authoritarian regimes or data parsing by Saudi Royal shareholders...is a pressing one and will continue to be a pressing one. I'd like to see an African uptick here.

@rrb A way to run Mastodon as an onion service? That would be top. If someone could integrate that, we would be really going places.

Great to learn of a growing African presence on the fediverse. For the first time, I came across an Algeria themed 🇩🇿 instance, perhaps the first instance set up for and by an African community here (there could be others that I'm not aware of).

The instance is dz.social (Dz, short for the country's local name "Dzayer" and .dz is the country's internet domain code.

It's a start. Happy to see a Maghreb presence here. P.S Algerians are amazing people to befriend.

https://dz.social/about