The six top seeds include Morocco, who created history at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar by becoming the first semi-finalists from Africa.

Nigeria is among the second seeds while South Africa has had to settle for a place among the third seeds for the draw in Abidjan, the Ivorian economic capital.

Add surprise 2021 Cup of Nations quarter-finalists Gambia from the fourth seeds and it would be a striking “group of death,” the term given to particularly tough sections.

Nigeria, three-time winners of the premier African football competition, and former champions South Africa were unlucky not to be seeded higher.

The Super Eagles lie sixth in the continental rankings and, ordinarily, would have been a top seed, avoiding Morocco, title-holders Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt in the group stage.

But host countries not only automatically qualify for the two-year tournament, they are also always among the first seeds.

To accommodate the ninth-ranked Ivory Coast, sixth-placed Nigeria had to give way and now share second-seed status with Cameroon, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

South Africa had been ranked above DR Congo for some time but, in the rankings that decided the seedings, they were placed one place below the Congolese.

It was an ironic change of positions as South Africa defeated DR Congo in a friendly match just a couple of days before the rankings were released.

Magistrate Aubrey Mashigo found Matodlana guilty in the Motherwell regional court of raping a 22-year-old man in 2013.

Matodlana was taken into custody after being convicted on Friday, May 20, but will appear in court for sentencing on Monday, May 23.

In her judgment, Mashigo said the National Prosecuting Authority’s team had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the former Mpuma Kapa TV resident pastor was guilty.

Matodlana’s victim who was 22 at the time of the incident, told the court shortly after meeting the pastor they spoke on Mxit in January 2013.

He said the pastor invited him to his Motherwell home between February and March. After sitting in the lounge for a brief period Matodlana invited him to his bedroom.

Once in the bedroom, both men sat on the bed and had a brief conversation before Matodlana attempted to kiss him.

The victim testified that Matodlana told him to undress and his refusal outraged the pastor. He said he had been fearful of Matodlana, who made him undress, pulled him onto the bed, forced him to lie face down and then raped him.

Matodlana denied throughout the trial that he had raped the man.

During the trial, Matodlana accused his victim of being a gay sex worker who had attempted to extort money from him.

However, Mashigo rejected the pastor’s allegations against his victim saying they could not be accepted and were false.

The pastor’s victim took to Facebook to share the details of his sexual assault.

Not long after the post was shared Matodlana threatened to file defamation and extortion complaints with the police, saying his accuser had slandered him and demanded he pays him to keep quiet about the incident.

The man says a day or two after posting about his ordeal a police officer asked him to come to the police station to file a complaint of rape.

A meeting later took place between the man, the police and Matodlana, and the pastor’s accuser had agreed to remove the post.

The pastor’s victim lodged a rape complaint against Matodlana on 23 June 2020 after being advised to do so by concerned friends.

Matodlana was arrested on 1 October 2020 and released on bail the same day. He was formally charged in court on 29 October where he pleaded not guilty.

Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, Angola, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe are countries placed on the list in late November after the emergence of the Omicron variant.

However, UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the Omicron variant had spread so widely that the rules no longer make much effect.

He told parliament today, Dec. 14: “Now that there is community transmission of Omicron in the UK and Omicron has spread so widely across the world, the travel red list is now less effective in slowing the incursion of Omicron from abroad. Whilst we will maintain our temporary testing measures for international travel we will be removing all 11 countries from the travel red list effective from 4 am tomorrow morning.”

Currently, all UK arrivals from red list countries must pay for and self-isolate in a pre-booked, government-approved hotel for 10 days. They must also take Covid tests within 48 hours of setting off for the UK and PCR tests within two days of their arrival.

“The first people who will qualify for the booster dose in South Africa will be people over the age of 60 years,” Dr Nicolas Crisp, director general at the health ministry, told a weekly news conference.

Experts are working to determine whether current Covid vaccines will work against the new highly-mutated variant, which was discovered by South African scientists last month.

The daily number of new Covid infections surged to a high of 22,391 on Thursday, when nearly 30 per cent of tests were positive.

The highest daily tally so far was in early July, when the country hit more than 26,000 new infections.

Health practitioners last month had already started being offered Johnson & Johnson shots as boosters.

South Africa is the worst-hit country in the continent for coronavirus, recording a cumulative 3.09 million cases, of which over 90,000 have been fatal.

A small study this week by the country’s African Health Research Institute, not yet peer-reviewed, suggested that Omicron may be able to evade some of the antibody immunity from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

But, its authors said, there was no reason to believe that vaccination would not protect against severe disease caused by the variant.

Slightly more than a quarter of South Africa’s population is fully vaccinated, with the figure among adults being 43 per cent.

Omicron accounts for around 70 per cent of new infections being detected in South Africa, Health Minister Joe Phaahla has said.

However, hospitalised patients are so far showing mild symptoms, he said.

Britain introduced the measures in response to the emergence of the Omicron variant of Covid in South Africa this week.

Scientists have so far only detected the new Omicron variant in relatively small numbers, mainly in South Africa but also in Botswana, Hong Kong, and Israel. But they are concerned by its high number of mutations which raised concerns that it could be more vaccine-resistant and transmissible.

South African officials are furious over the British ban on flights from southern African countries. Several other countries including Israel have followed suit.

Many South Africans feel they are being punished for their transparency and hard work in keeping tabs on the way the virus is mutating.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said authorities would not be considering economic lockdown restrictions for the time being. He also slams rich Western countries for their knee-jerk imposition of travel bans after hearing about the new variant.

Ramaphosa said: ‘This is a clear and completely unjustified departure from the commitment that many of these countries made at the meeting of G20 countries in Rome last month’. The prohibition of travel is not informed by science, nor will it be effective in preventing the spread of this variant. The only thing [it] will do is to further damage the economies of the affected countries and undermine their ability to respond to the pandemic. ‘If cases continue to climb, we can expect to enter the fourth wave of infections within the next few weeks, if not sooner.’

The Omicron variant is thought to be more transmissible than the currently-dominant Delta variant. It was first identified in South Africa but has been found in Hong Kong, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Details of the incident are still sketchy at the time of this report but according to a Johannesburg based Nigerian man, Saintpat Nnamdi, the deceased was shot dead by yet to be identified gunmen in the early hours of Tuesday, September 21.

He shared videos from the scene and also revealed that the deceased is from Umudioka in Awka, Anambra State.

Zuma has been serving a 15-month prison sentence since July 2021 for contempt of court after refusing to appear at an inquiry into corruption during his time as president.

Last month, Zuma was admitted to an outside hospital where he underwent surgeries for an undisclosed ailment, according to prison authorities.

Back in July, deadly violence erupted in South Africa after Zuma handed himself into custody, triggering widespread protests and looting as soldiers and police struggled to restore order.

Zuma is accused of corruption involving three businessmen brothers close to him Atul, Ajay and Rajesh Gupta- and allowing them to influence government policy, including the hiring and firing of ministers to align with the family’s business interests.

“Medical parole placement for Mr Zuma means that he will complete the remainder of the sentence in the system of community corrections, whereby he must comply with a specific set of conditions and will be subjected to supervision until his sentence expires,” South Africa’s Department of Correctional Services (DCS) said in a statement on Sunday, September 5.

The DCS said it was “impelled” to grant Zuma medical parole after receiving a medical report.

“Apart from being terminally ill and physically incapacitated, inmates suffering from an illness that severely limits their daily activity or self-care can also be considered for medical parole,” the statement said.

The DCS appealed to South Africans “to afford Mr Zuma dignity as he continues to receive medical treatment.”

Zuma served as president from 2009 to 2018 and was once widely celebrated as a key figure in the country’s liberation movement as he spent 10 years in prison with former President Nelson Mandela

The Department of Correctional Services “can confirm that former president Jacob Zuma has today, 6 August 2021, been admitted to an outside hospital for medical observation,” it said in a statement.

Zuma is scheduled to attend the resumption of a long-running corruption trial on Aug. 10.

The hearing will include a plea to drop 16 charges of fraud, graft and racketeering against him related to the 1999 purchase of fighter jets, patrol boats and equipment from five European arms firms when he was deputy president.

He is accused of taking bribes from one of the firms, French defence giant Thales, which has been charged with corruption and money laundering. Proceedings have been repeatedly postponed for more than a decade, sparking accusations of delaying tactics.

In a separate case, Zuma was handed a 15-month jail sentence in late June for snubbing a commission probing state corruption under his 2009-19 presidency.

Zuma began his sentence on July 8 at Estcourt prison.

Recall the US President, Joe Biden, promised to donate 80 million vaccines to Africa with another promise of 500 million vaccines to low-income and middle-income countries.

The Minister of health, Osagie Ehanire, during a press briefing, had also disclosed that Nigeria was expecting no fewer than 41 million vaccines before the end of 2021 while others will be coming in 2022 to enable the country to vaccinate at least 70 per cent of the entire population.

A report by Reuters on Wednesday morning, however, stated that out of the 10 million vaccine doses to be shipped, four million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine will go to Nigeria and 5.66 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to South Africa, the officials said.

The South Africa shipment is the single largest sent by the United States since it began sending vaccine shots overseas, one of the officials said. The latest shipments bring the total number of US vaccine doses sent to Africa to 16.4 million.

The urgently needed help comes amid growing concern about vaccination rates in Africa, which lag far behind those of advanced economies.

As of last week, African countries had administered just 60 million vaccine doses to a population that numbers over 1.3 billion, in part due to restrictions on shipments from vaccine-producing countries like India.

The country’s top court, which ordered Zuma jailed for refusing to appear before a corruption probe, is holding a review of its decision with a ruling expected later on whether the sentence will be upheld.

The 79-year-old former anti-apartheid fighter remains popular, especially in his native KwaZulu-Natal province where he is seen to embody traditional values.

KwaZulu-Natal was hit hard by protests over the weekend, and on Monday flames could be seen coming from the roof of a shopping centre in provincial capital Pietermaritzburg as hordes of people rushed in to loot.

In Eshowe, a town near Zuma’s Nkandla home, police opened fire to disperse crowds after a supermarket was ransacked early on Monday.

Police said some sections of a major road in Johannesburg had been closed because of the protests.

Dozens of cars were torched over the weekend in Johannesburg and KwaZulu-Natal, where protests erupted a day after Zuma was imprisoned on Thursday.

Police said dozens have been arrested.

Although some of the protests appear to have been triggered by Zuma’s 15-month detention for contempt of court, they are tied in with economic hardship and tightened restrictions brought on by a third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.