Falters

With a coordinated show of strength, Zanu-PF packed public hearings on a Constitutional Amendment Bill that seeks to extend President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s tenure to 2030. Supporters were ferried from towns such as Beatrice to sessions in Dema and Chitungwiza, where some filed written affidavits endorsing the proposal. The hearings again laid bare the opposition’s disarray, with its leaders struggling to mobilize a counter-presence. Opposition figures, meanwhile, accused the Parliamentary Committee running the hearings of…

SOUTH AFRICA — South Africa faces what health researchers call a “vaping crisis” among adolescents while a long-promised overhaul of the country’s tobacco laws sits largely dormant. The draft Tobacco Bill published in 2018 — designed to extend smoke-free public spaces, introduce plain packaging and ban point-of-sale displays for both cigarettes and electronic cigarettes — has yet to clear the long road from proposal to law, leaving regulators and public-health advocates alarmed as youth nicotine use climbs. A 2024 study of…