“I cannot work like this if you, all the political parties, cannot reach a common ground,” Nahid quoted Yunus as saying. He urged the interim leader to “remain strong”, stressing the hopes the public had pinned on him after the July uprising that ousted the Awami League government.
“It has been three weeks since my donkeys became sick,” said Guluma. “One has a leg problem and the other has a stomach issue.”Like many, Guluma depends on his donkeys for his livelihood, using them to transport jerrycans of water for sale in his community.
“After they became ill, I couldn’t buy bread for my children,” he said. “I begged a guy to bring me here.”According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Ethiopia was home to some nine million donkeys as of 2018. In this East African nation of approximately 130 million people, donkeys play a chief economic role, ploughing fields and transporting goods – offering a low-cost alternative to vehicles at a time when the price of fuel has soared.Another regular visitor, Chane Baye, earns his living by using his two donkeys to transport sacks of grain across the city for clients. His income can range from 200 to 400 birr per day (approximately $1.50 to $3) – a decent sum in a country where a third of the population lives below the World Bank’s poverty line of $2.15 a day.
The 61-year-old seeks out the clinic every three months or so – “whenever they start limping or have a stomach problem”, he said.“Before this clinic, we used traditional ways to treat them,” he explained, describing how nails were once crudely removed from the animals’ legs with a knife. He is grateful that his donkeys now have access to professional care for their injuries and infections.
At the clinic, vet Derege Tsegay demonstrates the less glamorous side of his work by performing a routine but unpleasant procedure – reaching deep into a distressed donkey’s rectum, clad in a rubber glove.
Derege removes a large mass of stool that had accumulated in the animal’s digestive tract.“And we had a lot of people, I must tell you Mr. President [Ramaphosa], we have had a tremendous number of people, especially since they’ve seen this – generally they’re white farmers, and they’re fleeing South Africa.”
Earlier this month, 59 white South Africansas part of a refugee programme set up by Trump to offer sanctuary to them.
Trump’s claim echoes white nationalist beliefs that legislation in South Africa aimed at rectifying apartheid is now, in fact, discriminatory against the Afrikaner community.Right-wing organisations, such as the Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, have been championing a narrative that Afrikaners are under an existential threat.