Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, who has died aged 85, took charge of Egypt from the ousting of its president, Hosni Mubarak, in February 2011 until a return to democracy with the election of Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in June 2012.

Despite being a pillar of the former regime – “Mubarak’s poodle” to some – Tantawi was given the job in response to the demands of a huge protest movement. He was respected for his decency and clean human rights record, though he became the focus of anger in his own right when demonstrators returned to the streets to protest against the army’s handling of the transition.

Government and military sources say a group of officers had tried to occupy state media building

A coup attempt in Sudan has failed, state media has reported, as the country grapples with a fragile transition since the 2019 ousting of the longtime president Omar al-Bashir.

Top military and government sources said on Tuesday the attempt involved a group of officers who were “immediately suspended” after they failed to take over the state media building.

With poverty deepening, state services are failing to cope with rising rates of addiction

Kola* was in secondary school in Nigeria when he started smoking cigarettes. He soon graduated to cannabis, heroin and eventually to crack cocaine. Access to drugs was easy and he felt the pressure of friends to participate.

In 2002, when he was 39, he was introduced to a private drug rehabilitation centre in Ibadan, in the south-west of the country, where he spent 90 days weaning himself off his addiction.

A terrifying contagion spreads in this chilling South African eco-horror that takes the fun out of fungi

The mushroom is having a moment. Its magical qualities and deep connection with the Earth have been explored in numerous recent releases, including Louie Schwarzberg’s Fantastic Fungi. Also journeying into the curious kingdom of the fungus, this psychedelic eco-horror directed by Jaco Bouwer reimagines the mushroom as an environmental avenger that awes and petrifies all at once.

Deep in the belly of the lush Tsitsikamma national park in South Africa, forest ranger Gabi (Monique Rockman) gets seriously injured after stepping on a makeshift trap. Rescued by Barend (Carel Nel) and Stefan (Alex van Dyk), a father-and-son survivalist duo, Gabi soon finds out, to her horror, that they are not alone. Mushrooms of all colours, shapes and sizes are sprouting, not only on trees and inside darkened hollows but also on Gabi’s own body. The contagion is beautiful and macabre, turning the infected into zombie-like creatures covered in colourful spores, blindly roaming around in the dark.

They may be vine-smothered ruins today, but the lost cities of the ancient tropics still have a lot to teach us about how to live alongside nature. By Patrick Roberts

Paul Rusesabagina, an ex-hotel manager, featured in a Hollywood film about the 1994 genocide

A Rwandan court has ruled that Paul Rusesabagina, a former hotel manager portrayed as a hero in a Hollywood film about the 1994 genocide, is guilty of terrorism-related charges.

“They should be found guilty for being part of this terror group – MRCD-FLN,” said judge Beatrice Mukamurenzi on Monday. “They attacked people in their homes, or even in their cars on the road travelling.”

Droughts and floods forcing workers from rural areas, leading to their exploitation in cities, report warns

Millions of people forced to leave their homes because of severe drought and powerful cyclones are at risk of modern slavery and human trafficking over the coming decades, a new report warns.

The climate crisis and the increasing frequency of extreme weather disasters including floods, droughts and megafires are having a devastating effect on the livelihoods of people already living in poverty and making them more vulnerable to slavery, according to the report, published today.

Postmortems showed the African penguins had multiple stings around their eyes

A swarm of bees has killed 63 endangered African penguins on a beach outside Cape Town, the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds said.

The protected birds were found dead in Simon’s Town, a small town near Cape Town home to a colony of penguins, and taken for post-mortems.

York Theatre Royal
Tonderai Munyevu’s semi-autographical show addresses Zimbabwe’s traumatic history with honesty and humour

Clothes hang in broken rows above the bare stage (Nicolai Hart-Hansen’s design). Dresses, suits, uniforms – they are presences that suggest absences, the “ghosts” of the people in the stories that Tonderai Munyevu and Millie Chapanda are bringing to life through words and music.

The text of Mugabe, My Dad & Me, written by Munyevu, is an assemblage of the events that have shaped his complicated identity as a “gay, black Zimbabwean man”. The narrative is set in motion by a white man’s question: “Where are you from?” Never shrinking from confronting the (overwhelmingly white) audience with the lazy tropes of the colonial mindset, Munyevu sets before us intersecting histories, both personal and political, “bouncing, non-linear” between Zimbabwe and the UK, past and present.

Campaigners fear ban emboldens anti-choice governments as more aggressive opposition, better organised and funded, spreads from US

The new anti-abortion law in Texas is a “terrifying” reminder of the fragility of hard-won rights, pro-choice activists have said, as they warn of a “more aggressive, much better organised [and] better funded” global opposition movement.

Pro-choice campaigners have seen several victories in recent years, including in Ireland, Argentina and, most recently, Mexico, where the supreme court ruled last week that criminalising abortion was unconstitutional. Another is hoped for later this month when the tiny enclave of San Marino, landlocked within Italy, holds a highly charged referendum.

Bouteflika, an independence war veteran, was ousted during pro-democracy protests in 2019

Algeria’s longest-serving president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was ousted in 2019 amid pro-democracy protests after two decades in power, has died aged 84.

The state television announcement on Friday, citing a statement from the office of the current president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, did not provide the cause of death.

Cambodia hopes to reopen schools closed for months; parts of Africa could be ‘breeding grounds for vaccine-resistant variants’, says WHO

• New Zealand extends Australia travel bubble pause as cases drop to 11
• Experts divided over Covid booster shots days ahead of US rollout
• Long Covid in children and adolescents less common than feared
• Alberta reverses hands-off approach to tackle ‘crisis of unvaccinated’
• France suspends 3,000 unvaccinated health workers without pay

Cambodia starts to vaccinate six- to 11-year-olds

Cambodia began vaccinating six- to 11-year-olds on Friday as part of a programme to reopen schools that have been closed for months.

Photographer Tommy Trenchard documents students whose stories of transformation at the Hogwarts of South Africa are more than just fairytales

To fans of JK Rowling’s books, the story may sound somewhat familiar: a young boy living in difficult circumstances is enrolled in a mysterious school far from home, where his life is changed for ever by the transformative power of magic.

Anele Dyasi’s story is no fairytale, though, and the school in question is not Hogwarts, but the College of Magic in Cape Town, a unique institution that has been training some of the continent’s most skilled illusionists since the 1980s.

Above and right: performers from the College of Magic on stage at Cape Town’s Artscape theatre centre

Fikile Ntshangase was involved in a legal dispute over the extension of an opencast mine when she was shot dead in her home. Her daughter Malungelo Kakaza tells her story to Rachel Humphreys

In October last year, Fikile Ntshangase, 65, was at her home in Ophondweni in South Africa when three men burst in and she was shot dead. The murder was witnessed by her 13-year-old grandson. No one has so far been charged with any part in the crime.

Ntshangase’s daughter Malungelo Kakaza tells Rachel Humphreys that her mother had been involved in a legal dispute over the extension of an opencast mine operated by Tendele Coal near Somkhele, close to Hluhluwe–Imfolozi park, the oldest nature reserve in Africa. She campaigned as part of the Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation.

York Theatre Royal
Tonderai Munyevu reflects on the men who have loomed large in his life in a thought-provoking show

‘Where are you from?” It’s a question that writer and actor Tonderai Munyevu gets a lot. In the opening moments of Mugabe, My Dad and Me, he recalls it being asked by a white man he was serving in a bar, who went on to offer strong, ill-informed opinions about Munyevu’s native Zimbabwe. This show is Munyevu’s response.

As the title suggests, it revolves around two men who have loomed large in Munyevu’s life, each shaped by Zimbabwe’s violent colonial history: controversial former president Robert Mugabe, and Munyevu’s heavy-drinking, often absent father. He traces the outlines of their lives both before and after Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, interspersed with his own experience as a member of the diaspora, having moved to the UK as a child. It’s an ambitious piece, tackling colonialism, neo-colonialism and different understandings of land, ownership and belonging.

At York Theatre Royal until 18 September; 2022 tour to be announced.

Covid-19 has shown the effectiveness of local partners. If the sector is to respond and rebuild, it must redistribute power

The UK’s cut to its aid budget comes to about £4bn a year. Such a dramatic reduction is a blow to many, but most of all to the local organisations who perpetually find themselves last in line for funding.

New research by the Vodafone Foundation reveals that, too often, only a small proportion of philanthropic funding earmarked for African development reaches local, African-led civil society organisations. Instead, most development funding favours intermediaries in the global north and international organisations.

Emmanuel Macron claims ‘major success’ against Sahrawi’s group, which has been blamed for killing US and French troops in the troubled Sahel region

Emmanuel Macron has said French military forces have killed the leader of Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi.

“It’s another major success in our fight against terrorist groups in the Sahel,” the French president said on Wednesday night, without disclosing the location of the operation.

National disaster declared as crops fail after poor rains and locusts, while ethnic conflicts add to crisis

An estimated 2.1 million Kenyans face starvation due to a drought in half the country, which is affecting harvests.

The National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) said people living in 23 counties across the arid north, northeastern and coastal parts of the country will be in “urgent need” of food aid over the next six months, after poor rains between March and May this year.

The Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado has been named as one of four winners of a £400,000 award given by the Japan Art Association. Amazonia, an exhibition by Salgado, opens at the Science Museum in London from 13 October. An exhibition of collectors prints, organised by the Photographers’ Gallery, is on show at Cromwell Place Art Centre from 20 October

Because of hoarding by rich countries, those in the global south on the frontline of the crisis will be excluded from the talks

• Mohamed Adow is the director of the climate and energy thinktank Power Shift Africa

As a Kenyan from a farming community that has experienced the ravages of the climate crisis, no one is keener to see a successful climate summit held in Glasgow than me. But this year, due to restrictions placed by the pandemic on those attending from the global south, I fear Cop26 will not be a success. It is because of this that it must be postponed until next spring.

The UK government is aware of the issues facing those wishing to attend the conference in person, which is why it has offered vaccines to delegates unable to receive them in their home countries and to pay for their hotel quarantine. However, obstacles still remain. The vaccine rollout has been slow, and for those receiving the AstraZeneca jab, the deadline for receiving both doses within eight to 12 weeks of the conference starting has passed.

Mohamed Adow is the director of the climate and energy thinktank Power Shift Africa