Nine suspected members of a German far-right group accused of plotting to overthrow the government and install a minor royal as leader went on trial at a high-security courtroom in Stuttgart on Monday.

Prosecutors will open their case against individuals tied to the Reichsbürger (Citizens of the Reich) movement. In all, 27 people face charges, including high treason and belonging to a terror organization, but they will be tried in three separate courtrooms in different cities.

The plot to overthrow the government and install martial law was exposed in 2022. The nine defendants in court on Monday — including former soldiers and judges, as well as a member of parliament for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) — are accused of participating in the “military arm” of the Reichsbürger, which espouses conspiracy-based theories regarding sovereignty and rejects the concept of the post-war German state.

The three trials together, across Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Munich, account for one of the biggest anti-terror cases in Germany’s modern history.

Businessman Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss allegedly led the plot. The defendants were believed to have planned the resurrection of the German Reich through violence, storming the German Bundestag — the national parliament — and kidnapping the country’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss is a descendant of the House of Reuss, the former ruling family of parts of eastern Germany.

“The aim of the organization was to violently eliminate the existing state order in Germany and replace it with its own form of government, the main features of which had already been worked out,” the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court said in a statement before the trial.

“The members of the group were united by a deep rejection of state institutions and the free democratic basic order,“ the court said, adding that the defendants had followed a “conglomerate of conspiracy myths.“

Those accused knew the “violent takeover would have involved killing people,” the statement said.

In December, Germany’s Federal Public Prosecutor General issued an indictment against the defendants, saying they “are accused of belonging to a terrorist organization founded at the end of July 2021.”

All of the defendants are charged with participating in a terrorist organization and preparing a highly treasonous enterprise, according to the court.

Two of the defendants are accused of violating the Weapons and War Weapons Control Act. “One of these two defendants is also accused of attempted murder, dangerous bodily harm, resisting and assaulting law enforcement officers,“ according to the court.

Brazilian UFC fighter Renato Moicano had just rallied back from an early-round beating to win a lightweight bout this month when he grabbed a mic to shout out his favorite economist.

“I love private property and let me tell you something, if you care about your country, read Ludwig von Mises and the six lessons of the Austrian economic school,” Moicano, his cheekbone bloodied, roared, along with a pair of profanities.

Footage of the mixed martial artist’s tribute soon went viral on social media, where many in the United States were quick to comment on the seemingly bizarre incongruity of the scene.

But for those with their fingers on the pulse of Latin American politics, it likely appeared far less surprising. Because in South and Central America, the Austrian-American laissez-faire champion Mises, who died in 1973, is having something of a moment.

In recent years, the free-market economist and the contrarian Austrian school he led midcentury have been turned into a hashtag deployed by tax-wary workers. A rash of think tanks and media influencers who champion his ideas have consolidated his influence. And in El Salvador and Argentina, Mises’ ideas have made their way into the speeches and policies of presidents.

“Ludwig von Mises is Latin America’s leading economist,” declared the headline of a Bloomberg opinion piece earlier this month by economist Tyler Cowen.

The one-time principal economic adviser to the Austrian government, Mises fled his homeland in 1934 to escape the growing Nazi reach, eventually settling in the US, where he became a professor at New York University. His free-market policy prescriptions, framed by an economic thinking centered on human behavior and individual choice, were widely considered out of fashion at the time.

But his strident rejection of socialism has found a foothold in places like Brazil, where a “Less Marx, More Mises” movement has swelled over the past 15 years in a backlash to the ruling center left party, propelled by the growth of social media and a series of corruption scandals, according to Camila Rocha, a political scientist and researcher at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning.

The movement is especially popular among young male students and low-income workers such as Uber drivers and street vendors “who started feeling and thinking like entrepreneurs” and “don’t want to pay taxes anymore,” she said. Moicano has said he began studying economics after facing taxes on his first UFC winnings.

In 2015, the “Less Marx, More Mises” slogan made its way onto the posters brandished by protesters in Brazil’s massive right-wing demonstrations, which foreshadowed the rise of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who would later embrace the libertarian flank.

From Mises to Milei

Today, many experts believe the Austrian school may have no greater sway than in Buenos Aires, where President Javier Milei, himself a libertarian economist, retweeted a viral clip of Moicano’s rant.

After reading Mises for the first time, Milei felt “superlative conceptual clarity,” he recalled in a 2017 interview. “Milei considers Mises to be among the greatest economists in history,” said Daniel Raisbeck, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Since taking office in December, the wild-haired leader has pushed for wide deregulation. While many of his proposals have been blocked by the country’s congress, his government achieved fiscal parity this year with a robust and controversial set of cuts, including shutting down the Argentina national press agency and reducing aid to soup kitchens.

Milei’s elimination of rent controls and price controls could be interpreted as harking back to Mises, Raisbeck said, pointing to the Austrian’s thinking that “freely determined prices provide the vital information without which economic calculation becomes impossible.”

But the idea has also been espoused by free market economists outside the Austrian school, like Milton Friedman, (after whom one of Milei’s dogs is named), Raisbeck said.

Instead, Raisbeck said, Mises’s fingerprints might be clearest in Milei’s anti-socialist rhetoric, like his January speech before the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he argued the West had to be wrested back from leaders “co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism and thereby to poverty.”

Mises-watchers also see strands of the economist’s thinking in the policies pushed by El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, another buzzy right-winger upending the Latin American political scene.

Remarks from Bukele earlier this year to the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington were awash in “language familiar to the Austrians,” reads a blog post on the website of the Mises Institute, a non-profit promoting the economist’s teachings.

Rocha, the Brazilian researcher, highlights local offshoots of the Mises Institutes and other libertarian centers as being “very skilled at disseminating their ideas to a broader audience in Latin America.”

Still, few mentions of Mises seem to have had as big an impact on the mainstream in recent years as Moicano’s: as the clip went viral, Google search interest for the economist hit its highest since 2016, according to the company.

The fighter’s salute to Mises led to a live TV interview on Fox Business and a nearly nine-minute celebration from Ben Shapiro, the right-wing commentator whose YouTube videos can rack up millions of views. “That is my jam!” Shapiro said of the Austrian school.

It’s also driven traffic toward Moicano’s YouTube channel and a new podcast, which might be considered no bad thing in the mind of a free-market capitalist.

“If you start to understand the concept of the Austrian economic school,” Moicano said in a recent YouTube video, “you’re going to understand that’s what I need: free market, liberties, and wealth, my brother. That’s the whole thing.”

Prince Harry will return to the United Kingdom in May to celebrate a milestone anniversary of the Invictus Games, the biennial sporting competition he founded a decade ago.

The Duke of Sussex will give a reading at a ceremony at London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral on May 8, to mark 10 years of the Invictus Games and its foundation, it announced on Sunday.

The last time the prince was back in his home country was in February, on a swift visit after his father King Charles’ cancer diagnosis was announced

Harry spoke of that diagnosis later than month, telling ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he “jumped on a plane and went to go see him as soon as I could.”

“I love my family. The fact that I was able to get on a plane and go see and spend any time with him, I’m grateful for that,” he added.

It was not immediately clear if the prince will meet with his relatives during the trip next month.

The duke and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex relocated to the United States in 2020. In the years since, Harry, 39, has made several fleeting trips back to the UK, most notably attending the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 and his father’s coronation last year.

It is also not yet clear whether Meghan would accompany her husband to the Invictus celebration. But it could be challenging for the mom-of-two as the event at St. Paul’s falls two days after Prince Archie’s fifth birthday on May 6.

Buckingham Palace announced Charles, who is still undergoing treatment, is set to return to public-facing duties on Tuesday. His medical team were said to have been “sufficiently pleased” with his progress and “remain positive” at his recovery.

His diary will be managed carefully with decisions about which events he’ll take on made closer to the time in consultation with his doctors. The King will not carry out a full summer program, the palace said, but he will welcome Japan’s Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako for a state visit in June.

The Invictus Games were established by Prince Harry after his deployment in Afghanistan. They aim to support recovery for wounded, injured and sick service personnel and veterans, according to the foundation’s website.

The next Invictus Games will be held in Vancouver and Whistler in Canada in February 2025. More than 500 competitors from over 20 nations will compete in adaptive sports such as indoor rowing, sitting volleyball, swimming, wheelchair rugby and wheelchair basketball.

Winter sports will also be played for the first time at the Vancouver Whistler games, including Alpine skiing and snowboarding, Nordic skiing and biathlon, skeleton and wheelchair curling.

The games will be held in partnership with the First Nations “in the spirit of truth and reconciliation with Indigenous communities,” Harry said on the games’ website.

In a press release, the Nigerian Defense Headquarters expressed “honor and delight” over the duke and duchess’s trip.

“During their stay in the country, they will be meeting with service members and will be hosted to arrays of cultural activities,” the press release said.

The possibility of Nigeria hosting the Invictus Games in the future will also be discussed, according to the press release.

On her podcast Archetypes, Markle has previously said that she is “43 percent Nigerian.”

Two Ukrainian servicemen were stabbed to death at a shopping center in southern Germany Saturday evening, by a suspected Russian national, German and Ukrainian authorities say.

German police say a 36-year-old man died on the scene in the city of Murnau, and a 23-year-old man died later that evening at a nearby hospital.

Both Ukrainian men were residents of the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen and had been in Germany undergoing medical rehabilitation.

A 57-year-old suspected Russian national was arrested at his home not far from the scene, according to German authorities.

A criminal investigation is underway for the suspected double murder.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry issued a statement with similar information.

“On April 27, two Ukrainian citizens, men born in 1987 and 2001, were killed by stabbing in Murnau am Stafelsee, Bavaria, Germany, at a local shopping center.

“According to preliminary information, the deceased citizens were military personnel undergoing medical rehabilitation in Germany,” the ministry said.

This is a developing story and will be updated

A pair of Russian journalists have been detained on “extremism” charges and face accusations of working for a group founded by the late Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny.

Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin are accused of producing content for Navalny’s prominent YouTube channel, “NavalnyLIVE,” which publishes videos investigating corruption in the Kremlin that have amassed millions of views.

Russian authorities have designated Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison in February, and his organizations as “extremist.” Members of his team have previously been imprisoned and many live in exile.

Gabov was allegedly involved in the “preparation of photo and video materials” for the YouTube channel, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court press service said. He was arrested Saturday and will remain in detention until June 27.

Karelin was arrested in Russia’s northwest Murmansk region on Saturday and is accused of “participation in an extremist organization.” He previously worked for a number of outlets including the Associated Press (AP) and German publication Deutsche Welle (DW), until DW was banned in Russia in 2022.

An AP photo showed Karelin, who has dual Russian-Israeli citizenship, sitting in a glass cage in a Murmansk court on Saturday.

The pair’s detention comes amid a heightened crackdown in Russia on journalists and Kremlin critics, as President Vladimir Putin has sought to stifle dissent more fiercely than before the invasion of Ukraine.

Forbes journalist Sergey Mingazov was also placed under house arrest Saturday after he was detained for allegedly spreading fake news about the Russian army, state media RIA Novosti reported.

Navalny was Putin’s most formidable political opponent before his death in a penal colony, where he was serving a more-than-30-year sentence on extremism charges. Navalny’s family and supporters have accused Putin of being responsible for his death, a claim rejected by the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin’s forces have made further gains in at least three locations along the eastern front in Ukraine – including for the first time in several months an advance in the northern Kharkiv region – highlighting again Kyiv’s need for ammunition and weapons from the United States and other allies.

The latest developments reflect the new tempo on the battlefield since the fall of the industrial town of Avdiivka in February.

Russia’s tactical advances are now daily. They are generally modest -– from a few hundred meters of territory to perhaps a kilometer at most – but they are usually taking place in several locations at once.

From the Ukrainian perspective, the losses are also being accompanied by more public expressions of criticism of the armed forces over the military’s official battlefield updates.

Among the areas continuing to witness some of the greatest Russian pressure are a handful of small settlements to the northeast, and to the south, of Ocheretyne, a large village on a ridge about 16 kms (10 miles) west of Avdiivka, in the Donetsk region.

Ukraine’s DeepState monitoring group, which updates daily changes in frontline positions, shows Russian forces pushing forward in eight different locations along 20-25 kms of frontline in one 24-hour period.

Military bloggers on both sides broadly agree that Russian forces have crossed a water course and taken control of the settlements of Semenivka and Berdychi. A few kilometers to the north, Soloviove is now also reported to be in Russian hands, and the tiny settlement of Keramik at least partially so as well.

“The withdrawal in the Donetsk operational zone continues,” the Ukrainian military blogger Myroshnykov writes, expressing concerns that Russian troops could soon move south towards Karlivka – where they could cross the Vovcha River – joining up with other Russian units pushing westwards from recently-captured Pervomaiske.

Criticism of military communications

Myroshnykov and the DeepState site both take aim at official Ukrainian communications, accusing the armed forces of unrealistic updates from the battlefield.

DeepState, in a post on Telegram, published a graphic video of a Russian soldier being killed in a drone strike in the village of Soloviove – but used the clip to argue that isolated incidents can mask the bigger picture, which it accused the military of doing as well.

“You can watch with pleasure forever the video of a Russian (soldier) being torn to pieces,” DeepState wrote, “but nearby there is another location that requires attention: Muscovites calmly moving around the village, keeping it under control. The (Ukrainian) Defense Forces inflict fire damage on them, and one can repeat at least a billion times (on national television) that two-thirds of the village is under the control of the Ukrainian military, but the picture of reality is completely different.”

That assessment – that two-thirds of Soloviove village was under Ukrainian control – was made by Nazar Voloshyn, spokesperson of the Khortytsia operational-strategic group, on Ukrainian TV on Saturday. Nearby Ocheretyne was also still two-thirds controlled by Ukraine, which had things in hand, he said.

“The part of the settlement into which the enemy broke through, is under our fire control. The enemy is blocked and measures are being taken to knock (Russian troops) out. Heavy fighting continues there, but the situation is under the control of the (Ukrainian) Armed Forces,” he said.

For its part, DeepState sees it differently, assessing that Russian troops have been in control of the center of Ocheretyne village, including the railway station, for at least three days. Last week, the monitoring site made a similar complaint against the military accusing “some spokespersons” of incompetence.

As part of his interview on Ukrainian television, Voloshyn also addressed the situation further north, along that part of the frontline that cuts into Kharkiv region, describing Russian forces there as having become “significantly more active” over the past day.

Russia last made small gains in the region in late January and early February, but DeepState assesses a new advance of between one and two kilometers into the village of Kyslivka. Overall, the frontlines in this region have been relatively stable since Ukraine recaptured a large swath of territory in Kharkiv region in late summer of 2022.

Russian forces are also making headway west of Donetsk city, entering the industrial town of Krasnohorivka from the south and the east.

Fierce fighting has been reported around a large brick factory. One Russian military blogger wrote of the battle’s importance: “The liberation (sic) of the refractory plant would actually mean the fall of the Krasnohorivka fortification, as the northern outskirts of the settlement are private buildings, which will be too difficult to defend if the plant is lost.”

More short-term setbacks

Many Western analysts, along with Ukrainian officials, see Russia’s current stepped-up tempo as a precursor to a major offensive attempt later this spring. It is also assumed Moscow wants to take advantage of its significant advantage in ammunition before US supplies – greenlit last week after six months of political stasis – get to the frontlines.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assesses that there will be more short-term setbacks for Ukraine, though without major strategic defeats.

“Russian forces will likely make significant tactical gains in the coming weeks as Ukraine waits for US security assistance to arrive at the front but remain unlikely to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses,” it writes.

Ukraine’s other major quantitative weakness, which also helps explain recent battlefield trajectories, is manpower. A new mobilization law comes into effect next month, which is expected to improve conscription processes. But Kyiv has proved highly reluctant to say clearly how many more soldiers it needs, while Moscow keeps increasing numbers.

“The quality (of Russian fighters) of course varies, but the quantitative advantage is a serious problem, Rob Lee of Foreign Policy Research Institute, writes on X.

“Without (its) manpower advantage, Russia’s artillery and airpower advantage would not be sufficient for Russia to make gains on the battlefield. The relative manpower situation is likely the most important factor that will determine the war’s trajectory, particularly if Russia can sustain recruiting 20-30k a month,” Lee adds.

At least five people were killed and 33 injured in a tornado Saturday that struck Guangzhou, a city of 19 million people in southern China, according to Chinese state media.

Authorities say 141 factory buildings were damaged but no residential houses collapsed, according to the Xinhua news agency. It said a preliminary assessment put the tornado at level-three intensity, two below the highest level of five.

Guangzhou, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) from Hong Kong, is the capital city of Guangdong province.

A weather station in Liangtian Village, Baiyun District, about 1.7 miles from where the tornado hit, registered a maximum wind gust of 20.6 meters per second, Xinhua reported.

As of 10 p.m. local time, search and rescue operations had ended.

The tornado follows multiple days of heavy rains that have lashed southern China, unleashing deadly floods and threatening to upend the lives of tens of millions of people as rescuers rush to evacuate residents trapped by rising waters.

Guangdong province, an economic powerhouse home to 127 million people, has seen widespread flooding that has forced more than 110,000 people to be relocated, state media reported, citing the local government.

Earlier this week state media reported that floods had killed at least four people in Guangdong.

Since April 16, sustained torrential rains have pounded the Pearl River Delta, China’s manufacturing heartland and one of the country’s most populated regions, with four weather stations in Guangdong registering record rainfall for April.

The Pearl River basin is subject to annual flooding from April to September, but the region has faced more intense rainstorms and severe floods in recent years as scientists warn that the climate crisis will amplify extreme weather, making it deadlier and more frequent.

While tornadoes do not occur as frequently in China as they do in the US, they do happen. A peer-reviewed scientific article from 2015 found that China averages fewer than 100 tornadoes per year, and that at least 1,772 people had died from tornadoes in the country in the 50 years since 1961.

The China Meteorological Agency is warning heavy rain and strong storms are likely to continue until the end of the month.

A Russian court has placed Forbes journalist Sergey Mingazov under house arrest after he was detained for allegedly spreading fake news about the Russian armed forces, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti has reported.

Forbes Russia says its journalist will be under house arrest for at least two months as he awaits trial after being detained on Friday.

RIA reported on Saturday that: “Forbes journalist Mingazov, detained in the case of spreading fake (news) about the Russian Armed Forces, has been placed under house arrest.”

On Friday, Mingazov’s lawyer Konstantin Bubon said that the journalist had been detained for “reposting a publication about the events in Bucha (Ukraine)” on Telegram.

Mingazov’s Telegram channel had 476 subscribers at the time of publishing this article. It shows that he reposted stories about the Russian military allegedly committing atrocities in Bucha, near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, from other news outlets such as the BBC’s Russian outlet and Radio Freedom.

Bubon said that Mingazov is accused of spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian armed forces “under the guise” of reliable reporting.

The city of Bucha was liberated by Ukrainian forces at the end of March 2022, having been occupied near the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February the same year. According to the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office, the Russian army committed thousands of war crimes in the Bucha district, with hundreds of civilians killed in the town. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the mass killings and has reiterated baseless claims that the images of civilian bodies were fake.

Internet ban imposed

Bubon told Forbes Russia that Mingazov’s house arrest was enforced as a “preventative measure.” In Russia, preventative measures take place pre-trial and include being remanded in custody, released on bail, or placed under house arrest.

Bubon also told Forbes Russia that the court had banned Mingazov from using the internet and imposed restrictions on his communications with people other than relatives, investigators, lawyers, and medical professionals.

On Saturday, without naming Mingazov, Khabarovsk territory’s Investigative Committee stated that it had chosen house arrest “as a preventative measure,” after charging a man with the public dissemination of knowingly false information about the Russian armed forces.

“In April 2022, a man, acting out of political hatred, posted a publication on a news channel he administers, intended for viewing by an unlimited number of people,” the Investigative Committee alleged.

“It contained, under the guise of being reliable, deliberately false information about… the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,” it continued.

Russia has been cracking down on journalists since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Several prominent journalists have been arrested, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty editor Alsu Kurmasheva and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

Courts have also ordered the arrests in absentia of several journalists for criticizing the state, including Alexander Nevzorov, Dmitry Gordon, and Marina Ovsyannikova.

On Saturday, a local Russian court press service said that Konstantin Gabov, a Russian journalist it said worked as a producer for the Reuters news agency, was detained and accused of “extremism.”

Gabov allegedly helped to produce content for a YouTube channel associated with late opposition leader Alexey Navalny called “NavalnyLIVE,” the Basmanny District Court press service said.

The court said Gabov was involved in the “preparation of photo and video materials” for the YouTube channel and would remain in detention for at least two months, until June 27.

Russian authorities designated Navalny and his organizations as “extremist,” meaning anyone associating with his group faces a legal risk.

Iraq has passed a new law that penalizes same-sex relations with up to 15 years in prison, a move condemned by rights advocates as the latest attack on the country’s LGBTQ community.

The Iraqi parliament on Saturday passed a bill amending a 1988 anti-prostitution law to cover acts including “promoting homosexuality” – now punishable with up to seven years in prison – and “biological sex changes based on personal desires and inclination.”

Transgender individuals and doctors who perform gender reassignment surgery face up to three years in prison under the new law, though it excludes cases of medical intervention to “treat birth defects to affirm the sex of the individual” following a court order.

The punishments are less severe than those originally sought by Raad al-Maliki, the independent Iraqi lawmaker who introduced the bill in August 2023. He had sought to impose penalties of life imprisonment and death for same-sex relations.

However, the vast majority of the 170 lawmakers who attended the parliamentary session Saturday – out of a total of 329 – were in favor of adopting the bill with the reduced sentences.

Mohsen Al-Mandalawi, the acting parliamentary speaker, said the new legislation was aimed at “protecting the moral fabric” of society.

“There is no place for homosexuality in Iraq, the land of prophets, pure imams, and righteous saints,” Al-Mandalawi said in a statement on Saturday.

‘I’d rather die’ than stay in Iraq

Samar, a member of Baghdad’s LGBTQ community, said the legislation was “unfair” and part of a wider “trend” toward homophobia in the country.

Many in the LGBTQ community, including herself, are now desperate to leave the country, she added.

“I have my own business, which I started a long time ago, gathering money so I can leave Iraq, whether legally or illegally. From the amount of pressure I face, I’ve reached a stage of despair. Let it be illegal migration; I’d rather die on the way than stay in Iraq,” Samar said.

Samar also claimed the vote on the bill had been delayed so that it came after the recent meeting between Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and US President Joe Biden.

Samar called on the US and other countries to put diplomatic pressure on the Iraqi government to revoke the law.

“I want to voice a demand from the queers in Iraq, not only to the American embassy in Iraq but to all embassies of countries that put human rights as a priority, that they intervene against this law and use diplomatic pressure to end the crimes that are going to happen because of it.”

Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the US Department of State, expressed deep concern over the new legislation, saying it could severely restrict free speech and expression, hinder NGO activities, and diminish Iraq’s appeal to foreign investors by undermining human rights and economic diversity.

He warned that international business coalitions have already signaled that such discriminatory practices could negatively impact Iraq’s economic growth.

“Respect for human rights and political and economic inclusion is essential for Iraq’s security, stability, and prosperity. This legislation is inconsistent with these values and undermines the government’s political and economic reform efforts,” Miller said on Saturday.

Sarah Sanbar, Human Rights Watch’s Iraq researcher, described the new law as “a horrific development and an attack on human rights.”

“Rather than focusing on enacting laws that would benefit Iraqis – like passing the draft domestic violence law or draft child protection law – Iraq is choosing to codify discrimination against LGBT people,” she tweeted.

Seth Mazibuko strides into the intersection of Moema and Vilakazi Street in Soweto, gesturing to the spot that changed South African history.

“This is where the students who were marching peacefully had a first confrontation with the police,” he says.

It was June 16, 1976. Mazibuko had turned 16 the day before. Tens of thousands of students, mostly still just children, streamed through the township to protest the racist education system of apartheid.

For decades, apartheid forced many indignities on the non-white population of the country. Perhaps most tragically, it relegated Black South Africans to a sub-par education and reinforced their place in a segregated society.

But few could have predicted the state violence that followed.

The final straw for Mazibuko and other student leaders was the switch to instruction in Afrikaans – a language few of them understood, and the language of the oppressors.

“When we were raising the hands and fingers of peace, we were met with bullets. I still feel guilty today that I led students and children out of the classroom to be killed,” he says.

Hundreds of students were killed, scores of student leaders, like Mazibuko, were sent to prison, and many more went into exile.

The Soweto uprisings, as they have become known, changed the trajectory of the anti-apartheid movement, and set South Africa on the eventual path of liberation.

But as South Africans celebrate 30 years of democracy this week, many educators and activists believe that there is a crisis hollowing out the country’s education system – a crisis that threatens democracy’s hard-fought gains.

“They sold out. Many of the leaders that were supposed to be leading have left this community. They left the people they were fighting for,” says Mazibuko.

Dropping standards

Just up the road from the iconic intersection, Prince Mulwela teaches a geography lesson to senior students at Morris Isaacson High School. It is a misty fall day; most of the lights in the classroom aren’t working.

The school is famous for its instrumental role in the Soweto uprisings, but Mulwela is focused on today’s problems. During his 18 years at the school, he says it has gotten more and more difficult to educate its students.

“It is becoming harder now because the learners we are teaching are so very problematic,” he says, adding that over the past decade children arriving at high school have been increasingly unprepared.

The statistics do make sobering reading.

Despite substantial education funding, South African students consistently rank among the lowest in global assessments of literacy and numeracy skills.

Out of the 50 countries of a well-respected assessment of fourth graders, South African students ranked last – more than 80% of 9- to-10-year-olds in the country cannot read for meaning.

However, in at least one study, South African sixth-graders do far worse in math than students in Kenya, a much poorer country.

Motshekga says more focus needs to be put on early childhood education and instruction in each learner’s mother tongue, part of a controversial education bill that the government hopes to bring into law. South Africa has eleven official languages.

“I’m very encouraged. I think from where we started off, I don’t think we could have done better,” says Motshekga, who grew up in Soweto.

A challenging history

To illustrate the country’s challenges, Motshekga refers to her own experience. She says she was the only person from her street to attain a proper education in the 1970s. 

Her mother and grandmother were teachers and were able to work around the apartheid system and get her into a Catholic school to finish high school. But the vast majority did not. “That’s why most of my generation are illiterate, unemployed, and poor,” she says.

When Nelson Mandela became president 30 years ago, his ruling African National Congress (ANC) party faced enormous challenges to fix education.

The apartheid education system was a convoluted and racist bureaucracy that had to be undone. There were not enough trained teachers and certainly not enough classrooms.

Now, more than 98% of children aged seven to 14 are in school, according to government statistics. The president recently praised students for their high passing rate in their final school leaving exams known as Matric.

But education experts say that ignores falling standards and high dropout rates.

“In fact, they lie about it when every year we have the festival around the Matric results and they tell us how well they’ve done when it’s not really true,” says Ann Bernstein, the executive director of the Centre of Development and Enterprise, an independent think tank.

Motshekga denied that standards were dropping and said the results show progress.

Bernstein says that South Africa has made meaningful progress in education, but that those gains have slipped in recent years due to corruption, politics, and a lack of political will.

A powerful teachers’ union has also been accused of fostering a “jobs for cash” scheme for teacher placement. Opposition parties and groups like Corruption Watch say that not enough has been done to clean up the education system.

Responding to the most recent accusation relating to jobs, the South African Democratic Teachers Union said last month it “will never condone or tolerate criminal acts in education. The selling of posts is corruption.”

“I think it’s time for the minister to go,” says Bernstein.

For educators like Mulwela, at Morris Isaacson, the problem is obvious. He says education, like many other facets of the state, has been overtaken by a culture of patronage.

“People that are loyal to the ANC, cadres that are loyal to the ANC, are getting jobs in education,” he says. “The government should be saying, ‘let us get people who are qualified for these positions.’”

Earlier this year, the ANC Secretary General admitted that cadre development could be subject to abuse, but said it was key for transformation.

An uncertain future

Many of Mulwela’s students are proud of their school and aware of its role in the protests of 1976.

“They put their lives in danger for a better future, for a better education,” says Mbali Msimanga, a student in her final year.

But she says her generation still faces an uncertain future.

South Africa has the highest unemployment rate in the world and many university graduates struggle to enter the workforce.

“It is scary for us to be sitting at home and doing nothing,” says Msimanga.

“Especially when you went to university for so long and you have a degree, but you are still struggling to get a job,” her classmate, Atlegang Alcock, agrees.

The personal sacrifices of the generations before them were immense.

Mazibuko spent 11 months in solitary confinement at the Fort Prison in Johannesburg, followed by seven years in Robben Island prison off Cape Town – where Mandela, too, served a lengthy term – for calling for a fair education system. He believes that the next generation is not yet “enjoying the fruit of the tree.”

“When we were marching and doing those things, we said that the tree of liberation shall be watered by the blood of the martyrs,” he says. “These kids are not even enjoying the shade of the tree. And for that, I think our country and our leaders are still going to pay dearly.”

In South Africa’s upcoming election, after 30 years of ANC government, that sentiment could be put to the test.