South Africans will on Tuesday begin seven days of mourning in in honour of Frene Ginwala, who became the founding speaker of South Africa’s first democratically elected parliament.

Ms Ginwala died on Thursday night aged 90.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has directed that the national flag be flown at half-mast around the country until the evening of Tuesday 24 January 2023, according to a statement from his office.

More details will be announced later on an official memorial service that will take place in Johannesburg next Tuesday.

During the 1960s and 1970s Ms Ginwala lived in exile in Mozambique from where she helped many prominent members of the banned African National Congress (ANC) escape abroad.

Ms Ginwala also travelled around the world drawing international attention to the abuses of the apartheid era.

Learning in primary and secondary schools resumes on Tuesday in Malawi’s two major cities following a cholera outbreak that killed hundreds of people.

Schools in the capital, Lilongwe, and the commercial hub, Blantyre, had remained closed for at least two weeks after the Christmas holidays.

The cholera outbreak began in March last year and has so far killed more than 750 people.

Infections are still high in Lilongwe and Blantyre.

Health Minister Khumbize Chiponda said schools now have access to safe water and improved sanitation facilities, which will go a long way in reducing infections reported in schools.

The minister was optimistic that infections in schools would reduce due to improved sanitation facilities.

Malawi is among 31 countries globally hardest hit by cholera.

Last week, the government asked for international assistance as it was running low on medical supplies.

The widespread cases of cholera in the country are as a result of the aftermath of tropical storm Ana and cyclone Gombe that caused extensive flooding last year and destroyed the country’s water and sanitation systems.

China’s population shrank last year for the first time in more than six decades, official data showed Tuesday, as the world’s most populous country faces a looming demographic crisis.

The nation of 1.4 billion has seen birth rates plunge to record lows as its workforce ages, in a rapid decline that analysts warn could stymie economic growth and pile pressure on strained public coffers.

The mainland Chinese population stood at around 1,411,750,000 at the end of 2022, Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported, a decrease of 850,000 from the end of the previous year.

The number of births was 9.56 million, the NBS said, while the number of deaths stood at 10.41 million.

The last time China’s population declined was in the early 1960s, as the country battled the worst famine in its modern history, a result of the disastrous Mao Zedong agricultural policy known as the Great Leap Forward.

China ended its strict one-child policy — imposed in the 1980s owing to fears of overpopulation — in 2016 and began allowing couples to have three children in 2021.

But that has failed to reverse the demographic decline for a country that has long relied on its vast workforce as a driver of economic growth.

“The population will likely trend down from here in coming years,” Zhiwei Zhang of Pinpoint Asset Management said.

“China cannot rely on the demographic dividend as a structural driver for economic growth,” he added.

“Economic growth will have to depend more on productivity growth, which is driven by government policies.”

– ‘I will not be a mother’ –

News of the population decline quickly trended on China’s heavily censored internet, with some expressing fears for the country’s future.

“Without children, the state and the nation have no future,” one comment on the Twitter-like Weibo service read.

“Having children is also a social responsibility,” another comment from a well-known “patriotic” influencer read.

But others pointed to the soaring cost of living and the difficulties of raising children in modern China.

“I love my mother, I will not be a mother,” said one.

“No one reflects on why we do not want to have (children) and do not want to get married,” another said.

Many local authorities have already launched measures to encourage couples to have children.

The southern megacity of Shenzhen, for example, now offers a birth bonus and pays allowances until the child is three years old.

A couple who has their first baby automatically receives 3,000 yuan ($444), an amount that rises to 10,000 yuan for their third.

In the country’s east, the city of Jinan has since January 1 paid a monthly stipend of 600 yuan for couples that have a second child.

Chinese people are “getting used to the small family because of the decades-long one-child policy”, Xiujian Peng, a researcher at Australia’s University of Victoria, told AFP.

“The Chinese government has to find effective policies to encourage birth, otherwise, fertility will slip even lower,” she added.

– ‘A real concern’ –

And analysts argue much more needs to be done.

“A comprehensive policy package that covers childbirth, parenting, and education is needed to reduce the cost of childraising,” researcher Peng told AFP.

“Women’s job insecurity after giving birth should be addressed particularly.”

Independent demographer He Yafu also pointed to “the decline in the number of women of childbearing age, which fell by five million per year between 2016 and 2021” — a consequence of the ageing of the population.

The Chinese population could decline each year by 1.1 percent on average, according to a study by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences updated last year and shared with AFP.

China could have only 587 million inhabitants in 2100, less than half of today, according to the most pessimistic projections of that team of demographers.

And India is set to dethrone China this year as the most populous country in the world, according to the United Nations.

“A declining and ageing population will be a real concern for China,” Peng said.

“It will have a profound impact on China’s economy from the present through to 2100.”

A six-month-old baby and its teen mother were among six people killed early Monday when gunmen opened fire at a home in California, police officials said.

Sheriff Mike Boudreaux of the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office described to reporters a grisly crime, a “targeted” attack that he said may be linked to gang and drug violence.

Police said they believed two people attacked the home around 3:30 a.m. Monday, firing multiple shots.

A neighbor called the police, who arrived seven minutes later to find dead and dying people both inside and outside the home.

“This whole situation is tragic, but we have a 17-year-old mother and (her) six-month-old child both of which were shot in the head,” Boudreaux said.

Two people survived the assault by hiding inside the building, while several of the wounded were given emergency medical attention by first responders. One of the wounded died shortly after being rushed to hospital.

The attack appeared to be drugs-related, the sheriff said.

“We also believe that this is not a random act of violence. We believe that this was a targeted family,” he said.

“We believe that there are gang associations involved in this scene as well as potentially narcotics investigations, adding that a week earlier his department had “conducted narcotics search warrants at this residence.”

Tulare is a city of some 70,000 inhabitants in the San Joaquin Valley, roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

About 49,000 people died from gunshot wounds in 2021 in the United States, more than half of which were suicides.

The country has more weapons than people: one in three adults owns at least one weapon and nearly one in two adults lives in a home where there is a weapon.