The room pulsed with the beat as bass from the speakers reverberated off the walls. At Club NOTO on Saturday night, the crowd pressed toward the stage while Uncle Waffles commanded the decks beneath a glowing backdrop of a cartoon woman flying through city streets on a motorcycle. Chants of “Waffles” rang through the room as the dance floor continued to fill with people. Uncle Waffles had touched down in Houston.
The DJ and producer, born Lungelihle Zwane in Eswatini, had become one of the brightest lights of the Amapiano movement. Based in South Africa, she built her reputation on high-energy performances where music, movement, and atmosphere converged.
She first broke through in 2021 when a clip of her dancing behind the decks to Young Stunna’s “Adiwele” went viral. That moment introduced the world to a performer who paired technical mixing with undeniable stage presence. Since then she released multi-platinum singles like “Tanzania,” dropped well-received projects including Red Dragon, Asylum, and Solace, and grew her profile with nonstop touring across Europe, North America, and Australia.
She became the first Amapiano artist to perform at Coachella, headlined Brooklyn Mirage in New York as the first Black woman DJ to do so, and earned recognition from global stars after Beyoncé incorporated her music into the Renaissance World Tour. Those milestones, along with multiple award nominations and a growing fan base, cemented her as one of the leading figures taking Amapiano from its South African roots to an international stage.
Audiences at NOTO witnessed a night that reflected the qualities that made her a worldwide draw. Fresh off of recent shows including New York, London, and Dallas Uncle Waffles is straight to the point, delivering high paced beats to an audience dedicated to dance. The room was awash with energy as bottle girls moved through the crow holding flashing sparklers, fans stood on couches cheering and blowing whistles, and peopledanced amongst the heat.
Her stage name had its roots in high school. Friends first called her “Waffles,” and later added the “Uncle” for flair, creating a moniker that was both playful and unforgettable. The combination stuck, and the name now echoes in chants at clubs and festivals around the world.
As an artist, Uncle Waffles has always been more than a DJ dropping tracks. She embodies the music physically, moving in rhythm with every transition and every drop. That connection between body and sound has made her sets as much a performance as they are a party. She represents a new generation of African artists expanding the reach of Amapiano, not by diluting its sound but by amplifying its energy for audiences far beyond Johannesburg.
For fans in Houston who packed into Club NOTO, the night offered both a glimpse of the genre’s global rise and a firsthand reminder of why Uncle Waffles has become its most visible ambassador.
Rhinos are especially vulnerable to intense heat, as they don’t sweat, instead cooling off by sheltering in the shade or bathing in water. The paper marks the first analysis of how climate change may affect these endangered species.
A file photo of a white rhino and her calf. Climate change may make it too hot for rhinos in southern Africa. ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS
“Generally speaking, most, if not all, species will, in one way or another, be negatively affected by the changing climate,” lead author Hlelowenkhosi S. Mamba, a research student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said in a statement. “It is therefore important for conservationists to conduct macroecological assessments over large areas to catch trends and model futures for some of the world’s most vulnerable species to prepare to mitigate climate change’s effects, hence minimizing global biodiversity losses.”
Both species of African rhino have seen rapid population decreases, mainly due to poaching. White rhinos once comprised two species, the northern white rhino and southern white rhino, but the northern white rhino is now considered extinct in the wild. The southern white rhino is listed as “near threatened” on the IUCN Red List, with only around 10,000 individuals left in the wild. Black rhinos are listed as “critically endangered”, with about 3,100 remaining.
The researchers investigated how increasing temperatures in large national parks across South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Botswana, Tanzania and Eswatini could impact the future of the rhino species living there. They modeled two scenarios in the parks, one based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, and the other being a more mild emissions future, and predicted the amount of rain and temperature that each park would see in 2055 and 2085.
They found that in each park it was expected to rise by 2.2 degrees Celsius by 2055 and 2.5 degrees by 2085 in the moderate emissions future, while in the IPCC emissions scenario, each park increased by 2.8 degrees Celsius by 2055 and 4.6 degrees by 2085. All but one park was expected to become increasingly dry in these scenarios.
They then calculated the probability that each park would remain suitable for the rhinos, and found that the increase in temperatures would be more than the rhinos can handle, exacerbated by the decreased precipitation.
“The temperature conditions in all study parks will become increasingly unsuitable for both species, but it is predicted that white rhinos will be affected earlier than black rhinos,” the authors wrote in the paper. “All the parks are showing drastic changes in the occurrence probability of rhinos.”
In the high-emissions scenarios, the likelihood of both species still existing will shrink to zero by 2085.
Two rhinos at a waterhole in a South African national park. Higher temperatures and decreased rainfall may make these regions inhospitable to rhinos. ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS
“All study parks will have zero probability of occurrence for the species throughout their ranges should conditions reach those represented by the [IPCC high emissions 2085] scenario late in the century,” they wrote.
“This paper highlights the importance of using climate predictions for both park and rhino management,” co-author Timothy Randhir, a professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst, said in the statement. “We propose that park managers think now about increasing water supplies, tree cover, watching for stress and planning to allow rhino migration as the world warms.”
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Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
The first time Maxwell Dlamini was arrested, he was 21 years old.
It was April 2011, and the marketing student was at a demonstration in Mbabane, the capital of Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland and considered by many as the last absolute monarchy in Africa.
Dlamini was out campaigning for democratic reforms, but the state saw it another way. They argued he was trying to overthrow the government, classified him as a dangerous political prisoner, and held him in a maximum security prison where he faced months of harassment, solitary confinement, and torture.
“I was kept in isolation for the longest time, not interacting with any other inmates,” Dlamini told Al Jazeera. “I was denied the right to write my exams, so I ended up not finishing and was expelled from university … at some stage, while I was in prison, I also had a stroke.”
Just shy of a year behind bars, an international human rights campaign helped secure bail and his release. But his freedom was short-lived. From 2012 to 2014, he was arrested twice more – once for criticising the king’s birthday party while Swazis live in poverty and once for attending a May Day workers’ rally.
For his actions, he was charged with sedition and “terrorism”, and more than a decade later, his court case is still pending. Meanwhile, the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), which he is deputy secretary general of, remains a banned organisation in a country where political parties are illegal.
Meanwhile, Dlamini is receiving psychosocial support after his ordeal. “I still feel like I’m in a box, so I have to sleep with the lights on,” he said.
Monarchy
Eswatini, the small Southern African kingdom of 1.2 million people, has been governed by King Mswati III for 37 years after he took over from his father, who had ruled since the country gained independence from Britain in 1968.
Tensions have been high there in recent years, especially since a crackdown on mass pro-democracy protests in 2021 killed dozens of people, and calls for greater transparency and real democratic reform have grown.
King Mswati III of Eswatini, left, with Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa in Harare, Zimbabwe [File: Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters]
Eswatini considers itself a constitutional monarchy. “We are a kingdom that subscribes to constitutionalism, to the rule of law, to democracy and to all international norms of human rights and good governance,” government spokesperson Alpheous Nxumalo told Al Jazeera.
But rights activists and pro-democracy groups said that in practice, it’s an absolute monarchy where the king reigns over all else.
According to the 2022 Freedom in the World report, which tracks global trends in political rights and civil liberties, “The king exercises ultimate authority over all branches of the national government and effectively controls local governance through his influence over traditional chiefs. Political dissent and civic and labor activism are subject to harsh punishment under sedition and other laws.”
‘A sham’
In late September, the country held elections to elect 59 members of parliament. Because the Eswatini constitution bans political parties, only individuals can stand for election.
Some political movements like PUDEMO have been fighting for collective recognition and decline to participate on an individual basis.
“It will be politically fraudulent and an outright selling of our soul for us individually [to participate in the election],” Wandile Dludlu, PUDEMO’s deputy president, told Al Jazeera, calling the banning of political parties “illegal and irrational and unconstitutional”.
“These elections elect parliamentarians that do not make up government,” Dludlu said. “They don’t make up the government because government in this country is appointed – 100 percent appointed by the king – from the prime minister to the last minister.”
Other political parties agreed.
“All these things are just a sham because there is nothing you can do in parliament to change anything as a member of parliament because the king is above everything. He owns the judiciary, the legislature and also the executive,” said Nombulelo Motsa, the head of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party in Eswatini.
“It’s just a ritual actually to have these elections. It’s a five-year ritual. You [as a member of parliament] go in there, you work for him, you get paid and you leave after five years.”
‘To stifle dissent’
Critics noted that the wealthy king owns big interests in the telecommunications industry, transport, hospitality, mining and real estate. He lives a lavish lifestyle while nearly a third of the population of Eswatini lives below the poverty line.
“There is not a single parliament who has challenged that,” Dludlu said. “There is no parliament that has been able to redirect money from useless vanity projects that the government engages in … It has done nothing in terms of speaking to people’s poverty, unemployment and the underdevelopment of the country.”
Members of parliament who have spoken out against the government have faced retaliation. MPs Mthandeni Dube and Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza, who were arrested after the protests in 2021, were found guilty of “terrorism”, sedition and murder.
Nxumalo said they were arrested for inciting violence and “none of the charges they were facing was politically related to what they were doing as members of parliament”, but groups like Amnesty International have called it a “flawed conviction”.
“It’s very sad to see the state continue to abuse a very important provision of our law. We are alive to the threat of terrorism across the continent, but there is this constant abuse of these mechanisms that are provided for national security in order to stifle dissent,” said Melusi Simelane with the non-profit Southern Africa Litigation Centre.
“It’s a state that is so afraid of dissent, a state that is so afraid of public discourse, a state that is so afraid of having the populace associate and discuss matters that are pertinent to themselves, so they will continue to abuse the laws of the country to harass and persecute.”
A voter leaves a polling station in Mbabane after casting her ballot during Eswatini’s parliamentary elections on September 29, 2023 [Esa Alexander/Reuters]
Intimidation
According to an Afrobarometer survey from 2021, nearly half of Eswatini’s population would prefer democracy as their form of governance, and 59 percent of Swazis want the ban on political parties to be lifted.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Nxumalo called the survey “madness”, saying that if Swazis wanted a different form of governance, “91 percent” would not have registered to vote in September’s elections.
“There is no way those people can come out in those numbers if they have another idea of the political process,” he said.
However, civil society voices have raised other possible reasons for high registration and turnout.
Melusi Matsenjwa, a representative of the Swaziland Council of Churches who engaged with regional election observers at last month’s vote, said his group heard reports of intimidation ahead of election registration.
“When the registration process started, it was relatively slow, but then there were these rumours that if you did not register, certain ramifications may be visited upon you,” he explained. People heard they would be cut off from access to certain government services if they weren’t registered to vote while university students heard that if they did not register, they might have to forfeit their scholarships.
“So towards the deadline of the registration, we then had a huge turnout of people who went to register,” he said.
Matsenjwa told Al Jazeera these reports were raised with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) election observers, who said they would take note of it, but nothing concrete was done.
“We get the sense that [the election observer presence] is a box-ticking kind of affair over the years. Nothing changes. There is never any follow-up on the recommendations made. … We do not see that any of these observer missions bring about any changes besides cosmetic changes.”
After the vote, observers released a report saying it was fair and peaceful, but they did reiterate calls for the government to hold a national dialogue as was advised in the aftermath of the 2021 violence.
A barricade in the middle of a road is set on fire in Mbabane, Eswatini, during the 2021 demonstrations demanding political reforms [File: AFP]
‘People are now afraid’
After mass demonstrations in 2021, calls for change continued into 2022. There was a heavy-handed response from the government, and at least 80 people were killed, according to Human Rights Watch, which said the state continued to use excessive force and threats of violence against protesters.
After SADC intervened in late 2021, the king agreed to hold a national dialogue. But that has not yet taken place, and elections were pushed ahead.
“We had huge expectations that government would prioritise the national dialogue so that we have a conversation around what were the issues that led us to the civil unrest,” Matsenjwa said. “Our view was that the dialogue should come first … to see what were the outcomes of that conversation before rushing into the elections.
“But then, of course, we decided as a country to prioritise the elections. The elections took place again under the same old regime.”
Motsa from the EFF told Al Jazeera the situation has not improved since 2021.
“The government has become more harsh. They even imported, if I may put it that way, mercenaries. They wear balaclavas. If you walk at night, you may be severely beaten, or sometimes they will shoot you,” she said. Human Rights Watch has also raised concerns about allegations of South African mercenaries working to stifle dissent in Eswatini.
“People are now afraid because whenever you go out into the streets to demonstrate or protest, they will follow you all the way and sometimes even shoot at people who are just marching … People want change. It’s just that we fear the guns now,” she said.
‘No greater fight’
Pro-democracy campaigners are nervous about the near future. Motsa does not expect any positive changes for at least another five years. And Dludlu warns that “if we continue with this trajectory that the king has put us on, we are destined for a second round of violent unrest that may spark anytime in the near future. And from where we sit, it will be much nastier than it was before.”
But the beginning of a solution would be for the king to honour his agreement to hold a legitimate national dialogue. “The king must stop arming. He must stop investing in armies. He must invest in dialogue,” Dludlu said.
Dlamini worries about the future for activists. “You end up being exiled in foreign lands, or you end up being arrested,” he said.
When he was younger, he had no political ambitions. But when he arrived in Mbabane for university and realised the harsh circumstances facing common Swazis, “the conditions forced us to stand up for our rights,” he said.
Since then, the fight for democracy has been his life. Despite the sacrifices, trauma and years lost to prison as well as a pending court case still keeping him in limbo, he is determined to continue.
“There is no greater fight that is more important than the fight for our humanity and dignity and for our citizenship. We want to live in a country where we can enjoy our rights. All of them,” he said.
“And we are on our way to victory. It may take long or seem to be going slow, but we are optimistic and hopeful that change will come in our lifetime and that the people of Swaziland will find their humanity.”
Gunmen in Eswatini killed a prominent opposition politician and human rights lawyer at his home, hours after the country’s absolute monarch challenged activists opposed to his rule.
Thulani Maseko was shot dead on Saturday night by unknown attackers in Luhleko, about 50km (30 miles) from the capital Mbabane, opposition spokesman Sikelela Dlamini told AFP.
The spokesman said he was told that “assassins shot him through the window while he was inside [the] house with his family”.
“Details are still scant (and), owing to the trauma his family members are undergoing, they are not yet ready to speak,” Dlamini added.
The government sent condolences to the family, saying Maseko’s death was a “loss for the nation” and that police were searching for the killers.
Maseko was a leading human rights lawyer and columnist in Eswatini who had a pending court battle with King Mswati III over the monarch’s decision to rename the country Eswatini by decree.
The country’s name was changed from Swaziland to Eswatini to mark the 50th anniversary of its independence from Britain in 2018.
Maseko’s position was that the king had not followed the constitution in the process. In 2014, he and the editor of The Nation magazine, Bheki Makhubu, were jailed for contempt of court over articles critical of the government and judiciary.
Maseko was the founder of the MultiStakeholder Forum (MSF), a coalition of opposition parties, associations and churches.
His death came just hours after the king challenged activists fighting to end Africa’s last absolute monarchy.
“People should not shed tears and complain about mercenaries killing them,” King Mswati had said.
“These people started the violence first but when the state institutes a crackdown on them for their actions, they make a lot of noise blaming King Mswati for bringing in mercenaries,” he said.
Last week, the Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN) alleged that the king had hired mercenaries, mainly white Afrikaners from neighbouring South Africa, to help Eswatini’s security forces suppress rising opposition to his regime.
But government spokesman Alpheous Nxumalo said: “No hitmen have been hired.”
Rights group Freedom Under Law, which operates across southern Africa, pointed a finger at the government.
“Somehow the stunning news that Thulani Maseko has been gunned down in cold blood comes as no surprise,” it said in a statement.
“A ceaseless and fearless human-rights lawyer, an outspoken critic of the regime in his beloved Eswatini, Thulani had all too long suffered at the hands of a heedless regime. No one can be misled by the cynical message of condolence put out on behalf of the government,” it added.
The European Union called for the killers to be caught and voiced “grave concern” about the situation in Eswatini.
“The EU calls on the authorities to ensure the safety of all citizens, including political activists,” it said in a statement.
“This tragic loss comes in a row of killings, arson attacks and other violent acts, which have destabilised the country over the past months.”
The bloc urged the authorities to urgently launch “inclusive dialogue… towards national reconciliation, respect for human rights and the rule of law, and ultimately, lasting peace”.
The US embassy in Mbabane expressed “profound sadness” and extended “deepest condolences to Mr. Maseko’s family, friends and admirers around the world”.
“Eswatini and the world have lost a powerful voice for non-violence and human rights,” the embassy added.
Condolences Statement on the passing of Human Rights Lawyer Thulani R. Maseko. pic.twitter.com/pBKimhIwST
King Mswati, who has ruled since 1986, is regularly accused of human rights violations. The king, who can dissolve parliament, and government and appoint or dismiss judges, also commands the police and army.
In June 2021, pro-democracy protests descended into violence, resulting in several deaths.
In April 2022, members of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), South Africa’s third-largest political party, organised peaceful protests along the country’s borders with Eswatini, in solidarity with human rights activists there.
