Briefly

Sita Traore’s Aug. 31 death prompted angry protests in which demonstrators torched a maternity ward.

She was expecting twins. Her husband said his wife and babies died at the clinic in the city of Bobo-Dioulasso.

It was the latest in a series of deaths of women in Burkina Faso maternity wards.

The death prompted a rare promise from the government of the West African nation that it would take action.

SOUTH AFRICA

Criticism mounts against chief justice nominee

JOHANNESBURG | Critics say the pastor nominated to lead South Africa’s judicial system is an apologist for rapists and belongs to a church that believes homosexuality is a sin.

On Wednesday, three female Nobel Prize winners urged President Jacob Zuma not to appoint Judge Mogoeng Mogoeng as chief justice. They claimed he would be unable to separate church from state.

“Many of his rulings have undermined the severity of the crime of rape,” they said in a statement.

The Treatment Action Campaign says Mr. Mogoeng seems to increase sentences for men who rape men and lessen those of men who rape women. He also ruled in one case that a man accused of raping his wife was provoked because she wore a nightdress.

Mr. Mogoeng quoted from the Bible at a hearing, saying he will uphold the law because “he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted.”

SWAZILAND

Police disperse march, arrest union leader

MANZINI | Swazi police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to break up a pro-democracy march Wednesday, arresting a top South African union leader who was going to address the crowd, a protest organizer said.

Zingiswa Losi, deputy president of the powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) labor body, was among three people arrested in the southern Swazi town of Sitheki, said Sibongile Mazibuko, head of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers.

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