Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Konstantyn Derevinskyy, director of Pokrovsk's Jubilee Park, kneels among the roses he calls “my beauties” in one of the park’s numerous rose beds, in Pokrovsk, Ukraine, May 29, 2024.

In this eastern Ukrainian city’s tranquil and orderly Jubilee Park, numerous precautions and accommodations have been implemented in light of the war that rages 20 miles away.

Fountains have remained dry ever since the pipes providing the park’s main source of water were damaged in Russian shelling this spring. The twinkly lights that once drew families and delighted children in the evenings are left off, so as not to encourage the large crowds that could invite missile strikes.

One attribute, however, not only has not changed, but also has defiantly expanded since Russia occupied parts of the surrounding Donetsk region in February 2022: the glorious rose beds that offer expanses of red, white, and yellow blooms for five months every year.

“These are my beauties,” says Konstantyn Derevinskyy, Jubilee’s director, as he presents with a sweep of his hand one bed of the 84-acre park’s 1,300 rosebushes. “For me they reign over everything else. They are a symbol of the strength of our city.”

The park has other flowers, like a popular iris allée, he adds, “but the roses are the queen of our flowers. They keep blooming no matter what, and that gives people hope.”

Mr. Derevinskyy is not alone here in his reverence for roses. Indeed, Ukraine’s entire Donetsk region has been synonymous with roses since a Soviet-era project made the region’s capital, some 40 miles from here, the city of a million roses – a designation recognized by UNESCO in 1970.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

A bed of yellow roses is below the Ukrainian flag at the entrance to Pokrovsk, Ukraine, some 20 miles from the front lines of war, May 29, 2024.

Now the capital city of Donetsk is occupied by Russia, and the region is on the front lines of war as Russian President Vladimir Putin pursues his goal of annexing all of Donetsk.

Indeed on Friday, Mr. Putin unveiled his latest proposal for ending the war, which calls for Ukraine to cede all of Donetsk to Russia, including Pokrovsk.

But in modest private gardens, town parks, even at gas stations and in highway median strips, the roses of Donetsk have come to symbolize hope and perseverance.

“The rose is like us: It has thorns and it protects itself, but it brings beauty into this world,” says Halyna Fateieva, as she tends a rose garden fit for a queen at her modest Pokrovsk home. “We too are defending ourselves, but we also give beauty and joy,” she adds. “My neighbors and even strangers say the roses refresh them and give them hope.”

Pokrovsk has the feel of other villages and towns along the war’s southeastern front: Some windows are boarded up to protect against blasts; others already blown out are now covered with thick plastic sheeting. Soldiers on rest from the front lines gather at gas stations to consume convenience-store hot dogs and energy drinks and call loved ones.

The quiet attests to a population thinned out by the war.

But the roses, well tended and vigorous, announce that people here have not given up.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Halyna Fateieva stands in her rose garden outside her home in Pokrovsk, Ukraine. Like Ukrainians, the rose has thorns and protects itself, she says, but it also brings beauty and hope to the world.

At Pokrovsk’s western entrance, the bed of yellow roses below the blue-and-yellow national flag serves as an introduction to Ukraine’s rising rose city.

“They always said Donetsk was the city of a million roses,” notes Mrs. Fateieva, “but people here have planted more roses since the war started, so I think we can claim the title.”

The idea of becoming Ukraine’s rose city was launched in 2022 when the mayor of Pokrovsk announced that despite the war, the city would plant 60,000 new rosebushes. Also that year, the city sent 5,000 rosebushes to Bucha, the town outside Kyiv where Russian soldiers committed atrocities against the population before retreating.

That gesture continued a Donetsk tradition of sending flowers, and in particular roses, to other cities as an expression of appreciation.

In 2020, authorities in occupied Donetsk, which Russia now considers the capital of the Donetsk People’s Republic, sent rose seedlings to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other Russian cities to thank them for supporting them against Ukraine.

In 2022, Pokrovsk sent 20,000 roses to Ukrainian cities and towns welcoming refugee families from Pokrovsk, and to military hospitals tending soldiers wounded in defense of Pokrovsk’s freedom.

“We have aimed to become the city of roses since 2014, when the city of Donetsk was occupied, but if anything we have increased our efforts since 2022,” says Oleh Tkachenko, manager of municipal grounds maintenance.

Noting that his department still has a “roses director” despite the war, Mr. Tkachenko says the city’s roses aren’t superfluous niceties but play a critical role in reassuring residents and in messaging to the world what Pokrovsk is made of.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

In Pokrovsk, Ukraine, even the municipal maintenance yard has roses. Oleh Tkachenko, manager of municipal grounds maintenance, says tending the city's roses is reassuring to its residents.

“When our residents see us tending the roses, it reassures them that we are going nowhere, that we are doing something today so there will be beauty and joy tomorrow,” he says. To visitors and to the world, he adds, “We are saying, ‘We are Ukraine, Pokrovsk is a Ukrainian city, and we will be here tomorrow.’”

After more than two years of intense war, on top of Russia’s occupation of parts of Donetsk since 2014, some residents who are still here need that reassurance.

“The front line is so close and getting closer, but what can we do but take care of our gardens?” says Iryna, manager of a large nursery on Pokrovsk’s outskirts that for years has been the city’s largest supplier of roses.

The nursery grows a wide variety of plants and trees, but Iryna, who asks that only her first name be used, says the roses mean the most to her. “The roses are like us; they can endure all kinds of conditions,” like the drought currently affecting southern Ukraine, she says. “But like us,” she adds, “they do best when cared for and living in peace.”

Noting that in better times the nursery offered more than 120 varieties of roses, Iryna says one variety – Gloria Dei, or “the glory of God” – remains the nursery’s bestseller. She excuses herself for choking up, but then she explains: “I think people seek it as a way of saying, ‘Please, let there be peace.’”

In her garden, Mrs. Fateieva offers a similar thought as she cuts a bouquet of roses for passing strangers.

“I love these roses, but I don’t see them as being all mine,” she says. “They are in my garden, but their message of hope and peace is for everyone.”

Oleksandr Naselenko assisted in reporting this story.

The National Assembly sat until late into the night. By the time the presiding judge announced Cyril Ramaphosa’s reelection as president of South Africa, some of the newly sworn-in members of Parliament were nodding off in their chairs, despite the harsh lights of the convention center where the solemn inaugural parliamentary session was taking place.

But when Mr. Ramaphosa stood to make his acceptance speech, just before midnight last Friday, his fellow members of the African National Congress were not the only ones to erupt in song and celebration.

Opposition parliamentarians joined in the applause, too, marking an historic shift in South Africa’s political landscape: the union of several parties under a new “government of national unity,” including the ANC’s oldest rival, the white-led Democratic Alliance.

“This is a new chapter for South Africa,” declared John Steenhuisen, the DA’s leader. “The era of coalitions has commenced,” he told reporters outside the conference hall, praising “a shared respect and defense of our constitution and the rule of law.”

“Our people expect all parties to work together to achieve ... a democratic society based on non-racialism, non-sexism, peace, justice and stability,” Mr. Ramaphosa urged in his acceptance speech.

Obliged by disappointing election results to woo opposition parties into a coalition government that could count on a majority in Parliament, Mr. Ramaphosa shocked some of his former allies by bringing the Democratic Alliance into the fold.

A traditionally white party that opposed apartheid, the center-right DA has lost many Black members in recent years. Its pro-business and free-market program is often at odds with the ANC’s left-wing social policies.

Controversial former President Jacob Zuma, who has been expelled from the ANC and is boycotting the new Parliament, was especially harsh. At a press conference on Sunday, he slammed what he called a “return of apartheid and colonialism.”

Nic Bothma/Reuters

John Steenhuisen, leader of the Democratic Alliance, which has joined the South African government, speaks to media during the first sitting of the National Assembly.

“There is no government of national unity in South Africa,” he argued. “There is a white-led unholy alliance between the DA and the ANC.”

He was not the only one to think like that over the weekend, as people pondered with a hint of perplexity on what their parties had gained and conceded in the deal. For many of them, the inclusion of the DA in government cast a troubling shadow.

“To see a revolutionary party like the ANC deciding to go with the former enemy – they’ve abandoned the majority of the people,” says tour operator Benjamin Zondo, who lives on the outskirts of Cape Town. While he used to support the ANC, the 30-year-old voted this year for the new party Mr. Zuma had formed, uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK).

Mr. Zondo had watched the National Assembly proceedings on television, even as they continued late into the night. “I would have loved to see the ANC going with MK or the [radical-left] Economic Freedom Fighters, because their ideologies are more similar: to uplift the Black majority and change the system,” he says. “Now the ANC have proven they’re willing to abandon the policies they’ve been pushing for 30 years.”

ANC supporter Rachid Mugerwa, on the other hand, says he was “very happy” with the arrangement. “It has shown another era where people come together,” the businessman says. “Now they won’t be rivals; there won’t be intimidation; they’re going to bring their different visions together.”

The “government of national unity” announced by Mr. Ramaphosa is an overt reference to 1994: After South Africa’s first democratic elections, which the ANC won overwhelmingly, Nelson Mandela formed a government with former apartheid leader F.W. de Klerk to ensure inclusivity in the transition to democracy.

But 30 years later, Mr. Ramaphosa’s attempts at unity won him only 283 votes out of 400 members of Parliament – about 70% of the National Assembly.

“For all practical purposes, this is a coalition” with the ANC, the DA, and the Zulu-led Inkatha Freedom Party, explains political analyst Sandile Swana, who teaches at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. “They call it a government of national unity for cosmetics,” he says.

“It is also an acknowledgement, by both the opposition parties and to a certain extent the ANC, that it lacks capacity to run the country properly,” he says. “The ANC have discredited themselves on virtually every front, so they are coming into this relationship to be rescued. The DA is the big winner here, because this is falling on their lap.”

Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

South Africa's former President Jacob Zuma is boycotting the new Parliament, claiming that the recent elections were rigged against him.

The day after the coalition announcement, families enjoying a sunny weekend on Cape Town’s seaside promenade welcomed the maturity with which this unprecedented shift had taken place.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” says Rory Cohen, an accountant walking his dog in the warm afternoon. He hoped the DA’s “competent leadership” and “credible policies” could steer the country in the right direction. “It’s got so much potential – it’s just a case of putting one’s differences aside.”

A little farther down the promenade, a woman named Fay, who asked to be identified by her first name only and described herself as a “grassroots activist” in the fight for democracy, shared a similar sentiment.

“It is a bit of a shock to the system but it holds an opportunity for robust engagement,” she says.

Sharing an ice cream with her husband by the sea, she reflected on her past. “Having survived apartheid, I would never be able to vote for the DA,” she says. “They don’t represent the interests of the majority in this country, because they’re an extension of apartheid.”

But the ANC “needed to be humbled,” she says. “Hopefully, this multiparty character will give the government the robustness the country needs.”

Mr. Swana, the analyst, is more dubious about the prospects of a Cabinet containing a wide range of opposing political views.

“We cannot ignore the history that the first government of national unity [GNU] did not go as well as they say it did,” he points out. Nelson Mandela’s unity Cabinet lasted barely two years, ending with the apartheid-era National Party’s withdrawal in June 1996.

“There is a clear, definite risk that this GNU might be unstable, just like the first one,” says Mr. Swana. “It is not a silver bullet. It’s going to be complicated.”

Growing up in South Los Angeles, Anthony Fagan was “very much part of all of the problems that take place in this community,” he says. Today, he’s overseeing construction on a park that is at the heart of efforts to make the Crenshaw District a must-visit stretch of LA.   

“We’re going to change lives with this park on so many different levels,” says Mr. Fagan, an assistant superintendent with PCL Construction. 

The $100 million initiative has drawn public and private funding to transform a 1.3-mile stretch of Crenshaw Boulevard into the largest Black-centered public art display in the United States. Destination Crenshaw is a holistic plan that weaves economic and community development together with cultural celebration to recast this neighborhood as a tourism center and create economic stability for those who live here – and for generations to come. 

“This is owning it,” says Jason Foster, president and COO of Destination Crenshaw. “It’s a way for our community to actually embrace folks coming and celebrating what this community is, but also for other communities to acknowledge that this community exists.” 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Anthony Fagan, assistant superintendent with PCL Construction, stands in the under-construction Sankofa Park in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles, April 4, 2024. He grew up in the neighborhood.

Skeptics and hope 

Destination Cresnhaw runs north-south through the Hyde Park neighborhood – part of South LA, known as South-Central Los Angeles until 2003, when the LA City Council changed the name, hoping to dissociate the 16-square-mile area from a reputation for gang violence and race riots. 

Destination Crenshaw touches three census tracts that fall in California’s highest quartile for poverty and unemployment. On average, about three-fourths of the residents who live in these neighborhoods are Black.

In the 1950s, South LA had the highest concentration of Japanese Americans in the country, after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted racist housing covenants and Japanese migrant farm workers settled into enclaves like Boyle Heights. Thousands of Japanese farm and railroad workers had arrived in the years leading up to that, too, beginning in the late 1800s, and a surge of migrants moved down after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. 

African American families soon followed, and by the late 1960s, Crenshaw Boulevard was a corridor of flourishing Black-owned businesses. Leimert Park, capping the northern end of the district, was a center of artistic expression.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Small-business owner Rosemary Williams sits in her store, Dog Lovers Pet Grooming, on Crenshaw Boulevard April 4, 2024. She says she was hesitant to lend the side of her business to a Destination Crenshaw mural because she worried it might attract troublemakers.

Rosemary Williams moved here from Chicago in 1968. She opened Dog Lovers Pet Grooming on Crenshaw Boulevard in 1980 and has since seen other businesses, and neighbors, come and go. The building next door is vacant – it used to be a Dollar Tree, but it fell victim to the pandemic and then to looting, she says, as did other businesses along the corridor. Like many locals, she’s skeptical of the latest initiative. But she also wants it to work – and believes it’s worth a try.

“We’ll see,” she says, adding that she’d like to see the area improve from where it was 10 years ago. “Things were kind of going south for a minute. ... A lot of people lost their properties during the pandemic. So a lot of us didn’t make it. ... That kind of hurts my feelings when I see that happening to other businesses.”

Ms. Williams’ daughter convinced her to participate in Destination Crenshaw’s mural program, which pairs artists with storefronts. Her reluctance gave way, she said, because of the organizers’ efforts to support small businesses and to clean up the area. Standing by a wall of collars and leashes, she details her two demands for the artist: that the mural represent friends and businesses who have persisted here through the decades – and that it include dogs. 

Anthony “Toons One” Martin answered the call. He grew up in South LA in the ’70s, and remembers it as vibrant. He turned a talent for graffiti art into a career and worked around the world as a muralist. Today he’s living back in South LA, contributing to the neighborhood that shaped him, as one of the 100-plus artists who will be commissioned by Destination Crenshaw. 

His design is titled “Hey Young World,” inspired by the hip-hop song with the same name. He hopes, in turn, to inspire the youth who live here to take pride in their neighborhood and themselves – and dream big about their futures.

“People forget that government is for the people, by the people,” he says. “If we want to see ... solutions, we have to be a part of that process.” 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Council member Marqueece Harris-Dawson says that he hopes the Destination Crenshaw project will repair how people treat and use the area, and will bring economic growth to local businesses.

All eyes on Crenshaw 

Nobody knows that better than Marqueece Harris-Dawson, City Council member representing the 8th District and a driving force behind Destination Crenshaw. The South LA native came into office as plans were underway to build a light rail station at Leimert Park.

Residents were upset that the line would be built at street level, instead of below or above ground, bisecting their main throughway and disrupting foot traffic. But Mr. Harris-Dawson took a cue from Beverly Hills, which lobbied to have its light rail at grade to showcase the world-famous shopping district around Rodeo Drive, where palm trees punctuate power lunches and luxury stores.

He enlisted the Crenshaw community for ideas about building on the city’s investment – and combating fears of displacement from a spike in property values that often comes with mass transit hubs. What emerged was a plan to capitalize on the art and culture that radiate from this district, stimulate economic development, and strengthen community ties.   

“These things are so tied intrinsically together, the money with the architecture with the benefit of the community,” says Valery Augustin, an architect and assistant professor at the University of Southern California. “You need that investment for communities to stay places that people want to go to. And if people won’t invest in communities, then your built areas can’t possibly thrive.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

The United to Inspire Collective is painting this 10-story mural on the side of Good Shepherd Manor in the Crenshaw District, April 4, 2024. It’s a tribute to muralist Charles White, titled "Mother and Child."

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A woman walks her dog past small bungalow homes in the Crenshaw District April 4, 2024.

South LA has nurtured innumerable Black artists and entertainers, many of whom have shaped America’s cultural landscape. And the local hip-hop scene is legendary. But the area has missed out on the economic rewards of its cultural influence. 

People associate Black culture with Harlem, Chicago, or Atlanta, “but they don’t think of LA. And it’s because we just don’t put it forward,” says Mr. Harris-Dawson, who was recently elected LA’s next City Council president. “Culture’s coming out all the time and people are consuming it, but we don’t tie it to home.”

In the next few years, millions of metro riders will see this tie up close. Leimert station is on the rail line leaving Los Angeles International Airport. With the FIFA World Cup coming to Los Angeles in 2026 and the Olympics here in 2028, all eyes will be on Crenshaw Boulevard – portal to the City of Angels.

“Unapologetically Black”

Organizers describe Destination Crenshaw as “unapologetically Black.” Sankofa Park showcases that spirit. The triangle-shaped plot sits across from Leimert Park Station, one of a half dozen pocket parks that will offer space for play, perusal, and the simple comfort of connecting with nature. When finished, it will house sculptures by some of the biggest names in contemporary art including Kehinde Wiley, Maren Hassinger, Artis Lane, and Charles Dickson.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Construction is underway at Sankofa Park, part of Destination Crenshaw, in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles April 4, 2024. The park is modeled after a sankofa bird – an African bird that represents moving forward while learning from the past.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

The design in metal fences at Sankofa Park features giant star grass, used by enslaved Africans as bedding on ships crossing the ocean. It is a symbol of resilience.

Every detail is intentional: The park name – Sankofa – is for the African bird that represents moving forward while learning from the past. Most of the park’s plants are native to Africa. Pathways are lined with cutouts in the shape of African giant star grass, which migrated with enslaved Africans and took root alongside them. Those shapes are echoed in the park’s shade structures. Employing people with strong ties to this community was a priority.

Charles Dickson’s Car Culture is one of the first sights to greet visitors entering Crenshaw from Leimert Park. The highly polished steel sculpture harkens to weekend parades of lowriders, the car dealerships that were once abundant here, and the nearby Goodyear tire factory that shut down decades ago.

When members of his community see it, Mr. Dickson says he wants them to feel important. “I want them to know that they are part of that past, present, and future. ... And so you build up that pride and that confidence that they’re connected, they’re part of something historical,” he says. “The whole process is about a spiritual connection.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Sculptor Charles Dickson poses in front of the future site of his installation in Sankofa Park, part of Destination Crenshaw, April 4, 2024.

This creative energy amplifies a narrative that the Crenshaw community has held all along.

“We’re incredibly human,” says Mr. Harris-Dawson. “And we’re incredibly human in that we hold close to our hearts the struggle to be in our humanity and to be protected in our humanity and affirmed in our humanity.”

abian Sommer/picture-alliance/dpa/AP/File

Mridula Singh holds up her new German passport in Frankfurt, Germany, Jan. 23, 2018. Ms. Singh had to give up any other citizenship she held to become a German citizen. That law changed this year.

Miman Jasarovski has brown skin in a society still wrestling with its history of white supremacism.

His father emigrated from Macedonia to Germany in 1968 to work in the metals industry, as part of a guest worker program initiated amid a labor shortage. He settled in Dusseldorf, where Mr. Jasarovski was born and raised.

Germany doesn’t grant birthright citizenship as the United States does, so Mr. Jasarovski grew up in Germany with a Macedonian passport. He applied for German citizenship as an adult, only to run up against bureaucratic hurdles so onerous he gave up after three years.

“When you’re born and raised in Germany as a so-called foreigner, you feel like a stepchild of the country,” says Mr. Jasarovski, a former social worker who now advocates for citizens’ rights. “Like not the original child, but like Cinderella who does the dirt work and has to be there for everybody but has no rights.”

Now after decades of waffling, parliamentary members have finally passed laws allowing dual citizenship. That means people such as Mr. Jasarovski could keep, say, a Macedonian passport while also holding German citizenship.

While announcing the new law, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, “We are saying to all those who have often lived and worked in Germany for decades, who abide by our laws, who are at home here: You belong to Germany.”

Yet the reality of integrating new citizens with dual identities is more complicated than a rule change.

The government has at the same time raised hurdles for applicants, who must now prove they aren’t receiving social welfare, even if they are disabled, single parents, or caretakers for family members, for example, to have a chance at citizenship. There’s also the ongoing question of how society would continue to view a more diverse German population, now that the far-right parties in the country have showed real heft in boosting their share of the vote from 11% to 16% in last week’s European Parliamentary elections.

Christian Kinzer

Miman Jasarovski, a former social worker who now advocates for citizens’ rights, holds a Macedonian passport despite being born and raised in Germany. He describes himself as brown-skinned.

“In a conceptual sense, [the German law] acknowledges many of us have multiple languages [and] cultures. And families have been growing up in this completely normal context. It could be an acceptance of multiplicity as completely normal,” says Olga Gerstenberger, a researcher with the migration-focused media group With Wings and Roots. “But you still have this very strong idea of homogeneous German identity. It’s something very present and pushed by conservative parties.”

“They are German. German, German, German.”

Germany’s longtime ban on dual citizenship often sidelined new arrivals.

Immigrants to Germany might draw identity from a mixture of cultures and places, yet that ban inevitably forced a decision: Give up home country passports for German citizenship, or live and work in Germany with no citizenship rights. And for generations, people of Turkish, Polish, Syrian, and other backgrounds chose the latter.

That old law presented German identity as a “monolith,” says Gulay Türkmen, a cultural sociologist and author of “Under the Banner of Islam: Turks, Kurds, and the Limits of Religious Unity.”

“The previous citizenship law was a testament to the idea that there is no place for hyphenated identities in Germany, that you cannot be German-Turkish, German-Polish, etc. but only German,” he says. “In such an understanding, citizenship was seen as a loyalty pledge.”

Politicians against dual citizenship usually argued that one cannot be loyal to two countries at once. Yet studies show lived experiences are more complicated, says Dr. Türkmen, with people in Germany who have at least one foreign-born parent or whose heritage is influenced by migration stating they can feel both German and Polish, for example.

About a quarter of the population in Germany now has a migration background, and the new rules lag behind the country’s reality. Many dual-identity residents have also been able to hold two passports via exceptions: for instance, Gökay Sofuoğlu, chairman of the interest group Turkish Community in Germany. But the gesture itself is critical, says Mr. Sofuoğlu.

“It’s a very, very, very important change for Germany. The sense of belonging to this country naturally changes when you have the right to vote. And politicians are now required to also reach this mass of people, of new voters.”

Markus Schreiber/AP

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told the media in Berlin, Aug. 23, 2023, that the new German citizenship laws would ensure Germans with a migration background “will no longer be forced to give up part of their identity.”

Martin Manzel, an immigration lawyer who is fluent in Turkish, hails the change. “Now there’s no first- and second-degree German. The German state recognizes them as Germans, so they are German. German, German, German.”

Lingering questions of identity

While the law is clear, logistical and practical barriers must yet be overcome.

Mr. Manzel expects thousands of Turks in Germany to apply for citizenship, and says the result could be years-long waits. At least 1.3 million Turkish citizens live in Germany, according the Statistical Office of the European Union.

“The administrative side is going to be a mess,” says Mr. Manzeau, who points out that wait times for citizenship application processing already stretch beyond several years, and administrative positions are understaffed. “Let’s say you have 50,000 more applications. I don’t know how they’re going to handle this.”

Mr. Jasarovski, the Macedonian passport-holder who was born and raised in Germany, knows that waiting game well. His first application for German citizenship entailed repeated criminal background checks and requests for proof of employment and other documents. But because of family problems, the deadline expired before he could meet all paperwork requirements. With the memory of the first run, he says he couldn’t bring himself to start the process again.

“When you think about what they’re looking for from you [when you apply], it’s the opposite of empowering,” he says. The application has rested “on the bench under the window so long that the first sheet turned yellow under the sun. I was always like, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow, not today.’”

The integration and belonging that Chancellor Scholz refers to might take some time to develop, as German society grapples with questions of identity. Already, Turkish-Muslim migrants are discussing exit plans as far-right, anti-migration populists gain power, writes Rauf Ceylan, a German-Turkish sociologist at the University of Osnabrück, in an email.

Meanwhile, Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is actively courting the loyalty and votes of the three-milllion strong Turkish diaspora; more than 1 million Turks in Germany can still vote in Turkey.

“In this context, there is uncertainty among migrants,” says Dr. Ceylan. “After all, if you are still perceived as a foreigner despite being naturalized ... why should you naturalize? It is therefore currently difficult to assess what effect Olaf Scholz’s gesture will have in the medium and long term.”

In a one-room apartment in Jos, Nigeria, instructor Wuni Bitrus and almost a dozen students gather around a table cluttered with equipment – a toolbox, a 12-volt adapter, a coding panel, a set of jumper cables, a mix of colored wires. The students’ idea: to build the prototype for a “smart” door that opens with the touch of a finger.

The students chat back and forth in sign language, and Mr. Bitrus signs back. The group discusses using Arduino, an open-source electronics platform, and one student wonders how fingerprints can be stored. Mindful of Nigeria’s electricity problems, Mr. Bitrus genially advises the group to use a battery-powered keypad lock system first and incorporate a fingerprint feature later. 

“It works well, rather than waste time reinventing the wheel,” Mr. Bitrus says. After nodding in agreement, the students excitedly start working.

This is just another afternoon in a club run by the Deaf Technology Foundation, a nonprofit co-founded by Mr. Bitrus in 2017 that trains Nigerian children and young adults who are deaf in computer programming and robotics. The students also work to improve their reading skills, and receive career guidance and counseling to help them believe in themselves.

Mr. Bitrus’ driving force? “Compassion,” he says, because deaf people in Nigeria “are limited in so many ways.”

Nathaniel Bivan

Students deliberate as they work on the prototype for a biometric door.

His desire to change the prospects of Nigeria’s deaf and hard-of-hearing community was sparked in 2014 by his encounter with a 13-year-old girl while he was teaching as part of the National Youth Service Corps in Zamfara state. Mr. Bitrus had noticed that the teen faced discrimination, and he became determined to learn sign language and teach her to use a computer. Three years later, he marshaled the resources, including funding from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to form the Deaf Technology Foundation.

Call her Mama Robotics

One of the darkest memories that Mercy Samson Grimah, a foundation student, has about growing up is looking at the faces of people around her and recognizing insults and negative energy directed at her. 

“That hurt me so bad because I knew in my heart that I could do anything. They just see us as lesser human beings,” she says. “I wanted to show them that deaf people can become whatever they want to be.” 

(Mr. Bitrus interpreted the students’ comments for this article.)

Ms. Grimah says her private secondary school did not formally teach sign language to her, nor much of anything else. But there was one teacher who knew how to sign, and she taught Ms. Grimah. When Mr. Bitrus visited Ms. Grimah’s school to promote the work of the Deaf Technology Foundation, she was happy to see that “he could sign,” too.

She dropped out in her third year because her parents could not pay her school fees, but fortunately, she had already formed a bond with the Deaf Technology Foundation.

“I had never touched a laptop before in my life,” she says. Now, she wants to become a computer scientist – and answers to the nickname Mama Robotics.

Five years ago, Ms. Grimah and several other students made a road trip from Jos to Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, to compete in MakeX, a robotics contest. The team had practiced for about 18 hours. In the end, it built robots to perform tasks such as cleaning trash in a model city. Although Ms. Grimah’s team was not chosen to go on to represent Nigeria in the international competition, it emerged fourth among about 15 teams.

“Our team was the only one made up of the deaf,” says Ms. Grimah, her eyes lighting up.

Nathaniel Bivan

Mr. Bitrus tutors a Deaf Technology Foundation class in Jos.

Her father, Grimah Samson, adds, “What they are doing changed her. The day we are not able to transport her here [to the Deaf Technology Foundation for club activities], she isn’t happy. We pray that God opens doors for her and the other children to make something of themselves.”

Shut out of the sciences

Mercy Sale wanted to study to become a computer scientist, but her school told her that, as a deaf student, she could not. 

In October 2019, Ms. Sale was part of a Deaf Technology Foundation team that flew to the Netherlands. It was among teams from 10 organizations around the world that competed for the Nothing About Us Without Us Award, which goes to nonprofits working with marginalized or disadvantaged communities.

“I started seeing the reward for where technology can take me,” Ms. Sale says. Now, she wants to be a web developer. 

Joy Yusuf, another Deaf Technology Foundation student, had wanted to become a doctor. But she was moved to a new school where the principal and staff said there was no way that could happen, even though the school welcomed students with disabilities.  

“It was a blow for me,” Ms. Yusuf says. “I cried. I had to call Mr. Bitrus and my father to beg them, but [the principal and staff] still refused. For me, Deaf Tech is the only way I can have anything close to [studying] medicine.” 

Now, she, too, wants to become a web developer. 

The Deaf Technology Foundation’s major challenge is a lack of funding. There are only two paid tutors for computer programming and robotics, and the number of students keeps growing. Thirty-four students on average attend classes four days a week, but that number can rise to 70 when students are on breaks from their regular studies. To loosen up, they all gather twice a week for sports and dance.

In addition to the three clubs that the Deaf Technology Foundation has started in Jos, it has one each in Zamfara state and Abuja. Most of the foundation’s volunteers are older students who help conduct sports activities for club members on a temporary basis, Mr. Bitrus explains. 

“This is what I love doing,” he says, adding that he hopes, in time, to see his students train others. 

To scale up, the foundation aims to take advantage of the technology boom in Nigeria, particularly in the robotics sector. It hopes to partner with Jos-based companies on, for example, self-driving car technology and automated wheelchairs.

Lengdung Tungchamma, co-founder of Jenta Reads, a community initiative that aims to improve reading skills in impoverished areas of Jos, has worked with the foundation for a couple of years.  

“The most important thing about Deaf Tech is the passion of its leaders and founders,” he says. “Giving people with [disabilities] skills that they can use to earn an income and make a future for themselves is the best thing anyone can do. 

“People need to see that disability is not a death sentence or the end of life. ... That’s what Deaf Tech does. It just gives hope to people.” 

Reuters

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa (left) shakes hands with the newly elected Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Annelie Lotriet, while leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, John Steenhuisen (center), looks on during the first sitting of the National Assembly on June 14 following the recent election.

The French call it “cohabitation.” When their country holds a parliamentary election in a few weeks, voters in France may hand control of the National Assembly to opponents of President Emmanuel Macron. Divided government – a president from one party, a prime minister from another – is rare in France. If it does happen, the European nation can turn for encouragement to a new model – in South Africa.

Last Friday, South Africa saw its first coalition government in three decades after voters used an election in May to deprive the once-dominant party, the African National Congress, of its long-held majority. The new government – a team of rivals between the ANC and two other parties – shows how adversaries can forge unity and trust through a shared respect for voter preferences on issues.

“Winner-take-all politics threatens to deepen polarisation and undermine national cohesion,” wrote Marie-Noelle Nwokolo, a researcher at The Brenthurst Foundation in Johannesburg. “The lessons from South Africa’s May 2024 election are clear: the maturity of democracy hinges on the active participation of an informed electorate, the integrity of the electoral process, and the willingness of political leaders to collaborate for the common good.”

Those ingredients of democracy are hard to come by in southern Africa. Over the past half-century, the political movements that ousted foreign or minority rule in the region have clung to power through patronage and ballot fraud. That trend has now been broken in South Africa – not by conflict or mass demonstrations, but through humility and a rejection of cynicism.

Elsewhere in Africa, corruption, unemployment, and crumbling services have eroded faith in democracy, particularly among young Africans. Yet in South Africa, citizens between the ages of 20 and 29 accounted for up to 77% of new voter registrations. Their ballots brought change.

In last month’s election, the ruling ANC fell short of 50% of the vote for the first time since the end of white-only rule in 1994. The party chose not to partner with parties fueled by race-based resentments or that were tainted by mass corruption. Instead, it teamed up with its main rival, the historically white Democratic Alliance, which advocates for achieving equality through free-market economics.

What the parties in the coalition share, their leaders stated in the framework for governing together, is recognition that “the people of South Africa expect us to work together ... in a new era of peace, justice and prosperity for all.”

At rare intervals in the life of a nation, “there occurs a transformation so remarkable that a molt seems to take place, and an altered country begins to emerge,” historian Doris Kearns Goodwin once observed. If the coalition holds together in making reforms, South Africans may have reached such a moment through a citizen-led renewal of democratic values.

That provides a calming example for other countries contemplating new power-sharing arrangements, as in France. As the French political scientist Alain Garrigou has noted, “Despite the conflictual nature of cohabitation, the major fear of an impossibility to govern has not been borne out.”