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The state of Jacob Zuma

Jobs and housing, not sex scandals, will determine the President’s future as party rivals struggle for influence in the government

Malema, mines and the youth league

As the African National Congress leadership tries to dampen factional rivalries, some are asking whether Julius Malema, ...

BOTSWANA | ZIMBABWE

A clash at the border

A confrontation between Harare and Gaborone over a wandering pride of lions has escalated into a serious bilateral rift

BLUE LINES

THE INSIDE VIEW

Understandably, Nigeria’s Acting President Goodluck Jonathan opposes military coups. A week after he took power through what some describe as a ‘democratic coup’ (see Acting President Jonathan sets out his plans), Jonathan hosted a summit of the West African regional grouping ECOWAS on 16 February. The group elected him Chairman and then demanded the region ‘get tough on crisis states’. A chance to test that call came two days later, when troops stormed the presidential palace in Niamey, arrested President Mamadou Tandja and suspended the constitution. Tandja’s illegal prolongation of his mandate had already prompted ECOWAS to expel Niger. Thousands of angry civilians demonstrated in the streets of Niamey last Sunday. The coup poses a challenge to those wanting to fight this sort of regime change. Diplomats were aware of Tandja’s plan to stay in power last year but were powerless to stop him. African Union officials argue that there is no such thing as a good coup, but the new Conseil Suprême pour la Restauration de la Démocratie promised to make Niger ‘an example of democracy and good governance’. After the death of Lansana Conté, there was a grudging acceptance of Guinea’s military coup in 2008. After soldiers massacred 130 civilians last September, that judgment was proved horribly wrong. Although the rules condemn coups, their leaders are often given a honeymoon to clean house and hand over to civilians – the prospect of which Niamey’s new leaders show little enthusiasm.

ZIMBABWE

Petrified Politburos

The old ruling party’s new Politburo, announced on 11 February, is anything but new. The Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front’s 49-member policy-making committee, announced by Robert Gabriel Mugabe, national President and First Secretary of ZANU-PF, reflects the party’s crisis over its leadership succession and its obsession with regional and ethnic balancing.

AFRICA | UNITED STATES

Beating up the bankers

Among the offending banks named in a new Congressional report on money laundering and corruption are HSBC Holdings, Europe’s largest bank, and Bank of America. They are accused of failing to scrutinise suspect accounts. HSBC is to be referred to the US bank regulators for facilitating transfers of funds from Angola which other banks had rejected as suspect. Bank of America was criticised for opening an account for the now-convicted arms dealer Pierre Falcone, who helped to break United Nations’ sanctions on Angola. An HSBC official said the bank feared opening branches in Africa because the ‘reputational risks’ were too high.

AFRICA | UNITED STATES

If you sincerely want to be rich

In February, the United States Senate Subcommittee on Investigations produced evidence on the transfer of illicit and suspect funds from African regimes to the USA. Its report highlighted lax US regulatory standards and the dubious activities of high-profile people and institutions.

GUINEA | UNITED STATES

The junta explains

Blamed for the massacre of over 100 civilians last September, the junta in Conakry is trying to improve its image via a United States-based public relations company run by two former Department of Defense (DOD) officials. David Crane, who was the first Chief Prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone before his departure in 2005, has made a surprise return to West Africa as a consultant to Guinea’s embattled military junta, the Conseil National pour la Démocratie et le Développement (CNDD).

NIGERIA | ANALYSIS

Acting President Jonathan sets out his plans

Whatever the constitutional doubts that remain, the 9 February resolution by the National Assembly, citing the ‘doctrine of necessity’, to recognise Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan as Acting President was warmly welcomed by Nigerians who had watched the country teeter for over 70 days. A deciding factor was Jonathan’s own base in the Niger Delta: the prospect of a return to widespread militant attacks against oil installations there in protest at the blocking of his political elevation was enough to convince most of the political class that it was time to suspend Umaru Yar’Adua’s attempts at ruling from a hospital ward in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

NIGERIA

Goodluck with the money

Now a man in a hurry, Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has to stamp his authority on Abuja and quickly decide which ministers and officials can help him and which to drop. Within two days of assuming office, Jonathan swore in 17 permanent secretaries and met with oil company executives. Whether he turns out to be a stopgap leader or a strong contender for the presidency in 2012, he talks obsessively about policy goals: pushing the Petroleum Industry Bill through the National Assembly and consolidating the amnesty in the Niger Delta, which has been fraying at the edges in the past month.

ANGOLA

Dos Santos prepares for power, again

Intending to run for another term in office in 2012, President José Eduardo dos Santos has moved close allies into key ministries. He faces a vote not by electors but by Parliament, where his Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) controls 87% of seats.

ANGOLA

The bid to clean up MPLA Inc.

President José Eduardo dos Santos says he laments the rise of grand corruption in Angola as it undermines the social fabric. If so, some members of his government may be in trouble. Any serious anti-corruption campaign must tackle key institutions, including the ruling Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) and foreign corporations involved in oil, gas, diamonds and construction.

KENYA

Maize splits the Grand Coalition

Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s 16 February call for his allies to boycott cabinet meetings until the furore over his right to suspend ministers is settled shows how quickly and deeply government schisms can open up (AC Vol 51 No 3). Ostensibly, the row was sparked by Odinga’s announcement on 14 February that he was suspending Agriculture Minister William Ruto and Education Minister Sam Ongeri for three months to facilitate investigations into corruption allegations which independent investigations have made against them.

NAMIBIA

SWAPO's big guns in the fray

President Hifikepunye Pohamba will be sworn in for his second five-year term at the end of March after the ever-governing South West Africa People’s Organisation was awarded an apparently decisive victory in November’s presidential and National Assembly elections. Nine opposition parties are as usual challenging the results in court. They include the new parliamentary opposition, the Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP). However, the real political action is within SWAPO itself. The constitution limits a president to two five-year terms, so Pohamba will not be allowed to stand again in 2014. Amid much bitterness, several would-be successors are now lining up.

BLUE LINES

THE INSIDE VIEW

SOUTH AFRICA | TANZANIA | BRITAIN

Protection in the arms bazaar

The US$450 million in fines that BAE Systems agreed to pay on 5 February to halt investigations into corrupt payments on arms deals adds to its financial woes. And it covers only part of the claims against its businesses. BAE’s profits for 2009 fell 43% to £982 mn. ($1.5 bn.) after it lost a US army contract and paid fines on its Saudi Arabian and Tanzanian contracts.Yet it remains one of the world’s biggest arms companies and its plea deal looks cheap. Germany’s Siemens paid $1.3 billion to settle similar corruption claims and the USA’s Halliburton paid some $600 mn. in a plea bargain with the US Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission for its corrupt payments on Nigeria’s $6 bn. gas export plant.

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The regional fight intensifies after Kano slaughter

Africa Confidential In The News

Reuters, 16 January 2012
UPDATE 1-Nigeria: will it fall apart or can it hold?
[Goodluck Jonathan is] "eerily calm considering we could be weeks away from a major confrontation," said Africa Confidential editor Patrick Smith. "The absolute failure ... to wheel on southerners and northerners at the same time to say this is a national crisis and we have to pull together, is striking."

BBC Newshour, 14 January 2012
Suicide bomb kills Basra pilgrims; elections in Taiwan; and special focus on Nigeria
Africa Confidential's editor Patrick Smith speaks to Julian Marshall in the special focus on Nigeria.

BBC Newsnight, 24 August 2011
Risk Islamists will move in to fill Libya power vacuum
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi claimed that if he was ousted from power Islamist radicals would seize control of Libya. Patrick Smith speaks to Newsnight's Robin Denselow about whether he is likely to be proven right or wrong.

BBC, 16 August 2011
Solomon Mujuru: Obituary of a Zimbabwean 'king-maker'
"He had all the mystique of a liberation war hero that has served him to present-day politics," Patrick Smith, editor of the London-based Africa Confidential magazine, told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

TIME Magazine, 1 June 2011
Death, Prison or Exile: Gaddafi Is Out of Options
"My understanding is that they would be delighted if he did a duck," Smith says.