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17th February 2012

Vol 53 N0 4

Gaalkaayo, Puntland. An AK47 rifle with a strap embroidered with 'Somalia' leans against a wall. Sven Torfinn / Panos
Gaalkaayo, Puntland. An AK47 rifle with a strap embroidered with 'Somalia' leans against a wall. Sven Torfinn / Panos

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures
Somalia SOMALIA | BRITAIN

No great expectations

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s grand conference will bring together many parties but no one is forecasting a breakthrough

After two decades of political mayhem, Somalis and more perspicacious foreign diplomats are intensely sceptical about high-level conferences. Many app...

CONGO-KINSHASA

The trouble after Katumba

The death of the country’s quintessential dealmaker leaves its leadership confused and exposed

SOUTH AFRICA

The state of Zuma’s nation

The promises sound good but money may be short as the President stakes his claim to another term at the helm

BLUE LINES

Close

THE INSIDE VIEW

An apparently revitalised President Robert Mugabe has been displaying some of his old, subtle political form in recent weeks, since returning from his annual Asian winter holiday and medical check-ups. When the First Draft of the Constitution appeared on 10 February, hardliners went into knee-jerk attack mode – but he reined them in. When Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai wrote him a letter, the hotheads leaked it to discredit the MDC leader and please their own leader. Mugabe was decidedly displeased and tore a strip off those responsible.

Unlike many ZANU-PF loyalists, Mugabe knows that blind commitment to destroying the enemy is not in the best interests of the party at this delicate stage in the constitutional negotiations. The Southern Africa Development Community and the constitution-drafters cannot be gaoled and only a fool would try to humiliate the SADC facilitator, President Jacob Zuma, ahead of his visit to Harare.

Mugabe’s longer game is to encircle the enemy rather than charge him. He hopes to persuade his MDC coalition allies of the futility of the irksome and tedious constitutional process, and that both parties have a future together in a two-party state, a marriage of convenience. The more desperate MDC activists may agree to junk the constitutional talks and slug it out in an early election under the old rules. SADC could walk away. The ZANU-PF hotheads would cool off, the mediators might back off, and Mugabe could celebrate his 88th birthday this month in style.

SOUTH AFRICA

Big projects, money pressures

Central to President Jacob Zuma’s plans for 2012 is a massive infrastructure development programme. It is to be driven and overseen by the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission (PICC), headed by Zuma and consisting of government officials without a technocrat, private sector or civil society representative in sight. Five strategic projects, none of them new, are intended to develop the economy and create jobs – a welcome change from previous fanciful promises, such as 2011’s ‘five million jobs by 2020’.

SIERRA LEONE

Early exit for UN envoy

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon closed the door on a bitter dispute with the government of President Ernest Bai Koroma by recalling his Executive Representative for the UN Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone, Michael von der Schulenburg, on 2 February. Koroma had grown increasingly angry at what he and his supporters saw as Unipsil’s unwarranted interference in local politics. The UN believed it was defending the peacebuilding process and helping to pave the way to free and fair elections.

GUINEA | MINING | ANALYSIS

The gamble for Simandou

The financial firm JP Morgan estimates that Simandou’s Vale-controlled blocks can produce 50 mn. tonnes of ore annually by 2020. That compares favourably with the output of South Africa’s Kumba Iron Ore, the continent’s biggest producer. International financier George Soros has a special role in the drama. He advised Condé’s government on a revised mining code with better benefits for the state, including a 15% free-carried interest in mining projects and an option to buy a further 20% stake at market prices.

GUINEA

Condé takes on the army and opposition

Hard choices confront President Alpha Condé as he comes under pressure to set a date for parliamentary elections this year. Polling was postponed from November 2011, after Condé and the opposition parties failed to reach agreement over electoral registration and guarantees of the independence of the electoral authority. More ticklish still, it must deal with allegations against serving officers following the massacre by security forces in September 2009 (AC Vol 50 No 20, Gunning down democracy).

GHANA

Who paid whom for what?

The deepening row over Alfred Agbesi Woyome’s financing of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) is a nightmare for President John Atta Mills’s re-election campaign. The scandal has undermined one of Mills’s strongest electoral assets: that he is a man of irreproachable personal integrity whose modest demeanour gives him a natural bond with the average Ghanaian on the tro-tro. The government’s management of the affair has been defensive and cack-handed, if not outright dishonest.

GHANA

The Woyome scandal and its casualties

The Woyome scandal has so far claimed two cabinet ministers. The Education Minister and former Attorney General, Betty Mould-Iddrisu, resigned on 23 January, after her successor as AG, Martin A. B. K. Amidu, was fired on 19 January for ‘misconduct’. His dismissal – before which he made public claims that his life had been threatened and ‘gargantuan crimes’ against the state committed by an unnamed cabinet colleague – had triggered a crisis in the governing party just as a final pre-election ministerial reshuffle was being planned.

MALI

Libyan arms fuel Tuareg revolt

Battle-hardened fighters of the Mouvement national pour la libération de l’Azawad – equipped with heavy weapons they brought back from Libya – are confronting the Malian army in hard combat for the control of key towns. Well-led and highly experienced, the Tuareg MNLA launched its offensive in January, having returned to Mali late in 2011 from the defence of Bani Walid, the last stronghold of forces loyal to the late Libyan leader, Colonel Moammar el Gadaffi (AC Vol 52 No 18, The Gadaffi clan scatters).

MALI

MNLA’s deadly mobility

Attacks by the Mouvement national pour la libération de l’Azawad (MNLA) have been not only fierce but well planned. The late January assault on Ménaka, in the far south-east near Niger, was followed by operations against Tessalit and Aguelhok, 500-600 kilometres to the north, near the Algerian border. The aim was clearly to divide government forces and cause confusion. Then, the rebels attacked Léré, over 700 km. to the south-west, near the Mauritanian border, and Niafounké, near Timbuktu. After the Léré attack, some 1,000 civilians fled into Mauritania. The army has deployed five helicopter gunships to try to push back forces threatening Kidal, capital of the Malian Sahara.

SAHEL

Gadaffi’s bequest to region

A report to the United Nations Security Council paints an alarming picture of Sahelian countries being severely stressed by the 420,000 returnees who have fled Libya since the beginning of the uprising there. Some of them were armed – and have fuelled the Mali revolt (see Mali: Libyan arms fuel Tuareg revolt) – and others have been spreading Libyan weapons through the region.

BLUE LINES

THE INSIDE VIEW

An apparently revitalised President Robert Mugabe has been displaying some of his old, subtle political form in recent weeks, since returning from his annual Asian winter holiday and medical check-ups. When the First Draft of the Constitution appeared on 10 February, hardliners went into knee-jerk attack mode – but he reined them in. When Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai wrote him a letter, the hotheads lea...

Read more

GAMBIA

No freedom of the press

The announcement by United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on 9 February that Gambia’s putschist President Yahya Jammeh had requested UN assistance in the case of ‘Chief’ Ebrima Manneh was greeted with general scepticism. The Daily Observer journalist is widely believed to have died in detention. The case is just one of many, including the murder in December 2004 of The Point’s Deyda Hydara, which still provoke public outrage. The Spokesman for the President’s Office said it was unaware of – and could not confirm – any such request to the UN.


Pointers  

SENEGAL

Wade rallies

After looking distinctly lacklustre in recent weeks, President Abdoulaye Wade’s prospects for re-election have brightened considerably while the opposition looks divided and riot police keep the streets on lockdown. Some even speculate that Wade could cle...

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