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Published 2nd November 2007

Vol 48 No 22


Nigeria

Which rules? Whose laws?

President Yar’Adua’s call for the rule of law could have unexpected consequences

It has been a good week for the many Nigerians who like reversals of fortunes. On 30 October, the free-spending Speaker of the House of Representatives, Patricia Etteh, had to resign after losing a vote in the National Assembly. A few days earlier, the election tribunals had overturned the victories of two governing party state governors, Saidu Dakingari in Kebbi State and Ibrahim Idris in Kogi. Before the election tribunals, Namadi Sambo, the People’s Democratic Party Governor of Kaduna, faces a strong challenge from the opposition All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) candidate. In Ekiti State, the PDP Governor, Segun Oni, is challenged by Kayode Fayemi of the Action Congress (AC). Fayemi’s case is strong enough to push Oni to desperate lengths: he claims bizarrely that outgoing British High Commissioner Richard Grozney had personally endorsed his election. The Foreign & Commonwealth Office flatly contradicted this account.In Rivers State, the tribunal ruled that new Governor Celestine Omehia should hand over to PDP rival Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi because his party’s primary election was flawed. The Rivers judge had not thought such irregularities required a fresh poll.


Raiding the camps

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

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While Khartoum’s delegates attend the peace talks, its armed forces move in on Darfur’s displaced peoples’ camps

As Khartoum’s delegation sat in Libya slamming ‘holdout rebels’ who had boycotted the Darfur talks, its armed forces were capturing displaced people in a camp nea...



BLUE LINES
THE INSIDE VIEW

Cape Town’s leafy Rondesbosch suburb is an improbable setting for a power struggle in a liberation movement but the local branch of the African National Congress may have set one in motion this week after they nominated Cyril Ramaphosa as their choice for the next ANC President. Local ANC members led by former Education Minister Kader Asmal put forward Ramaphosa’s name alongside those of President Thabo Mbeki and sacked Deputy President Jacob Zuma at the party congress in Polokwane in December. ...
Cape Town’s leafy Rondesbosch suburb is an improbable setting for a power struggle in a liberation movement but the local branch of the African National Congress may have set one in motion this week after they nominated Cyril Ramaphosa as their choice for the next ANC President. Local ANC members led by former Education Minister Kader Asmal put forward Ramaphosa’s name alongside those of President Thabo Mbeki and sacked Deputy President Jacob Zuma at the party congress in Polokwane in December. As ANC tradition demands, Ramaphosa is saying nothing publicly about his nomination but he no longer energetically rejects any thoughts of his running for the party’s and then the country’s presidency. Zuma’s campaign with a series of public rallies to drum up support and exploit Mbeki’s current difficulties follows a different script. As rivalry intensifies between the Mbeki and Zuma camps, senior ANC officials argue for a compromise candidate. Ramaphosa fits the bill: as the first Secretary General of the unified ANC – the exiled, domestic, prison and armed wings – he knows the party inside out. Ramaphosa is known and liked by grandees such as Nelson Mandela, as well as by activists and trades unionists. Compromise or not, Ramaphosa is the candidate that Zuma’s camp fears most.
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No borders against trouble

Unfinished business in three major hotspots endangers the whole region

The international community helps where it can and the governments concerned are trying, but the Great Lakes region is far from being settled. In Congo-Kinshasa’s North Kivu ...


His friend Bob

President Mutharika seems to be buddying up to Zimbabwe's failing boss, which looks a bad move

Since he became President in 2004, Bingu wa Mutharika has confounded expectations that he would go on governing as his predecessor, Bakili Muluzi, did. His management of the econom...


Conflict in a lakeside church

Nkhotakota is a small town on the western shore of Lake Malawi, whose opposite coastline, in Mozambique, is occasionally visible. The corrugated-iron roofed Cathedral of All Sain...


Shooting the messenger

One thing unites the factions in the bitter infighting for the succession in the governing African National Congress: they all hate the media

After the toughest weeks of his presidency, Thabo Mbeki basked in the national euphoria generated by the Springboks’ Rugby World Cup victory over England in Paris. He used the triu...


Sam bows out again

The founding President is standing down, but he certainly isn't going away for good

President Sam Nujoma, at 78, is at last moving into a back seat. He told a specially-convened meeting of the politburo of the ruling South West African People’s Organisation ...



Pointers

In loco parentis

The trial of nine French and seven Spanish citizens accused of abducting 103 children from the Chad/Sudan border region on 25 October will damage France’s relationship with C...


Digging Belinga

Gabonese are outraged at the terms of a US$3 billion iron ore project at Bélinga and the likely damage to the country’s national parks. We hear that the recently found...


Scrum half

Relations between Britain and South Africa, not helped by the Springboks’ 15-6 defeat of England in the Rugby World Cup in Paris on 20 October, have become poisonous again ov...