ANGOLA War drums sounding 7th August 1998 UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi's meetings with Dos Santos and Savimbi may be the last hope to rescue the peace accord Jonas Savimbi is on the presidential campaign trail again. He has ordered his troops into a series of carefully orchestrated hit-and-run attacks against government positions in twelve of the country’s 18 provinces. Insiders from the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola insist that Savimbi is still determined to be Angola’s President; it’s the only cause left for him. He has spent the last 33 years fighting, first against Portuguese colonialism, then against communism and its African supporters and most of all, against the 23-year rule of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola.
ANGOLA Angola looks east 7th August 1998 Image courtesy of Panos Pictures View site Zambia has decades of experience of the Angolan war (AC Vol 39 No 10). It hosts the oldest continuous refugee camp in Africa, Muykwayukwa, opened in 1966 for Angolan refugees. Thre...
UNITED NATIONS Another Congo crisis 7th August 1998 Image courtesy of Panos Pictures View site New claims emerge that the UNHCR financed arms shipments to Mobutu's soldiers As a new rebellion from the east gets under way in Congo- Kinshasa, more questions are being asked about the role of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees...
SENEGAL Pre-millenial tension 7th August 1998 A military adventure abroad and political squabbles at home By sending Senegalese soldiers into Guinea-Bissau, President Abdou Diouf has muddied the pool of Dakar’s politics. The bitter rebellion in the southern province of Casamance made l...
ZIMBABWE Questions of succession 7th August 1998 Replacing veteran Vice-President Joshua Nkomo has opened new political divisions Zimbabwe has two vice-presidents, Joshua Nkomo and Simon Muzenda, but people may have forgotten that Nkomo still exists. He does not appear in public; President Robert Mugabe conti...
ERITREAETHIOPIA Last ditch 7th August 1998 The Organisation of African Unity was working ‘flat-out to avert a full-scale war’, said Secretary General Salim Ahmed Salim at last weekend’s peace summit in Ouagadougou. Yet rene...
TOGO Lomé out of Lomé 7th August 1998 The rigging of Togo’s 21 June presidential election (AC Vol 39 No 14) may lead to Lomé being thrown out of the Convention named after it. The European Commission has set in motion ...
MALI Money doubling 7th August 1998 Enigmatic Malian businessman and marabout Babani Sissoko’s finances are under the spotlight again following the start of legal proceedings against him in Miami by the Dubai Islamic...
