Africa’s headline stories, hailed as successes only eight months ago, are back at the top of the news — but for the wrong reasons. Having declared just last October that the continent was more peaceful than it has been in five years or more, analysts have recently had to eat their words.
Sudan and Burundi are both tripping up in the final push towards peace, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which looked like a shoo-in eight months ago, is running into serious trouble.
South Africa’s Minister of Provincial and Local Government, Sydney Mufamadi, probably knows the DRC better than any other member of the Cabinet. With United Nations special representative Moustapha Niasse, he co-brokered the global and inclusive Pretoria agreement in December 2002.
President Thabo Mbeki despatched him to Kinshasa earlier this month when ethnic violence in the east of the DRC threatened to unpick the agreement. Mufamadi’s eight-person delegation returned last week with an altogether too upbeat assessment of the situation. Mufamadi himself lumped the ethnic violence with an abortive coup in the early hours of last Friday, calling them ”freak incidents” that would not be allowed to derail the transformation process.
The fact, however, is that the process now needs much more than a shot in the arm to get it moving in time to deliver the DRC’s first democratic elections in one year’s time. It looks as if it might have to be wheeled back into the intensive care unit.
The ailing central African giant is, frankly, becoming infectious.
Thousands of Banyamulenge are fleeing from the DRC into Burundi. These DRC Tutsis believe the neighbouring state is the only place safe from the marauding Hutu Interahamwe and Mai-Mai loyal to Joseph Kabila’s presidency.
It was ostensibly to protest against what they say is an impending genocide that Banyamulenge rebel groups took the town of Bukavu last month. Although the town is back under government control, the Banyamulenge threaten more drastic action if a commission of inquiry is not called into alleged atrocities by the Interahamwe.
Meanwhile, Interahamwe elements have engaged the Ugandan army in the Bwindi forest near the capital, Kampala. And refugees fleeing increasing unrest in the south-east of the DRC are reportedly moving into Zambia.
Rwandan troops are reportedly back in the DRC responding to Interahamwe threats. President Paul Kagame himself has said he would have to act against these former genocidaires if the DRC did not do so itself.
Kagame has requested a third-party verification mechanism to ascertain what is really happening along the border that Rwanda closed earlier this month.
With nine neighbours, the DRC has a frightening potential to destabilise the heart of Africa.
In Sudan, rebel leader John Garang has gone on the stump to sell the agreement reached so far with the government on six of eight critical issues to determine the future governance of that country, share its resources and end the continent’s longest-running civil war.
But the bridge across the Muslim north/Christian south divide does not reach the problems being experienced in the west.
The United States administration, which has largely underwritten the peace process that culminated in the signing at Naivasha in Kenya, is now under pressure from human rights groups to characterise the government treatment of rebels in Darfur as genocide. Normally cautious UN officials are already referring to government backing of bandit groups in the west as a reign of terror.
With the rainy season approaching, aid organisations are saying that 80% of the people reliant on their assistance for their survival will be unreachable — this after the organisations warned two months ago that Darfur threatens a humanitarian crisis on the scale of that seen in Rwanda a decade ago.
The assumption of peacekeeping duties in Burundi by the UN on June 1 is a positive development. It remains to be seen, however, whether the increased resources provided by the world organisation can be unleashed to bring the National Liberation Forces of Agathon Rwasa into the peace process. The apparent determination of interim Burundi President Domitien Ndayizeye to delay elections, which were due to be completed by the end of October, presents a formidable political poser to the mediation team led by South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
An encouraging element in an otherwise depressing scenario is the recognition by the developed world that Africa is trying to put out its own fires. At their summit in Evian last year, leaders of the world’s seven richest countries and Russia — known as the G8 — grudgingly agreed to help train and equip one brigade of troops for Africa’s envisaged rapid reaction force.
A year later, on Sea Island off Georgia, the leaders acknowledged the launch of the African Union’s Peace and Security Council (PSC) and the commitment of African leaders to addressing conflict and instability. Their offer has increased substantially to cover training and equipping the five brigades — one in each of the continent’s regions — envisaged by the PSC.
The secretary general of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, Wiseman Nkuhlu, noted this week that the discovery of more and more oil under Africa has something to do with the Western leaders’ concern for the continent’s security.
”But they understand that lawlessness anywhere threatens security everywhere in the world. That is why they have to take African security very seriously. Their point is that collapse and chaos anywhere undermines and threatens everyone.”