Once again, Africa has experienced a year with more conflicts resolved than wars started. Nevertheless the continent remains depressingly in the red on the agenda of international confidence.
Using a militia known as the Janjaweed to crush a rebellion, the Sudanese government has reduced its western region of Darfur to what the international community is calling the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Peace talks have been suspended after the Sudan Liberation Movement and Justice and Equality Movement rebel groups walked out in protest over a renewed government offensive on their positions.
Last week, fresh evidence emerged that Khartoum was violating an African Union-brokered ceasefire by launching air strikes on the village of Labado. The conflict has displaced 1,6-million people and killed tens of thousands since it first broke out in February 2003.
The peace process to end the 21-year-old civil war in the south of the country — the longest-running conflict in Africa — is gaining pace.
Mediators attending talks between John Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army and the government — represented by Vice-President Ali Osman Taha — are confident of clinching a deal by December 31. This would make good on a pledge made to the United Nations in November.
The last obstacles will be overcome this week and a settlement signed, a government negotiator told the Sudanese daily Al-Anbaa last Tuesday.
The sides have “achieved remarkable progress on power-sharing issues”; agreed on five of six protocols in the draft accord and proposed a 450-member central Parliament.
South Africa too has seen an increase in its mediation efforts. A year ago, President Thabo Mbeki was in the Comoros pressing the federal government and independent island administration to accept a deal, which led to elections in the first quarter of 2004.
Mbeki remarked at the time that the challenges and effort expended on this little archipelago equalled those presented by Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This year, both of these have presented anxious moments.
Burundi failed to meet its deadline for a Constitution and elections at the end of the three-year transitional period in October. The constitutional referendum set for December 22 was postponed and transitional president Domitien Ndayizeye intends making another change to the basic law to enable him to run in the presidential election in April.
South African forces remain on peacekeeping duty, simply changing helmets when the UN assumed responsibility for this task.
Even under more favourable circumstances, the political players in the DRC are moving far too slowly to meet their transitional targets, which include elections midway through next year. On the second anniversary of the conclusion of negotiations in Pretoria, the country looks dangerously like it is unravelling.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame has sent troops into the DRC to hit Hutu rebels responsible for the genocide that killed close to a million Tutsi and Hutu moderates a decade ago. Joseph Kabila retaliated by posting 10Â 000 Congolese soldiers to guard their turf. But troops of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) have mutinied, rather than fight against their former Rwandan backer.
Some of the 1Â 500 South African troops in the UN peacekeeping force Monuc are reportedly involved in sexual crimes against refugees. The UN report to this effect was leaked in the United States last week.
Mbeki’s pivotal role in continental conflict management was apparent when the AU made him its point man on Côte d’Ivoire where he is trying to get Ivoirean leader Laurent Gbagbo to implement the Linas Marcoussis agreement signed in 2003.
Gbagbo has stubbornly refused to bring opposition and rebel leaders into the transitional government. He precipitated a fresh round of violence by attacking the rebel stronghold of Bouake. After two visits to the country and extensive talks in Pretoria with the political participants, Mbeki has produced a timetable. The players are being pressed by the UN to accept it or face further sanctions.
The South African mediation team went on alert in September to facilitate negotiations between the Moroccan government and the Polisario Front on the Western Sahara. But assured that this would be based on implementing a UN peace plan, King Mohammed VI decided that the South African help he had requested was best rejected. Relations further soured when Pretoria formally recognised the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in November accepted in principle the ruling of the permanent court of arbitration on the border demarcation. Ethiopia was split in two in 1991 to form Eritrea. He presented his Parliament with a five-point peace plan but Eritrea responded that Ethiopia was merely trying to buy time.
Hopes soared for Somalia with the election of an interim president, the appointment of a prime minister and the formation of a Cabinet. But things remain too dangerous for the administration to return to Mogadishu, which has effectively been without a government since 1991. The new government remains in Nairobi. Its success rests on the ability of warlord Abdillahi Yusuf to persuade his compatriots that his imperfect government is better than none at all.
The search for alternative oil supplies to the Middle East has focused attention on Africa. Nigeria — the continent’s biggest oil producer and only Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries member — is the main concern.
Strike action about increases in the pump price of fuel shut down the country for days and an uprising by rebels demanding autonomy for the oil-rich Niger Delta contributed to world oil prices rising above $50 a barrel. To compound matters, on Tuesday the Appeal Court ruled that there had been evidence of electoral fraud in last year’s poll. The result in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s home state of Ogun was nullified.
The lure of offshore oil deposits in Equatorial Guinea triggered a failed coup attempt in March. Several people have been sentenced for their part in courts in Harare and Malabo. Mark Thatcher, son of a former British prime minister, is engaged in a legal battle with South African authorities over his alleged role.
Equatorial Guinea intends asking the International Court of Justice to probe Britain’s failure to alert them of the coup plot they had knowledge of as early as January.
Nigeria and Cameroon are bickering about who owns the potentially oil-rich Bakassi peninsula. Chad had to crush an army mutiny this year and Mauritania has stifled three military uprisings since June last year — all linked to oil.
The three big flashpoints
South Africa’s mediation skills have been thoroughly tested this year in three of the most vexatious conflicts preoccupying the continent.
Burundi: With all but the oldest liberation movement — the Forces for National Liberation — on board, the transitional process agreed on in Arusha, Tanzania, in 2000, should have carried Burundi to elections in November, but these have been delayed until next April. Deputy President Jacob Zuma will continue the mediation in 2005 and is expected to pressure parties to keep their feet off the brakes.
DRC: Fighting in the eastern area of this vast country is threatening the already dangerously slow transitional process. Elections are due mid-year but many of the important enabling mechanisms have not been implemented. Rwanda has withdrawn its threat to invade the country for a third time. The DRC maintains the Rwandans have never fully quit their country and are the root cause of the troubles in the east.
Côte d’Ivoire: President Thabo Mbeki remains firmly at the helm of the mediation efforts, and has beefed-up the embassy in Abidjan to take on a heavier load. President Laurent Gbagbo is the key to settling the crisis gutting this regional giant and implementing the peace deal signed in France two years ago.
Gbagbo has agreed to look into the strict nationality regulations limiting his major opponent from running against him but won’t change them until he has subjected it to a referendum. Mbeki is expected to make a third visit to Côte d’Ivoire early in the new year.