As the continent celebrated Africa Day on Wednesday, with many countries observing it as a public holiday, the non- governmental group Amnesty International released Report 2005: The State of the World’s Human Rights. It contrasts international reaction to the tsunami disaster with responses to other global crises that left ”comparable numbers of victims in their wake” with particular reference to Darfur in Sudan. ”Unlike the tsunami, this tragedy was not one of nature; it was man-made. And in this instance, the international community made relatively little effort to stop or alleviate the suffering.”
North
Morocco remains the most vexatious member of the region at the very door of Europe. This week King Mohammed VI withdrew from the first summit of the Maghreb African Union in 11 years. He is miffed at Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s promise to champion the cause of the occupied Western Sahara at the gathering of the five leaders.
Morocco quit the Organisation of African Unity when it admitted the Saharawi government in exile. Morocco has occupied Western Sahara since 1975 in defiance of the international community.
An attempt to get a toehold in Africa — by hosting the headquarters of the pan-African organisation of local authorities — has been frustrated. If it wants to assume that role, Morocco has six months to join the African Union and face the angry Saharawis.
The young king faces grown-up problems at home. His promised social reforms have failed to materialise. Frustration at this and growing economic hardship, including unemployment approaching 40%, is creating a breeding ground for religious fundamentalism.
Tunisia‘s economic performance should make it the positive beacon in North Africa. But its human rights record lets it down.
So the regional prize has to go to Libya, continuing to re-emerge from its terrorist sponsor status and engage politically and economically with Europe and the United States.
Its leader, Moammar Gaddafi, persists in playing an energetic role in regional peace and relief initiatives. This month he hosted a summit on Sudan’s peace process and opened an air route for relief to its troubled western Darfur region.
East and the Horn
Sudan was home to the continent’s longest-running civil war that has mercifully now ended in a settlement between the Muslim north and the Christian and animist south. Nevertheless, its western region of Darfur remains branded as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, with more than 200 000 people killed and two million displaced in the past three years.
Somalia is, however, the biggest worry in the region. The government of Abdullahi Yusuf, elected last year after 14 years of anarchy, is split down the middle on where to locate itself.
Half the representatives have moved to the capital, Mogadishu, where the warlords, who ran the place like an anarchical patchwork quilt, have shown signs of disarming. Yusuf, under pressure from his Kenyan hosts to leave, prefers to go to Baidoa and Jowhar.
African countries that promised to deploy peacekeepers in Somalia are now having second thoughts because the country, known as ”the Ireland of Africa”, has a history of turning pacifiers into belligerents.
Ethiopia, despite its economic tribulations and recent natural disasters, remains the bright spot on the horn.
The May 15 elections saw more than 90% of the 26-million registered voters cast their ballots for 35 parties.
The Carter Centre, which sent some of the 350 international observers to the election, said it ”shows promise in the deepening of democracy”. The European Union’s chief observer, Ana Gomes, said the campaign had been very positive overall.
While final results have not yet been published, the opposition has made huge inroads into the majority held by the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who has led the party through all three of its elections, appears prepared to accept this.
Central
When the new Constitution was adopted last week, President Joseph Kabila declared the electoral process in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to be irreversible.
Anger, particularly among the non-armed opposition groups, over the delay in holding the country’s first democratic elections has already claimed at least 14 lives this year.
Integration of the rebel armies into the new DRC forces has been slow — hamstrung by rampant corruption.
Interference from neighbours Uganda and Rwanda keeps the country’s already volatile eastern region simmering. Kabila has had to deal with a secession scare in his political stronghold of Katanga.
Burundi’s is the most upbeat story in the Great Lakes region. An election programme has been mapped out that will give the country a democratically elected president by the end of August.
Interim president Domitien Ndayizeye has shaken hands on a ceasefire with Agathon Rwasa, whose National Liberation Forces was the last rebel movement still fighting.
Pierre Nkurunziza, leader of the largest rebel group, the Forces for Defence of Democracy, has been part of the peace process for 18 months. Insisting that he has bridged the Hutu-Tutsi ethnic chasm, he is preparing to make his play for political power.
West
Regional pressure and South African mediation achieved a breakthrough in Côte d’Ivoire, torn by a failed coup in 2002. President Laurent Gbagbo agreed to face his chief rival, former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara, in elections set for October. Ouattara has been banned from running because of a constitutional clause requiring both parents of candidates to be born in Côte d’Ivoire.
Ouattara has since struck an electoral pact with former president Henri Konan Bedie, who introduced that restrictive clause.
But while the political opposition is engaged in these arcane games, the disarmament process with the New Forces rebel movement that holds the north of the country is facing recurrent delays.
In Togo, tens of thousands of people are fleeing a security crackdown. Togo spun into chaos when Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled for four decades, died and army leaders named his son, Faure Gnassingbe, president.
Faure quit under fierce pressure, particularly from the Economic Community of West African States, and agreed to elections on April 24. But violent protests erupted around the country when he was declared the winner, with the opposition saying the vote had been rigged.
Sierra Leone, which became a by-word for the brutality of African conflict in the Nineties when thousands had their hands chopped off by political opponents, appears to be undergoing a return to normality.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said earlier this month that things have calmed down enough in Sierra Leone for the peacekeeping force, known as UNAMSIL, to be phased out by the end of the year.
Southern
Zimbabwe remains the migraine of Southern Africa, compounded by the ruling Zanu-PF party, led by President Robert Mugabe, cynically manipulating election results in April to ensure a two-thirds majority.
The veneer of economic well-being that coated the capital, Harare, for the benefit of the hundreds of journalists and observers to the elections has quickly worn off.
Zimbabweans are facing critical shortages of fuel and maize. The tobacco sales, still the major foreign exchange earner, have not approached expectations.
The Zimbabwe dollar was devalued by 31% last week and triple-digit inflation is once again spiralling upwards.
Mugabe has been lying to the international community about supposed crop surpluses rendering food aid unnecessary.
This week he had to tell World Food Programme director James Morris the truth. Crop failures in 82% of Zimbabwe’s farming districts signal an impending famine. Nearly half the country’s 11,6-million people will soon rely on food aid for survival.
In the achievers column, the region is somewhat spoilt for choice. Botswana, Namibia and South Africa all experienced relatively trouble-free elections last year and have healthy, growing economies.
Mozambique, now under President Armando Guebuza, remains an international favourite as an example of a country, as World Bank Africa director Gobind Nankani put it, ”that has made great strides in a post-conflict scenario, including reducing poverty and increasing accountability in government”.
On a regional tour earlier this month, Guebuza took good neighbourliness a step too far by promising Swaziland’s profligate King Mswati III help in countering the rotten press he has been getting of late.
The continent at a glance
- According to World Bank figures, 16 of 53 African countries have shown steady growth over the past decade.
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The number of grindingly poor Africans has doubled in the past 20 years to 320-million.
There were three million new cases of HIV/Aids in Africa last year. More than a million people will die of the scourge every year for the next two decades. Only 300 000 Africans are in treatment.
The World Bank has promised $1,4-billion for HIV/Aids programmes but less than a quarter of that has been disbursed.
Conflict has left one in five homeless in the African states experiencing conflict. Mercifully, 20 of these are now in a transition to peace.