Democratically elected presidents in Burundi and Liberia have presented at least two indisputably positive developments in Africa. Given the war-torn state of the countries they’ve inherited, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia and Pierre Nkurunziza in Burundi probably need regular reminding of this.
Africa’s ”iron lady” will have to draw on all the grit she possesses — and that’s before she is actually sworn in.
Back from speaking to presidents John Kufour and Thabo Mbeki, international soccer star George Weah claimed to have won the November presidential run-off and refuses to accept that his compatriots opted for an economist and international public servant over his populist flair.
Johnson-Sirleaf continues to ride the wave of international goodwill impelled by her status as Africa’s first elected woman president. This could dissipate if the riot control measures her new police have already had to deploy against Weah supporters become lethal. And she certainly doesn’t need any distraction from dealing with the pressing problems of a country that does not have electricity, running water and passable roads.
Nkurunziza enjoys the positive attention of European development partners and prepares to say goodbye to the South African troops that have been protecting him and his government as they did the transitional rulers.
He also wants to bid farewell to the United Nations peacekeepers, but cannot do this while the National Liberation Forces (FLN) continue to lob mortars into the capital from the surrounding hills. The challenge for Nkurunziza is how to get the FLN, torn by its own leadership struggle, into the fold.
Like other leaders in the Great Lakes region, he’ll be hoping for a favourable outcome from the constitutional referendum in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
With the go-ahead to move to presidential, parliamentary and local elections next year, the youthful transitional leader Joseph Kabila can deliver the first democratically elected Congolese government in more than 40 years.
Political stability and economic reconstruction in this country, flattened by decades of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko’s kleptocracy and two wars following his ousting, will be a huge fillip for the region.
If banker-turned Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny is able to do his job in Côte d’Ivoire, then that former West African jewel should have elections by October next year. Konan Banny sounded optimistic when he visited President Thabo Mbeki earlier this month. It is doubtful he could have justified this ebullience had he perused the political books with his banker’s eye.
Banny cannot answer questions about whether he or interim president Laurent Gbagbo is actually running the country.
Also on the plus side, Libya’s Moammar Gadaffi continues with his intriguing makeover from maverick terrorist financier to enigmatic leader of an oil-rich state.
He will further enhance his image north of the Mediterranean if he releases the six Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor under sentence of death purportedly for infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV/Aids. At one stage, he was planning to use them as economic hostages — a sort of Lockerbie bombers in reverse. But that doesn’t fit with his new business relations.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak won yet another term in office but was for the first time subjected to a multiple candidate contest.
2005 will best be remembered for the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed between the government of Sudan and the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) in January that ended Africa’s longest running conflict. The charismatic SPLM leader John Garang’s death in a helicopter crash sparked fears that the north-south deal would flounder, but it remains on track.
The same cannot be said of the conflict in western Darfur. After seven rounds of talks, the belligerents are unable to make a breakthrough in what still ranks as one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes.
On the continent’s balance sheet, the usual suspects — Africa’s old lags — have remained drearily in the red this past year.
Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is now being likened to North Korea. After two cynically bent polls in 2000 and 2002, his electoral larceny in March this year has a same- old-same-old quality.
So it is for his operation Murambatsvina, which destroyed urban slums and displaced 750 000 people, most of whom voted for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, that he tops the list of Africa’s most odious tyrants.
Oil-rich neighbours Omar Bongo in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema continue to line their pockets while ignoring their compatriot’s misery. The former pulled off yet another dubious electoral victory last month to retain his status as Africa’s longest serving president with no less than 38 years in the saddle.
The template for skimming petro dollars is held by Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos, who whips into his back pocket at least one in five of them flowing into his country.
Will he or won’t he hold presidential elections next year? He’s keeping his compatriots, who have not been to the polls since the end of the civil war in 2002, guessing.
Morocco‘s King Mohamed VI remains aloof from his subjects’ economic problems that are creating an incubator effect for Islamic fundamentalist recruiters.
The king has disappointed those who took him at his word when he promised reforms on coming to the throne.
The harsh treatment by Moroccan authorities of thousands of would-be illegal immigrants seeking to gain access to the Spanish enclaves of Ceuto and Melila on the African mainland comes as no surprise to those who have been watching their treatment of the Saharawi living under Moroccan occupation.
Indeed, some of the unfortunate economic refugees from various North and West African countries were actually dumped in the Western Sahara.
There have been some depressing new additions to the Most Not Wanted list. Yoweri Museveni’s palpable desire to acquire president-for-life status has led to a spectacular fall from grace.
The man who attained an iconic status for turning around the effects of the HIV/Aids pandemic in Uganda is now attracting international condemnation for duplicity.
Pressed by the donor community to restore the multiparty system to his country, he opened the door for his major rival and former personal physician Kizza Besigye to return from four years in exile in South Africa.
The size and enthusiasm of the welcome Besigye received startled Museveni, who believed he had seen him off as a presidential challenger. Besigye fled the country fearing for his life after losing the 2001 contest to Museveni.
But that was before the formation of the Forum for Democratic Change transformed the political landscape. Within weeks, Besigye was facing charges in both the high court and a military tribunal. In the former he faces execution if found guilty of treason.
To ensure that he is unable to get bail — even Mugabe was not able to ensnare his arch foe Morgan Tsvangirai so securely in the web of the law — Besigye, a civilian, was hauled before a court martial, charged with terrorism and weapons offences and told he has to stay behind bars.
A year ago, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia was among the eminent Africans on the Commission for Africa initiated by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
People protesting about rigged elections in May were gunned down in the capital.
The death toll approaches 50. Zenawi has also locked up many political rivals.
Having promised to settle his border dispute with Eritrea peacefully, he nevertheless massed troops on the border with his neighbour, bringing things dangerously to the brink of war.
Eritrea’s increasingly authoritarian leader Isaias Afworki certainly didn’t help things by barring UN helicopter flights over the area to disguise his own bellicose intentions and then expelling Western peacekeepers in retaliation against the UN Security Council resolution condemning this behaviour.
Mwai Kibaki’s promise to bring clean hands to Kenya‘s notoriously corrupt governance has not lasted three years. No fewer than seven members of his Cabinet were among those who worked for his defeat in a constitutional referendum last month. The Rainbow Coalition on which he floated to power is unravelling.
Niger‘s Mamadou Tandja and Malawi‘s Bingu wa Mutharika both score badly for being famine denialists. From their respective state houses, they refused to accept NGO warnings of mass starvation — until the television crews started pouring in.
Tandja also scored badly for spending $9-million to host the Francophone games when the UN is still seeking $19-million to provide emergency food aid for Niger.
There are warning lights from Botswana, Namibia and Nigeria.
President Festus Mogae showed an authoritarian streak by expelling Australian academic Kenneth Goode, a long-time resident of Gaborone, for saying the manner of choosing Botswana’s president is not democratic.
Like his predecessor Sam Nujoma, Hifikepunye Pohamba in Namibia is showing a worrying admiration for Zimbabwe’s emotive land grabs that drove white farmers off the land and ruined agricultural production.
Nigeria’s business community is making noises about getting an extra term for Olusegun Obasanjo. If he’s wise, he’ll set a Madiba-like example as a man who knew when his time was up. Meanwhile, he’s doing a Murambatsvina of his own, clearing tens of thousands of informal residents from Abuja in a bid to keep his new capital tidy.