As African leaders gear up for two successive summits to salvage peace efforts in Côte d’Ivoire, the country’s President, Laurent Gbagbo, has ruled out any mediation role for his fellow West African leaders. The 15-nation Economic Community of West African States has invited heads of state from across the region to the Nigerian capital of Abuja.
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/ 16 September 2005
Darfur risks sliding into a perpetual state of lawlessness even as the Sudanese government and the main rebel groups in the region — the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and Justice and Equality Movement — resume peace talks, observers have warned. Attacks on aid workers and villages in Darfur have increased greatly and threaten to destabilise the fragile ceasefire in the volatile western Sudanese region.
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/ 13 September 2005
Swazi schoolchildren are feeling the brunt of renewed debate over the Swaziland-South African border. South African soldiers are reportedly blocking Swazi students from attending schools on the South African side of the frontier. A South African immigration official, is alleged to have threatened to prosecute South African school authorities who continued to admit Swazi pupils without study permits.
A split has emerged among groups campaigning against relocation of the San Bushmen from Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve. In a statement, the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa, an umbrella group of rights NGOs, said the London-based NGO Survival International did not have a mandate to speak on behalf of all the San.
The Zimbabwean government has agreed to allow aid groups to offer humanitarian assistance to people who have been displaced in its controversial urban clean-up drive. Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo announced that the government would allow donors to provide assistance, mainly in the capital, Harare, and Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo.
In a rare move, the Nigerian President and head of the African Union, Olusegun Obasanjo, has publicly rebuked an AU Commission decision to appoint a special envoy to resolve an ongoing political standoff in Togo. Obasanjo told journalists in Lomé that he ”repudiated” a commission statement last week appointing former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda as special AU envoy to Togo.
The United Nations mission in Burundi, known as Onub, has stepped up its military presence across the country ahead of communal elections set for next Friday. This comes after 17 Forces for National Liberation (FNL) fighters were killed. The FNL is the only rebel group that has yet to be integrated into the transitional government.
Traditional funeral rites in Angola are putting the families of Marburg victims at risk of contracting the killer virus. For most Angolan families, preparing the body and kissing and embracing the deceased are integral to bidding a final farewell. But the secretions from a body increase after death, making such practices highly dangerous in the case of a Marburg-related death.
France has recommended that the United Nations extend the mandate of international peacekeepers in Côte d’Ivoire, by one month, until it becomes clear whether a peace summit in Pretoria on Sunday achieves a breakthrough in slow-moving negotiations to end the West African country’s civil war. The current mandate expires on April 4, hours after the Pretoria summit is scheduled to take place.
It is best known for the audacity of its campaigns: protest messages stamped on condom packets and bank notes, and pithy postcards to President Robert Mugabe — but who it is, is less apparent. An underground group of anti-government activists, Zvankwana-Sokwanele — "Enough!" in Zimbabwe’s two main languages, Shona and Ndebele — do not operate out of offices with a nameplate on the door.