Going into the African Union summit in Banjul, The Gambia, Zimbabwe’s beleaguered President Robert Mugabe already knew that he would once again escape censure by the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights for his controversial slum clearance plan that displaced more than 700 000 people.
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On Thursday morning a confident Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s President since independence in 1980, predicted that his ruling Zanu-PF would reach the two-thirds threshold in the 2005 parliamentary poll and use its majority to change the Constitution. Zimbabwe’s president is likely to mend party factions, but has rejected reconciliation with the opposition.
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/ 11 November 2004
President Thabo Mbeki has his work cut out as mediator in Côte d’Ivoire. Mbeki was dragooned into this job by the African Union after the West African regional mechanism failed to bring about peace in the country. Relations between France and Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo have spiralled into the violence that now necessitates the evacuation of France’s 14 000 nationals.
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/ 29 October 2004
With the winner of Saturday’s election in Botswana a racing certainty, interest has focused on exactly how many of the 552 890 registered voters will turn out and who will be the strongest opposition. The battle in this landlocked, diamond-rich state will be the first test of the electoral code adopted by the Southern African Development Community nations at their summit in Mauritius in August this year.
South African Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma backed Zimbabwean government moves to stifle an explosive report on human rights abuses in Zimbabwe at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa. At the same time, there is mounting evidence that Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge lied when he claimed his government had not seen or had a chance to respond to the report.
President Thabo Mbeki has been ill-advised to link celebrations of SAs first Haiti’s decade of democracy with festivities marking Haiti.