Chad and Sudan’s frosty relations are expected to plumb new lows following Chadian Foreign Minister Ahmat Allami’s statement that Sudan’s role in its conflict be investigated by the United Nations Security Council. The security council is no stranger to the conflict in Sudan.
A recently released report by Amnesty International says Norinco 9mm pistols, which are cheaply manufactured in China, are commonly used in cases of robbery, rape and other crimes in South Africa. The report notes that, despite South Africa’s stringent Firearms Control Act of 2000, firearms are filtering into the underworld after being lost or stolen.
Citizens of the first republic to be established on the continent, in 1847, visited the most recently established democratic African republic to seek guidance and insight for their fledgling Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Members of Liberia’s TRC were on a week-long study tour of the country to learn how South Africa’s transition and healing process was managed.
”If Shell have the guts to come to the Ijaws’ land, we won’t just kidnap their workers, now they will disappear,” threatened Joseph Evah, coordinator of the Ijaw Monitoring Group, in the wake of a court judgement against oil giant Shell. The judgement ordered the company to pay ,5-billion to the Ijaw community in the Niger region of Nigeria for environmental damage in the region.
Jacob Zuma’s political future rests with the way about 3 000 delegates at next year’s ANC conference will vote for the party’s leadership. The Mail & Guardian‘s Monako Dibetle, Percy Zvomuya and Niren Tolsi spoke to members of the party and its affiliates.
Like a variegated leaf, the old Movement for Democratic Change didn’t respond to sunlight and other atmospheric conditions in a uniform way. There was party president Morgan Tsvangirai, a former trade unionist and the working man’s hero, who wanted to tread the populist route and then there was his secretary general, Welshman Ncube, a professor of family law with a tendency to seek consensus through scholarly persuasion and debate.
All the African representatives on the 15-member United Nations Security Council, Congo (Brazzaville), Ghana and Tanzania recently agreed that travel and financial sanctions should be slapped on four individuals suspected of involvement in atrocities in the Darfur province of Sudan.
The redistribution of posts to black people was a dangerous model of transformation, as it pitted blacks against whites and entrenched racial divisions, businessman and political gadfly Moeletsi Mbeki argued recently. Mbeki, the brother of President Thabo Mbeki, has repeatedly raised eyebrows through his criticism of government policies and actions, notably on Zimbabwe
The real test of a leader is not when to make a decision on turning north or south, but choosing which road will lead to one’s destination. For Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the new Liberian President, the dilemma is walking the road to reconciliation and economic recovery that may be barricaded by the indictment of Charles Taylor.
One would have assumed that the tumultuous chorus that this week accompanied the proposed formation of a human rights commission in Zimbabwe was a response to a presidential decree that any person found without a Zanu-PF membership card would be flogged at two-hourly intervals in a public square.