Africa

The MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai has taken off the gloves against Robert Mugabe. In what he called a “State of the Nation” address, Tsvangirai pulled no punches in discussing Zimbabwe’s “State of disrepair.” Perhaps more perilously, he also declared that there will be no amnesty for those who have engaged in political violence. Such a declaration is in many ways welcome, especially to the victims of Robert Mugabe’s police, military, and other henchmen, but certainly will not do anything to diminish the desire of ZANU-PF operatives to make sure that there is no way that Mugabe loses the run-off election. Tsvangirai is making a risky gambit, though he likely sees the need to go for broke given the odds against him in the race against Mugabe and the institutional might he has behind him.

The United States’ Government Accountability Office has issued a report indicating that food aid to sub-Saharan Africa is woefully insufficient. This comes as no surprise. The optimist in me sees the timing of the report — which comes on the eve of a United Nations summit in Rome to address the global food crisis — as an opportunity to bring about real change in the approach the west takes to development. My pessimistic side simply sees status quo continuing to prevail, inertia being what it is, especially when it comes to policies toward Africa.  

David Ignatius has a column in The Washington Post revealing the ways in which Rwanda has, against all odds, managed in many ways to come to grips with the horrible events of 1994. The Rwanda story is unspeakably incomprehensible for most of us, and yet the last fourteen years have shown the ways in which people are able to reconcile, however imperfectly, in the face of the worst humankind can do to itself.

Simba Makoni drew a great deal of attention when he stepped out and announced his challenge to Robert Mugabe. He finished third in the recent, and still contested, elections but more importantly he may well have broken the dam of silence and fear. His candidacy simply could not draw from a firm enough base of support and lacked any sort of party apparatus, but when the history of  this election is written, Makoni will warrant more than just a footnote. He was a vital force in what still might represent the first real signs that the end of Robert Mugabe’s reign might be near.

Given Makoni’s steadfast opposition to what Mugabe has done to his country, most people assumed that when Makoni spoke publicly this week that he would throw his support behind Morgan Tsvangirai. Instead he stood firm in his calls for national unity, arguing that the planned run-off will almost inevitably exacerbate the violent situation in the country. Makoni hopes for the emergence of a unity government instead. Such an outcome seems, to say the least, unlikely. One cannot envision Morgan Tsvangirai compromising at this late date, and Mugabe almost surely believes that he will possess the whole loaf come July (how he obtains it is another question), and he is even less likely to toss more than crumbs in the direction of the Movement for Democratic Change.

Makoni almost surely is thinking of the events in Kenya. And perhaps he sees  a tragedy in the making that he believes can be averted. But that is the thing about tragedy: You can see it coming and cannot do a thing about it. Nonetheless, there does not appear to be a viable, or even plausible, scenario for a unity government. And as long as Mugabe sits at the head of that government, how much unity, never mind reconciliation, could any of us expect?       

Kenya’s Standard reports on how environmental issues, high-level politics and ethnic concerns are merging to create another potential flashpoint in that country’s tenuous recovery process. The Mau Forest involves a complex interplay of tensions related to conservation and the country’s (indeed the region’s) environmental health, the prospects for putatively ethnic clashes over land, and tensions between local control and national governmental power.

One issue you never thought about, and neither did I, is the fact that after the post-election violence in Kenya there are a lot of new weapons. I wish I had something more clever to say than: How very frustrating.

Yet anything more clever would involve gun control policies that would seem uniliateral, or punishment policies that would seem draconian, or political policies that would seem fatuous.

Writing about Africa isn’t always fun.

As I’ve feared all along, it appears quite clear that Robert Mugabe and his supporters in the military, police, and among the “veterans” are not about to yield power. Violence against the opposition continues to escalate. The International Crisis Group has concluded that the military will either engage in pre-emptive action prior to the runoff or else will topple Tsvangirai if he takes office.

All along Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF’s trump card has been the naked use of violence. It looks like he is prepared to play that hand fully.

Yet another indicator of how bad things are in Zimbabwe? Even with the recent explosions of xenophobic violence aimed at foreigners and especially Zimbabweans in South Africa,  huge numbers of immigrants continue to cross the border and head directly for the maelstrom in Johannesburg and its environs. They have undertaken the quick calculus and decided that whatever is going on in South Africa is no match for what they confront on a daily basis in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

Is Guinea headed for political chaos? Recent events indicate as much. In recent days President Lansana Conté fired his prime minister Lansana Kouyaté, who enjoys international support, on 20 May, replacing him with Ahmed Tidjane Souaré.

In sub-Saharan Africa crises will come and crises will go but it seems, tragically, that the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and especially that country’s eastern regions, will constantly be beset with chaos.