Africa

At H-SAfrica, the scholarly listserv on southern Africa, editor Peter Limb notes that there appears to be traction on the part of regional leaders becoming more vocal in their criticism of Robert Mugabe and his regime:

There certainly are signs of stronger views from Africa leaders:

In Kenya, PM Raila Odinga says the run-off is a sham and called for Mugabe to stand down.

Paul Kagame attacked Mugabe: “For me the question that it raises is why do you even call for elections?” Mr Kagame said.

ANC President-General Jacob Zuma says: “I think we’ll be lucky if we have a
free election,”; would it be fair: “I don’t think so.”

As John Leaver notes, the problem is more than Mugabe: namely, the military.

One wonders if this criticism will accelerate leading up to the runoff and if it will result in action in the very likely event that Mugabe simply seizes the election.

How does a country reconcile itself after horrific paroxysms of violence? Numerous countries have had to deal with precisely this dilemma. South Africa, through its Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), did so most famously and most extensively. And the TRC process has served as a model, an inspiration, and as a template for several other countries that have followed with processes of their own to reconcile the past with the present and with a hoped-for future, though the process was also fraught with imperfections and faced sometimes intense criticism from across the political spectrum.

Zimbabwe will almost surely have to go through a comparable process, whether in a matter of weeks and months or years. And today Kenya is trying to deal with its relatively brief but still nightmarish political violence of a few months ago. President Mwai Kibaki has declared categorically that his coalition government will not provide blanket amnesty for the perpetrators of post-election violence, once again putting him at odds with his erstwhile rival and uncomfortable supposed government coalition partner Raila Odinga. Kenya’s violence did not endure like that in most of the countries that have gone through formal reconciliation processes, but the chaos that exploded nationwide nonetheless reveals fissures in Kenyan society that runs deeper than the mere electoral divide that provided the proximate causes of violence. At some point Kenya is going to have to address those divisions in something other than a patchwork manner.   

The costs of food and fuel are hurting Africa perhaps more than any other continent, and of course on the whole Africans can least afford the economic disruption. South Africa’s Mail & Guardian has a feature revealing the myriad ways Africa is effected and how different countries are responding to the newest global economic crisis to disproportionately impact the continent.

The United States has announced a fairly serious scaling-back of its plans for AFRICOM, the American African Command. Is the US finally responding to the will of Africans on the ground? Or is it merely taking the most expedient path? The answer is probably a combination of factors, but it is clear that the ambitious scale of AFRICOM butted against realities on the ground and the realities on the ground seem to have prevailed.  

In a short “Editorial Notebook” piece in The Boston Globe Donald MacGillis explores the problem of brain drain in Uganda, which is a nearly universal problem across the continent, and what the west might be able yo do to stanch the flow of talented doctors (and others) without limiting personal freedoms of those who so often choose to leave their native lands for the lures of the West.

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.  

This week nine nominees for ambassadorial posts to Africa stood before the United States Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee. AllAfrica has the details on the nominees and their backgrounds. The posts to be filled include posts to Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Ghana, Liberia, Togo, Malawi, Zambia, Cape Verde, and Botswana.

There is lots of news and not much time for analysis, so enjoy these links on a range of issues:

At Pambazuka News Chido Makunike looks at the Complexities of Zimbabwe with special emphasis on the various political participants and their needs and desires. A little less elegantly — which is not to say any less accuratel — Binyavanga Wainaina at the Mail & Guardian compares Robert Mugabe to a haemorrhoid, arguing, “He is not Aids, cancer, leukemia or malaria — those things that can kill you.” While Wainaina’s larger argument stands, the fact remains that Mugabe can, of course, “kill you,” especially if you are the opposition. One assumes that the coming weeks, and possibly months, will not be without their Mugabe-backed killings.

IRIN reveals how Botswana has shut down cross-border fuel sales to Zimbabwe and also has a story on how Amnesty International’s report on human rights abuses in Somalia barely “scratch the surface.”  the latter story might provide another example of how Zimbabwe’s neighbors are, however belatedly, increasingly fed up with Mugabe’s regime. Meanwhile the Somali government, or what amounts to the Somali government, predictably denies the report even as most civil society groups argue that the report is insufficient in revealing the true extent of the Somali crisis. My money is on the civil society groups being correct.

In Kenya many refugees are afraid to return home, fearing that violence may resume. Cautious optimism aside, for those who were caught up in the post-election maelstrom the healing process will almost inevitably be slow and may never be complete.

Finally, in this grab-bag of not-so-cheery news, it appears that more than a third of anti-malarial drugs tested in six cities across sub-Saharan Africa failed quality tests. Malaria does not draw the attention that AIDS (rightly) gets in Africa, and yet it is every bit as pervasive and deadly.

In a welcome op-ed piece in the Mail & Guardian William Gumede calls for Africa to be more “hard-nosed” with regard to China. Gumede uses China’s attempted (and truly unjustifiable) attempt to ship arms to Zimbabwe as a springboard to express larger concerns about the role China might want to play across the continent.

In this Sunday’s travel section The Washington Post published an “African Safari Special” (follow the links for safaris in individual countries). It is easy to reduce Africa, as so many tourists do, simply to the chance to see animals at game reserves. nonetheless, safaris also represent a significant tourist lure to the continent.