News Africa Extended

News Africa Extended

A prescription for African strife

Posted: 02 Aug 2016 10:26 AM PDT

The number of African presidents who refuse to relinquish power, and the inevitable violence that ensues, is on the increase, writes Peter Fabricius.

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The number of African presidents who refuse to relinquish power, and the inevitable violence that ensues, is on the increase, writes Peter Fabricius.

Welile Nhlapo is something of a pocket battleship plying Africa’s diplomatic waters.

Almost as wide as he is high, Nhlapo has always been a straight shooter. But now that he is officially retired from the South African diplomatic service, he can really fire the big guns with impunity.

He did so at a seminar last week of the NGO Salo about the crisis in Burundi. Burundi’s ambassador to South Africa, Isaie Ntirizoshira, tried to convince a sceptical audience that the reason for the 15-month crisis was not, as most people suppose, the decision of his boss, President Pierre Nkurunziza, to run for a third term in office.

This, in the eyes of almost everyone else, was a clear violation of the two-term limits in Burundi’s constitution and in the Arusha peace accords which ended a 12-year civil war, and ushered in the current democratic era in 2005.

But Nkurunziza used some legal sophistry to wiggle free of those limits by claiming he had been ”nominated” by Parliament and not ”elected” by the people for his first time term from 2005 to 2010, and so it did not count.

He persuaded an entirely pliant Constitutional Court to endorse this patently self-serving legal opinion.

Nkurunziza’s decision ignited opposition protests, and then violence, which have continued on and off ever since.

But Ntirizoshira insisted the third term bid was not the trigger of the violence. He claimed Nkurunziza’s political opponents had been planning the violence ever since they badly lost the 2010 elections - because they realised then that they could never win any election.

”It is a sort of tradition for Burundi opposition leaders to resort to violence after they lose elections,” he blandly stated.

Nhlapo, a former South African envoy to the Great Lakes region and former national security adviser in the Presidency, gave this argument the respect it deserved by ignoring it. Instead he diagnosed Nkurunziza’s third term bid as just another case study of what he called ”a regional pandemic of people wanting to stay in power forever”.

And he then berated the AU for having left it up to this region, the EAC, to resolve the Burundi crisis.

”You take a troubled region and its institutions, including its regional body (the EAC) and you hope that institution will come up with a solution?” he asked.

“It’s not going to happen, because there is a regional pandemic of people wanting to stay in power forever. It’s a regional disease. Nobody can call anyone to order. When the EAC met in Dar es Salaam to consider the situation in Burundi, the question of changing the constitution was discussed.

“They came to the conclusion that this was not an area they wanted to get involved in. If you do something and you believe it is correct, if I do the same, you can’t tell me I’m wrong. It’s not possible. This is politics. It’s all about power.”

That was a shot right through so much of the elaborate justifications and prevarications of the EAC on this issue and a warning to the AU that it should immediately re-think its approach to resolving the Burundi crisis.

The leader who the AU and EAC put in charge of the Burundi problem is Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has remained in office for 30 years, by hook or by crook, as Nhlapo says, he can hardly tell Nkurunziza to step down, with a straight face.

Museveni, incidentally, is also playing a destructive role in South Sudan, propping up President Salva Kiir militarily and protecting him from the repercussions of his atrocities in the civil war there. At last month’s AU summit in Kigali he resisted demands from other leaders that both Kiir and his deputy - and mortal enemy - Riek Machar should stand down if South Sudan were to stand any chance of returning to peace.

At the Salo seminar Martin Rupiya, associate professor at Unisa’s Institute for Renaissance Studies, quoted from a study which found that African countries which had emerged from civil war, often relapsed into war again after about 10 years. Rupiya noted that it was often elections which triggered this return to violence. And Burundi looks like a perfect example of the problem.

Rupiya’s prescription for the problem was for such countries to take a 10-year breather from democracy after emerging from conflict, to allow them to settle down. But would that really help? Nhlapo was being too regional when he talked about “a regional pandemic of people wanting to stay in power forever”. The virus has spread to the continent.

If you look around, you’ll see lots of leaders who are infected. The disease is an addiction to power.

And Nhlapo warned that “the bigger problem is still going to come once we look at what’s going to happen in November in the DRC”. That’s when Kabila is also supposed to step down after two terms - but is also finding lots of technical excuses not to do so.

“When the DRC implodes we will all be running around like headless chickens, coming with non-solutions,”said Nhlapo.

Is anyone in Addis Ababa, Pretoria and all the other capitals listening?

Foreign Bureau

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Tunisia's president proposes relative as PM

Posted: 02 Aug 2016 09:53 AM PDT

Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi has proposed a family member to replace sacked Prime Minister Habib Essid drawing accusations of nepotism from the opposition.

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Tunis - Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi has proposed a junior minister who is a family member as his candidate to replace sacked Prime Minister Habib Essid, politicians said on Tuesday, drawing accusations of nepotism from the opposition.

Critics in the opposition and Essebsi's own Nidaa Tounes party have in the past accused the president of trying to line up his son to replace him - charges his supporters deny - in a throwback to the regime of autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali.

Opponents said they would protest the choice of Youssef Chahed, and critics on social media posted with the hashtag “keep your relatives at home” in Arabic. Local media and sources close to his party said Chahed is the nephew of Essebsi's son-in-law.

“Essebsi got rid of Essid so he could put in place someone close to him and have them follow orders,” said Jilani Hammami, with the opposition Popular Front party. “This is a step back to when one family ran everything.”

Tunisian lawmakers voted on Saturday to dismiss Essid in a no-confidence ballot, clearing the way for a new government of unity that Essebsi wants to push through delayed economic reforms.

During negotiations over the new government, Essebsi put forward Chahed, a senior official in the ruling Nidaa Tounes party and the minister for local affairs in the outgoing government, said Issam Chebbi, a party official.

Chebbi said negotiations will continue on Wednesday in Carthage presidential palace and parties will give their responses about the proposal. Essebsi has until Aug. 10 to name a new premier.

Essebsi is already facing widespread criticism from the opponents over what some see as his attempt at a hereditary transfer of power to his son Hafed, the new leader of Nidaa Tounes. That caused a split within the party.

Allies of the president dismiss claims they are looking to place his son into a position of influence.

Chahed, 41, obtained a doctorate in agricultural sciences from France. He is also a researcher and university professor in agricultural economics and has taught at several Tunisian and French universities.

Since its 2011 revolution to oust Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has emerged as a democracy praised as a model for the region. But militant attacks have tested the government and political infighting has slowed economic progress.

Essebsi has said the country needs a more dynamic government ready to take strong decisions to bring about the liberalisation and cost-cutting required for an overhaul of the North African state's economy.

Three Islamist militant attacks last year - including gun attacks on foreign visitors at a museum and a beach resort - have badly damaged the tourism industry, which makes up around 8 percent of the economy and is a major source of jobs.

Reuters

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#ThisFlag pastor fears backlash in Zimbabwe

Posted: 02 Aug 2016 06:50 AM PDT

"If I say to you I am not afraid of going home, I would be lying,” Zimbabwean activist Pastor Evan Mawarire tells Lance Witten.

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Cape Town - For Zimbabwean activist Pastor Evan Mawarire, returning home is a scary prospect.

The instigator of the #ThisFlag campaign is on a tour of South Africa and will address students at UCT on Tuesday evening.

Once his tour is done, however, he will have to face the consequences of speaking out against the Zimbabwean government.

"If I say to you I am not afraid of going home, I would be lying. The president of the country of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, in the last two weeks, in his last two public speeches, has attacked me,” Mwarire says.

“The first comment that was made was that I caused violence, that people like me have no place in Zimbabwe and I must go where my funders are, wherever my funders are. That concerns me when my president says that about me, an upstanding citizen.

"All I did was to say to my government: 'There's something wrong. Guys, please help us, there's something wrong.' And I've been asked not to come back home.

"In the second speech, he literally said we must not meddle in the politics of the country, and we will rot in jail, and that I will be dealt with. The very next day, over 3 000 young people marched in support of the president's comments and they all said 'down with Mawarire'. That is scary.

“Everybody knows my address, they know where I stay, because the charge sheet against me was snapped up by social media. I cannot go home unless there's a guarantee of my safety. I have a family I need to take care of and think of.

"As much as I say I am not afraid of the government of this country, I still feel I have a job to do and I want to be able to do so safely."

Watch the interview

 

 

The #ThisFlag campaign went viral in May when Mawarire took to social media to speak out about poverty, corruption and injustice in Zimbabwe.

He said it was not his plan to subvert the the government, but he merely wanted to engage with the country's leadership to address "those three simple issues".

Mawarire was detained for two days before standing trial for treason in July.

He was released on bail after the court found the police to have acted unconstitutionally when they arrested him.

Cape Argus

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