Sudan: Of Zebras And Stripes

SUDAN

Of Zebras and Stripes

In January, during his last month in office, former President Barack Obama temporarily lifted the economic sanctions on Sudan that had been in place for 20 years.

Obama’s rapprochement with the delinquent and violent regime of longtime President Omar al-Bashir was deemed a reward for the president’s “positive actions,” the Economist notes.

Sudan cooperated with the United States in its fight against global terrorism, sought to end its wars with rebels in the country’s west and south, and allowed aid workers to reach destitute civilians in conflict zones.

But with a new American president at the helm, a decision must be made about the permanence of normalizing relations with Sudan and its president. It begs the question: Can a zebra really change its stripes?

Many remain skeptical – and for good reason.

President Bashir seized power in Sudan in 1989 in a coup against a democratically elected government. He then proceeded to ban political parties and consolidate power through a series of sham elections and intimidation campaigns, the BBC reports.

Bashir’s crackdown on rebel groups in the western region of Darfur resulted in the systematic murder of hundreds of thousands of non-Arabs and perpetuated a drastic humanitarian crisis that continues today. Bashir is now wanted by the International Criminal Court for orchestrating genocide in Darfur. Many see his actions as simply unforgivable.

At the same time, some are starting to recognize Sudan as a potential partner for regional stability. Khartoum once helped smuggle weapons into Gaza vis-à-vis Iran, but diplomatic relations with Tehran have since cooled. Sudan now says it wants to normalize relations with Israel, Haaretz reports.

The United Nations also believes that Darfur, while still fragile, is reaching a point of stability. It announced in June that it will withdraw more than one-third of the nearly 19,000 peacekeepers it has in the region, the New York Times reports.

Still, human rights activists say that below the surface nothing has changed.

Last year President Bashir’s regime was accused of using chemical weapons against Darfuris. In an open letter to the Guardian, Niemat Ahmadi, president and founder of the Darfur Women Action Group, wrote that Sudanese forces continue to pillage Darfuri villages, rape women and reallocate stolen land to Khartoum loyalists.

And while Darfuri rebel factions have come to the table to negotiate peace with Khartoum, they fear that campaigns to demilitarize Darfur could leave the region at the president’s mercy, AllAfrica.com reports.

The Trump administration’s opinion on Darfur is still unclear: The White House recently pushed back a decision on whether to permanently end sanctions against Khartoum.

But with inflation on the rise and the Sudanese economy grinding to a halt, the White House needs to decide whether the zebra really has changed its stripes – or whether pretending to see a new pattern is in the best interest of both nations.

WANT TO KNOW

Kenya-Challenges And Consequences

KENYA

Challenges and Consequences

Opposition presidential candidate Raila Odinga challenged the results of the recent election in Kenya’s Supreme Court on Monday.

Odinga’s lawyers said there were discrepancies in some of the election forms, others lacked bar codes and other security features meant to prevent documents from being copied, and many of the election officers lacked the proper credentials, the local Standard newspaper reported.

Kenyan election authorities say President Uhuru Kenyatta was re-elected by a margin of around 1.4 million votes, and independent monitors said those numbers matched estimates they made based on a sample of around 2,000 polling stations.

But Odinga’s supporters say the problems they’ve identified mean that the results from around a third of the polling stations are flawed.

At least 28 people were killed in election-related violence following the August 8 polls, many of them shot by police during protests after the results were announced, Reuters reported.

The court must rule on the challenge by Sept. 1. If it rules in favor of Raila, a new presidential election must be held within 60 days.

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Venezuela: Fight Or Flight

VENEZUELA

Fight or Flight

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro thumbed his nose at the prospect of more US sanctions and said he’s seeking an international arrest warrant for former Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz, who fled the country last week.

“I have prepared a set of decisions and measures to defend us against commercial, financial or oil blockades that Donald Trump will decree,” Bloomberg quoted Maduro as saying.

Ortega and her husband fled to Colombia to avoid what they claim are politically motivated charges at home. A former Maduro loyalist, Ortega began opposing him earlier this year and sought to stop the elections for the controversial Constituent Assembly – which was formed on July 30 to rewrite Venezuela’s constitution in the face of the threat of a crippling US oil embargo.

She’s now set to address a meeting of the regional economic group Mercosur in Brazil, where she claims she will “show the world proof that will incriminate President Nicolas M

Angola-Follow The Leader

ANGOLA

Follow the Leader

Angolans go to the polls Wednesday to elect their next president and parliament. But what they are actually doing is writing a new chapter in the history of their young country.

Here’s the obvious change: Africa’s second-longest-serving leader, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, is stepping down after 37 years, a period defined by a brutal fight for independence from Portugal and a bloody, decades-long civil war.

Here’s the good news: The People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) will not fight over trenches, airstrips and dusty roads through scrubby forests. They will battle for the backing of 9 million voters, as the Guardian wrote.

And there’s more reason to be cautiously optimistic about this oil-rich country’s future.

The president’s handpicked successor, Defense Minister Joao Lourenco, is all but sure to win. And while Lourenco was a surprise choice, he’s a strong one, the Washington Post reported. He’s respected both at home and abroad, having held multiple high-level government positions. He’s also married to the World Bank’s former executive director for Angola, Nigeria and South Africa.

Indeed, Lourenco has a track record clean of corruption, a rarity in Angola, whose capital, Luanda, by the way, was recently ranked the most expensive city in the world, the Independent reports. The country is plagued by nepotism and elites lining their pockets even as their fellow citizens remain entrenched in poverty, the New York Times wrote.

And with oil prices sinking and inflation rising, Angolans have become increasingly restless as botched infrastructure projects, a lack of access to basic needs and a stagnant economy have squeezed them.

Sensing the dissatisfaction, the MPLA has run on a platform of “improve what is good, correct what is wrong,” Africa.com opined.

Still, observers urge caution: The status quo will likely remain for a while, despite the change of leadership, Deutsche Welle reported.

First, Lourenco will be beholden to party stalwarts in the government whose jobs are guaranteed by a statute that breezed through parliament during the last session.

Second, the current president’s daughter, Isabel dos Santos, is head of the state-run oil firm, Sonangol. Considered Africa’s first female billionaire, she won’t likely be going anywhere anytime soon, either.

Third, there’s concern over the crackdown on speech in advance of the elections, Human Right Watch reported.

Still, the MLPA is expected to pay a price for ruling incompetently. Recent polls show the party’s support is dwindling. They’re expected to win only 38 percent of the vote, which is enough to be the largest party in parliament, but hardly constitutes a mandate.

Also, the oil crisis and the strife of the past few decades have “focused minds…realizing the party is over,” said the Guardian.

So while a strong opposition and an ailing governing party could make life hard for Lourenco, it could also be an opportunity to reach across the aisle and let fresh air into Angola’s government and its future.

“We hope,” said Marcolino Moco, a former prime minister who is now a fierce opponent of dos Santos. “We have to try. We have to hope.”

https://www.stratfor.com/article/angola-age-old-story-money-power-and-family

AFRICA

Over One Million South Sudanese Flee From Violence to Uganda

By NICK CUMMING-BRUCEAUG. 17, 2017

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A South Sudanese family crossing into Uganda in June. The United Nations refugee agency said about 1,800 people have fled across the border to Uganda every day for the past year. CreditBen Curtis/Associated Press

GENEVA — A daily exodus of villagers fleeing armed conflict, hunger and sexual violence in South Sudan has pushed the number of refugees sheltering in Uganda to over one million, the United Nations refugee agency said on Thursday, urging international action to deal with what it called one of Africa’s biggest humanitarian crises.

International relief agencies say that one-third of the South Sudanese population of 13 million people has now been displaced and that half of the population is suffering from severe hunger and is in need of food aid.

“We’re looking at Africa’s biggest displacement crisis,” Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the agency, said in an interview. “It points to the dramatic worsening of the situation inside the country.”

About 1,800 people have fled across the border to Uganda every day for the past year, 85 percent of them women and children, the refugee agency said. As many as 85 percent of those reaching Uganda recount horrific tales of seeing armed groups burning villagers alive in their houses, shooting people in front of their families, raping women and girls, and seizing boys to serve as conscripts, the United Nations reported.

MULTIMEDIA FEATURE

We Witnessed South Sudan’s Anguish

Our reporters went to South Sudan and found that the world’s newest nation has not turned out the way it was supposed to.

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The villagers often travel for days through the bush to avoid indiscriminate killings by the marauding armed groups, which have set up checkpoints on the roads.

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Hundreds have escaped to South Sudan’s other neighbors — notably Sudanand Ethiopia — where, the refugee agency said, an additional million have sought shelter. Two million more have been driven from their homes for other reasons, the agency said.

South Sudan became the world’s newest nation in 2011, when it declared its independence after five decades of guerrilla warfare and the loss of two million lives. Civil war erupted four years ago, after President Salva Kiir sacked his deputy, Riek Machar. The move set off bloody confrontations between their supporters and rival ethnic groups. The bloodshed has escalated and intensified in the last year, with a sharp rise in ethnically targeted killings and sexual violence.

The United Nations started deploying 4,000 troops to South Sudan this month to bolster a peacekeeping force of 13,000, but as violence has spread to new provinces, the agency has not been able to do much to protect civilians outside its bases or to prevent attacks on relief agency staff members trying to deliver humanitarian aid.

Photo

A section of the the Bidi Bidi refugee settlement in northern Uganda. One-third of the South Sudanese population of 13 million people has now been displaced. CreditBen Curtis/Associated Press

Relief agencies say the impact of the fighting — which has forced farmers to flee, disrupting the planting of crops — and the looting of livestock has deepened economic hardship in one of Africa’s poorest countries.

In June, the United Nations food agency described conditions in South Sudan as catastrophic, and warned that the situation there was deteriorating, with more than six million people facing acute hunger.

“The number of hungry and displaced South Sudanese is overwhelming,” Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in a statement on Thursday as he began a visit to the country. The staggering scale of suffering was evidence of “a style of fighting that appears calibrated to maximize misery,” he added.

Hospitals supported by the Red Cross had grappled with a significant rise in the number of war-wounded this year because of the increased fighting, Mr. Maurer said, while conflict was hampering the delivery of medical care.

The United Nations said weak international financial support was forcing cuts in lifesaving assistance to those fleeing the conflict. The refugee agency said it had received only one-fifth of the $664 million it had sought this year to support refugees in Uganda, and in June the World Food Program had cut in half the food rations it provided them.

Sierra Leone: Mass Mourning

SIERRA LEONE

Mass Mourning

Between a decade-long civil war and a 2014 outbreak of Ebola that resulted in a humanitarian crisis, the West African country of Sierra Leone is no stranger to tragedy. But for a beleaguered people, the unprecedented carnage from floods and mudslides this week must seem like the last straw.

With some 400 bodies recovered so far, the dead are being buried in mass graves in the capital of Freetown, the New York Times reported. And hundreds more are still missing.

Some, like 30-year-old Thomas Benson, were dealt an almost incomprehensible blow. Benson lost nine of his relatives in the tragedy, finding his nephew, sister and uncle in a morgue crowded with hundreds of corpses.

The devastation is by no means over, either. A Unicef spokesman told the Times the agency had donated a thousand body bags to assist in providing a “dignified” burial process – even if the bodies wind up in mass graves. But the specter of disease looms large.

“The potential for infectious diseases like cholera is our biggest concern,” Unicef’s John James told the Times. “The water infrastructure has taken a big hit.”

Grace Mugabe Under Pressure

ZIMBABWE

Grace Under Pressure

Facing assault charges in South Africa, Zimbabwe’s First Lady Grace Mugabe returned to the safety of her own country rather than honoring a promise to turn herself in to South African police.

A 20-year-old South African woman accused Mugabe of hitting her over the head with an extension cord Sunday evening during an argument at a local hotel, the BBC reported.

Gabriella Engels, a model, accused Mugabe, 52, of hitting her after finding her with her two sons in a hotel room in Sandton, a wealthy suburb north of Johannesburg. South African police said they had been negotiating with Mugabe to convince her to turn herself in, and she had agreed to do so but never appeared.

Born in South Africa, Grace Mugabe married longtime President Robert Mugabe in 1996 after an extramarital affair. Made head of the ZANU-PF Women’s League in 2014, and thus a member of the party politburo, she has been accused of assault in the past, when she allegedly joined her bodyguard in beating up a newspaper photographer in Hong Kong in 2009.

Africa's Biggest Data Center Set To Open In South Africa In November

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Nigeria-The Grimmest Of Ironies

NIGERIA

The Grimmest of Ironies

Oil once fueled a boom in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria.

But plummeting oil prices, persistent terror threats and drought have caused economic turmoil in this West African nation of 170 million people.

Petroleum exports comprise some 70 percent of the Nigerian government’s revenues. So when oil prices began to plummet a few years back, public spending sagged, forcing the country to fall into recession last year, according to African Economic Outlook figures.

Thanks in part to help from OPEC, Nigeria is expected to post anemic growth this year.

But persistent corruption and sabotage at the hands of terror groups, insurgents and criminals have severely undercut the benefits of that turnaround, Reuters reported.

As much as 30 percent of the oil sent through the Niger River Delta is stolen, reported Stars and Stripes, citing oil industry estimates. Authorities claim former oil minister Diezani Alison-Madueke has absconded with $615 million, for example, wrote Bloomberg.

Last month, meanwhile, the militant Islamic group Boko Haram – an Islamic State affiliate in Africa that has plagued Nigeria for the better part of the last decade – ambushed an oil exploration convoy, killing 10 people and abducting several others.

Despite the Nigerian army’s sometimes-controversial advancesagainst them, Boko Haram militants also continue to occupy much of the country’s remote north, exacerbating a famine already gripping the region. Around 1.7 million people have yet to return to their homes in the wake of the jihadists’ rampage, too.

The United Nations said in a recent report that famine conditions affect roughly 5 million people in northeastern Nigeria. But Boko Haram’s grip on the region means that aid workers simply can’t reach those in need.

These hardships have put Nigeria’s youth in a dire situation, the Washington Times reported. According to UNICEF statistics quoted in the article, 45 percent of the population is younger than 15, and 10.5 million of those children aren’t attending school.

Meanwhile, unemployment stands at 14.2 percent.

The grim irony of Africa’s energy superpower not being able care for its own has forced the nation to face a bleak reality.

“Having 10 million children out of school is literally a ticking time bomb for our nation,” said Nigerian Senate President Bukola Saraki. “An uneducated population will be locked in a cycle of poverty for their entire lives. These children could constitute the next generation of suicide bombers and militant terrorists.”

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The Fertile World Of Nigerian Patois

Get the gist?The fertile world of Nigerian patois

Urban Nigerians speak a fantastic blend of languages

 Print edition | Middle East and Africa

Aug 3rd 2017| LAGOS

NO COMPLIMENT was too flowery at the launch in May of “Antidotes for Corruption”, a book by Dino Melaye, a Nigerian senator who has fended off numerous allegations of graft. “What is being launched today is, ipso facto, a new potent Intercontinental Ballistic-cum-Cruise missile—an unassailable Assault weapon against, arguably, Mankind’s Enemy Number One: Corruption,” read the opening sentence of a leaflet handed out at the event. The 43-year-old politician was described as a “unique, strong-willed, opinionated, stubborn, determined, intelligent, prolific and even sexy young man in his prime”.
It is not just Nigerian politics that is prone to verbal flourishes. In December Arik Air, an airline, blamed flight cancellations on the “epileptic” supply of aviation fuel (it was bailed out by the government soon after). Nigerians have taken English, the former colonial language, and made it their own. Many switch back and forth between standard English and Pidgin, peppering their speech with local words and colloquialisms. For example, “gist” is often used both as a noun and a verb meaning “gossip”. Someone going out for the night is “catching fun”. Traffic jams are “go-slows”. A younger girlfriend is a “smallie”.

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In a country with more than 500 languages Pidgin English is the lingua franca. Pop culture depends on it. Fela Kuti, one of the most popular Nigerian singers of the 1970s and 1980s, argued that, “You cannot sing African music in proper English.” Many Nollywood producers feel the same about the action films and convoluted romantic dramas that they export all over the continent. The Pidgin phrase Naija no dey carry last, roughly meaning “Nigerians strive to finish first”, has become an unofficial national motto (as well as the title of a book satirising the country).
Many English-language radio hosts talk in accents that indicate they have lived in Britain or America. But Nigerians can also tune in to the Pidgin “people’s station” Wazobia FM and, soon, BBC Pidgin. The celebrated novelist Chinua Achebe’s defence of writing in English, rather than his native Igbo, would ring true today whether spoken by politician or pop star. “We intend to do unheard-of things with it.”

This article appeared in the Middle East and Africa section of the print edition under the headline "Get the gist?"