Mocambique: An Awful Sense Of Dje Vu

MOZAMBIQUE

‘Awful Sense of Déjà Vu’

The second cyclone to strafe Mozambique this season has put about 160,000 people at risk, with raging floods already threatening to cut off the northern region’s main city and days of torrential rain in the weather forecast.

“It’s an awful sense of déjà vu,” said Nicholas Finney, response team leader with the aid group Save the Children, describing the stunned reaction to Cyclone Kenneth, which blasted the southern African nation just six weeks after flooding caused by Cyclone Idai killed more than 600 people.

It’s the first time in recorded history that two cyclones are hitting Mozambique in the same season, raising concerns about the impact of climate change on such weather events, the Associated Press reported. But of more immediate concern are the fears that twice as much rain could fall in Kenneth’s aftermath as fell during Idai.

The government said more than 160,000 people have been affected in the largely rural region, while more than 35,000 homes in Mozambique’s northernmost province of Cabo Delgado were damaged or destroyed.

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25 Years Ago Today I Voted In The First All-Race Election In South Africa

     It was a sunny and beautiful Friday morning in the Port Elizabeth (South Africa) suburb of Saint Albans. It was a special national holiday. All South Africans (regardless of race) were going to the polls to elect a new president for the first time in the 500+ year history of the country.

     I was going through hard times financially. I had a low-level clerical government job. I did not own a car. I lived in a humble apartment with two other men. I only had a good diet because my job was working at a center for military, police, and prison services personnel. I got to eat in the officer’s mess. The food was quite decent.

    Despite my humble circumstances, a brand-new 3 Series BMW sedan pulled up at my apartment building. A well-dressed captain in the South African army stepped out of the car. He walked to the door of my apartment and knocked. When I opened the door, he told me that he had been sent to take me to the polls to vote. (How I got this VIP treatment will be the subject of a blog post tomorrow.)

    I followed him to the BMW and got in on the passenger side. There was great fear on this beautiful and sunny day. Major violence and disruption had been predicted. As we drove through the streets of Saint Albans, soldiers and police lined the streets. Despite all this tension, there was a feeling of relaxation, hope, and confidence.

   When we arrived at the polling place, the captain came with me to the place where voters were checked in and given their ballot. I presented my South African National ID book. The captain vouched for me with election officials. I was given a two-page paper ballot. It had the pictures of all candidates by the place to cast one’s vote. This was because so many of the voters were illiterate and could not read and write.

     I went to a polling station. I made my decision and cast my vote. The captain drove me back to my apartment. Throughout South Africa that day, there were sporadic and infrequent episodes of violence. No charges were ever made of election tampering or voter fraud.

    A little before midnight, Nelson Mandela was declared the winner. There was euphoria all over South Africa. Parties were going on everywhere. (Take my word for it, no one knows how to give a party like South Africans!) For me the most touching moment of this election euphoria was when a black woman was being interviewed on The South African Broadcasting Commission. She said these words: “Finally they will start treating us like adults and stop treating us like children!”

    On that day I was part of an incredible moment in history that was watched all over the world. I was honored to have been allowed to vote. I was delighted to see a fair election with little violence or intimidation. State President FW de Klerk conceded in a most-kind manner.

    I now have the benefit of 25 years to look back on that day and what followed. Nelson Mandela went on to serve 5 years as president. He exceeded all my expectations. The two men who came after him as president were huge disappointments. At the time of the election 25 years ago, South Africa was the economic power house of the African continent with 40% of the continent’s gross domestic product. Now South Africa has the number three economy in Africa with Nigeria being #1 and Egypt being #2.

     Some progress has been made to alleviate the huge disparity in comes and wealth that existed between the 15% white minority and the 85% majority of color. The unemployment rate is still above 27%. Corruption is rampant. Crime rates are high. The new president, Cyril Ramaphosa is honest and sincere. He has a hard challenge to overcome.

       South Africa has not achieved what I had hoped for it 25 years ago. But it is not a failed state either.

Benin: Of Gizzards And Threats

BENIN

Of Gizzards and Threats

History has not been kind to Benin.

The tiny West African country exported more than a million slaves to the United States and elsewhere centuries ago. On the country’s coast stands the Door of No Return, a moving memorial at the port where slaves once embarked on the torturous Middle Passage.

After gaining independence from France in the 1960s, Benin struggled through military coups and authoritarianism. In 1991, democracy emerged. Voters twice re-elected former dictator Mathieu Kérékou, but the political system nonetheless thrived. In the last parliamentary election four years ago, voters could choose between 20 parties.

Sadly, that democracy is now under threat.

Citing technicalities under new reforms, election officials recently ruled that only two parties can run in parliamentary elections on April 28, reported the Mail & Guardian, a South African newspaper. Both parties happen to be allied to President Patrice Talon, a cotton and shipping tycoon. No opposition candidates are standing for office.

Protests have flared up, but security forces have quashed them. Talon stationed troops, paramilitary forces and military vehicles throughout the country, including around the headquarters of the opposition Benin Rebirth Party.

The military is not the only way Talon appears to be consolidating power. Last month, the Tanzania-based African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights ruled that Benin mistreated former presidential candidate Sebastien Ajavon, a poultry magnate who lost to Talon in 2016.

As Bloomberg explained, after Ajavon lost the election, authorities found 40 pounds of cocaine in a shipping container of imported turkey gizzards in one of his companies and charged him with drug trafficking. He claimed he was being framed and now lives in exile in France.

Those moves led critics to charge that Talon was planning a power grab. “Talon’s plan is to revise the constitution as he pleases,” said Corneille Nonhemi, a young activist who had wanted to run for parliament as a candidate under Ajavon’s Social Liberal Union.

Talon countered that the new election rules were designed to encourage around 250 opposition parties to coalesce into two or three groups.

Former President Thomas Boni Yayi, who backed Ajavon in 2016, has called on Talon to postpone the election, wrote Agence France-Presse.

Beninese opposition leaders have also called on Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, the current chairman of the Economic Community of West African States, to intervene. “Nigeria has over 800 kilometers (of) land border with Benin Republic and principally stands to suffer the consequences of any political instability in Benin,” Jean Adèkambi, a leader in a coalition of opposition groups, said in the Nation, a Nigerian newspaper.

Hopefully, foreign military intervention won’t be necessary. Sometimes, as in The Gambia, the threat is enough.

Gold worth billions smuggled out of Africa

Gold worth billions smuggled out of Africa: Billions of dollars' worth of gold is being smuggled out of Africa every year through the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East – a gateway to markets in Europe, the United States and beyond – a Reuters analysis has found. Customs data shows that the UAE imported $15.1-billion worth of gold from Africa in 2016, more than any other country and up from $1.3-billion in 2006. The total weight was 446 t, in varying degrees of purity – up from 67 t in 2006.

Mali: Taking The Blame

MALI

Taking the Blame

Mali’s prime minister and entire government resigned on Thursday, a month after the massacre of an estimated 160 Fulani herders by an ethnic vigilante group, and following the largest protests in decades.

A statement from the president’s office accepting the resignation provided no explanation as to why Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga was stepping down, but the move came a day after legislators mulled a no-confidence motion in response to the government’s failure to stop ethnic militias and Islamist militants, Reuters reported.

Malian authorities have detained five people suspected of taking part in the massacre. Even so, Maiga and President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita have failed to disarm the militia that many believe organized it in spite of promises to do so.

On March 23, men believed to be from the ethnic Dogon hunter community massacred ethnic Fulani herders in the central Mali village of Ogossagou, following a jihadist attack on an army post claimed by an al Qaeda affiliate that includes many Fulani members.

Mali has for years struggled with internal fighting and terrorism. The deteriorating political situation now jeopardizes reforms the government had pledged to implement this year – a process key to the country’s stability – including the agreement for peace and national reconciliation, South Africa’s Daily Maverick reported.

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Libya-Hedging Bets

LIBYA

Hedging Bets?

France on Thursday refuted claims by the internationally recognized government of Libya that Paris had thrown its support behind Khalifa Haftar – the military leader whose Libyan National Army (LNA) is fighting to take over Tripoli.

Earlier, the Libyan interior ministry said it had suspended relations between the ministry and the French due to the position of the French government in support of the “criminal” Haftar, France 24 reported.

A French foreign ministry official called the accusations “disappointing” and “completely unfounded,” while the French presidency said in a statement that it supported Libya’s internationally recognized government under Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj and was in favor of a political solution to the conflict.

While France has supported Sarraj’s Tripoli government in the past, there may also be a pragmatic interest in Haftar – who enjoys the support of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates because they see the general as a bulwark against Islamist militancy.

Meanwhile, the battle for Tripoli rages on, with the death toll now reaching 205 after two weeks of fighting, the World Health Organization said.

The Battle For Algeria

ALGERIA

The Battle for Algeria

Widespread demonstrations, followed by the loss of military support, forced former Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who’s 82 and seriously ailing, to resign earlier this month after 20 years in power.

Interim President Abdelkader Bensalah has scheduled a new election for July 4, reported Al Jazeera. But the protesters and others who helped bring an end to Bouteflika’s harsh, corrupt rule still aren’t satisfied.

“The old invalid is gone, but if Algeria is to move to ‘the better future’ that Mr. Bouteflika … wrote about in his resignation letter, then much bigger changes are needed,” the Economist wrote.

Bensalah, 77, was in the sights of protesters who took to the streets in recent days demanding an end to “Le Pouvoir” – French for “the power,” meaning the establishment class. Under the law, he can’t run for re-election. He was a Bouteflika ally, however, associated with a group of leaders who have run the country since fighting to end French colonial rule in the 1960s.

“Algerians refuse all the old figures who are at the root of the corruption that prevailed in the country,” civil activist Messaoud Boudiba told Bloomberg, adding that he was skeptical Bensalah could hold a fair and legitimate ballot. “Elections under current conditions means reproducing the same political system because there will be no evidence of transparency,” according to Algiers University political analyst Louisa Aid Hamadouche.

Many Algerians also fear the military might seek to step into the vacuum left after Bouteflika and his cronies pass into history.

Gen. Ahmed Gaid Salah was instrumental in ending the president’s tenure in office, for example. But he has recently spoken on political topics, like how he supported elections, and mused about whether Bouteflika’s cabal might face prosecution, the Washington Post reported. That’s not exactly an apolitical stance.

Indeed, Middle East Monitor noted that one of the few serious candidates for the July 4 election is an ex-general.

The military has run the country before, Foreign Affairs explained. In fact, Bouteflika took office to bring an end to the so-called “dark decade” that began in 1992, when the army canceled the country’s first multiparty legislative elections to prevent an Islamist victory, triggering a civil war that ended with the Islamists mostly vanquished.

Taking office in 1999, Bouteflika promised “national reconciliation” after the bloodshed. In a resignation letter released after he stepped down on April 2, he asked the Algerian people for forgiveness, imploring them “to stay united, and never divide yourselves.”

His friends and his former generals should read that letter very, very closely.