Baobab

AFTER the polls closed on the first day of voting in South Sudan's referendum on secession on the evening of January 9th, Baobab spoke with an international election observer, long based in Sudan, in Juba, South Sudan's capital. His report on how the day played out is below.

Such was the determination to hold Southern Sudan's referendum on time—in marked contrast to every other aspect of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement which ended Sudan's second civil war in 2005—that logistical preparations for the vote were complete several days before polls opened, a remarkable achievement for preparations that initially began years behind schedule, and in comparison to the problem-plagued April 2010 Sudanese elections. Voting kicked off at the mausoleum of John Garang, the former SPLM leader, with thousands of people celebrating Salva Kiir, Garang's successor, presenting his registration card, inking his finger, and casting the first ballot. The several days of street parties that have filled every corner of Juba continued. Churches were empty as the exhortations of ministers to go out and vote were heeded all too seriously on this Sunday morning.  Following voting, Mr Kiir noted that with the arrival of this promised referendum, Garang and all those who fought in the civil war had not died in vain.

At 5pm, the close of polls, some disappointed voters were asked to return on Monday morning to cast their ballots. Despite the seemingly heavy turnout, only a quarter of voters appeared to have cast their ballots on the first day, leaving the 60% turnout threshold required to validate the vote some days away. A recent, if less than fully scientific poll released by the Association for Independent Media found that 96% of Southerners would choose independence. In the festive environment there was little to suggest that the pollsters were wrong.

Still, even if expectations of the outcome of the vote are evident, the lengthy polling and counting process will mean results only trickle out towards the end of January. The euphoria of the electorate is contagious, but in one sense the vote is the easiest part of the process of statehood. With no post-referendum framework agreed between North and South, the referendum is a largely symbolic victory that will still require tough negotiations to become a meaningful reality.

With a referendum on the secession of the southern part of Sudan scheduled for January 9th, the time seems right for a trip into the archives (specifically, the leader pages in the print edition of April 24th 1993), to reexamine what our thoughts were in advance of Eritrea's vote for independence, and on the merits of secession in Africa in general:

Africa should welcome Eritrea, not resist it

WITH referendums enjoying something of a vogue, the one taking place in a remote corner of Africa this weekend may not grab many headlines. Between April 23rd and 25th the inhabitants of Eritrea, a little wedge of territory beside the Red Sea, will vote on whether to secede from Ethiopia. The place is small, but the symbolic value of its vote is not. When Eritreans say Yes to independence, as they surely will, they will deliver to Africa the first country born through secession since decolonisation. Many fear that if Eritrea splits off the entire African jigsaw will break up.

In a continent where frontiers and people are famously ill matched, such a prospect is not altogether fanciful. Hence the principle so often cited: African borders may be random lines drawn on colonists' maps, but any attempt to alter them will only lead to more instability and fighting. Africans have bitter memories of secessionist wars; Nigeria's Biafra, the Congo's Katanga. They need only cast their eyes northwards to Bosnia to see where the post-cold-war version can lead.

But Africans should relax. Eritrea's claim to independence is unusually strong. And even where others have as good a case, that need not spell disaster for the continent.

A chip, but not off the old block

The fear that Eritrea will start a trend is, not surprisingly, strongest in Ethiopia. There is the worry that, once Eritrea has cut loose, other groups in other parts of the ethnically mixed country will want to do the same. They may, but their case will not be as strong as the Eritreans'.

Eritrea's claim to be special starts with its history. In colonial days, Eritrea was never a part of Ethiopia. Whereas the Ethiopians drove the Italians off their soil and escaped colonial rule (a brief spell under Mussolini excepted), Eritrea was in the first half of this century an outpost of the Italian empire. Not until 1952 was Eritrea handed over by the British, who had been running it for the previous 11 years, to Ethiopia; their reasons for doing so lay largely in their feelings of guilt about the way Europe had allowed Mussolini to gobble up Ethiopia in the 1930s. Besides spaghetti and cappuccino, Italy bequeathed to Eritreans a sense of national identity which has only been strengthened by their forced cohabitation with Ethiopia. Eritrea's independence will not draw new borders, but return the country to its shape of 40 years ago.

Furthermore, the Eritreans fought almost every year of annexation by Ethiopia. Their victory over the Ethiopian army in May 1991, which ended a 30-year war, led to the liberation of their country. Since then the Eritrean People's Liberation Front has been running the place as a de facto independent state. Eritreans are not breaking away so much as making their separation formal. Above all, since the end of the war, Eritreans have gone about their bid for secession in an orderly, peaceful way. They have waited two years before holding a referendum, to allow their war-battered country to recover. And they are on good terms with the government in Addis Ababa.

In time, other parts of African states may well press their claims more forcefully. Few will have as strong a case as Eritrea. The world should be especially wary of those areas that, being blessed with mineral or other wealth, simply want to bolt with the loot. But some may deserve support. British Somaliland, for example, the northern bit of (former Italian) Somalia, has a similar historical case. Southern Sudan's long war with its north might support a divorce on the ground of irreconcilable differences. Some boundaries have, in fact, been changed in the past: western Togo, once British Togoland, is now in Ghana; British South Cameroon is now part of ex-French Cameroon, whereas British North Cameroon is part of Nigeria.

Not every would-be secessionist should be encouraged to follow Eritrea. But it is time for Africans to bury a taboo.

WHEN I arrive in Obubra, a sleepy village in the lush forests of south-eastern Nigeria, two soldiers bearing AK-47s are instructed to accompany me at all times. “After all,” says one of my hosts, “this is a DDR environment.”

I am spending a day on a residential “non-violence course” for former militants from the Niger Delta, the creeks of which contain the bulk of Nigeria’s vast oil and gas reserves. Thousands of these fighters have signed up to an amnesty that began 18 months ago, whereby they agreed to hand over their weapons, attend this course, and do vocational training. The amnesty is billed as a “disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation” scheme—known as DDR—of the kind that has been tried across Africa, to varying degrees of success.

Today is exam day for this week’s batch of over 1,300 students. Youths in white uniforms hang around in the dusty compound in the stifling afternoon heat. When it is their turn, they list mantras on topics such as “the steps to non-violence” in rote fashion. Unable to do the simple written test, the majority sit oral exams.

The course teaches “Kingian non-violence”, which is partly based on the speeches of Martin Luther King. Critics argue that the five-day course is too short and classes of around 150 students each are too large. They also question the government’s commitment to the scheme overall; the amnesty has been dogged by delays, which have reportedly led some youths to return to the creeks. The Obubra course began almost a year after the militants had laid down arms.

However, the students I meet are friendly and enthusiastic about the scheme. As they munch on mashed cassava and a thick stew, they imagine their new life away from the creeks. They hope that the government will soon provide them with jobs as nurses, welders and oil rig technicians. I feel ridiculous for having two armed guards in what feels like a school canteen.

It is hard to tell whether the students have been “transformed”, as their tutors’ jargon goes. None of them say they enjoyed violence before taking the course. Most of them just joined their local militant camp because they needed a job. “It was terrible. We had shoot-outs with the government,” says Michael Festus, a 30-year-old former fighter. “You would be sitting and eating with your friend and then suddenly he would be lying on the ground.”

Militant commanders did not just hire fighters. The students include young women who worked as cooks and prostitutes. One teenage boy was a plate-washer who was saving up his salary to attend football trials.

On a nearby parade ground, preparations are underway for a graduation ceremony that will take place in a few days. The former insurgents will sing their national anthem and salute Nigeria's green-and-white flag. The tutors say this is a milestone: a sign of “transformation”.

But for these young people, the real milestone would be to find something to do next. After their vocational training, which in some cases has been delayed by several months, the ex-militants will enter an anaemic job market. Nigeria’s woeful electricity supply and poor roads make it hard for entrepreneurs to flourish, or even get by. A flawed education system means the few businesses doing well enough to hire often struggle to find the necessary talent.

“The government is paying us for now,” says Okechukwu Peculiar, a 20-year-old former cook for a militant group (pictured above, centre). She will receive a monthly stipend of 65,000 naira ($423) until the scheme ends. “But I am worried about what happens next.”

THE International Criminal Court (ICC) today named the six Kenyans it wants summoned to The Hague to answer for the violence which killed 1,200 Kenyans, displaced 300,000, and brought the country to the brink of collapse after an election at the end of 2007. For those following the process carefully there was just one real surprise: the decision to name President Mwai Kibaki's secretary to the cabinet, Francis Muthaura. By choosing to go after Kenya's top civil servant, the ICC's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, has signalled that he would like to see the whole election process scrutinised.

Many observers, including Baobab, believe some of the responsibility for the blood-letting rests with those within Mr Kibaki's circle who sought to obscure and manipulate the vote tally. An examination of how the result was announced and how Mr Kibaki was speedily and shabbily sworn into office gives rise to the suspicion that the election may have been stolen from the prime minister, Raila Odinga. The naming of Mr Muthaura will make it hard for Mr Kibaki to remain removed from the process. His instinct will now be to delay, obfuscate, and block The Hague at every step in an attempt to protect his man.

Pointing the finger at the finance minister, Uhuru Kenyatta, strikes another blow to dynastic politics. Mr Kenyatta is a son of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's founding father, and a Kikuyu like Mr Kibaki. To strengthen his hand, Mr Kenyatta might now seek a political alliance with the minister of higher education, William Ruto, a Kalenjin. Mr Ruto, who has for the moment been suspended from his post on suspicion of corruption, will have to answer for an explosion of violence in the Rift Valley, which saw young Kalenjin men hack and burn alive their Kikuyu neighbours.

A so-called coalition of the accused would seemingly go against the wishes of the people: a survey released today shows that 73% of Kenyans have confidence in the ICC. The three others on the list include the then police chief, Hussein Ali, the minister for industrialisation, Henry Kosgey, and a Kalenjin businessman, Joshua Arap Sang. The list also leaves open the question of who, if anyone, should answer for the ethnic cleansing of Kikuyu from Mr Odinga's political strongholds in western Kenya.

VISITORS to Zambia who are pushing 40 face a sobering fact. Were they locals, statistically, they would be dead. The average life expectancy in Zambia is 38. This is at the lower end of the spectrum in Africa but not rock bottom. What makes it unusual is that Zambia in many ways feels like the sort of place where people live long, decent lives. Perhaps not in the bush, where women must cook over open fires and men are mostly unemployed. But in Lusaka, the capital, an older Zambia survives. 

Some 40 years ago, the former Northern Rhodesia was a middle-income country. Average Zambians were wealthy by African standards. They had salaried jobs that paid well and gave them enough time off to enjoy their relative wealth. A bout of nationalisation, later reversed, destroyed the economy and with it the chance for many to grow old thanks to decent health care. HIV also played its part.

Today urban professionals are still well paid but the gap between the employed and the unemployed, who make up more than half the population, grows ever wider. A junior economist fresh out of university can command a monthly salary of $3,000 to $4,000 in Lusaka. Miners too do comparatively well, up to $1,000 (though some are poorly paid). The high wages no longer seem so outlandish when one takes into account what stuff costs in Zambia. A bottle of wine from neighbouring South Africa is sold for twice as much as in overpriced and far away London. The World Bank estimates that the cost of living in Lusaka is 30-40% higher than in Washington, DC. The Zambian economy may be growing at a respectable rate of 6% but that is mostly because Zambia opened the world's biggest copper mine just as world copper prices were going through the roof. Foreign resource extractors are queuing up. But high wage costs have scared away other investors.

Why is Zambia so expensive? Observers have offered a number of explanations. The labour market is rigid—a 15% annual increase in wages is customary. Transport costs bump up the price of everything else—Zambia is a landlocked country with little domestic manufacturing. The cost of finance is high—banks charge up to 35% in interest (one study even reports loans with 100% interest rates). 

Baobab isn't quite satisfied with any of these explanations. They surely contribute to the high costs. But there must be more to it. Could one of the highly paid Lusakan economists offer an answer, please?

SO CITIES are growing, jobs need to be found, schools built, sewers dug, but urbanisation has its sunnier side. Cosmopolitan youth in many African cities are using technology to draw more deeply on their own and other cultures. At the same time, increased religiosity and a more sober approach to democracy is filtering in. Youth are able to circulate many messages over Facebook and Twitter before permanent secretaries in African ministries can get around to killing a story. That is making it harder for the old elite to exercise control over public opinion. These two videos, both from Kenya, illustrate the new zeitgeist. The first takes on apathy among young voters. 

The second celebrates the Kenyan superhero, Makmende, whose name means hero in Swahili slang. According to the producers, it is derived from a mispronunciation of Clint Eastwood's signature line in the 1983 film Sudden Impact: "Go ahead, make my day." Or, in the case of this video, go ahead Hitler, Makmende.

BAOBAB is working on a big piece on digital Africa for Intelligent Life. It is an attempt to paint a portrait of a time when the continent is plugging in to the rest of the world through mobiles and the internet. The article will deal in particular with changes in the way urban Africans live, work, and entertain themselves. Among the trends is the observation that cheaper internet and the wider availability of smartphones and laptops has caused the African porn industry to explode. Hawkers selling pirated Hollywood DVDs in car parks and traffic jams now earn extra money by selling porn to regular customers. What is more interesting is that cheaper cameras and smarter distribution models are producing videos tailored not just to colour or country but to tribe: Luo men want to see Luo girls, not Pamela Anderson. Nairobi's porn business is flourishing. Baobab has not yet been able to verify it, but even Somali porn is said to be being made and sold.

Attendant to the rise of porn has been a subtle change in attitudes to sex, at least in the African cities Baobab reports from. Women are more assertive. Sex columns abound. Family planning is no longer a taboo. And while the porn is getting more local, high-end prostitution is getting more global. The classified section of the Nairobi Star carries a page of erotic massage offers. Most of them advertise East European and Russian women to rich African and Arab men.

Paying for sex in any form comes with complications for those African men who by day claim to abide by the chaste standards of their churches and mosques. Indeed, Baobab predicts that the sex industry might well profit from as more of Africa turns to Pentecostalism and Islamism and the previous easy pickings of maids, secretaries and cousins are put off-limits.

African sex-workers tend to be poorly treated. Slum sex is a matter of survival for orphans and single mothers; intercourse often goes for less than $1. The rate of AIDS among sex-workers is correspondingly high. Which brings Baobab in a round-about way to the point of this post, which is to call out Uganda, again, for its conflicted sexual identity. A country which tends towards primness by day is often alcohol-fueled and lustful by night. Ugandan politicians have backed regressive legislation on homosexuality and seem equally sanctimonious on prostitution. Uganda's Ethics Minister, James Buturo, last week cancelled a regional conference of sex workers due to take place in Entebbe on the grounds the women were promoting criminality under the guise of human rights. In fact, the meeting was meant to find ways to limit sexually transmitted diseases and improve conditions for the most vulnerable sex-workers.

We have a new debate on the Africa page: Are governments best placed to protect Africa's wildlife? Join the discussion.

Here is a slideshow to go with our piece in the print edition this week looking at traditional Nigerian dambe boxing. 

ON NOVEMBER 13th Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, had the fortune to host the 2010 Miss ECOWAS Peace Pageant. The contest, which pits young women from the 15 countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) against one another, is no mere beauty pageant, say its organisers. They are looking for a "peace ambassador" with intellectual substance. The competition still includes a swimwear round though.

The event got off to a rocky start. The website still bears the proud headline “Welcome to Sierra Leone: The Loin Mountains”. The pageant took place in the compound immediately behind Freetown’s main ministerial pile which boasts an erratic elevator and apocalyptic lavatories. When the 28 competitors arrived their changing area was still under construction. Young men were stripping the insulation from electric cables with their teeth and taping the wiring together to light naked bulbs. Despite prior clearance Baobab was ejected three times from the backstage area by the increasingly frantic Ghanaian organisers.

The pageant itself ran far into the night. The competitors waved their national flags, read meandering messages of peace, and strutted on stage in their swimwear. At one point Miss Niger nominated Muammar Qaddafi as her favourite African leader. 

The eventual winner, announced in the small hours after a performance by reggae singer Jimmy Cliff, was Ghana’s Shirley Nwangere. Alongside a new car and $5000 in cash, she wins the heady prospect of “a year of ambassadorial work spreading peace across the sub-region.”

IN THE print edition this week, we look at the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan rebel group. In May, Barack Obama signed a law making it American policy to kill or capture Joseph Kony, the LRA's leader but that will not be easy. Elsewhere, as the referendum approaches, pressure is mounting on Sudan's government in the north to let the south go.

ALICE NYAMIHANDA, a 23-year old Ugandan, became the first of her Batwa people to graduate from university last month. The Batwa, or Twa, are among the oldest of the peoples in the Great Lakes Region. There are about 80,000 left, several thousand of them in Uganda. They are pygmies, classified as being under 1.55m tall, and are genetically closer to the ancient San and Hadzabe hunter-gatherers than to the much younger surrounding Bantu peoples. Alice says she wants to use her degree to help her people. The Batwa claim to have been pushed out of their traditional forests in the 1990s to allow further protection of the mountain gorillas. In truth, their story has been one familiar to indigenous peoples for much of the last century, with failures of dislocation, ignorance and addiction, compounded by the prejudice and exploitation of outsiders. The Batwa who emerged from the thick forests were often enslaved to Bantus. They speak Kinyarwandan; some communities have kept their traditional polyphonic singing and dancing. Although most of their days are spent squatting on land in squalid conditions, they still sing sadly of the fruits and vines of the forest, the wild honey, the antelopes and other animals that sustained them.

But the idea that the Batwa ever had an Eden may be misplaced. Their short stature may have been a response to the very harshness of their living conditions. These days the Batwa have the worst development indicators in the region. Life expectancy is less than 30 years. As China moves into the Congo basin, some thought should be given to the fate of the half a million pygmies living there in various groups. Deforestation has usually been a death knell to their culture, and indeed many of the pygmy hunting grounds were already sundered by Belgian road building projects and the wars which later swept through. Still, in more enlightened times Baobab would like to think that the intimate knowledge the Batwa, the Mbati, and other pygmy groups have of the forest, its plants, creatures, terrain, its whole, even the way the light and the rain spills into it, should make them a precious resource rather than something to be yet again cleared away and ruined.