Africa News blog

Are “African Solutions” right for the continent’s democracy push?

“This is an African solution to an African problem,” was African Union chief Jean Ping’s reasoning for another round of negotiations to resolve Ivory Coast’s bitter leadership dispute.

Regional leaders and the outside world had been uncharacteristically swift to condemn Laurent Gbagbo’s bid to cling onto power. The AU itself wasted little time suspending the West African nation from the bloc.

Gbagbo lost the presidential election in November last year, according to U.N. certified results, but he has refused to hand over power to rival Alassane Ouattara, citing fraud.

That has left regional powers, the AU and the United Nations all up against the same problem: how to convince Gbagbo to exit gracefully?

Ouattara’s camp have called for a military intervention. But talk of a military option opened up divisions within the AU.

Sudan’s “foolproof” elections

It all started so well… the lines of voters sheltering patiently in the shade from the sweltering heat to vote in Sudan’s first open polls in 24 years.

Many criticised the opposition for boycotting the vote, saying it was missing out on a national event.

But as the votes began to pour into the ballot boxes, the cracks began to show.

In one centre, ballot papers began to run out and after 3-1/2 hours waiting, an impatient woman shouted in through the window: “Please people can’t you hurry it up – we’ve got young children out here.”

While a desperate elections official was shouting requests down his mobile phone for more ballot papers, another discovery came to light. The hundreds of votes already cast were made on the wrong ballots.

And it all began to unravel.

As the sun rose in the desert sky, it was revealed that dozens of voting centres had received incorrect ballot papers and that the nameor symbols of many independent and opposition candidates were either missing or incorrect.

To observe or not to observe?

This is likely to be the question hotly debated in the more self-aware international observer missions covering Sudan’s elections, due to start on Sunday and marred by a wave of boycotts and claims of fraud.

Sudan’s first multi-party polls in almost quarter of a century had promised to be fiercely contested until revelations of irregularities caused boycotts by several parties.

The two largest parties and incumbent President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s only real two contenders both withdrew, saying the ruling party had fixed the polls.

As evidence of fraud continued to emerge, the use of government presses to print presidential and gubernatorial ballot papers, and voter registration books was the final straw. The boycotts have raised serious questions about the credibility of the presidential polls especially.

Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, had hoped to win legitimately, in defiance of the warrant.

This week Sudanese civil society groups asked the international observer missions from the Arab League, African Union, China, Japan and the European Union among others to leave, saying they served only to legitimize a flawed election.

They all arrived in time to observe the voting and counting, while the Sudanese activists said the major fraud began with a flawed 2008 census, demarcating the constituencies followed by the voter registration last year. 

Gaddafi tries to steal show at African Summit. Again

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been stealing the show at African Union summits for years now. With theatrical – sometimes bizarre – entrances, rambling, grandiose speeches and his well-known penchant for dressing up, Gaddafi has gobbled up media coverage and bemused his fellow leaders.

But he probably wasn’t expecting what happened yesterday when he introduced two traditional African “kings” to speak to the assembled African leaders. Peals of laughter started to ring around the room. It began when he made the announcement and it continued as they spoke. It seems that some African delegates have begun to consider the continent’s longest serving leader ridiculous. And aren’t afraid to show it.

He turned up with the “kings” at last year’s summit, too. Despite opposition from some African leaders, he was then elected chairman of the African Union and set about trying to push his pet project of a “United States of Africa”.

Many Africans suspect he sees himself the obvious leader of such an entity

“On behalf of the traditional kings, on behalf of all the sultans, on behalf of all the princes, on behalf of all the customary rulers, I want to say thank you to the King of Kings who we have crowned,” one of the “kings” said on Gaddafi’s election last year.

That statement was struck from the record.

The man who likes to be referred to as “Brother leader” came to Addis Ababa this year to try for another year as chairman to continue preaching the politically united Africa that most analysts think an impossible dream for such a complex continent.

Why is the world ignoring Somalia?

I’m blogging from the African Union’s annual summit in Addis Ababa and can see the Somali delegation from where I’m sitting. They’re mingling right now, cups of coffee and croissants in hand, pressing the flesh and smiling and joking with leaders and ministers from all over the continent and beyond. Delegates are responding warmly to the men who represent a government hemmed into only a few streets of the capital Mogadishu as they fight an increasingly vicious Islamist rebellion.

But you get the sense the other delegates are responding so warmly to compensate for something: The fact that the Somalis are here looking for help and nobody is really willing to stick their neck out and give it to them.

Somalia’s strife — as well as the conflicts in Sudan and DR Congo — have dominated the agenda at these summits for years now. But there’s something different about this year. The African delegates seem confused – really genuinely confused – about why the international community is dragging its heels.

When Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero — a guest at the summit – stood up on the opening day he made some of the most dramatic remarks any world leader has made on the Horn of Africa country.

“If we do not support the transitional government more, Somalia could become a place that could destroy humanity,” he said. “The proper response is a strong response from the international community, led by the U.N. Somalia is suffering.”

Strong stuff, but Zapatero didn’t offer any real help. African leaders will have taken heart, though, from the fact that he seemed to be pushing the UN to send in peacekeepers — something the African Union, with its beleaguered force of 5,000 under constant attack in Mogadishu, has been crying out for.

 After Zapatero, UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon took the podium.

A slick visit to Darfur’s red carpet camps

There was a time when visits to Darfur were uncertain affairs, fraught with danger. These days — as long as you travel with the right people and stick strictly to the right route — they can be as comfortable as a coach trip.

The African Union delegation plane touched down in El Fasher, North Darfur’s capital, at 9.35 a.m. on Tuesday. We were on the bus heading back to the airstrip at 4.40 p.m.

In between, the members of the African Union’s peace and security council visited the governor’s walled-in compound, where ambassadors watched tribal dancing and a PowerPoint presentation (complete with CD-ROM handout).

The next stop was the heavily secured UNAMID peacekeeping headquarters. Next, a razor-wired police station, 200 metres outside a displacement camp, where around 40 residents had been waiting for two hours to talk to the delegates.

Forty-five minutes later, the 18-vehicle convoy of buses, 4x4s and armed escorts drove slowly through Abu Shouk camp. Then there was one final stop at the governor’s to eat dinner and admire his collection of gazelle and exotic birds. The AU ambassadors and women in the party received souvenir mats.

Darfur has got used to hosting visitors in the six years since it became one of the world’s best known conflict zones.

North Darfur’s governor Osman Kebir told Tuesday’s trip he had welcomed about 800 delegations since July 2006 which would make about one a day, without adjustment for understandable overstatement.

Some questions about al-Shabaab

Africa back to the old ways?

The overthrow of Madagascar’s leader may have had nothing to do with events elsewhere in Africa, but after four violent changes of power within eight months the question is bound to arise as to whether the continent is returning to old ways.

Three years without coups between 2005 and last year had appeared to some, including foreign investors, to have indicated a fundamental change from the first turbulent decades after independence. This spate of violent overthrows could now be another reason for investors to tread more warily again, particularly as Africa feels the impact of the global financial crisis.

“Although I don’t think these instances of instability in Africa are related to each other or part of a pattern, I think there’s no doubt external constituents and businesspeople around the world will assume there is a pattern,” said Tom Cargill, Africa Programme Coordinator at London thinktank Chatham House.

The fact that coup makers have succeeded without being forced to step down or even face major censure could also embolden those who might be tempted to take power in bigger countries, where falling growth is encouraging disaffection.

“Look at … other African countries, so-called pivotal states: Nigeria is in a terrible state, so is Egypt, so is Kenya, all these so-called big countries,” said Hussein Solomon, a political science professor at the University of Pretoria.

Although there can be a tendency to group very diverse African states together, the picture is far from uniform – Ghana’s presidential election two months ago was one of Africa’s closest, but avoided major violence, reassuring investors despite an acute fiscal crisis.

But social pressures are growing across Africa as a result of the world economic crisis.

Gaddafi keeps African leaders talking

Despite the extremely tight security at this week’s African Union summit in Ethiopia, one brief lapse gave some journalists covering the meeting a very rare glimpse behind the scenes.

Reporters at the annual meeting in Addis Ababa are normally kept well away from the heads of state, except for the occasional carefully managed press conference, or a brief word thrown in our direction as they sweep past in the middle of a phalanx of sharp-elbowed, scowling bodyguards.

As the talks dragged well past midnight on Tuesday, long after the summit was scheduled to end, a European diplomat approached me and a colleague: “Want to see something interesting?”

Leading us down an outside staircase, we were suddenly confronted with the sight of dozens of African leaders consulting in private.

The curtains in the meeting room had been left open a little, and we had a perfect view of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi holding forth. Gaddafi, who was elected AU chairman at the summit, appeared to be particularly animated — although we couldn’t hear what he was saying.

But as the discussions neared 2 a.m., the other presidents became visibly more and more tired.

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, sitting just a couple of metres away, looked particularly dejected, often holding his head in his hands. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni stared stonily ahead. AU Commission chairman Jean Ping, sitting next to Gaddafi, stifled a few yawns.

Will Gaddafi bring change to African Union?

Libya’s often controversial leader, Muammar Gaddafi, has finally won the top seat at the African Union and promised to accelerate his drive for a United States of Africa, but it seems doubtful that even his presence in the rotating chairmanship will do anything to overcome the reluctance of many African nations to accelerate moves towards a federal government.

Gaddafi, a showman whose fiery, often rambling speeches, sometimes unconventional behaviour and colourful robes are always a scene stealer at international gatherings, has been pushing for a pan-regional govenrment for years. But like his previous, three-decade drive to to promote Arab unity, it has not aroused much enthusiasm in many quarters. All the AU’s 53 states have said they agree in principle but estimates for how long this will take vary from nine years to 35.

Gaddafi was installed as chairman on Monday, the first time he has headed the AU or its discredited predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity although his aides say he has rejected the role twice before, preferring to work as a backroom reformer. He vowed in his inaugural speech to push forward with his pet project and said if there was not a majority opposed at the next summit in July, this would mean the idea was approved – somewhat discordant with the AU’s traditional way of making decisions by consensus. AU leaders were berated by Gaddafi at a three-day summit in Ghana in 2007 for not agreeing to immediate union but braved his scorn and did not reach a deal. Regional economic power South Africa, with its considerable clout, leads the group of reluctant nations.

Delegates in Addis Ababa said privately that they felt duty bound to discuss the idea on the first day of this summit on Monday because Gaddafi is now an older statesman of the organisation and has poured money into some parts of the continent. But if anything, this meeting slowed down the process further. It agreed to change the AU Commission into a vague authority whose additional powers are not clear, and even that won’t be launched until the next summit. Outgoing AU chairman Jakaya Kikwete, the Tanzanian president, said on the one hand that the authority would have more power but on the other that member states are not willing to give up their sovereignty.

There are also those within the AU who are uneasy about Gaddafi’s prominence, given his previous alleged bankrolling of terrorism, for which he was ostracised by the West up until 2003. Then he was brought in from the cold after taking responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people and abandoning the search for weapons of mass destruction. Human rights groups also accuse his security forces of arbitrary arrest of political opponents and torture.

But whatever your views of Gaddafi, he remains a consummate showman. For years his caravan of hundreds of bodyguards, including a special all-woman unit, and his insistence on sleeping in a tent at AU summits –often in the grounds of luxury hotels–caused pandemonium among press photographers and cameramen.