AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL

FIFTY YEARS OF REPORTING AFRICA
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AC'S SPECIAL BRIEFING ON SOUTH AFRICA'S ELECTIONS
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Africa Confidential Volume 50 Number 9 - 1 May 2009
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SOUTH AFRICA: LEARNING TO LOVE JACOB ZUMA
A pragmatic coalition of pro-market politicians and presidential loyalists will dominate the new cabinet
There is some truth in Jacob Zuma's insistence that he owes no favours after the African National Congress's sweeping election victory on 22 April. It was the culmination of Zuma's five-year comeback campaign and shows both the party's continuing resilience and the opposition's weakness (AC Vol 50 Nos 7 & 8). The markets liked it and the rand strengthened as the results came in. The result also confirmed the strength of personal support for Zuma, especially in his base of KwaZulu-Natal. These developments run counter to the ANC's traditions of collective leadership and opposition to ethnic politics. As Zuma and his advisors draw up their cabinet list, the main losers will be the leftists in the trades unions and the South African Communist Party (SACP). The beneficiaries will be the discreet business backers who have helped to finance the party's election campaign and Zuma's legal defence against corruption charges. In his victory speech on 25 April, Zuma said there would 'be no surprises in the next administration's programme of action.' Two main considerations will affect his choice of ministers: the balance between technocrats and political appointees, and the establishment of an overarching planning commission, which would amount to a fundamental restructuring of government.

Finance Minister Trevor Manuel's next job may clarify both issues. He is front-runner to head the new Planning Commission and therefore de facto prime minister. He is too valuable an asset to be dumped, as Zuma's leftist allies have demanded; they see Manuel as the high priest of neoliberal economics, joined ideologically to the sacked President Thabo Mbeki. Yet Manuel is very popular within the ANC; he came third in the National Executive Committee elections last December. And the markets trust him.
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SOUTH AFRICA: ON THE LINE TO ZUMA
First off of the blocks to congratulate Jacob Zuma on the African National Congress's win in the 22 April elections was British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. This was not just because of Brown's keenness to be associated with electoral success (his own Labour Party is suffering) but dates back to an hour-long meeting with Zuma last year, much of which concerned cooperation on Zimbabwe.

ZIMBABWE: THE FIGHT OVER THE BASIC LAW
None of the parties are as yet prepared to derail the coalition but all are relentlessly probing each other's weaknesses
Tendai Biti did not mince his words. 'The power-sharing accord is a poor document - it's a strange amalgam of extreme nationalism and things we like such as democracy and human rights,' the Finance Minister told the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington on 27 April. The vagueness was deliberate, he argued. 'It's up to us to make it a working agreement.' Biti, who has been campaigning for foreign financial support, and his opposition Movement for Democratic Change insist that progress is being made, both in stabilising the economy (see Box) and more slowly, on political reform (AC Vol 50 Nos 7 & 8).

ZIMBABWE: NO RALLY FOR THE MDC
The Zimbabwe Republic Police, under Commissioner Augustine Chihuri, celebrated Independence Day on 18 April by withdrawing permission for a rally by the Movement for Democratic Change on the spurious grounds that officials from the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front had insisted the rally be cancelled.President Robert Mugabe managed a more convincing pitch for unity at the Independence Day celebrations. This did not extend to allowing MDC leader and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to address the official rally, despite the crowd's enthusiasm over his arrival.

SOMALIA: KEEPING SOMEONE ELSE'S PEACE
Just as an international conference promises more peacekeepers, an Islamist leader returns to Mogadishu to drive them out
The return of Sheikh Hassan Dahir 'Aweys' to Mogadishu on 23 April may prove extremely dangerous for the shaky coalition government under Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed (AC Vol 50 No 4). Although a reconciliation between the two men might have been possible, it seems the personal and political rivalries run too deep. Hassan Aweys publicly refused to meet representatives of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) which Sheikh Sharif leads. Aweys ruled out any cooperation as long as there were foreign troops in Somalia, referring to the peacekeepers of the African Union Mission to Somalia (Amisom). That will be a continuing sticking point as the grossly under-equipped Amisom is likely to get United Nations' reinforcements in the coming months, much to the dismay of Aweys.

Ethiopian troops withdrew in February, following last year's Djibouti Agreement, which also led to the replacement of the Puntland warlord President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed by the self-styled 'moderate Islamist' Sharif Sheikh. Sharif has also endorsed the introduction of Sharia in Somalia and this has now been passed by Parliament. Aweys still rails against the presence of Amisom troops. On arriving in Mogadishu, he referred to Amisom as 'bacteria' in Somalia's body politic.

SIERRA LEONE: ERNEST'S ELECTION
After seeing off his rivals in the APC, President Koroma has to find some employment for the restless youth
Against a background of heightening inter-party violence, President Ernest Bai Koroma has been re-elected leader of the governing All People's Congress at the party's national conference in Makeni on 18 April. Although far from universally popular within the APC, Koroma has been able to consolidate his party base. His backers persuaded the party to defer the leadership contest until 2013 in Kono, a year after the next general elections in which Koroma is expected to stand again for the presidency.

Koroma, an accountant and businessman, is good at glad-handing investors and foreign visitors such as Irish rock star campaigner Bob Geldof (AC Vol 50 No 4) and his friend, British former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who jetted into Freetown on 28 April with a package of proposals to promote tourism. Today, Koroma wants to return to the party's origins before the rot sets in. It was his claim that the APC represented the common man - as opposed to the more elitist Sierra Leone People's Party - which helped it win the closely fought 2007 elections after two rounds of voting.

IMF/WORLD BANK: HARDER CASH BUT WARMER WORDS
As befits an institution that has just been voted a trillion dollar boost to its capital resources, the International Monetary Fund busily dispensed loans and policy advice at its spring meeting on 24-25 April in Washington.The Fund's co-host in Washington, the World Bank, had a tougher meeting. Although its analysis of the damage done to developing countries by the financial crisis was well received by the finance ministers of the G-20 countries, the Bank raised little new finance for its development initiatives.

The IMF show
It was the International Monetary Fund's show in Washington. International finance ministers agreed to proposals to reshape the Fund, widen its mission and speed up plans to give developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America more votes on its Executive Board. For some, the progress is agonisingly slow. 'For how much longer can you sustain a position where Belgium and Luxembourg combined have more votes on your Executive Board than China?' a journalist asked IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn and World Bank President Robert Zoellick. The questioner was not reassured by their argument that voting power was not the only measure of a country's weight within the institutions. In any case, they promised that China's shareholding would be significantly increased at the end of the restructuring exercise.

IMF/WORLD BANK:AFTER THE G-20, THE MONEY-GO-AROUND
No one agrees about how much the global financial crisis is costing Africa, but all the international financial institutions agree that the continent needs its own fiscal stimulus package if it is to stave off disaster. The African Development Bank President, Donald Kaberuka, led the field with a detailed country-by-country breakdown of the effects of the crisis and the size of the resulting financing gaps. The AfDB estimates that Africa faces a financing gap of US$50 billion in 2009 and $56 bn. in 2010 just to maintain gross domestic product (GDP) growth levels averaging 5.4% of 2008 (AC Vol 50 No 8). The AfDB says that the financing gap would be $117 bn. if Africa is to reach the antipoverty, health and education targets of the UN's Millennium Development Goals.

CHAD/SUDAN: WHO SHOOTS FIRST?
The regimes in Ndjamena and Khartoum are preparing for another proxy war, this time with more guns and better technology
On the Chad-Sudan border, everyone is asking who will fire first. As the mandate of the European Union Force (EUFOR) in eastern Chad ran out last month, Sudan's rebel Justice and Equality Movement was resettling its fighters in its rear bases in Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno's home area of Am Jaress, north-east Chad. The plan appears to be a new offensive at a time when the National Congress (NC, aka National Islamic Front, NIF) regime is focussing on the International Criminal Court arrest warrant for President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir. JEM's target might be Kordofan's capital El Obeid or, more practically, El Fasher.

This would signal that JEM is now as powerful as the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army was when it attacked the North Darfur capital in 2003. Since its withdrawal from Muhajeriya in February (AC Vol 50 No 7), JEM's attempts to position itself as the main Darfur rebel group have had some success, attracting people from SLM/A factions. These include SLM/A-Unity's Suleiman Jamous - like top JEM leaders, a Zaghawa and once part of the NIF regime.

TOGO: BROTHERS AND ENEMIES
The Gnassingbé family that has run Togo for almost 42 years has split, opening up competition for the presidential election next year
The two most powerful sons of the late President Gnassingbé Eyadéma have fallen out. Kpatcha Gnassingbé was arrested on 12 April (AC Vol 50 No 8), charged with plotting a coup d'état against his elder half-brother, Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé, President of Togo since 2005. Several of Kpatcha's guards were killed in the four-hour assault on his house. Two other half-brothers and several influential officers along with other soldiers have been arrested. The old dictator had never made clear which son he wanted to succeed him and the Faure-Kpatcha rivalry was no secret. Both accompanied their dying father on the flight from Lomé to Tripoli, whence he was supposed to travel on to see doctors in Israel. He died on the flight; local rumour insists that he was dead before departure and that the flight was a way of buying time to fix the succession. When the brothers got home with the body, they found that the ruling ethno-military clique had pronounced Faure President 'in the interest of stability'. Under international pressure, he resigned to stand for an election which he unsurprisingly won. Kpatcha became Defence Minister but was referred to as 'the Vice-President'.

KENYA: WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE?
The coalition government looks irreparably split, but Speaker Kenneth Marende has offered a temporary fix
Kenya's coalition squabbles have spilled over into Parliament (AC Vol 50 No 9). The latest, and worst, row between the coalition partners, President Mwai Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) and Prime Minister Raila Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), involves a tussle over nominating the Leader of Government Business and the Chairmanship of the House Business Committee. Citing executive authority and 45 years of tradition, President Kibaki wrote to Speaker Kenneth Otiato Marende a week before Parliament was due to reopen on 21 April, nominating his Vice-President, Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, as Leader of Government Business. That nomination would almost automatically give Musyoka the chair of the House Business Committee, which determines Parliament's agenda. However, Odinga too had written to the Speaker, nominating himself as chairman of the Business Committee by virtue of his role as Government Supervisor. It was the first open contest over executive authority since the signing of the National Accord in February 2008.

ANGOLA/CONGO-KINSHASA: AN OFFSHORE IMBROGLIO
The two countries set up a joint commission to resolve long-standing border rows
Grievances have arisen between Angola and Congo-Kinshasa about their borders - offshore and onshore. Kinshasa's Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito and ministers Célestin Mbuyu (Interior), Alexis Thambwe Mwamba (Foreign Affairs) and René Isekemanga Nkeka (Hydrocarbons) met Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos and Prime Minister António Paulo Kassoma in Luanda on 21 April and agreed to set up a joint technical commission to discuss the maritime border, which will meet in May. The maritime border has never been demarcated. At the meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries last month, the Angolan delegation was upset when Kinshasa's Oil Minister, Isekemanga, remarked that the border would inevitably be retraced and 'some oil blocks could possibly come back' to his country.

Pointers...pointers...pointers...pointers...pointers...pointers...pointers...pointers...pointers...pointers

NIGERIA: DO OR DIE
'Politics is a do or die affair,' according to a founder of the ruling People's Democratic Party and former head of state Olusegun Obasanjo. Some of his party militants have been taking the adage literally in the rerun of the Ekiti State governorship election on 25 April. After the overturning by the courts of the PDP's wins in Ondo and Edo States, national attention focused on Ekiti. The rerun, ordered by the Appeal Court on 17 February in 65 wards of Ekiti State, annulled the claimed victory of the PDP candidate Olusegun Oni in April 2007. The appellant and rival candidate, Kayode Fayemi from the Action Congress (AC), prepared well for the rerun: a former civic activist, he brought in 800 election monitors from across Nigeria, many with cameras and sound recorders.

CONGO-KINSHASA: SPEAK EASY
A month after Vital Kamerhe was forced out of office, a weakened National Assembly has followed President Joseph Kabila's instructions and voted in a new Speaker, Evariste Boshab (AC Vol 50 No 7). On 12 April, the police had forcibly dispersed some 40 members of Parliament, from both majority and opposition, gathered in a restaurant to launch a pro-Kamerhe 'current' in the Assembly. Kamerhe gave up and on 24 April, Kabila's own man was elected Speaker by 329 of 484 votes.

SUDAN: WARNINGS
International concern is rising over the North-South peace deal and the national elections due under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. This week, the head of the CPA's Assessment and Evaluation Commission, Sir Derek Plumbly, a British former Ambassador to Egypt, warned that time was short and called on the United Nations to do more to support the Government of Southern Sudan. Next week, a report from the Rift Valley Institute will underline the difficulties of holding free and fair elections. Under the 2005 CPA, these were due by June 2009 but are now delayed until February 2010, with the Southern referendum on independence still scheduled for 2011.

ETHIOPIA: LOSING THE PLOT
The arrest of 35 members of Ginbot 7 on 24 April, accused of plotting a coup against Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government, increases the pressure on opposition groups ahead of parliamentary elections in May 2010. The arrests by the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) have been met with scepticism by diplomats in Addis Ababa and protests by human rights groups, already campaigning against the gaoling for life of the opposition Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) party leader, Birtukan Mideksa.
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