AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL

FIFTY YEARS OF REPORTING AFRICA

Now online at www.africa-confidential.com, the latest issue of Africa Confidential.
Also online at africa-asia-confidential.com, the June edition of Africa-Asia Confidential - ­ As Chinese commerce with Zimbabwe increases again, Beijing's diplomats reveal the role they played in the negotiations for Zimbabwe's power-sharing government; how Kinshasa will be the winner in the row between China and the IMF over the US$9 bn. Congolese minerals-for-infrastructure contracts; controversial dam deals in Mozambique; an unpopular skyscraper development in Dakar and much more.

Africa-Asia Confidential ­ - For Those Who Need to Know


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AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL VOLUME 50 NUMBER 13 - 26 JUNE 2009
NB These are just short extracts. To get the full picture, subscribe to Africa Confidential today: no adverts, no opinion, just the facts
ZIMBABWE: TSVANGIRAI CARRIES THE CAN
The momentum is moving in the MDC's favour yet its foreign friends remain cautious
After a three-week tour through Western capitals and having raised some US$150 million for his fragile government, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai now knows that diplomats and business people in the West are as ambivalent as their African counterparts about the prospects for Zimbabwe in the short term. The difference is that African governments have already 'taken the risk', as Tsvangirai puts it. The stakes are much higher for Zimbabwe's neighbours if things fall apart again.

The Nigerian-based Afreximbank has extended some $250 mn. in credit lines to Zimbabwean state-owned and private companies; the regional Preferential Trade Area is extending another $150 mn.; Botswana and South Africa are offering nearly $200 mn. Several African bankers who attended the Zimbabwe roadshows in Cape Town on 10-12 June told Africa Confidential they would open negotiations, having been convinced to sign up by Finance Minister Tendai Biti, Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara and Harare's omnipresent financial baron, Nigel Chanakira.
Read this article now
See africa-confidential.com for details of Africa Confidential's Special Briefing on the South African Elections 2009.

ZIMBABWE: THE HARD ROAD TO A NEW CONSTITUTION
The Parliamentarians launched the great constitutional debate on 24 June, amid growing tension in the power-sharing government. Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change is struggling to persuade loyalists of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front to stick to the Global Political Agreement (GPA) that the two parties signed in September. Based on last year's sabotaged elections, the government is an uneasy coalition between the cheated MDC and the electorally defeated ZANU-PF.

SOUTH AFRICA: BUSINESS BEYOND BORDERS
The Zuma government's foreign policy will be more about commerce than high-minded diplomacy
The appointment of the inexperienced Maite Nkoana-Mashabane as Foreign Minister in the new African National Congress government suggests that President Jacob Zuma will dominate foreign policy, with his strong economic team of Planning Minister Trevor Manuel and Trade Minister Rob Davie (AC Vol 50 Nos 11 & 12). Policy is likely to align more with economic rather than ethical imperatives, to underplay Thabo Mbeki's vision of an African renaissance and focus on African rather than global issues. Links with Brazil, China and India may take precedence over ties with the West.



SOUTH AFRICA: TSHWANE'S BIG FIVE IN AFRICA
Foreign affairs analysts broadly agree that five countries will attract more attention from Tshwane (Pretoria). Angola will welcome Jacob Zuma on his first foreign trip as President 'before Christmas'. Zuma is grateful to President José Eduardo dos Santos for the loan of an aircraft during the election campaign. Thabo Mbeki never visited Angola as President: Luanda suspected him of maintaining ties with Jonas Savimbi, leader of the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola during the 1980s and 1990s, and the Mbeki-Dos Santos relationship was undermined by the two countries' growing rivalry for regional leadership. Zuma will use different tactics and soften those rivalries.



EAST AFRICA: SYNCHROBUDGETS
As they approach economic union, East Africa's finance ministers struggle to balance the books at home
The East African Community, grouping Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda, plans to set up a common market this November. The opportunities are potentially vast: the EAC comprises 120 million people, with a combined gross domestic product nudging US$50 billion. Negotiators still need to agree on tariffs, local protection and new rules for land use and work permits.

In the past, Kenya's larger and more diversified economy was regarded as the biggest beneficiary of the regional project, giving its businesses more open trade and the chance to invest their surpluses in other members' relatively cheap assets. However, Kenya's pre-eminence has been shaken by its political crisis last year.



TANZANIA: KIKWETE'S BAILOUT PACKAGE
Tanzania, the second largest of the big-three members of the East African Community, has presented a budget with a bullish message designed to spend its way out of the global economic crisis. At 31%, the overall budget increase is the largest in the EAC but much is to be spent on recurrent programmes rather than new development initiatives. Finance and Economic Affairs Minister Mustafa Mkulo said on 11 June that the recession would reduce this year's gross domestic product growth from over 7% to about 5%, with 5.7% GDP growth forecast for 2010.



SUDAN: COUP ANNIVERSARY ­ 20 YEARS OF ISLAMIST RULE
As the NCP/NIF celebrates 20 years in power, the 'democratic transformation' stipulated by the CPA looks optimistic
A momentous year awaits Sudan. Amid fighting in the South and Darfur, elections are due in February and the Southern referendum on independence is scheduled for 2011. The Islamist government will not come meekly to the table. The ruling party does far more than respond to changing conditions, at home or abroad: its organisational power enables it to shape key domestic events while manipulating the world's response. How does it do it?

Continuity 1989-2009
When the National Islamic Front overthrew Sudan's elected government on 30 June 1989, nobody imagined that in 2009 it would be celebrating its 20th anniversary in power. Nobody except the NIF itself, that is. A party that spends over a decade patiently preparing to seize power also makes preparations to hold on to it. That is why the NIF, carefully rebranded as the National Congress Party (NCP), confounded forecasters, from Egypt to Eritrea to the late Colonel John Garang de Mabior, who taunted Brigadier General Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir as a 'junior rebel' (AC Vol 30 Nos 15 & 16). Despite an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for crimes against humanity and war crimes, Field Marshal Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir is still there.



SUDAN: 'SELLING THE SOUTH DOWN THE RIVER'
This week's meeting in Washington of the two signatories to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement is unprecedented. Both the National Congress Party (aka National Islamic Front) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army expect to gain traction: the SPLM/A because it has friends in the United States government, the NCP (NIF) because it hasn't. Ethiopia, Kenya, Britain, China, France, Norway and Russia were among the 33 countries represented. The main result seemed to be that both sides agreed to accept next month's Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling on Abyei - as they had already agreed to do.



SUDAN: THE COUP-MAKING GOVERNMENT LIVES ON
Hassan Abdullah el Turabi may watch mainly from the wings but the party he nurtured lives on, albeit renamed. The core group of his National Islamic Front is still largely intact since taking power in the 1989 coup. The group works on a strictly need-to-know basis with those outside it and sometimes with those inside. Top people circulate, sometimes in public posts, sometimes not; posts that are ostensibly junior are often policy-making. The real work happens out of sight. AC identifies the key members of the party...



GUINEA: CAMARA'S REALITY TELEVISION
Conakry's military leader regularly berates drug traffickers and corrupt businesses on the state media but is extending his stay in office
Many Guineans like Captain Moussa Dadis Camara's tough talk on state television and his increasingly tough actions, such as the mass arrests of suspected drug traffickers. Yet the civilian politicians who had hoped to contest the presidential poll this year now doubt the junta's promise to cede power quickly to an elected government. Such doubts have been growing since a broadcast by the Armed Forces Chief of Staff, Colonel Oumar Sanoh, this month saying that 'the people' wanted Camara to delay elections. The junta's Conseil National pour la Démocratie et le Développement (CNDD) had scheduled parliamentary elections for 11 October, followed by a presidential election on 13 December, with a run-off, if necessary, on 27 December.


MALAWI: ON TOP AND IN CHARGE
The May elections have given President Mutharika political dominance for the term that is meant to be his last
After his victory in the 19 May elections, President Bingu wa Mutharika and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) dominate Malawi's political scene. Mutharika won 66% of the vote to 31% for his closest rival, John Tembo. This is a strong vote of confidence in the incumbent and of no-confidence in his more experienced rivals. Mutharika's DPP, which did not even exist during the 2004 elections, gained 114 of the National Assembly's 192 seats, a figure expected to rise to 137 after independent members of Parliament join the government party. That would give it well over the two-thirds majority required to amend the constitution.


WHO'S WHO
NIGERIA: Central Bank Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
SOUTH AFRICA: Sandile Zungu, Chief Executive, Zungu Investments Company
ZIMBABWE: Finance Minister Tendai Biti and Economic Planning Minister Elton Mangoma

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


NIGERIA: HIDE AND SEEK
National Assembly politicians are investigating reports that tens of billions of dollars in revenue from the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation's (NNPC) foreign subsidiaries, which have accrued over the past decade, are missing from the state's audited accounts. Members of the Assembly's Ad Hoc Committee on the NNPC and its subsidiaries say they are examining the operations of joint ventures with the NNPC such as Duke Oil, Calson (Bermuda), Napoil, Hyson Nigeria, Hydrocarbon Services and Nigermed. The Committee is set to make the accounts of the NNPC's overseas subsidaries a key part of its investigations and plans to summon Group Director Mohammed Barkindo.


CONGO-BRAZZAVILLE: PONGUI DISQUALIFIED
The victory of President Denis Sassou-Nguesso in 12 July presidential elections is all but assured after the Constitutional Court disqualified former Premier Ange-Edouard Poungui on the grounds that he had not lived continuously in Congo for the last two years. Poungui was to stand for the Union Panafricaine pour la Démocratie Sociale, of ex-President Pascal Lissouba.


GABON/FRANCE/AFRICA: NO FUNERAL FOR FRANÇAFRIQUE
On 16 June, Francophone leaders came to bury El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba, éminence grise of the occult Françafrique networks, and to keep alive the personalised relations between France and its former colonies. Yet no current leader - Presidents Laurent Gbagbo, Paul Biya, Blaise Compaoré or Denis Sassou-Nguesso - can fulfil the role pioneered by Côte d'Ivoire's President Félix Houphouët-Boigny and continued by the 'Grand Camarade'.


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