South Africa

Given it’s role as the largest anti-apartheid liberation organization, its central role in the transition to democracy, and its virtually insuperable status in the country’s politics today it should come as no suprise that the African National Congress is far and away the most scrutinized (and criticized) political party in South Africa. From issues of politics and policy that some fault Thabo Mbeki’s party for not addressing satisfactorily (crime, AIDS, poverty, continuing inequality) to internal strife (the myriad crises surrounding Jacob Zuma) to the natural backlash against the party in power, it is not always easy to sit in power, even if in each national election from 1994th ANC has actually consolodated its hold. Even as the party garners greater criticism, it seems to draw more support. At least in large part this can be explained by the lack of a viable opposition party.

This past week some of the ANC’s brightest lights met n Durban to try to smooth out some ruffles that have emerged between the national party leadership and the party’s hierarchy and rank-and-file in KwaZulu-Natal, where Zuma’s sacking hits closest to home. The leadership emerged proclaiming unity, but some observers, (see, for example, this analysis) take a more cynical approach, believing that the Durban meeting reveals fissures within the party and an ANC that is “troubled,” and perhaps in a state of crisis. Naturally, at least some observers, notably from the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) want to use the opportunity that the times provide to push the ANC to move its politics leftward.

I have long argued that if a viable challenge to the ANC ever emerges in South Africa it will not come from the old recidivist challenges from the white right, but rather will come from a splintering of the ANC-SACP-COSATU alliance. Perhaps South Africa approaches a time when the ANC will either swing to the left or else it will fracture, with SACP-COSATU forming a new party.

But as a new boook by Padraig O’Malley, Shades of Difference: Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa, indicates, the ANC has always dealt with internal division. The party’s leadership has always shown itself to be imaginative and clever when responding to crises. My guess is that Mbeki and company will be able to convince dissidents in SACP-COSATU and in KwaZulu-Natal that their interests are best served within the party, not operating from outside of it.     

Although African agriculture is often underdeveloped, there exist many possibilities for maximizing the continent’s resources. According to a report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

With food security often at the mercy of erratic weather patterns, Southern Africa could bank on its “tremendous” potential to farm fish to sustain its predominantly agrarian communities, according to aquaculture experts. 

There is, of course, a considerable gap between theory and practice, but it stands to reason that food security in Subsaharan Africa can only increase as a result of continued diversification efforts.

Over at The New Republic John Talbott has a rather radical suggestion for how to end AIDS in Africa: “Compulsory testing and notification of every citizen.” Talbott is not a medical doctor nor is he an Africanist — his tagline lists him as “an author, former investman banker for Goldman Sachs, and former visiting scholar at UCLA’s Anderson School in Los Angeles,” and his solution seems a bit simplistic and pie in the sky. The example he uses is Botswana, where there is a strong civil society and fairly wide access to antiretroviral drugs. he surmises that once people know they are infected, they will know to get service, which in Botswana might be more readily available than elsewhere.

His solution is an provocative one on the theoretical level, though it does not take an especially fertile imagination to understand why compulsory medical exams, whether imposed from white outsiders or African leaders, might be construed as more than a little bit problematic. And what if, after diagnosing someone, the state does not follow up with a guarantee of treatment? Be sure to look at the discussion comments, in which an infectious disease doctor who is about to head to Namibia to deal with AIDS patients addresses Talbott’s article, calling his solution “interesting if half-baked.”

I’m back from a week in England and am still absolutely buried with email and work and deadlines. But here are a lot of links on some of the crucial issues facing Africa and Africans:

The online news editor of The Economist is in Zimbabwe trying to get a feel for things there, to stay out of jail, and to report what he sees from a “Correspondent’s Diary”-cum-Blog called “Robert Mugabe, Man Or Monster?” Meanwhile, it probably should come as no surprise that Mugabe is “not losing sleep” over the prospect of western universities stripping him of honorary degrees they thrust upon him in a bygone era. I should think not.

Nigeria’s presidential election was a nightmare just as were the local and state elections that preceded it. As expected, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Governor of Katsina State, the winner of last Saturday’s presidential election. Equally predictably, international observers scoff at the credibility of the polls, the opposition parties continue to press for protests and resistance, and The New York Times similarly laments the recent farce, though it is tough to discern what real “democratic legacy” they find in Nigeria’s history. J. Peter Pham had an astute pre-election assessment in the World Defense Review (courtesy of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, for which I have been a fellow).

World Politics Watch shows how the April 11 terrorist bombings in Algiers fit into al Qaeda’s larger global plan. Of course the implication of the article is that the real concern is the potential for future attacks in Europe, which reveals a remarkable willingness to pass off African suffering as of secondary significance. Maybe someone should , say, the Somalians that their suffering only serves as a prelude to something more important. 

Closer to the putative focus of this blog (I’ve said all along that while my focus would be South Africa, I would try to place the country within its larger continental context) the Proteas advanced to the semi-final round of the cricket World Cup, but unfortunately barring some sort of miracle, the South Africans, who put up a pathetic 149 all out , their worst total ever in a World Cup and every bit as embarrassing as what they did to England last week, the Aussies are likely to reach the necessary 150 by somewhere around the 25th over. We should know soon enough. As I type this the Aussie juggernaut is at 27-1. South Africans should probably start to turn their attentions toward Amabokkobokko.

It doesn’t all have to be grim, though. Just imagine yourself isolated from it all, travelling along the Skeleton Coast, free of the cares of the world. There the bad news fades amidst the splendour of Africa.  

Your faithful scribe is leaving the country for about a week and as a consequence I may not be able to blog. I thus want to leave you with a lot of links from South Africa and Africa generally to take you to the weekend. I’ll be back next week.

According to The New York Times “A confidential United Nations report says the government of Sudan is flying arms and heavy military equipment into Darfur in violation of Security Council resolutions and painting Sudanese military planes white to disguise them as United Nations or African Union aircraft.” I am baffled as to why this would come as a surprise to anyone. This has been Khartoum’s pattern from the outset — say whatever it takes to get loose of criticism and what always prove to be empty threats. A few days later back away and forge onward with the tyranny.

South Africans are feeling pretty good about their pasting of England to advance to the semi-final round of the Cricket World Cup. The Brits? Somewhat less thrilled. (And South Africa’s Baby Boks advance to the Under-19 World Championships Finals.) Sports do not mean everything but they surely mean something, and South Africa has reason to feel good about the state of sport in the country and what it means for South Africans.

Zimbabwe’s Independence Day celebrations leave some wondering what, precisely, there is to celebrate. It’s a pretty trenchant question.

The Nigerian elections are in danger of succumbing to chaos. This weekend’s presidential elections will go forward as planned even as violence breaks out and some seek postponement. 2007 seems a long way from the generally positive tone that surrounded the 1999 elections that seemed to indicate the emergence of some semblence of sanity to Nigerian politics. It seems that this election has been mishandled at nearly every turn, possibly out of a sense of misplaced confidence that the country was on the right track. maybe the presidential election will turn out ok, but as a general rule, elections with this much chaos in the run-up tend not to go well, and the perception, in any case, will be that it was corrupt from the outset.

Foreign shores beckon. I will post as I can.

Reports of dissent within Zimbabwe’s security forces represent hope for change in Mugabe’s regim Hints of police dissatisfaction are not new — back in December and January similar rumors circulated. Here is what I wrote about the possibility of police backlash then:

[The recent revelation] represents an interesting development inasmuch as Mugabe relies on both the police and the military to prop up his regime. If he loses the former he will have to trust the latter increasingly. This will prove bad for Zimbabwe’s citizens, but also could make Mugabe’s control more tenuous even if in the short-term it becomes more draconian.
Tellingly, no one in the police is speaking. Mugabe has shown a willingness to crush dissent. The country’s journalistic institutions, especially the newspapers, have been under a state of virtual siege for years. Mugabe and his minions have forced the closure of newspapers, arrested editors and reporters, and generally made a mockery of the idea of a free press. Will a similar purge of the police follow? And if so, what might the consequences be? For too long observers of Zimbabwe have wondered if there might be a tipping point that could lead to the downfall of Zimbabwe’s biggest of Big Men. Perhaps this seemingly small story represents a shift in weight. Or, as is likely, [the news] may represent just another muffled lamentation of the sad state of affairs in tragic Zimbabwe.

There is little doubt that continued dissatisfaction among the security forces is not good for Mugabe. And while a positive outcome might be that the police either refuse to crush opposition or even join in with them, eventually leading to a toppling of Mugabe, there are other, less rosy possibilities. One need look no further than the Democratic Republic of the Congo to realize that security forces, rather than acting politically, might in fact work to foment anarchy. While Mugabe relies on the police to enforce his will, it might be just as effective for him if they simply allow anarchy, a reign of all against all, to prevail.

Nonetheless it seems apparent that the police at least theoretically could provide another pressure point against Mugabe. Having such a vital institution of control waver might provide the tilt that leads to Zimbabwe’s tipping point. Only a fool maintains optimism in the face of Zimbabwe’s plight, but surely there is some small room for hope even among realists.

As I type South Africa is running down England in their World Cup Cricket Super Eight match. This is the game I have been waiting for since the Super Eight fixtures were announced, and as the weeks have passed it grew more and more clear that the South Africa-England competition would be huge and probably would decide the last spot in the Championship round of four. Given my affiliation with both South Africa and England, these are the two teams for which I root in international cricket, but my heart is always with South Africa, especially in cricket, soccer, and rugby.

England won the toss, chose to bat first, and from the outset were in trouble. To make a not-so-long story short, the South Africa bowling attack overwhelmed the hapless Brits, and South Africa put England all out at a pathetic 155. Now South Africa is at-bat and their attack, which has been lethargic for nearly the whole tournament, is clearly energized by the blood in the tank. They currently stand at 108-1 after 13 overs, which is, for you neophytes, an absolute ass-kicking. They could, at their current pace, win this before the 20th over and almost certainly will have it by the 25th, which is the halfway point for an at-bat in a One Day International, and with several, possibly 7 or 8, wickets to spare. I have to assume that this will go down as a historically embarrassing loss for the English.

If you act quickly you might be able to catch the remaining over-by-over coverage here.

Crossposted from dcat.

Update: South Africa indeed did get it done with a whopping 29.3 overs to spare, winning by nine wickets in a thrashing. Australia looms for the Saffies, but if they play a complete match like they did today they will be a threat to nay team in the world. And for the record, I think South Africans and Brits are united in their loathing of the Aussies.

A couple of weeks back I wrote about controversy over the renaming of the South African town of Louis Trichardt.  It seemed obvious to me that a country that had so long seen the majority population trampled under the foot of the white minority ought to have the fairly fundamental right to reclaim the naming rights of the country’s towns, cities, and institutions. Some members of the formerly privileged population disagree.

The naming controversy is back in the news. This time the issue is the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC’s) running of ads  referring to “Tshwane,” an African name meaning “We Are All One,” and by which the municipality (but not the city proper) of Pretoria has also been known for some time now, as Africa’s leading capital.

The complainants in this case are from AfriForum, which represents itself as a civil rights organization for minorities, which means for South Africa’s whites, that is affiliated with the equally white-dominated union “Solidarity.” (Enjoy, if that is the word, their website here.) Color me dubious about AfriForum, a group that grabbed the mantel of protector of civil rights only well after the demise of one of the least-civil rights oriented governments in modern history finally gave way to multi-racial democracy. The AfriForum staff is all white, and among their many complaints with the current dispensation are as follows: “Specific problem areas, e.g. the government’s growing obsession with race, political interference in sport, race-based welfare subsidies, crime and the ill-considered changing of some place names will receive attention.”

Let’s forget the irony of  white South Africans of a certain age lamenting an obsession with race for a moment. Let’s instead keep in mind that the race obsession of arguably the most race-obsessed regime in human history necessitated serious attempts at transformation in sport, in welfare policies, and in the rest of South African life, and that crime is a function of poverty as much as anything, and that poverty was pretty much built into the apartheid system. As for the “ill-considered changing of some place names,” this is only a viable complaint if you sincerely believe that an overwhelmingly African country ought to continue on with names imposed by a white master class, indeed that whites are entitled to prevail when it comes to place naming. That is, suffice it to say, a peculiar (and rather self-serving) rationalization.

AfriForum might seem more sympathetic if it appeared to be trying to cross racial lines in a country so historically beset by racial division overwhelmingly fomented by the white minority. Instead it just comes across as ranging between shrill and tone deaf. AfriForum is not racist, per se, from what I can tell, but its commitment to civil rights seems selective and at times nearly parodic.

Over at the Council on Foreign relations website Francis Kornegay, a senior researcher at the Center for Policy Studies in Johannesburg, and Tom Wheeler, a research fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs, discuss whether South Africa is living up to its responsibility as Africa’s leader in an edifying exchange.

Meanwhile other observers debate whether or not Thabo Mbeki will move from silent diplomacy in his new role as SADC’s chosen mediator between Mugabe’s ZANU-PF and the opposition movement.  The general consensus hopes that he will. And of course silent, or at least quiet diplomacy does not have to be ineffective. But the quiet has to be backed by sternness. Optimists can consider Theodore Roosevelt’s famous admonishment to “speak softly and carry a big stick” with regard to diplomacy. The next couple of months will be telling. 

One of the biggest problems that African policymakers face is the risk of being reduced to one or two usually failing policies. The majority of Americans pay Africa virtually no heed as it is, and so complexity gets lost in favor of simple, and thus simplistic, renderings of African leaders. Ask even educated Americans (or, for that matter, Brits, or the French, or just about anyone else) about Thabo Mbeki and if his name receives any recognition at all it will come in response to one of two policies: Mbeki’s odd (though in recent years tempered) AIDS dissidence and his Zimbabwe policy, which at best is inscrutable and morally vacuous.

And yet it would be a mistake to define Mbeki by these two issues, even if both mark blots on his escutcheon. Yesterday Mbeki arrived in Khartoum alongside his Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma for talks with President Omar el-Bashir and First Vice President Salva Kiir. According to South Africa’s Department of Foreign Affairs:

“President Mbeki’s visit to Sudan takes place within the context of South Africa’s priority to encourage the full implementation of the African Union (AU)-United Nations (UN) agreement on the hybrid force for Darfur and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the North and the South.”

Say what you will (readers of the blog certainly know that I have) about Mbeki’s seeming fecklessness with regard to Robert Mugabe. The fact remains that not only can South Africa be a force for good in African foreign affairs, South Africa is probably the continent’s most essential actor. The brunt of the disappointment about South Africa’s policies toward Zimbabwe is based on the fact that South Africa can effect change in the region if it so chooses. (After all, SADC as a whole voted effectively to prop up Robert Mugabe’s regime. When’s the last time you read a vitriolic piece about the leader of any other SADC member nation with regard to Zimbabwe? Not too many outlets have vented rage against Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba’s seeming  accomodation of Mugabe.)

Part of Mbeki’s problem is that he now has to live up to the heightened expectations that his government has earned. The plight of Zimbabwe has rightfully garnered Mbeki considerable criticism. But perhaps the situation in Sudan can earn him approbation as well. Just because the tendency is to turn Africans into cardboard characters fitting the attention span of the “Western” news cycle does not make the characterization accurate. The Sudan situation is too serious and Mbeki’s possible capacity to help nudge Khartoum along too important, for such facile reductionism. That said, let’s hope that Mbeki does use the power of coercion rather than the tendency toward accomodation while he is in Sudan.