South Africa

There is a new story about political intrigue, firings, scandal, corruption, and crime reverberating through South Africa with the issue of an arrest warrant and suspension of National Police Commissioner (and head of Interpol) Jackie Selebi. This might represent Thabo Mbeki’s stiffest political challenge yet, which is in itself saying something. 

The Mail & Guardian editorializes hopefully on the prospects of Africans developing African solutions to African problems, using the Ibrahim Index  as a springboard and less hopefully on the Salebi mess.

Meanwhile, recent data from an internal ANC audit of party membership indicates that Jacob Zuma is the front-runner for the party’s presidency. One wonders if this sort of news might not hasten Cyril Ramaphosa to leave the private sector and return to public service. Ramaphosa, who has remained steadfast that he will not run for the ANC leadership, stands as my (mild) upset candidate to emerge with the party and national presidency. 

What are the odds of reforming Nigeria’s corruption ridden oil industry? The Economist lays out the long odds.

The Boston Globe has an editorial about how scientists increasingly can trace DNA — “genetic markers” – to tell us a great deal about not only the origins but also the movement of human beings from our earliest origins in Africa to today.

Is South Africa indifferent to the Darfur crisis? Pambazuka News believes so. There is little question that the country ought to be doing more to address the situation. Also at PN, Rotimi Sankore presents a rather sophisticated cri de couer about the Zimbabwe situation in which, ultimately, Robert Mugabe’s endless reign of power is the crucial problem.

It seems that Nigerians are rather dissatisfied with their political system and their leaders. Nigeria in so many ways has the potential to be to West Africa what South Africa is to the southern part of the continent. But too many years of chaos and misrule have pretty much assured that Nigeria will be a long time in fulfilling its promise.

Two months after taking office after a disputed election fraught with irregularities, Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua finally announced the formation of his cabinet yesterday after weeks of horse trading with the Senate, which has to approve the selections. It is difficult to discern whether this represents good news or bad in oft-troubled Nigeria. On the plus side, it seems to represent collaborative democracy in action, with the senate vetting process going forward as required. But there are also whispers that Yar’Adua’s predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo still wields too much influence over his successor. Nairobi’s East African Standard fears that Obasanjo might still be “calling the shots” in Nigeria.

Hat Tip to the Council on Foreign Relations.

A couple of items from West Africa caught my eye this morning:

Ghana recently discovered oil off of its coast. But oil has usually proven to be a mixed blessing in Africa, bringing with it what has come to be known as the “petro-curse”: Fueling kleptocracy and division, exploiting poor workers for the benefit of a few, ultimately leading to deeply divided and oftentimes violent societies. Ghana hopes to avoid the petro-curse.

Meanwhile The Financial Times has the transcript of an interview with Nigeria’s newly elected President Umaru Yar’Adua.

Despite the questionable legitimacy of the elections that brought him to power, Yar’Adua hops to be able to implement economic reforms and to open the political system. In so many ways, Nigeria can be an engine that powers the whole of West Africa, and so many observers are rooting for its success, yet the optimism has to be tempered by wariness given all that has gone before. 

First South African workers become embroiled in a general strike the end of which is not in sight. Now it appears that Nigerian workers are set to embark on their own general strike. The Nigerian strikes will be the result of rising fuel costs, an increase in Value Added Taxes, and the sale of government-owned oil refineries to cronies of Olusegun Obasanjo in the former President’s final days in office. The government has made some compromises, but not enough to placate the Nigeria Labour Congress.  

For the next few weeks I’ll be on the road celebrating my impending (Saturday . . . tick … tock … tick … tock) nuptials and so while I’ll be blogging as I can, it might be both light and a bit less analytical than usual. In other words, more links, less of my opinions. (I realize that for some of you this development represents nothing but improvement..)

Here are a couple of stories that caught my eye today: 

Nigeria has filed suit seeking nearly $7 billion in damages from Pfizer for the deaths of children who participated in an allegedly unauthorized and obviously risky test of meningitis drugs.  According to the story: “‘The plaintiff contends that the defendant never obtained approval of the relevant regulatory agencies …, nor did the defendant seek or receive approval to conduct any clinical trial at any time before their illegal conduct,’ Nigeria said in court papers obtained by Reuters.”

This case represents an example of there being no real good guys. Forgive me if I am sceptical of Pfizer’s virtue in this case. It would not surprise me in the least if a major pharmaceutical company used Africans as guinea pigs. Or at least if they used Africa as a testing ground precisely because Nigeria poses far fewer barriers in terms of regulation, standards and bureaucracy.  At the same time, I may be cynical, but I don’t really entirely trust that the Nigerian case, win or lose, is geared toward bringing justice or compensation for the victims. The Mail & Guardian shares some of my suspicions that the new dispensation in Nigeria may share more than a passing similarity with past regimes in which Big Man rule, kleptocracy, and a general lack of accountability and transparency have represented the rule and not the exception. This is the classic example of  a situation where Africa observers will hope for the best but prepare for the worst.  

Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, it looks like the few foreign investors that remain in the country might see their assets seized by Mugabe’s government. we can probably file this under “Not At All Surprising.”

In South Africa recent studies have shown that many black business professionals are not especially happy in their jobs. The research also dispels a whole host of racially-predicated myths about the nature of “job hopping” in the country. 

Meanwhile, in rugby news, South Africa’s recent thrashings of England saw them break scads of Springbok Test Rugby records. More significantly, perhaps, the upcoming test match against global rugby minnows Samoa will see something unprecedented: when Jake White confirms his starting roster, only two of the seven backline players will be white. Observers are calling this lineup the “blackline.” This represents an enormous step forward in the transformation of the Springboks.

At Real Clear Politics Peter Brookes, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and columnist for The New York Post, diagnosis our acute case of the Niger Delta Blues. We now import more oil than ever from Africa — moreso even than the Middle East, according to Brookes, though such numbers tend to be volatile — and yet instability and corruption in places such as Nigeria make for a potentially problematic, indeed explosive, situation.

Brookes’ solution is somewhat obvious: 

In the end, it’s going to take skilled diplomacy. Washington must engage-quietly, if necessary-Abuja to address development issues, political grievances, corruption and the ongoing security challenges, especially to the oil industry.

And yet the obvious solution in Africa so rarely emerges among American policymakers that those of us who write about African affairs tend to resemble voices in the wilderness when we voice them. Of course much of the burden, as Brookes makes clear, lies with the Nigerians themselves, but we will have to be skillful in our wielding of sticks and proferring of carrots to help promote stability, good governance, and a reduction of the almost overwhelming corruption that comes with oil riches in the Niger Delta. The question is whether we are up for the task. We seem so rarely to be when it comes to our African affairs.

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.