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Tuesday, November 10, 2009 07:35 PM
A South African dream, deferred
A year ago, I was at the formative meeting of a nascent political party that seemed to be triggering an earthquake in South African politics. The mood at the convention in suburban Johannesburg was boisterous, joyful, almost ecstatic. The delegates of the new party were dancing in the aisles and singing the songs of liberation as they listened to the speeches.
The party became known as COPE (the Congress of the People). Created by dissidents from the ruling African National Congress, it seemed to offer the first real chance of robust democratic competition in South Africa since the collapse of apartheid in 1994.
The ANC was adored as the party of Nelson Mandela, the party that liberated South Africa from white minority rule. But after 14 years in power it was accused of arrogance and corruption. With the creation of the new breakaway party, the long monopoly of the ANC was finally facing a real challenge.
As the new party marks its first anniversary, however, its political dream is rapidly fading, destroyed by disorganization and bitter infighting among its egotistical leaders. For those who hoped to see the ANC forced to compete for votes, COPE's decline is a depressing reminder that Africa's ruling parties can be extremely difficult to dislodge.
The decline began in early 2009 with squabbles between the party's two main founders, former ANC provincial premier Mbhazima Shilowa and former ANC cabinet minister Mosiuoa Lekota. Unable to agree on a presidential candidate for the national election in April, the party ended up choosing a compromise figure, a little-known Methodist priest, as its candidate for president.
The party was aiming for at least 15 to 20 per cent of the vote in the national election – enough to establish a strong base for future growth. Instead it wound up with 7 per cent, finishing third in the election, instead of the assumed second.
Since then, the feuding and squabbling has grown disastrously worse. Many of its top leaders have quit the party. One of its most famous members, the anti-apartheid activist Allan Boesak, resigned from COPE this month. He complained of “disarray” in the party, and accused the party of suppressing any critical voices. Another senior COPE leader, Lynda Odendaal, had quit the party earlier, complaining of internal power struggles. Several other top officials have also resigned.
A year ago, political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi told me that the new party could seriously weaken the ANC if it could capture 15 to 20 per cent of the vote. Now he is asking what went wrong. “COPE looks more like the Titanic – with an iceberg waiting ahead – than a credible alternative to the ANC,” he wrote in a recent column.
Certainly COPE seems mortally wounded. But it would be wrong to dismiss its formation as a meaningless event. Despite gaining only 7 per cent of the vote, it played a key role in preventing the ANC from retaining the two-thirds majority that it had previously enjoyed – an important victory for the opposition, since a two-thirds margin would allow the ANC to change the constitution unilaterally.
Just as important, COPE has shown that an opposition party can gain votes from blacks across the country. Until this year, South Africa's opposition parties were largely based on ethnic strongholds , whites or mixed-race voters. The rise of COPE has shown that many middle-class blacks across the country are growing discontented with the ruling party.
While it might ultimately be destroyed by its internal feuds, COPE has paved the way for future challenges to the ANC, keeping democracy alive in Africa's richest country.
Link to this postWednesday, October 14, 2009 02:32 PM
Terrorism blues in Timbuktu
Timbuktu, Mali – The travel warning is blunt and a little frightening: Avoid all travel to Timbuktu and anywhere else in Mali's northern regions “due to the presence of armed groups and the threat of banditry and kidnapping, even in big cities,” says the warning by Canada's Foreign Affairs department.
The warning helpfully notes that an army lieutenant-colonel was killed in his own home in Timbuktu by “members of an armed group.” And it notes the European tourists who were kidnapped in the desert, northeast of Timbuktu.
Similar warnings have been issued by the United States and many European countries. American officials are banned from travelling to Timbuktu and anywhere else in northern Mali unless they have written permission from the U.S. ambassador. Canadian officials – including diplomats, aid workers and even military officers – have been prohibited from visiting northern Mali since the kidnapping of diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay last year.
Poor old Timbuktu. It was just beginning to develop a tourism industry. Tourists were attracted by its famous name, its ancient mud-brick mosques, its nomad culture, its desert festivals and its sand dunes. And now the tourism sector has collapsed, leaving the town to sink back into its traditional industries: the salt trade, goats, sheep, and smuggling.
Even in Bamako, the capital of Mali, many people are nervous about Timbuktu. I met one American scholar who formerly lived in Timbuktu who had abandoned the place because of the danger. When a local journalist heard that I was travelling to Timbuktu to write about the Fowler kidnapping and the terrorists who captured him, he looked alarmed and told me to be “very, very careful.”
Needless to say, I was a little apprehensive when I arrived in Timbuktu last week – and even more apprehensive when my two-day visit stretched into a four-day visit because Air Mali's sole domestic airplane was 31 hours late because of mechanical problems. Perfect for allowing more preparation time for kidnappers, if there were any.
In my four days in Timbuktu, I only saw one intrepid tour group – five people – along with one other tourist, an American woman with her own guide. The hotels and guesthouses were empty, and the local tour operators were bemoaning the cancellations. Yet they insisted the town was safe. “Tell everyone that it's calm and peaceful,” one guesthouse owner pleaded with me.
I don't know whether it was as safe as they said. But it's possible that the Canadian and U.S. warnings are exaggerated. Only one attack has happened inside Timbuktu itself. The battles and the kidnappings have taken place many hundreds of kilometres away from the town. With only a few hundred members at most, the main terrorist group in the Sahara is unlikely to attempt a kidnapping inside Timbuktu itself.
In any event, the tourists who stay away from Timbuktu are missing an incredible place. It's not just the ancient architecture of the old town, the homes of the explorers, the thousands of intricate Arabic manuscripts that have survived centuries in the libraries here, and the mystique of the Sahara surrounding the town. There's something more than that – a living culture that thrives to this day.
In interviews with locals, I sipped sweet mint tea, fragrant and hot. I drove south to the nearby Niger River, where villages hummed with activity. I talked to Moors and Songhai people and blue-robed and turbaned Tuareg nomads. One evening I went to dinner at a bar called Amnis Fude (“Thirsty Camel” in the Tuareg language). As I sat outside under the stars, a Malian blues band began to play a sinewy, improvised music that combined African rhythms and American blues melodies. The drummers set the beat on local instruments: a djembe and a calabash. The guitarists, who seemed to have listened to a lot of old Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix LPs, wailed away on solos that were the best I'd heard this side of Chicago.
Aside from me and a colleague, and a couple of friends of the band, nobody else was there. I'm hoping some day the band will be playing to the crowd that it deserves.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 06:51 AM
How to win friends and influence people
On the desk of his embassy office, Somalia’s ambassador to Kenya displays an unexpected item: a Canadian flag.
His daughter insisted that he should put up a Canadian flag, so he did. After all, Ambassador Mohamed Ali Nur is a Canadian citizen, and proud of it, even if he works now as a Somali diplomat in Nairobi.
When I visited him at his office recently, he told me how much his family misses Canada. “They miss the snow,” he said.
To keep them happy, he takes his children to an ice-skating rink at a hotel in Nairobi – one of the few ice rinks in Africa. Almost all of his eight children can skate.
He happily chats away about Canada for several minutes before I have to ask him about more difficult issues. It’s clear, as we chat, that this is one of Canada’s biggest fans.
Canadians often don’t realize how much goodwill our country still enjoys around the world. After decades of generosity to the poor and needy of the world, Canada has earned a warm respect from many parts of the world. It gives us more influence than we realize.
Friday, September 18, 2009 03:20 PM
Wondering Where the Lions Are
MASAI MARA, Kenya - At Kenya’s most popular wilderness park, the tourists who go on safari in their jeeps these days are seeing a strange and unexpected sight: herds of cattle, sheep and goats.
Livestock (and their herders) are invading the world-famous Masai Mara reserve. It’s the latest sign of the catastrophic drought that is afflicting much of Kenya, where almost 4 million people are now dependent on emergency food aid.
Desperate for grazing grounds as their grass shrivels in the drought, herdsmen from nearby villages are sneaking their cattle into the reserve, dodging the park rangers, often by bringing in their herds at night, but sometimes in broad daylight in the more remote stretches of the reserve.
In the morning, tourists can see the carcasses of dead cows, killed by lions and cheetahs that find the livestock to be easy prey. Unlike the gazelles of Masai Mara, cows are incapable of fleeing at 80 kilometres an hour when a lion approaches.
Masai Mara’s veteran guides are worried that the drought-induced invasion is a threat to Kenya’s wildlife, accelerating the conflicts between wild animals and humans. When the herders see their cows hunted and killed by lions, they sometimes take revenge. There are already cases of lions perishing at the hands of herdsmen who put poison into the corpses of dead cows where the lions are eating.
It’s just one example of how the drought is posing a serious danger to Kenya’s famed heritage of wild animals, which has lured tourists from around the world for decades.
In three districts of Kenya, for instance, more than 40 elephants have died over the past two months because of the effects of the drought.
At the famed Lake Nakuru national park, at least 10 rhinos have been moved to another park because of a shortage of pasture and water. Park rangers are creating artificial water points for the remaining animals because the rivers have dried up and the lake water is too salty.
And at the Tsavo West national park, at least 15 hippos have been found dead because of a lack of grass to graze on. Kenya’s wildlife service is feeding bales of hay to the hippos to keep them alive. Herdsmen have been bringing their cattle into the park, which in turn has induced the elephants to move out of the park, sparking conflicts with local farmers.
Saturday, September 5, 2009 07:41 PM
South Africa’s new comedy hero
After overcoming their shock at the Canadian decision to give refugee status to a 31-year-old white man who claimed to be “persecuted” by black criminals, South Africans have quickly recovered their sense of the absurd.
South Africans are among the world’s funniest, most irreverent, scathing and acerbic commentators on daily events – equalled perhaps only by the Russians who joked their way through the dying decades of the Soviet Union. And they’ve switched on their highly tuned sense of the surreal to find some kind of meaning in the Brandon Huntley decision .
Mr. Huntley, as most readers know by now , is the white South African who managed to persuade a Canadian refugee board member to award him refugee status in Canada on the grounds that he would “stand out like a sore thumb” if he was forced to return to his homeland. He claimed that he was “persecuted” by black muggers and robbers who attacked him merely because of his skin colour.
South Africans were outraged at first, but soon they appreciated the ridiculousness of it all. Their reactions now are veering toward the droll and satiric.
One newspaper, the Mail & Guardian, suggested that the Canadian official who made the refugee decision would be a perfect sucker for a Nigerian email scam. The newspaper promised him a $1-million award for his “brave decision” in the Huntley case, and added: “As soon as you send a $50,000 (US) handling fee, the money will be transferred to your account.”
The newspaper also praised Mr. Huntley for his “dofness” – a South African term that remains obscure to me, but apparently is the perfect description of Mr. Huntley’s attitude towards life. “This is a man who is so damned lazy he couldn’t be bothered to report to police the seven vicious attacks on his person,” the newspaper said. “Respect.”
South African cartoonists have had a field day with Mr. Huntley and the Canadian refugee decision. Lumberjacks and Mounties have figured prominently in their satires of wooly-headed Canadian thinking.
Canada and Mr. Huntley even made a surprise appearance in “Madam and Eve,” the most popular cartoon strip in South Africa, revolving around the adventures of a typical white South Africa housewife and her black “domestic” (i.e., her maid). In the latest episode, Eve’s fearless 8-year-old cousin Thandi suggests that the housewife’s elderly mother should take a hint from the Huntley case and seek refugee status in Britain to escape the torment of having a maid who brings her chilled gin-and-tonics every day at 5 p.m.
But it is South Africa’s satirical news website, hayibo.com, that has enjoyed the most sport with the Huntley case .
“Survivors of the genocide in Darfur have issued a formal apology for overstating their case, saying they were forced to reassess the extent of their plight once confronted with the terrible story of South African refugee Brandon Huntley” the website reported in its mock coverage of the case.
“Sudanese refugee Abdul Wardi . said he could only imagine how tough things must have been for Hartley. ‘He spent a whole winter living in a basement in Ottawa. Could anything be worse?’”
Sunday, August 30, 2009 02:06 PM
Racism in the Rainbow Nation
Johannesburg – Tourists who visit South Africa often come away impressed by its postapartheid “Rainbow Nation” image of reconciliation and rapprochement.
For many foreigners, this is the nation of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, of soaring rhetoric and beautiful music, of multiracial harmony and democracy. It’s an image strengthened by South Africa’s inspirational museums and monuments, its powerful literature and eloquent intellectuals.
Monday, July 13, 2009 09:29 PM
Obama and the masses
Millions of Africans wanted to see Barack Obama on his first presidential visit to a black African country. Some travelled for days, from countries all over the continent, in hopes of getting a glimpse of him. Thousands gathered at the Accra airport and the streets of the capital. Virtually all were disappointed.
Why? Because the White House had decided that Mr. Obama would not be seen in public during his entire 21-hour visit to Ghana. All of his events were carefully limited to a small number of invited guests and official dignitaries. As for the ordinary masses, they could only watch him on television – or glimpse his helicopter flying overhead.
Accra’s central square, known as Black Star Square, is the traditional place for foreign leaders to meet the crowds. It’s where former president Bill Clinton held a huge rally for nearly a million people in 1998. But the square was tightly sealed off during Mr. Obama’s visit to the city on Saturday morning, and there was no central place for people to gather to catch a glimpse of him in any way.
Friday, July 10, 2009 02:42 PM
The media circus comes to town
Accra – After three visits to Ghana by various U.S. presidents over the past 11 years, you'd think that the Ghanaian authorities would have the drill down by now.
But instead, as Barack Obama prepares to land Friday in Ghana for a historic visit, there is organizational chaos, rampant disinformation, and a large seething mob of seriously unhappy journalists.
I attended a circus-like meeting at the Ministry of Information Thursday. Hundreds of journalists crammed into a small room, with dozens of microphones and television cameras. We were promptly informed that it was not a press conference, it was an “off-the-record briefing” and therefore all of the microphones and television cameras must be removed. Chaos ensued, and only about half of the electronic equipment was removed – the rest were mysteriously allowed to keep recording.
Next, a diplomat from the U.S. embassy asked the journalists to “dress sharp” and be on time at every presidential event. “No sudden movements,” he warned us. “Please don't run.”
Then the senior officials of the Ministry of Information explained that nobody would be allowed to attend more than one of the eight events in Mr. Obama's schedule in Ghana. This caused considerable grumbling.
But worse was yet to come. The ministry revealed that only a small fraction of the journalists who applied for accreditation – less than 200 of the 670 applicants – would be permitted to attend the Obama events.
And then the clincher: the decisions about which journalist would attend each event had been made unilaterally by Ghana's secret intelligence agency. No appeals would be permitted. Even those journalists who were lucky enough to get an accreditation would be arbitrarily assigned to an event. All of the decisions had been made secretly by Ghana's spy agency with no discussion allowed.
The pool allocations were posted on a bulletin board, and a horde of journalists mobbed the bulletin board to find out their fate.
Many were disappointed. Many were furious. One woman from a website in Mali was in tears.
Angry journalists from West Africa accused the government of discriminating against African journalists. Television journalists said the spy agency had put their reporters in a different pool from their cameramen, splitting up television crews at random. At least one television crew that flew in from South Africa was denied a visa and turned back at the Accra airport, forced to return home.
Meanwhile, the Information Ministry was giving us plenty of disinformation about our accreditation cards. Each day, we were told to come back at a different time to pick up the cards. When we finally got our “Temporary Ghana Press Card,” there was a rumour that a new card was needed. Sure enough, we eventually had to queue up at the intelligence bureau to get another photo taken, and then we had to make repeated futile visits to the spy agency to get this card.
If this wasn't enough to frustrate and annoy the journalists, a senior official at the Information Ministry managed to alienate the Ghanaian journalists by making a nasty crack about corruption in the local media. He said the buses to the Obama events would contain food for the journalists, since they would be required to wait for several hours at each presidential event for security reasons. Then the official added: “I know normally our Ghanaian friends prefer envelopes.” He was referring to envelopes of cash. This sparked a furor at the press conference. There was a buzz of anger around the room, and then a Ghanaian journalist stood up and demanded an apology. There was thunderous applause from his colleagues, and the official grudgingly backed down.
By Friday, a few hours before Mr. Obama's arrival, many journalists were still furiously lobbying for last-minute permission to join the press pools. Another media pass was suddenly created, and new rules were floated. The chaos continued.
Thursday, July 9, 2009 01:38 PM
Bribes and Big Brother in Ghana
Accra – Even as Barack Obama is heaping praise on Ghana for its anti-corruption battle, the Ghanaian police seem completely unaware that they are supposed to be clean and honest by now.
Mr. Obama is arriving in Ghana Friday for his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa. He chose Ghana because he sees it as a bastion of freedom, democracy, and what he calls “good governance” – the fight against corruption.
But while Ghana is making progress on those fronts, there is still a long way to go, as I found out this week.
On two consecutive days, Ghana's finest were happily demanding bribes from me and my driver on the same stretch of highway between Accra and Kumasi, the two biggest cities in the country.
On the first day, the police stopped me on the highway and began inspecting the car and the bags in our trunk, making it clear that the search would be a very long process, until my driver produced a couple of Ghanaian cedi (the equivalent of about two dollars) for “lunch money” for the police.
On the second day, they stopped us at a checkpoint and said we were speeding – which we probably were. Instead of giving us a ticket or a fine, they insisted on another two- cedi bribe – no receipt provided.
(The policeman who demanded the bribe was one of the fattest men I have seen in Ghana.) My driver and interpreter paid the bribes without even asking me. “This is how things work in Ghana,” they said later.
As for political freedom: yes, Ghana has become democratic, its elections are free, and it has independent media. But powerful people still like to throw their weight around.
When I visited the famed Cape Coast Castle, the former slave-trading fortress, I interviewed a tour guide and asked him about Mr. Obama's planned visit to the castle. It was standard journalistic practice – I had wondered what the tour guide would think about the visit to a slave castle by the first African-American president. But he seemed nervous, and later I found out why.
As I was leaving the castle, I was stopped by two Ghanaian men who did not bother to identify themselves. I soon realized they were senior agents in the national intelligence bureau – the secret police.
“We were monitoring you,” one of the agents said in a menacing tone. “We do not like your questions.”
He demanded my identity documents and threatened to cancel my press accreditation. What he disliked, apparently, was a question I had asked the tour guide about whether Mr. Obama would be giving a speech at the “Door of No Return” – the most famous place in the castle, the gateway from the slave dungeons to the ships that took them to America.
Everyone knows that Mr. Obama will visit the slave castle – the White House and the Ghanaian government have both announced it. Yet the intelligence agent seemed to think that nobody should ask questions about it. Did he think that journalists are a threat to the security of the U.S. President? Did he think that nobody should ask questions about a visit that had already been announced? Or – more likely – did he just enjoy the process of intimidating people and demonstrating his power?
I'm not completely certain of the answers. But when I left the castle, the agents followed me for a while in a car. I walked into a book store. They hung out of the car windows and stared at me for a while. Then they disappeared, apparently satisfied with their work.
My interpreter, meanwhile, had a word of advice for me. When the intelligence agents gave me back my documents, he whispered to me: “Make sure they didn't take anything.”
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 10:15 PM
And now for some good news
Johannesburg --There are so many gloomy stories about Africa, from the wars of Somalia to the cholera of Zimbabwe and the chaos of Congo, that it's important to remember how much progress has been achieved by many African countries in recent years.
This is not a continent of hopelessness and despair, even though many people like to portray it that way. Disasters and coups always make the headlines, but there has been remarkable progress on many fronts during the past decade.
As an antidote to pessimism, here are a few examples of good news from Africa, culled from recent reports by Unicef, the Africa Progress Panel, and the Millennium Promise organization. When cynics try to write off Africa as a hopeless place, try quoting a few of these statistics:
- Dramatic improvement in Africa's child mortality rate (under the age of 5). The child mortality rate, which was 229 per 1,000 births in 1970, has now fallen to 146 in 2007. Since 1990, the child mortality rate has dropped by 40 per cent or more in countries such as Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger and Eritrea.
- The growth of democracy in Africa. There are almost 30 democracies in Africa today, compared to just five at the end of the Cold War.
- More peace and less war. There are three civil wars in Africa today, compared to 13 in the 1990s.
- Education improvements. Net enrolment in primary schools in Africa increased from 53 per cent to 70 per cent in the past two decades.
- Adult literacy has increased from 27 per cent to 62 per cent in the past three decades.
- Health improvements. Measles deaths have dropped by 89 per cent in the current decade, mostly because of higher levels of immunization.
- Progress in the fight against AIDS. Several countries have significantly reduced their AIDS prevalence rates. More than two million people are receiving AIDS treatment today, compared with just 10,000 people in 2001.
- Better governance. Of the 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, 31 have improved their governance performance, as measured by the Ibrahim Index.
- Progress in the battle against malaria. Countries such as Rwanda and Ethiopia have seen a sharp drop in malaria deaths because of the widespread distribution of mosquito nets and malaria medicine in recent years. Malaria death rates have dropped by as much as 66 per cent.
Africa Diary Contributors
Geoffrey York
Geoffrey York is The Globe and Mail's Africa correspondent. He has been a foreign correspondent for the newspaper since 1994, including seven years as the Moscow bureau chief and seven years as the Beijing bureau chief. He is a veteran war correspondent who has covered war zones since 1991 in places such as Somalia, Sudan, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the author of three books including two books on aboriginal issues in Canada. He has received several journalistic awards, including a National Magazine Award and nominations for the National Newspaper Awards.