Not thinking of term limits. President Museveni was early this week hosted by Patrick Kamara on the popular NTV talk show — On the Spot. The President spoke about his retirement at the age of 75; he also gave his views on the term limits, the economy, and how he would want the police to deal with the opposition demonstrators. Importantly perhaps, he gave an outline of how he would want to be remembered when he is no longer at the helm. Sunday’s Monitor ISMAIL MUSA LADU brings you the interview that was held at the President’s country home in Rwakitura.

About 2005 there was the agitation to limit the term limits because it was thought you are offering good leadership and so you shouldn’t be limited. But now the same people, especially the young turks are back saying they want term limits back. Is this an indication that they are losing confidence they had then in you?

It is not the same people. Those young turks are normally part of the indisciplined group who were opposing NRM programmes even in the past. So it is not the same group, actually it is the same group that used to oppose the idea of term limits even in the past. There is no change as far as NRM mainstream is concerned.

People from across the United States gathered in Oskaloosa today to protest Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame when receiving his new PhD at WPU.

Protesters from various organisations. Some came from New York, Michigan, Texas, Tennessee, Maryland and other states.

In an open letter to university president Dr. Ann Fields, protesters accused Kagame of mass murder and war crimes, both before and during his time as president.

The open letter read as follows:

Ms. President:

While we praise William Penn University for entering a cooperative agreement with the Rwandan Ministry of Education to help Rwanda educate its citizens, we cannot help but regret the University leadership’s mistake to invite President Kagame to come and address William Penn University graduating class of 2012, ignoring his worldwide reputation as a human rights outcast.

It is ironic at best that William Penn University leadership is also planning to bestow the honor of Doctor Honoris Causa in Humane Letters on that same man who has shined from his cruelty, his mockery of human rights and his mass murdering record, not only against his own people but also across the borders in the Democratic Republic the Congo (DRC). Beside his well documented mass murdering record before, during and after the Rwandan genocide of 1994 (Gersony report1, Garreton report2, and others),  Kagame is also credited to have exterminated more than 200,000 unarmed Rwandan refugees in DRC, mostly women, children, the sick and the elderly.  He invaded DRC more than three times with the help of his co-conspirator, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, and caused the death of over 5 million Congolese citizens in a killing spree that is extensively documented and classified by the UN Mapping Report3 as a possible genocide pending the ad-hoc confirmation in the court of law.

For these reasons and for many others for which we don’t have neither the room nor the time to report here, we respectfully request that President Kagame’s inhumane record be kept out of William Penn University’s graduation ceremonies and that such a record be kept out of the University’s reputable Alumni membership, especially the one in Humane Letters, an area that is contrary to Kagame’s record as a renowned inhumane tyrannical leader.

Your informed understanding and your proper action in this matter will save William Penn University, its faculty and its student body from the embarrassment of associating with one of the most notorious human rights abuser and mass murderer of the 21st century.

Sincerely,

Theophile Murayi, FDU-Inkingi/USA: 443-980-4676
Providence Rubingisa, RNC-Ihuriro/USA: 630-401-4719
Celestin Muhindura, IDD/USA: 682-203-7948

In our series of viewpoints from African journalists, film-maker and columnist Farai Sevenzo reflects on Africa’s democracy and new wars of terror.

A third of the year 2012 is nearly over and we can take stock if we are that way inclined – and conclude that it has been a bloody year in parts of our continent now more used to blood than rain.

Or we could rejoice in the orderly transition of the Senegalese elections, and be thankful that Mali’s soldiers have had a change of heart in their pursuit of a coup led regime, and that the people of Malawi’s constitution triumphed in their hour of need as the late Bingu wa Mutharika became yet another African leader to die in office.

We have been told by the experts that “global jihad is being sustained through Africa” and that “recent attacks in Nigeria… insurgency in Somalia and turmoil in Mali underline that the jihadist challenge may be migrating to Somalia, Kenya, north Nigeria and the borderlands of some of the vast territories of West Africa”.

Over in Mogadishu a large and long-running peace mission (read: guns, war, dead Ugandans, Burundians, Kenyans and Ethiopians fighting to keep the Islamist al-Shabab at bay) was dealt a blow when Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali’s speech to celebrate a year in existence of Somali TV was interrupted by a bomb at the Mogadishu National Theatre.

In one blast the head of Somalia’s Olympic Committee and the president of the country’s football association lost their lives, while many members of the journalism fraternity present were gravely injured while simply doing their jobs.

Easter bombs

This bloodletting, as we have seen in other parts of the planet is harder to combat because it has its roots and conviction in religious faith.

The faithful – and they seem to be all around us this century – would like to turn the clock back in northern Nigeria, northern Mali and, of course, Somalia to a time none of us living have seen but which, we are assured, renders their faith purer and unsullied by the imperfections of the modern world.

Ironically, al-Shabab’s communications team, however, has embraced Twitter – that megaphone of the 21st Century for character-challenged publicity seekers – and we learn from their profile, for example, that “Harakat Al-Shabaab Al Mujahideen is an Islamic movement that governs South & Cen Somalia & part of the global struggle towards the revival of Islamic Khilaafa”.

The enemy, though, for this particular brand of faith is everywhere, and the bomb which nearly claimed the prime minister’s life in the National Theatre was strapped, according to the Mogadishu officials, on the body of a 16-year-old girl who can only be more of a victim than a martyr.

And what is more, scores of African soldiers seem to be paying the ultimate price to contain this growing threat and it is difficult to gauge how long it will take to end it all.

Over in Nigeria as Christians marked Christmas last December, Boko Haram struck a church with devastating effect. And now as Christians marked Easter Sunday, it seems that Boko Haram may be behind the two car bombs that exploded in a crowded area in Kaduna.

This battle of faiths is one that will pull us all in different directions and there is no sign that the government of President Goodluck Jonathan is any closer to getting an authoritative handle on the situation.

Gentle persuasion?

Meanwhile Mali reminded us all that the coup is still our continent’s most likely source of a sudden change of government. From Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi to Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam, men in uniform became heads of state and correspondents could cover up to 29 coups in a lifetime during the 20th Century.

Even in this century a splattering of presidents came from the barracks and only last year we had Guinea following that well-trodden path.

“Conquerors and governments pass before the people as dim rumours, as entertainment in a hospital ward,” wrote John Updike in his novel The Coup.

And laughter for the sick is a painful thing.

Mali’s Capt Amadou Sanago, the head of this coup, has been gently persuaded to abandon his putsch by an economic blockade and a lack of support from the regional body Ecowas.

In exchange for an amnesty for the captain and his men, the economic embargo would be lifted and the captain must hand power to the head of the national assembly – Diouncounda Traore – to organise national elections within 40 days of the power transfer.

But those national elections, should they happen on schedule, may well not include large chunks of northern Mali.

For as Capt Sanago was taking over power in Bamako, Tuareg rebels said to have been once fighting for the dead Colonel Gaddafi led a rebellion in the north and took over large chunks of the country, including three key towns that included Timbuktu, a city of staggering significance to the continent for its cultural and religious importance.

The Tuareg rebels have been unclear about their rumoured alliance with Ansar Dine, yet another radical Islamist group that is part of the new northern Mali nation the rebels have named Azawad.

Ansar Dine are rumoured to have even closer ties to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

And so this vast region, that is home to the Djinguereber Mosque, Timbuktu’s oldest mosque built in 1325, may soon see rocket-propelled grenades smashing into its ancient towns as various sides try to establish control.

We only have to look at Mogadishu’s pock-marked visage to imagine what northern Mali’s towns will one day look like, should these wars of faith head that way.

Given these events, the death of a president in Malawi and the successful transition of power to a female president in Joyce Banda can be seen as a miracle of sorts.

The UN human rights chief has condemned Sudan’s bombing of South Sudan, carried out despite a UN resolution demanding an end to hostilities.

Navi Pillay, on a visit to Juba, said she was “outraged and saddened” by the continued aerial bombardments.

Sudan’s leader Omar al-Bashir warned on Thursday that no organisation had the right to dictate to his country, especially when it was threatened.

South Sudan seceded last July as part of a deal to end years of civil war.

But disputes, especially over oil, stemming from the secession led to clashes last month and fears of a return to all-out war.

The UN resolution passed last week threatens sanctions if both sides fail to negotiate.

They have both agreed to adhere to an African Union roadmap under which they must restart negotiations and reach an agreement on outstanding disagreements within three months.

But on Wednesday, South Sudan accused its neighbour of several more bombing raids. Khartoum said it had the right to respond to acts of aggression.

‘Civilians at risk’

“Twice in the past six months I have publicly condemned the indiscriminate use of aerial bombardment by the Sudanese armed forces inside South Sudan, today I condemn it again,” Ms Pillay told journalists at the end of her first visit to South Sudan.

“I am saddened that such attacks take place where civilians are at risk and endangered despite last week’s Security Council resolution.”

She also called for a human rights monitoring mechanism in the border regions.

Aid agencies have warned of a deteriorating situation along the border – with the number of those fleeing bombings increasing.

There is also a surge in the number of refugees crossing over the border from South Kordofan and Blue Nile states in Sudan.

Conflicts have erupted in these states over the last year where communities traditionally allied to the South found themselves north of the border after Juba’s independence.

Mr Bashir warned that if security matters with South Sudan were not first resolved, then there would be no negotiations with Juba over oil, trade or citizenship.

Both sides accuse the other of backing proxy armies – which they deny.

“We will defend ourselves and, as I said to you before, we will chop off any hand that dares to harm Sudan. And if someone dares to raise their eyes to Sudan, we will blind them,” President Bashir said.

He made his comments to a group of oil and mining workers marking the “liberation” of the Heglig oil region, which South Sudan occupied for 10 days last month.

The president said Sudan did not seek aggression but would respond in kind and would not be intimidated by threats from the UN or AU.

“We will implement what we deem it right to implement and will reject what we do not want to implement,” he said.

South Sudan, which took most of the former united Sudan’s oil reserves when it seceded, relies on pipelines to seaports in Sudan to export it – and stopped pumping oil in January in a row over transit fees.

Mr Bashir said that, with the closure of the border between the neighbours, it was South Sudan’s economy that was suffering most.

“We know that we control their economy – we have their oil, their sugar, their bread, we have everything they need and therefore they cannot fight us.”

Last year Southern Sudanese voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence from Sudan in a referendum promised as part of a peace deal in 2005 which put an end to the 22-year civil war in which some 1.5 million people died.

-BBC

Heavy fighting broke out in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo when a deadline expired for army mutineers to surrender.

Thousands of Congolese villagers fled over the Ugandan border overnight, officials in Uganda told the BBC.

Last weekend, the army gave the hundreds of fighters who defected last month five days to turn themselves in.

They are loyal to Bosco Ntaganda, who is known as the “Terminator” and wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes.

The International Criminal Court accuses Gen Ntaganda of recruiting child soldiers for the same rebel group as Thomas Lubanga, who in March became the first person to be convicted by the court of war crimes.

The general, who has fought for various militias over the years, denies masterminding the mutiny by former members of the CNDP rebel group.

These CNDP fighters were integrated into the Congolese army as part of a peace deal three years ago.

‘Regrouping’

Congolese people who are arriving in Uganda in their thousands say they fled because of heavy gunfire near their villages, say Ugandan officials in Bunagana, which straddles the border.

The heavy fighting, estimated to be about 5km (three miles) from the border, began at Thursday night and continued into Friday morning.

A resident in the Congolese side told the BBC it was a ghost town, but Congolese army troops and UN peacekeepers were now in Bunagana.

However they arrived too late to stop the renegade soldiers taking several smaller towns on the edge of the nearby Virunga National Park.

The number of Congolese refugees in Rwanda has more than doubled in the last week to 7,000 – and tens of thousands of other civilians are pouring into displaced people’s camps near the regional capital, Goma.

On Thursday, regional authorities said some people had begun to return to their villages during the ceasefire, but the BBC’s Jonathan Kacelewa in the region says residents are still leaving their homes.

In the last five days about 100 of the fighters have returned to the army and large stockpiles of weapons have been recovered, according to a military spokesman.

DR Congo’s Media Minister Lambert Mende told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme that the army’s efforts over last few weeks had “weakened bad elements who are threatening the peace” in the area.

There are an estimated 900 renegade soldiers still at large, according to sources close to the mutineers.

Following last month’s defection, fighting raged in the Masisi area of North Kivu province.

There has been criticism from civil society groups in the province that the military’s five-day ceasefire and ultimatum has given the defectors time to regroup.

‘Example to other warlords’

They are believed to be split into three groups with some 400 fighters with Gen Ntaganda, between 80 and 250 with Col Sultani Makenga near the Rwandan border and an estimated 500 fighters with Col Innocent Kayina close to Uganda.

To the south in South Kivu province, 18 officers, who were captured not long after they mutinied, are due to go on trial on Friday charged with the capital offences of insurrection, mislaying weapons and ammunition and disobeying orders.

Their lawyer says they defected because of a general hostility against troops integrated from the CNDP movement since 2009.

Before the peace deal in 2009, the CNDP militia threatened to invade Goma, leading some 250,000 people to flee.

People in and around the town of Goma blame these troops for persistent unrest – including looting and rape – since the formal end of DR Congo’s war in 2003.

The Congolese authorities have blamed the recent violence squarely on Gen Ntaganda and have called for his arrest, but say they want to try him themselves, rather than sending him to The Hague.

Mr Mende said the government’s initial decision not to hand Gen Ntaganda over to the ICC, which issued an arrest warrant for him in 2008, had been a “policy of appeasement”.

“It was this decision of the international penal court in The Hague… to condemn Thomas Lubanga that pushed Bosco Ntaganda to be threatened and start again because he was collaborating with us,” the media minister told the BBC.

“I can assure you he will be arrested very soon… he will be sued in Congo first as an example to any other warlord.”

-BBC

“In loving memory of Kim Jong-Il,” reads an epigram at the beginning of “The Dictator,” Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest send-up of political manners and American exceptionalism.

It’s true that the character Cohen plays, an aggressively bearded tyrant named Admiral General Aladeen, who has ruled the North African country of Wadiya since he was 7, embodies all of the absurdities of despotical power, including its preening vanity to chronic insecurity.

As portrayed by Cohen, the egotistical, belligerent Aladeen bumbles through everything – from sexual encounters with paid starlets to the executions he orders for the most innocuous perceived slight – like Uday, Qusay, Larry, Moe and Curly combined. (He describes himself as the last in a long line of now-fallen dictators: “Kim, Gaddafi, Saddam, Cheney.”)

But once Aladeen comes to America – to speak at the U.N. about his nuclear arms buildup – Cohen’s target area widens from reactionary abuses of power overseas to political correctness and unearned moral arrogance on these shores.

When Aladeen is supposedly assassinated and his body double steps in, he finds himself beardless and abroad in 21st century New York, where he meets a vegan-feminist collective grocer named Zoey (Anna Faris); their budding friendship invites nonstop jokes about lesbianism, underarm hair and fundamental cultural and political misunderstandings. “The police here are so fascist!” Zoey cries after Aladeen is temporarily taken into custody. “Yeah, and not in a good way!” Aladeen retorts.

That’s one of the few throwaway lines that are genuinely amusing in “The Dictator,” which never achieves the stinging parodic heights of Cohen’s “Borat” movie, but manages a better batting average than his most recent misfire, “Bruno.” Cohen has thankfully dispensed with ambushing real-life people for squirm-inducing interviews. But an early stunt involving a Wii game based on the 1972 Munich Olympics falls flatter than a stale matzo, a running gag about Hollywood stars selling sexual favors quickly loses steam, and it can be stipulated that rape jokes simply aren’t funny.

More debatable is the “too soon” question regarding the film’s satirical centerpiece – in which Aladeen takes a helicopter ride and alarms two American tourists while speaking excitedly in Wadiyan about his Porsche – a “911 2012.”

As for bits involving a childbirth filmed from inside a woman’s birth canal (“It’s a girl, where’s the trash can?” Aladeen mutters) and the severed head of a man whose funeral Aladeen raids for his beard, “The Dictator” can’t end soon enough.

Then again, at a lean 83 minutes, it will be worth the ride for Cohen fans just to hear choice Arabic renditions of “Everybody Hurts” and “Let’s Get It On,” and for a pointed third-act speech questioning a democracy ruled by its wealthiest 1 percent (hint: rhymes with “Mamerica”).

Even amid the hit-and-miss broadsides and laugh-free longueurs that comprise most of “The Dictator,” Cohen’s acute hypocrisy-detector keeps on ticking, if barely.

Contains strong crude and sexual content, brief male nudity, profanity and some violent images.

- http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Joseph Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, must be wondering just when he is finally going to shake the recurring nightmare that he has not finished his history homework. The only thing worse than the nightmare itself is waking up and realising that it is not his homework he has neglected, but a festering conflict in eastern DRC.

Not that he has not been busy: 1500km to the west, in the capital Kinshasa, Kabila has spent the first four-and-a-half months of his controversial second mandate keeping the country in suspense about the composition of his new government. Will it include key opposition figures critical of the elections? Will the new prime minister be chosen from the ranks of compromise candidates, or will he be a Kabila stalwart from the president’s own party? All these decisions will be interpreted against the backdrop of the November 2011 presidential and legislative elections won by Kabila and his political alliance, which have been heavily contested and divided the country.

The international diplomatic community gravely acknowledged the election observer reports by respected missions such as the Carter Centre and the European Union, which pointed out serious flaws in the electoral process and concluded that the election lacked credibility. But by December 20, when Kabila was inaugurated, decisions had already been made and ambassadors from Asia, Africa, Europe and North America solemnly attended Kabila’s inauguration in Kinshasa, openly recognising him as the victor of the fraudulent elections.

Behind the scenes, various countries were pushing for a political opening that could heal the rift caused by the election and counter the impression that the country’s second free election in decades had set the DRC on the path for less, rather than more, democracy. But the stage-managed political consultations initiated by the Kabila camp stopped far short of the negotiations demanded by the political opposition, which wants a wholesale review of the election. In the end, they amounted to little more than a window-dressing exercise aimed at co-opting willing opposition parties.

Competent technocrat
When the government was finally formed on April 28, it included one opposition member – but he has already been expelled from his own party for joining the Kabila government. Meanwhile, the head of government, Prime Minister Matata Ponyo Mapon, a former minister of finance, has been hailed by many as a competent technocrat. He is generally appreciated by the international financial community, but is also from Kabila’s political party base.

Throughout this, the international community has been relatively silent and in late March it became apparent why. Instead of using its leverage to lobby for a robust political dialogue, the international community appears to have changed focus and has been pressuring Kabila to arrest Bosco Ntaganda. Ntaganda, a former rebel leader-turned-army general, is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of recruiting child soldiers during his time as the military commander of an ethnic militia in northeastern DRC.

The court’s recent guilty verdict against Thomas Lubanga, Ntaganda’s former boss, on the same charges levelled against Ntaganda, appears to have renewed the international community’s zeal for his arrest. The question now is at what cost to the country.

For the past few years Ntaganda has been living happily and freely in and around the North Kivu capital of Goma. The court’s arrest warrant against him was revealed in 2008 and the Congolese authorities could easily have executed it at that point. However, by then Ntaganda was part of a new Rwandan-backed rebellion, the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), a predominantly Tutsi armed group led by Laurent Nkunda.

Nkunda’s CNDP was a significant threat to the east, a region that had helped to carry Kabila to his first electoral victory in 2006. As the CNDP stood poised to capture the strategically important city of Goma in late 2008, Kabila struck a deal with Rwanda: arrest Nkunda, neutralise the CNDP by integrating its units into the Congolese army and allow it a seat at the political table in Kinshasa. In return, Rwandan troops would pursue the militia responsible for the 1994 genocide. Despite the existence of the arrest warrant, Ntaganda became Nkunda’s successor and was ultimately given the post of general in the Congolese army, commanding military operations in the east.

Implications
The deal was little more than a quick fix: Ntaganda has been able to amass considerable wealth and influence because it is clear that he still has command over several thousand CNDP troops who were integrated into the army, but remain essentially intact and deployed in that part of the country they previously controlled.

They also maintain parallel command structures and their loyalties are clearly not to the Congolese army.

But Kabila never made good on his promise to include the CNDP in government, a fact many of its Tutsi fighters strongly resent. Because of this delicate power balance, Kabila has consistently dismissed calls to arrest Ntaganda, saying peace and stability are more important than justice.

Over the past six weeks this has changed. Kabila seems to have calculated that arresting Ntaganda is a much smaller price to pay for international recognition than creating an inclusive political environment and sharing power with the political opposition.

It is unclear whether he or the international community fully understood the implications: as news filtered out that Ntaganda’s arrest could be imminent, hundreds of CNDP soldiers deserted their positions and regrouped in their strongholds.

A wave of desertions
In the midst of the first wave of desertions, Kabila flew to Goma and announced publically for the first time that he was ready to arrest Ntaganda, but that he would be tried by a Congolese jurisdiction, not the International Criminal Court. In the days that followed the announcement, the Congolese government sent 1000 CNDP troops to a new base several thousands of kilometres to the west, but this simply created a vacuum that has already been filled by other armed groups operating in the region.

After a brief period of calm, the situation has escalated and the Congolese army is now clashing regularly with deserting CNDP units that have managed to capture significant territory in North Kivu. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced and sought refuge in overcrowded camps close to Goma, and the international community has warned of a growing humanitarian crisis in a region of the country in which two million people are already displaced.

Ntaganda said he had nothing to do with the desertions and was until last week holed up on a farm north of Goma. He has since fled the advancing Congolese army and his whereabouts are unknown.

Whether this situation degenerates into a drawn-out rebellion will depend to a great extent on Rwanda. Even if Ntaganda is arrested, the CNDP could survive, but it would need the support of its former backer, Rwanda. Rwandan and Congolese military officials have been meeting in the past week to map a way forward, but it is unclear what this means.

Perhaps a new deal will be made that will allow Rwandan troops into the eastern DRC yet again. Ntaganda’s freedom is a blot on the court’s record and the international community seems willing to sacrifice a lot to make its flagship court look good.

-M&G

After Gitarama, where the population had first defied the dictatorial regime of Butcher Kagame in demonstrating against mass drift authority of the police which prevented the motorcycle taxis around town, bigger things are happening in Rwanda.

Today, what just happened in Gisenyi really looks like the beginning of a determined protest.

This never happen before in Rwanda or elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Only Tunisia had the honor of such a saving gesture. In Tunisia a young trader set himself on fire unleashing a revolution.

Well, in Rwanda, a young man, peddler of peanuts has tried to immolate himself.

Kagame’s soldiers came to snatch his shelf filled with a few bags of peanuts, which is enough to survive the country of the general-chairman-President.

The young man was admitted to Rubavu hospital in Gisenyi, but AD has just learned that the Rwandan intelligence services transferred him to the Centre Hospitalier de Kigali to protect him from the public.

Human rights claim to be extremely worried about the safety of the young and his family said he may not survive. A diplomatic source in the Rwandan capital Kigali said that “a revolution is underway.” Nothing can stop it, he added.

Kagame – your end is near!

Scenes of Zimbabwe police firing warning shots and charging party activists are usually associated with the authority’s frequent crackdown on opposition groups. But over the past week the police have used force to quell violence between rival factions of President Robert Mugabe’s party.

Mugabe has been trying to rally his party towards a new election campaign, but the grassroots structures that have long been the mainstay of Zanu-PF appear to be crumbling.

The factionalism that has divided the top leadership of the party has now seeped through to the grassroots at a time when Mugabe needs it most in his bid for new elections.

With these structures in a shambles, party officials believe Mugabe may be forced to rethink his plan for yet another election campaign.

Across five party provinces Zanu-PF has had to suspend district elections after fights erupted over accusations of vote rigging, the imposition of candidates and intimidation.

Grassroots structures have always been key in getting Mugabe’s supporters to the polls during elections and, according to opposition activists, they have also been used to intimidate communities into voting for Zanu-PF. Its district elections are a key step towards party primary elections it plans to hold soon, under pressure from Mugabe to organise quickly for national elections that he wants to be held this year.

Deeper rifts
But now Mugabe finds that the rifts among his top lieutenants reach deeper than he thought.

Even in the lowest structures of Zanu-PF local leaders are aligning themselves to the two main factions, which are said to be led by Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa and Vice-President Joice Mujuru.

Mugabe has previously acknowledged the divisions in his party, blaming them for Zanu-PF’s loss in the 2008 election, but rarely have these fault lines shown up in the grassroots.

In Masvingo, a traditionally pro-Zanu-PF province, the police fired warning shots and had running battles with rival factions. Police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena said officers had to step in to “maintain law and order” at a rural school in the province.

Walter Mzembi, the Zanu-PF MP in the Masvingo area where the violence erupted, said poor discipline was “tearing at the core of leadership and needs to be stopped”.

He said the grassroots support felt ignored by those in power over the choice of leaders, who he said had given themselves the “power of self-deployment”.

“In the final analysis, the party should arrogate to itself the ultimate role of deploying cadres if it is to check individualism, selfishness, factionalism, tribalism, regionalism and ultimately the division so rampant now everywhere,” said Mzembi.

Fighting talks
Rugare Gumbo, Zanu-PF spokesperson, said senior party leaders were to meet this week to discuss the fighting. Party officials are worried that the violence shows it is not yet ready for another campaign. Mugabe’s insistence on new elections is only deepening the divisions in Zanu-PF, one official said.

In the Manicaland province, where Zanu-PF lost 20 of the 26 available seats in the 2008 election, attempts to reorganise the party have been stalled by factional violence. A senior official said some party supporters had defected to the Movement for Democratic Change after party district elections were abandoned over charges of cheating and intimidation.

Webster Shamu, who, as Zanu-PF “political commissar”, is in charge of running party elections and its “restructuring” exercise, has now ordered all elections stopped while the party investigates the fighting.

The year 2011 began with the Arab Spring that changed the face of North Africa and possibly beyond. The question asked further down the continent — by both the people and their leaders — was when, if at all, the popular uprisings fuelled by social networks would spread southwards.

Midyear, the normally tranquil and grindingly poor Malawi saw at least 18 people die in protests against Bingu wa Mutharika’s autocratic rule and economic mismanagement. Eventually it was a heart attack and not the people that brought him down, but more about that later.

By Easter, unconstitutional changes in power, reminiscent of West Africa’s past, had ruled out two of the two dozen elections scheduled for continent in 2012.

Between 1963 — when the first elected president of Togo, Sylvanus Olympio, was overthrown — and the year 2000, there were 27 successful military takeovers in West Africa. One could have been forgiven for thinking that coups were an infectious disease endemic in West Africa.

Mutiny in Mali

With less than a month to go before stepping down at the end of his constitutional limit of two-terms in power, Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré was forced to flee from a military mutiny on March 22 this year.

The soldiers were ostensibly disenchanted with government’s inability or unwillingness adequately to equip forces fighting Tuareg rebels in the northern part of the kidney shaped country.

The 15-million Malians have had democracy since 1991.The mutineers led by Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo were unable to garner the civilian support generally needed to allow a junta to make the noises, however hollow, about restoring democracy and returning to barracks.

The coup drew muscular opposition from Mali’s neighbours. When a delegation from the Economic Community of West African State (Ecowas) was prevented from landing in the capital Bamako on March 29, the 15-nation regional grouping imposed tough sanctions on Mali.

These punitive measures froze international banks transactions and cut off the fuel supply to the landlocked country. The junta caved. Within a week, it withdrew the new Constitution it had tried to impose and returned to the 1992 basic law. In a deal negotiated by Ecowas, the junta stood down in favour of parliamentary speaker Dianconda Traore.

Fulfilling his part of the bargain Touré resigned “without pressure, in good faith and out of love for the country”.

The military continued to flex their muscle, arresting at least 10 of Touré‘s close allies as the deposed president took refuge in the Senegalese embassy in Bamako before actually relocating to that neighbouring country with his family and bodyguards.

The long-term damage caused by the coup has been manifest by the new strength of separatists and Islamists in the northern half of the kidney-shaped country who returned to the country after the fall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi who armed and paid them as mercenaries.

They have taken the main towns of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu and imposed Sharia law. The flow of refugees into neighbouring Mauritania became a flood as it became increasingly unclear which wing of the rebels — the Tuareg separatists or Islamist jihadists with links to al-Qaeda in the Arab Maghreb (AQIM) — was in control.

Traore has made threatening noises against the separatists who have declared independence in northern Mali, knowing full well this will not be internationally recognised. The new leader has the impossible task of organising elections in Mali by June.

Guinea Bissau

Ecowas and the rest of the African Union took an equally hard line against the April 12 coup in Guinea Bissau.

No president in the former Portuguese colony has ever served a full term since its independence in 1974. In 1984 a woman president, Carmen Pereira, served for only three days. Deposed president Carlos Gomes was facing a runoff election on April 29.

Victory was assured because his opponent Kumba Yala had withdrawn from the contest. In the past three years there have been six assassinations of senior politicians, including a president — Joao Bernardo Viera in 2009, apparently in retaliation for the killing army chief Tagme na Waie.

Guinea Bissau is the world’s sixth largest producer of cashew nuts, and has one of the highest birth rates in the world with 5.6 children per woman. A major source of revenue comes from its being a key transit point for Latin American cocaine headed for Europe and some army officials are known to have become involved in the trade.

Senegal

In Senegal, which has had democracy since before it became independent from France in 1960, president Abdoulaye Wade was booed by a crowd when he went to cast his ballot. The 85-year-old brought in a term limit for the president but believed he was above this because the regulation came into force after his first election win in 2002.

He easily regained the mandate in 2007. By 2012, however, there were fears he was trying to build a dynasty. At least 13 people died in violence during campaigning. To his credit, Wade quickly conceded defeat when it became clear he had lost the run-off in March to his former prime minister Macky Sall.

Popular musician and entrepreneur Youssou N’Dour, who was among those disqualified from competing in the election, was made culture minister in Sall’s Cabinet.

Malawi

Malawi’s Bing wa Mutharika, whose enigmatic handling of the affairs of one of the world’s poorest countries lost him development aid from major donors, suffered a heart attack in April.

Constitutionally, his vice president Joyce Banda was next in line. Mutharika’s body was flown to Johannesburg by insider determined to prevent Banda from taking the reins. She had been expelled from the ruling party and had not spoken to the president in a year. The insiders wanted to promote foreign minister Peter Mutharika — the late president’s brother, who had unconstitutionally deputised for him — causing the rift with Banda.

In the event, constitutional and international pressure prevailed and she was sworn in. She declared there was no room for revenge in Malawian politics. Nevertheless she signalled her intention of pursuing officials guilty of excesses under Mutharika.

-MG