Just Africa

South African HIV/AIDS activists welcome new Health Minister

After a decade of adversarial relations with Manto Tshabalala-Msimang (who advocated "garlic and beetroot" rather than antiretrovirals), leading HIV/AIDS activist group Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is celebrating the appointment of Barbara Hogan as South Africa's new Minister of Health.

From TAC:

"We are confident that Hogan has the ability to improve the South African health system. She has been one of the few Members of Parliament to speak out against AIDS denialism and to offer support to the TAC, even during the worst period of AIDS denialism by former President Thabo Mbeki and former Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. 0n 14 February 2003, she received the TAC memorandum to President Mbeki for a treatment plan. She was removed as Finance Portfolio Chairperson by Mbeki in part for her stand on HIV/AIDS.  She has a reputation for being hard-working, competent and principled." 

As South African Politics Blaze in Controversy, Zimbabwe Drops From Western Spotlight

A common critique of South Africa’s relations with its southern African neighbors has been its tendency to monopolize the attention of the international community. Since even well before 1994, South Africa’s politics, economics, and societal progress have dominated the scant Western news coverage of the African continent. The momentous events that have rocked South Africa's political sphere this past week are well worthy of coverage. Indeed, without the U.S. presidential election circus and financial crisis, they probably would be more prominent.  The small Western appetite for African affairs however, seems to have settled on the Mbeki drama as its sole sustenance. Zimbabwe's landmark power-sharing deal has been swept off the headlines.

South Africa was widely criticized by Western commentators for its silence on the on-going crisis in Zimbabwe, and President Thabo Mbeki took the brunt of it for his so called "silent diplomacy" policy when it comes to Zanu-PF's violent repression of political opposition. Yet despite the ANC's apparent policy of denial, Mbeki was appointed by the Southern African Development Community to facilitate a resolution that would end the violence in March 2007. Since then he made several fruitless visits to Zimbabwe attempting to facilitate a compromise between the long standing president, Robert Mugabe of Zanu-PF, and MDC opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Mbeki came to Harare after the presidential runoff that was widely condemned locally and internationally as unfair, to head the Southern African Development Community (SADC) sponsored power-sharing talks in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare.

Bashir and the ICC - Sudanese perspectives

One of the most controversial topics at the UN General Assembly underway this week is the International Criminal Court's looming indictment of Sudanese President Omer al-Bashir.

Last Thursday I attended a panel discussion in New York, sponsored by the International Refugee Rights Initiative on  "The Case Against Bashir: Perspectives from Sudan." Veteran Sudanese human rights activist and former director of the Sudanese Organization Against Torture (SOAT) Osman Hummaida and renowned Sudanese human rights lawyer and parliamentarian Salih Mahmoud Osman were among the presenters. They spoke eloquently about the need to pursue both peace and justice for Darfur - no easy task. International Crisis Group's Fabienne Harah, another presenter, posited that the Bashir charges present "perhaps the hardest peace versus justice dilemma the international community has faced."

Osman Hummaida has been closely monitoring the Sudanese media discourse in the wake of ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's July 14th landmark announcement that he would pursue charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against President Bashir. Osman argues that the ICC pressure has opened NCP hardliners up to public criticism  (particularly in newspaper opinion pieces) from a wider array of voices than have previously spoken out against the dominant partner in Sudan's Government of National Unity.

While the press faces serious governmental restrictions in Sudan ( ranked 140/169  on Reporters Without Borders press freedom index)the country is home to a vibrant and diverse community of independent journalists and public intellectuals. The intense polarization that initially followed July 14th has relaxed in the past two months. More Sudanese academics and commentators are warning that the international isolation the country faces as a result of the NCP's confrontational stance with the Court (and broader international community) is not worth it. As a result, those who don't think Bashir should face ICC prosecution are increasingly arguing that the appropriate way to fight the charges is through technical legal procedures, rather than pressuring allies in the Security Council to invoke Article 16 of the Rome Statute.

Osmane's analysis that the public discourse in Sudan on this topic is widening is heartening. As one activist in Khartoum recently reminded me, for such a diverse country, it's futile to try to construct a single Sudanese perspective on this issue. Even as different perspectives are held within civil society, the political opposition and the academic community, still other distinctions exist between the views of these elites and ordinary Sudanese who lack access to information about the Darfur conflict.

This Save Darfur Coalition video has interviews with some of the civil society leaders who participated in the recent Darfur Consortium conference in Kampala, including Salih Mahmoud, Darfur Relief and Documentation Center's Abdelbagi Jibril and Dr. Mohammed Ahmed Abdullah of the Amel Center for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture in Darfur.

Video: Briggs Bomba Discusses Zimbabwe on VOA-TV

Voice of America's Chris Simkins put together this report, featuring Africa Action's Briggs Bomba, on the historic Zanu-PF/MDC power-sharing arrangement.

One Day Africa's Breadbasket Once Again?

As Zimbabwe's leaders begin to implement the historic power-sharing agreement reached on Monday, international and internal speculation over where Zimbabwe will go from here abounds. Africa Action's statement on the agreement identifies four key factors that will determine whether or not this deal lives up to its potential for Zimbabwe's people. At the top of everyone's mind is how the deal will impact the food security situation in a country where empty shelves and breadlines have become the norm.

"The rains are about to start, so the time to put the seeds in the soil is very close, but we must get the seeds, we must get the fertilizer, we must get the fuel, we must get the implements as a matter of urgency. I am quite certain as a region and a continent we can do that," said South African President Thabo Mbeki, who acted as the main facilitator of the six-week Southern African Development Community (SADC)-driven talks that culminated in this deal. Agriculture was the economy’s backbone since well before independence in 1980, and its export industry rose the country to one of Africa’s most economically successful newly independent countries by the late 1980s.

Today, Zimbabwe has little resemblance to the economic dynamo and regional breadbasket it once was. For the past seven and a half years, the country has produced little and imported a lot. International debt has risen to $5 billion and inflation, which was once at a slightly uneasy 30 percent in the late 1990s has risen to over 11 million percent by conservative estimates today. Because bills are worth less than the money used to print them, food and other necessities have changed hands by mainly barter or fuel credit.

Agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilizer, tractors, and especially fuel to run machinery and transport the harvests will be needed in bulk. "We want everybody to be supportive. We have to utilize land that we claimed back," said Zimbabwean Ambassador to Namibia, Chipo Zindoga. Despite the overwhelming support SADC has provided and promised for the future, a path to development will require a change in Zimbabwe's global economic relations. Perhaps the greatest challenge is the massive debt burden, but new aid and trade policies (including the status of targeted Western sanctions) also have roles to play in helping Zimbabweans lift their country out of economic turmoil.