News Briefs 21 September 2018
Democratic Republic of Congo
DRC unveils candidates for troubled vote
Election officials in Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday released an official list of candidates for December’s presidential election, formally excluding two heavyweight opposition figures.
“Now we have finished with the candidacy stage, we are in the home stretch for the December 23 elections,” said electoral commission chief Corneille Nangaa as he unveiled the list.
More than two dozen people registered their bid with the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), a much-contested panel tasked with overseeing the ballot in one of the Africa’s biggest and most unstable nations.
It gave the green light to opposition figures Felix Tshisekedi and Vital Kamerhe, as well as to Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, a hardline former interior minister backed by President Joseph Kabila.
News24
DR Congo political heavyweights excluded from presidential election
Election officials in Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday released an official list of candidates for December’s presidential election, formally excluding two heavyweight opposition figures.
“Now we have finished with the candidacy stage, we are in the home stretch for the December 23 elections,” said electoral commission chief Corneille Nangaa as he unveiled the list.
More than two dozen people registered their bid with the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), a much-contested panel tasked with overseeing the ballot in one of the Africa’s biggest and most unstable nations.
It gave the green light to opposition figures Felix Tshisekedi and Vital Kamerhe, as well as to Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, a hardline former interior minister backed by President Joseph Kabila.
France24
Somalia
Somalia ‘vulnerable but making progress’
The troubled Horn of Africa country, Somalia, is still vulnerable but is making progress towards a more stable future, according to the UN’s most senior official in the country.
Michael Keating, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, says the situation in Somalia, politically, economically and from a security perspective is improving; but he adds that after 30 years of civil war, long-held grievances are impeding progress in the country.
Mr Keating is leaving his post on Friday – he’s also head of the UN Mission in Somalia, UNSOM – after more than two and a half years in the job.
UN News
Intelligence officers in Somalia agree to strengthen collaboration in the fight against Al-Shabaab
Intelligence officers in Somalia have resolved to strengthen collaboration on information gathering and sharing to counter threats posed by terrorist group, Al-Shabaab.
The resolution was made at the end of a three-day intelligence information sharing conference organized by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and the UK Mission Support Team (UK MST).
The conference, attended by senior intelligence officers from AMISOM and Somali national security agencies, sought to forge closer working ties among security agencies in the country. Intelligence officers gather critical information that informs security decisions taken by AMISOM and the Somali government.
Speaking at the end of the workshop, Col. Naboth Mwesigwa, the AMISOM Chief Military Intelligence Officer (CMIO), urged intelligence agencies in the country to work together by sharing critical information.
Relief Web
Central African Republic
Representatives from 14 militias in the strife-torn Central African Republic have held “positive” talks that could lead to negotiations with the government, the African Union (AU), acting as a mediator, said on Friday.
The “positive meeting in Bouar (in western Central African Republic) ended yesterday with a single document on demands, signed by the representatives of the 14 armed groups,” Francis Che, a spokesperson for the AU panel in Central African Republic said.
The document will now be put to the government as “the basis for negotiations between the two sides,” Che said.
The AU, supported by the UN and the Central African Republic’s main partners, has been striving to set up negotiations between the militias and the government since July 2017 but progress has been scant.
News24
Rival Central African Republic militias agree demands in ‘positive’ African Union meeting
Representatives from 14 militias in Central African Republic have held “positive” talks that could lead to negotiations with the government, the African Union which is acting as a mediator said on Friday, August 31.
The talks in Bouar in western CAR ran in parallel to a dialogue brokered by Russia between rival militias in Sudan that led to the Tuesday signing of a declaration of understanding between the armed groups.
Supported by the United Nations and other international partners, an A.U. panel has been working to set up negotiations between the militias and the government since July 2017.
Francis Che, a spokesperson for the African Union expert panel, said the “positive meeting in Bouar ended yesterday with a single document on demands, signed by the representatives of the 14 armed groups.”
The Defense Post
Sudan
Sudan’s new cabinet has uphill battle lifting the embattled economy
Sudan’s new 21-member cabinet was sworn in on Saturday, with Prime Minister Moutaz Mousa Abdallah also assuming the finance portfolio in a bid to revive the country’s economy.
Sudan has been grappling with an acute foreign exchange shortage and inflation above 65% for several months, prompting President Omar al-Bashir on Sunday to sack the previous 31-member cabinet to “fix the situation”.
Bashir had initially nominated Abdallah Hamdok as the new finance minister, but Sudan’s official news agency Suna reported earlier on Saturday that Hamdok had “apologised” and declined.
“After consultations with Prime Minister Moutaz Mousa Abdallah, President Bashir decided that the prime minister will hold the finance portfolio,” the presidency said in a statement on Saturday.
Business Day Live
Sudan rejects UN proposal to reconfigure Abyei peacekeeping force
Sudan has opposed a proposal by the United Nations Secretary-General to reconfigure the mandate of UN peacekeepers deployed on the disputed area of Abyei as it might affect the establishment of a local administration that Juba rejects.
The Security Council Thursday was briefed by Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, outgoing UN Special Envoy Nicholas Haysom on the need to adjust the mission mandate to the changing needs in the disputed area.
Lacroix proposed to deploy additional police units, to enhance the UN’s focus on maintaining law and order there, and furthering peace between local communities.
According to the proposal, the military personnel of the Mission would concentrate its deployments along the borders of the Area, to safeguard against armed incursions.
Sudan Tribune
South Sudan
Report Accuses South Sudan Troops of Rapes, Killings
Children and elderly burned alive. Women gang-raped. Civilians shot, run over with armored vehicles, or hanged from trees and rafters.
A new report by the rights group Amnesty International alleges that South Sudan’s government committed such atrocities earlier this year in a military campaign targeting the northern area once known as Unity state. The area, which borders Sudan, is an opposition stronghold.
The report, released Wednesday, contends the government offensive began in mid-April and continued for more than two months. During that period, President Salva Kiir and former vice president and rebel leader Riek Machar were in negotiations for a peace agreement that they signed Sept. 12. It aims to end nearly five years of armed conflict.
The alleged attacks “seem to have been carried out with an absolute intent to displace civilians” and to leave their villages “uninhabitable,” said Joanne Mariner, the report’s co-author and Amnesty’s senior crisis adviser. Amnesty’s research indicates systematic targeting of women and children, as well as widespread looting and destruction of property.
Voice of America
In an interview Thursday with VOA’s South Sudan in Focus, Phillip Jada Natana, South Sudan’s new ambassador to the United States, said he wants to repair the damaged relationship between Washington and Juba.
The South Sudanese envoy said that Tibor P. Nagy, U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, has expressed a willingness to work with the Kiir administration.
“He is someone who has been following keenly the situation in South Sudan, and he said he was really willing to open a new page and work with me as a representative of South Sudan here in Washington,” Natana said.
Relations between South Sudan and the United States have been strained in recent years. In September 2017, Washington imposed unilateral targeted sanctions and an arms embargo on the Central African country.
Voice of America
Western Sahara
Trump has suggested building a giant wall in the Sahara. But it already exists
It stretches for almost three thousand kilometres under the Saharan sun, patrolled by military personnel and surrounded by landmines.
The Moroccan Western Sahara Wall is one of the longest separation barriers in the world, by some measurements second only in length to the Great Wall of China and certainly the longest in North Africa.
But its existence has escaped the attention of US President Donald Trump, who suggested, according to Spanish media reports this week, that Madrid should “build a wall” across the Sahara to stop refugees reaching the Spanish mainland.
Josep Borrell, Spain’s foreign minister, said that Trump made his comments to a Spanish delegation in the US in June, telling him: “The Sahara border can’t be bigger than our border with Mexico.”
Middle East Eye
AU limits its role in Western Sahara crisis
The African Union (AU) will be limiting its peace efforts in the Western Sahara in order to support the United Nations’ (UN) process in the region. Western Sahara is a disputed area claimed by both Morocco and the Polisario Front, the representatives of the indigenous Sahrawi people.
The UN oversaw a truce between the two sides in the early 1990s but the issue has never been resolved and tensions flare up periodically in the border regions. The AU has also asserted its role in resolving the crisis since the dispute erupted in the 1970s.
The AU’s new decision to limit its efforts means that unlike before, its Peace and Security Council (PSC) won’t discuss the Western Sahara situation among ambassadors in Addis Ababa where security issues are usually considered.
The AU will now only support the UN peace process through a troika of heads of state, together with the AU Commission (AUC) chairperson. While the troika will report to the AU Assembly and possibly the PSC at the level of heads of state, no major AU decision on Western Sahara could be expected going forward.
Daily Maverick
Swaziland
eSwatini, Formerly Swaziland, Heads for First Elections Under New Name
The tiny African nation of eSwatini is officially holding its first set of elections Friday under its new name, which was bestowed by the king in April. Critics say this poll is nothing but a pretense of democracy in the state, that was known as Swaziland, until the king unilaterally changed the name to celebrate the nation’s 50th anniversary of independence from Britain.
Voters will choose 55 parliamentarians to fill the lower house in this nation of some 1.3 million people. King Mswati III, who has ruled since 1986 with unlimited constitutional powers, gets to choose another 10 legislators.
VOA made multiple attempts to reach government officials to discuss the elections, but calls and messages were not returned. The government’s official website makes no pretense of eSwatini being an ordinary democracy, describing the king as being “born to rule,” and “the only absolute monarch in Africa who rules his country with a firm hand.”
Voice of America
New name, same flaws in eSwatini election, say critics
Political parties cannot be involved, there are no campaign rallies and the king wields absolute power, choosing the prime minister and cabinet: a parliamentary election in eSwatini is a vote like no other.
Opposition activists in the tiny southern African country formerly known as Swaziland say Friday’s election is a mockery of democracy and reveals how its 1.3 million citizens have long lived under a repressive regime.
Around 540,000 eligible voters must choose from candidates who have no party affiliation and who are almost all loyal to King Mswati III, one of the world’s last absolute monarchs.
Winners from the 59 constituency ballots take seats in a parliament over which the king has complete control. He also appoints a further 10 directly.
“It is a total misnomer to even call them elections,” Alvit Dlamini, head of the Ngwane National Liberatory Congress, the oldest political party in eSwatini, told AFP.
Times Live
Zimbabwe
New faces as Zimbabwe’s Mnangagwa makes civil service changes
Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Wednesday made sweeping changes to the country’s top civil service.
He retired a batch of long-serving bureaucrats and promoted new faces in a break with his predecessor Robert Mugabe.
Mnangagwa, elected in July in a vote ratified by the courts after an opposition challenge, is under pressure at home and abroad to differentiate his administration from that of his former mentor Mugabe, who was ousted in a bloodless coup in November.
Misheck Sibanda, chief secretary to the president, said Mnangagwa had retired nine senior government officials, including Tobaiwa Mudede, an abrasive lawyer-turned-bureaucrat who had served as registrar general since independence in 1980 and was until recently in charge of the voter register.
The Star
New Zimbabwean president rules out early return to local currency
Zimbabwe’s new president on Tuesday ruled out an early return of the Zimbabwean dollar, toning down remarks by his finance minister that backed reintroducing the currency.
In an inaugural address in parliament marked by an opposition walkout, President Emmerson Mnangagwa pledged a raft of economic measures, including currency reforms and better forex availability.
But, he said, conditions had to be right before foreign currencies were replaced once more by the Zimbabwean dollar.
“My government shall continue with the use of the multicurrency system up until the current negative economic fundamentals have been addressed to give credence to the introduction of the local currency,” Mnangagwa said.
News24
Africa in General
Zim’s Mnangagwa promises to fight corruption, debt
Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa gave his first state-of-the-nation address on Tuesday, promising to fight corruption, address the country’s ballooning external and local debt and meet people’s expectations of his administration.
Opposition MDC-Alliance members if Parliament (MPs) continued the tradition of walking out of the address, and walked out of Mnangagwa’s address.
The tradition gained traction during the late Morgan Tsvangirai’s tenure as MDC-T president, and was meant to show the then president Robert Mugabe that he was illegally in office after “stealing” the vote from the MDC-T in 2013.
Despite the walkout, Mnangagwa continued with his first address as president.
“My government is alive to the economic challenges being faced by the ordinary Zimbabwean,” Mnangagwa said.
His government recently come under fire for failing to attach the ongoing cholera outbreak the importance it deserves as the disease continues to take lives.
IOL
SA unions ‘must support struggling comrades in eSwatini’, says SAFTU
The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) has criticised eSwatini police’s heavy handedness in dealing with striking workers this week after they used batons and stun grenades to disperse protesting workers in Manzini.
Demonstrators and police clashed during a protest action to demand higher wages and reforms to the way the state pension fund was managed.
According to Reuters, several workers were wounded in the clashes, as police used batons, stun grenades to disperse the crowd.
The organisers of the demonstrations, however, vowed to continue with the protest until Thursday, as the protests were also taking place in other parts of the country, including the capital Mbabane, Siteki and Nhlangano.
News24
South Sudan’s security gaps can only be filled by regional force says UN
The outgoing United Nations Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan Nicholas Haysom has warned that security gaps in the world’s newest country can only be filled by regional security forces.
Haysom said on Tuesday that he supported the deployment of forces from regional bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), in South Sudan within the UN peacekeeping force (UNMISS) there.
Haysom, who has been appointed UN special envoy for Somalia from October, also threw his weight behind the revitalised agreement which was signed in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on September 12 by the South Sudanese governments and various opposition groups.
Pointing out that the peace deal fell short in certain areas the UN envoy stressed that it could still be an effective platform for peace, “if the parties demonstrate the political will to implement it”.
IOL