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Published 8th October 2010

Vol 51 No 20

Sudan

A New York divorce

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures
Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

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Positions are hardening in both Washington and Khartoum in the lead up to the referenda in the South and Abyei, due in January

Within days of the United Nations' New York meeting on Sudan, the 15-member UN Security Council set off for Kampala, Juba and Khartoum. The 4-10 October trip, led by Britain's UN Ambassador, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, and his counterpart from the United States, Susan E. Rice, signals serious concerns about a return to war in Sudan over the referenda due next January. The tour was meant to send a strong message - at least from Britain, France and the USA - about Khartoum's efforts to obstruct the vote in the South and Abyei.

SWAPO suffers bee stings

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Elections next month and rumbling financial scandals around SWAPO-linked businesses could boost support for the opposition

The opposition was cheered by a legal victory last month, when the Supreme Court overturned the Windhoek High Court's dismissal of an application by nine opposition parties to...

Buttering up Zuma

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In trying to sort out its relations with Africa, Brussels takes care to befriend its main trading partner on the continent

South Africa is the European Union's leading trade partner in Africa and the 27 EU countries form its most important trading bloc. Both parties are well aware of...

BLUE LINES
THE INSIDE VIEW

Breaking bread with South African President Jacob Zuma can be expensive but enlightening. The going rates before the African National Congress’s council meeting in Durban last month ranged from 100,000 rand (US$13,700) to 500,000 rand, depending on one’s proximity to the leader.   The Chairman of African Rainbow Minerals, Patrice Motsepe, one of South Africa’s wealthiest businessmen, huddled close to Zuma, perhaps urging him to resist ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema’s calls to nationali...
Breaking bread with South African President Jacob Zuma can be expensive but enlightening. The going rates before the African National Congress’s council meeting in Durban last month ranged from 100,000 rand (US$13,700) to 500,000 rand, depending on one’s proximity to the leader.   The Chairman of African Rainbow Minerals, Patrice Motsepe, one of South Africa’s wealthiest businessmen, huddled close to Zuma, perhaps urging him to resist ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema’s calls to nationalise the mines. Motsepe may also worry about trade union calls for a new tax on the ‘super rich’. Zuma opposes nationalisation and has no qualms about friends and family, such as nephew Khulubuse, taking advantage of new opportunities. Khulubuse has just taken a couple of oil blocks in Congo-Kinshasa, thanks to commercial diplomacy from President Joseph Kabila. That makes Zuma’s encounter with United States President Barack Obama in New York somewhat puzzling. Zuma deliberately departed from his talking points, we hear, to tell Obama that Kabila’s political days might be numbered. Zuma said that Kabila’s popularity had nosedived, while Congolese oppositionists such as Vital Kamerhe, Kalaa Mpinga and Jean Pierre Bemba (currently detained by the International Criminal Court) would win a free and fair election. They may not have expected to, but it seems that US and South African officials agree about President Kabila’s mounting problems.
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