President Mbeki is betting his diplomatic credibility on success
in brokering peace in Congo and Burundi
South Africa is about to raise the stakes by committing three battalions for peacekeeping duties in Burundi and eastern Congo, having hosted a succession of summits to persuade warring factions to disarm and demobilise. With Johannesburg mining houses greedily eyeing Congo's scandale géologique, Pretoria's interests are not wholly altruistic but its diplomatic efforts reflect President
Thabo Mbeki's aim of pacifying Africa's conflict zones. Central Africa's conflict takes in six countries - Congo-Kinshasa, Congo-Brazzaville, Central African Republic, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda - before washing down into Angola and Zambia. As long as wars rage across borders and feed new conflicts, serious economic development and investment can be ruled out - a massive obstacle in the centre of the continent to Mbeki's hoped-for African Renaissance. Pretoria has been involved in Great Lakes politics since 1996, when it tried and failed to broker a settlement between Zairean President
Mobutu Sese Seko and his eventual successor Laurent-Desiré Kabila.
The civil war has ended but economic and political renewal
have barely begun
A year after the fighting ended, war-ravaged Angola is on hold. The most pressing issues, such as resettling and rehabilitating more than three million civilians displaced by four...
Mostly quiet on the Iraq war, Colonel Gadaffi wants his oil
industry to be run by US companies
The normally loquacious Moammar el Gadaffi, erstwhile champion of Arab nationalism and bogeyman of United States President Ronald Reagan (and many others) in the 1980s, spent the weeks...