Africa News Digest
Brazil Will Seek Stronger Relations With African Nations
Brazil will maintain its aggressive foreign policy stance, says President Lula da Silva, and will seek stronger relations with China, India, and the nations of Africa, according to Folha de Sao Paulo May 3. Speaking April 30 at a seminar sponsored by the National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES), Lula warned, "Brazil must learn that we are a large country, that our vocation is to grow, and that we don't need to ask anyone's permission [before we undertake our] political, diplomatic and trade relations." Even though Brazil enjoys excellent relations with the European Union, and an important relationship with the United States, he said, "we need to open up new frontiers, and we don't have the right to stand around waiting for someone to invite us."
Making no reference at all to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) so heavily promoted by the Bush Administration, Lula underscored the necessity of moving forward on South American integration, as well as broadening relations with China, India, and the entirety of Asia. Lula also stressed that Brazil has a "political, moral, and historical obligation to increasingly strengthen its relations with the African continent."
See IBERO-AMERICA DIGEST this week for more on Brazil's collaboration with Africa.
Egyptian President Mubarak Visits Khartoum for First Time in More Than 12 Years
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak arrived in Sudan on April 30. Egyptian Information Minister Safwat el-Sherif told reporters that Mubarak and President Omar el-Bashir discussed the lessons derived from what had happened in Iraqhe would not elaborateand the peace process in Sudan. Sherif added that the talks dealt with means to activate organizations set up within the framework of Egyptian-Sudanese integration, and revival of integration agreements between the two states. Egyptian and Sudanese experts who met in Cairo recently were guided in their discussions by the directives of the two Presidents, ArabicNews.com reported May 5.
Directly following Mubarak's historic visit, President al-Bashir left on what was described as an unscheduled visit to Libya. He was accompanied by his assistant, Mubarak al-Fadil al-Mahdi, and Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail, and "will discuss with Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi developments in the Arab world following the Iraq war," the official Al-Anbaa daily reported.
On May 1, Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail told reporters in Khartoum that "the renewed placing of the Sudan on the list of the states America alleges are sponsoring terrorism is unfair and unjust and is not based on any logical justifications." On April 30, the U.S. renamed Sudan and six other countries to its blacklist.
Two Major Energy Projects Link West African Countries
Hydroelectric power generated at the Inga Dam in the Democratic Republic of Congo will be transmitted to Calabar, Nigeria, whence some of it will be sent north to Niger and Burkina Faso. The interconnection was completed April 21 and the system is ready for commissioning, according to Ibrahim Kokuri, outgoing chairman of the West African Power Pool, speaking in Abuja April 30. The project was conceived by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 1982.
Natural gas from the Escravos region of the Niger Delta (Nigeria) will reach Ghana, Togo, and Benin, thanks to the West African Gas Pipeline, a $500-million project first conceived in 1995 under the aegis of ECOWAS. Construction is to begin by the end of 2003 and operations are to commence 18 months later. It is projected that 85% of the gas will be used for generating electricity and 15% for direct industrial use. For electricity generation, the cost of gas per kilowatt-hour will be about half that of oil, according to Dr. Oluremi Aribisala of ECOWAS. Chevron owns 36% of the project, Nigerian National Petroleum Company 25%, Shell 18%, Volta River Authority 18%, and gas companies in Benin and Togo, 2% each.
South African Intellectual Compares U.S. to Apartheid Mode
The United States is now operating in the same mode that the South African government initiated in 1976, namely, shock and awe, according to a member of South Africa's elite, Njabulo Ndebele, Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town. This is so, he charges, because in both cases, the state policy could no longer be sustained by argument. Dr. Ndebele's inaugural address, "The New Logic of War," stands out because Africa has almost fallen silent in the wake of the Iraq war. He noted that what was seen in South Africa earlier and in the U.S. today is that "A powerful country in a state of decline validates its arguments through force.... Of course, the U.S. may take more than a century to finally peter out...." The address was reported in the Mail & Guardian May 6.
The Vice Chancellor, an author of many literary works, began his address by drawing on the movie Brother John, in which Sidney Poitier was "the eponymous hero who returns to the small Southern town of his birth," and finds a "time warp," of racism. Ndebele says the definitive moment was "when Brother John stands on a hill overlooking the town, and the camera, accentuating his visual perspective, zooms in to a dump of scrap metal and other kinds of garbage. In the middle of his kingdom, this dump of discarded things, is a grown white man with a shotgun. He is intently shooting at something: rats. He finally finds one and shoots it many times after he has killed it."
Ndebele continues from this perspective: "The latest rats are Iraqis, in what U.S. President George W. Bush has billed 'the first war of the 21st century.' They follow Palestinian rats on which the Israelis routinely test the latest American gadgetry of destruction. The technological capacity to kill a thousand times what is already dead has been the common feature of the onslaught on human rats.... This was a war without a transcendent goal or cause. It is a war obsessed with its own techniques. We see no heroism in this war. We witness only the deaths of rats and how they are killed a thousand times over; ordinary men, women, and children cynically described as 'collateral damage.'...
"It is difficult not to remember Afghanistan, where food and bombs, thanks to the invading Americans, tumbled from the Afghan skies simultaneously. Kill and feed. Kill and liberate.... It could have been the concomitant intention of the 'coalition forces' to induce fear among observing nations through 'shock and awe' efforts. Unfortunately, it is not fear that has been evoked in me [but] a huge loss of respect for a country I have admired. This war evokes revulsion.
"Indeed, what 'the first war of the 21st century' has signalled is the onset of the decline of a great civilization ... unless it does something to radically alter itself."
U.S. Wants Permanent Military Bases in North Africa
According to Khilafah.com of May 6, "U.S. officials said the Defense Department is discussing the prospects of a U.S. military presence in such states as Algeria, Morocco, and other countries in North Africa. They said the U.S. has sought naval bases or port rights while in other cases Washington wants permission to deploy ground troops.... Officials said Egyptian President Mubarak has rejected a U.S. approach for basing rights in Egypt." The sources cited by the publication were unnamed U.S. officials.
Following the Iraq war, of course, the U.S. is pulling most of its military presence out of Saudi Arabia's Prince Sultan airbase and relocating its regional headquarters to Qatar.
Regime Change in Zimbabwe: Bush Sending Walter Kansteiner
President Bush is sending Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter Kansteiner to Southern Africa to work on edging out President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, in favor of an interim leader from his Zanu-PF party. A May 2 story in the Cape Argus and the Independent (U.K.) claims that the U.S., Britain, and South Africa have a preference for Zimbabwe's former Finance Minister, Simba Makoni. The story says that Makoni "is untainted by the worst excesses of the Mugabe regime and has publicly denounced the chaotic land seizures." Because Mugabe seeks to plan and direct the Zimbabwe economy, he dumped Makoni, a free-market technocrat, in August 2002.
Blair and Bush have been speaking softly while carrying a big stick since the beginning of Anglo-American occupation of Iraq. Blair told the London Financial Times the week ending May 2, "I have never had a difficulty with the concept of intervention. It doesn't necessarily mean that it is armed intervention, it can be diplomatic." Blair has been unsuccessful for more than a year in his attempts to get the British Commonwealth to agree with his desire to blackball and sanction Zimbabwe.
Mugabe's government has been alone in black Africa lately in actively opposing IMF/World Bank hegemony.
Personal Ties Reported Between U.S. Official and Zimbabwe Opposition
Walter Kansteiner also has strong personal ties to Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), claims the Herald, the government newspaper in Harare, May 8. The connections were reported as a strong delegation from the Anglo-American-controlled MDC party embarked for Botswana to meet with Kansteiner. MDC secretary for legal affairs David Coltart is leading the MDC delegation. Sources quoted by the Herald noted that Coltart is a close friend of Kansteiner's, and that in fact, when Coltart is in the U.S., he regularly stays at the Kansteiner home. "They are not just personal close friends, they belong to the same religion, as they claim to be born-again Christians," said the Herald's source.
Kansteiner's wife is a former Rhodesian "who is believed to exert tremendous influence on her husband in defense of white interests, especially former white commercial farmers," according to the source.
China Looks to Zimbabwe for Ferrochrome
China's leading iron and steel company will invest US$300,000 in ferrochrome exploration in Zimbabwe. A 12-member delegation from the Shanghai Baosteel International Economic and Trading Company arrived the first week in April, followed by a team of six experts from Beijing Central Engineering and Research Corporation. Zang Ronghai, who led the delegation, is quoted by the Herald: "We believe that Zimbabwe, which holds 19% of the world's reserve of chrome ore, is a viable option for us to get raw materials from this part of the world." The outcome of the project would ultimately determine the size of the investment Baosteel would make in Zimbabwe.
Shanghai Baosteel International, which produces more than 10 million tons of steel annually, is the largest steel producer in China and the world's third largest.
The incoming Chinese ambassador to Zimbabwe, Hou Qingru, said that concerted efforts were being made to bring more Chinese companies into the country.
Kenya Research Institute Wants DDT for Fighting Malaria
Kenya's leading research institute, KEMRI, has sparked a fight by proposing that the pesticide DDT be reintroduced to fight malaria, now killing more than 700 Kenyans daily, according to the East African Standard April 23. KEMRI Director Dr. Davy Koech said Kenya must act fast. DDT, he said, is one of the most effective pesticides against the Anopheles mosquito, which transmits malaria, adding, "There is no concrete existing evidence linking DDT use for public health with harmful environmental effects."
The Director of Kenya's Medical Services, Dr. Richard Muga, said malaria is a developing problem that regularly changes form. He said the only option is to turn to DDT. Muga told the East African Standard that government chemical analysts and experts from KEMRI are working around the clock to see if it is possible to reintroduce the use of DDT, banned in Kenya in 1986. KEMRI researchers pointed out that DDT was, however, being used in effective malaria campaigns in South Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Mauritius.
Speaking on April 19 in Nairobi, Minister for Environment and Natural Resources Dr. Newton Kulundu said the ban on DDT may have arisen out of an exaggeration of its dangers by scientists. He argued that available evidence against DDT was not sufficient for its continued ban.
The chairman of the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), which monitors environmental impacts of all projects in Kenya, says that while malaria kills 700 Kenyans daily, it takes more than 40 years for one person to die of DDT-related effects.
The LaRouche movement's science publication, 21st Century, has for years campaigned for bringing back DDT to save lives in Africa and elsewhere, and gave prominence to the issue in its fall 2002 edition.
International Accord To End War in Western Ivory Coast
Representatives of the armed forces of Ivory Coast and Liberia, northern Ivorian rebels, and French and West African peacekeepers agreed April 30 to implement a full ceasefire in western Ivory Coast, according to UN IRIN Weekly for April 26-May 2. According to a communiqué issued by the Ivorian Defense Ministry, Presidents Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast and Charles Taylor of Liberiaas well as Presidents Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo and John Kufuor of Ghanastill need to approve the final document.
The meeting was a follow-up to the April 26-27 session between Presidents Gbagbo and Taylor, at which they agreed on the need to have a joint military presence to secure their common border, with assistance from West African and French troops stationed in Ivory Coast. In recent weeks, the presence of government military forces of Liberia and Ivory Coast, as well as mercenaries and other fighters on both sides, had transformed western Ivory Coast into a war zone.
The northern MPCI rebels are now also becoming the dominant force in the West, where they are expelling Liberian freebooters.
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