In this issue:

ICC To Become Tool of Genocidalist Museveni?

South African Budget Moves Away from Neoliberal Policies

Count Lambsdorff To South Africa: 'You Can't Be Protectionist'

From Volume 3, Issue Number 9 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Mar. 2, 2004
Africa News Digest

ICC To Become Tool of Genocidalist Museveni?

The newest pillar of the oligarchs' new world order, the International Criminal Court (ICC), may suitably brand itself with the mark of Cain by basing its first case on a referral by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who is guilty of crimes as great as—and on a wide scale than—those he refers. The case is that of Joseph Kony, leader of the bestial Lords Resistance Army (LRA), and his lieutenants.

The ICC Prosecutor, Jaime Moreno Ocampo (a former Harvard professor), at a London press conference Jan. 29, announced, with Museveni at his side, that he had accepted Museveni's request to investigate the LRA's crimes. Moreno Ocampo has since appointed a Harvard-trained lawyer to lead the investigation.

Another Harvard Law School graduate, James A. Goldston (executive director, Justice Initiative of George Soros's Open Society Institute, and a former Assistant U.S. Attorney) tried to cover the ICC's exposed flank—Museveni's own crimes—in an International Herald Tribune op-ed Feb. 27, co-authored by a Harvard lecturer. Goldston writes, "International perceptions of the court's competence and credibility ... will be affected for years by the way [it] handles the Uganda case.... [T]he crimes have not been committed by one side only. Uganda's army also faces allegations of abuses,... though not on the scale of the LRA. To date, the government has made little effort to punish the responsible parties." Museveni's hideous crimes in the DR Congo are thus not visible in his view of the two "sides."

Politicians and religious leaders of northern Uganda—where Kony's army of children and the Ugandan Army murder, maim, and rape—largely oppose the ICC move. The Rev. McLeod Ochola, vice president of the Acholi Religious Leaders' Peace Initiative, told IRIN Jan. 30, "This kind of approach [the ICC approach] is going to destroy all efforts for peace. People want this war to stop. If we follow the ICC in branding the LRA criminals, it won't stop." Ochola said that any prosecutions must come after the war has ended. Moses Saku, spokesman for the Ugandan government's own Amnesty Commission, told IRIN that the "position of the Uganda Amnesty Commission is that all LRA should be granted across-the-board amnesty, including the commanders."

When the ICC indicted Charles Taylor of Liberia, West African leaders also said the timing of the indictment endangered their efforts to establish an enduring peace in the region.

South African Budget Moves Away from Neoliberal Policies

The new South African budget, presented to Parliament Feb. 18 by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, confirms the country's departure from neoliberal policies. Manuel "introduced measures to boost employment and more state spending in other sectors, but made little mention of revenues from privatization, earlier a major theme," according to SouthScan, a leftist bulletin of Southern African affairs, Feb. 20. President Thabo Mbeki, in commenting on his government's new budget, attacked opposition parties for their "free-market" policies and for demanding that "the democratic state abandon its developmental role."

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) called the budget "very positive," and said there was "a welcome 9% increase in the overall budget, which will have a positive impact on the social services—especially social grants—and infrastructure, while expenditure on defense remains restrained."

"The novel development this week," SouthScan writes, "was Manuel's remark to members of Parliament that a major rethink was in progress on the government's privatization program. He ascribed this to lessons learned from the disastrous consequences last year of the privatization of power utilities in California."

South Africa's general elections are scheduled for April 14. While some critics think the Mbeki government is only temporarily moving away from neoliberal policies for electoral reasons, SouthScan—not particularly friendly toward the government—is not so sure: "There have been some changes of substance in the real economy, both in SA and worldwide, and this may mean the swing towards the state and away from elements of the Washington Consensus may become more permanent."

Count Lambsdorff To South Africa: 'You Can't Be Protectionist'

Otto Graf von Lambsdorff, former German Economics Minister and chairman of the Free Democratic Party, on a recent visit to South Africa went to bat for the free-market opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA). On Feb. 19, he told a breakfast meeting of German businessmen in Johannesburg, organized by the DA, that the ANC (African National Congress) government's "Proudly South African" campaign, which calls on consumers to buy locally made goods, was protectionist. "You cannot be protectionist. Policies like buying South African, buying German, or buying British are protectionist. You must be looking towards the open market and free trade," he said, adding that "I hear all about [the South African] government's increasingly heavy hand in a number of areas of economic activity." Von Lambsdorff also attacked South Africa's minimum-wage laws.

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