IGIHE

Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

  • White House pushes healthcare vote with ultimatum

    {Approve healthcare bill or Obamacare stays in place, is President Donald Trump’s message to lawmakers.}

    Abandoning negotiations, President Donald Trump has demanded a make-or-break vote on healthcare legislation in the US House of Representatives, threatening to leave “Obamacare” in place and move on to other issues if Friday’s vote fails.

    The move was presented to divided Republican lawmakers behind closed doors on Thursday night after a day of negotiations among conservatives, moderates and others within the president’s own party.

    At the end of it the president had had enough and was ready to vote and move on, whatever the result, Trump’s budget director Mick Mulvaney told lawmakers.

    “Let’s vote,” White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said as he walked out of the meeting.

    “For seven and a half years we have been promising the American people that we will repeal and replace this broken law because it’s collapsing and it’s failing families, and tomorrow we’re proceeding,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said, then walked off without answering as reporters demanded to know whether the bill had the votes to pass.

    Conservatives have condemned the Republican-drafted bill because it scraps Obamacare, but puts another government plan in its place. They believe healthcare should be left to the free market.

    Democrats and moderate Republicans, meanwhile, fear the new bill will take insurance away from millions of people.

    Repealing and replacing former president Barack Obama’s healthcare law was one of the major campaign promises of Trump.

    Mark Petersen, a professor of public policy at the University of California, said getting the bill passed is “extremely critical” for Trump’s ability to move forward with his agenda.

    “Usually when a president comes in, this stage is what we call a honeymoon period. He’s trying to rack up some big wins in Congress to build momentum,” he told Al Jazeera.

    “Right now his White House has been described as in a bit of chaos. He has not been doing well in popular support.” A defeat over the healthcare bill “would be quite a setback,” Petersen said.

    Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare, in 2010, providing health coverage for 20 million low-income Americans previously uninsured. Many middle-income Americans complained their premiums spiked as a result.

    Millions of Americans would lose coverage next year under the Republican plan, according to a review by the Congressional Budget Office made before last-minute amendments to the bill.

    Supporters of Obamacare staged rallies in Washington, DC, Chicago and Los Angeles on Thursday denouncing efforts to repeal the law.

    The Republican bill would halt Obama’s tax penalties against people who do not buy coverage and cut the federal-state Medicaid programme for low earners, which the Obama statute had expanded.

    It would provide tax credits to help people pay medical bills, though generally less than Obama’s statute provides.

    It also would allow insurers to charge older Americans more and repeal tax boosts the law imposed on high-income people and health industry companies.

    The measure would also block federal payments to Planned Parenthood for a year, another stumbling block for Republican moderates.

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • David Friedman approved as US ambassador to Israel

    {David Friedman, a known donor to illegal settlements on Palestinian land, confirmed as ambassador to Israel.}

    The US Senate has approved the appointment of President Donald Trump’s former bankruptcy lawyer, a supporter of Israeli settlement building, as Washington’s ambassador to Israel.

    Trump’s nomination of David Friedman had raised concerns about America’s commitment to a two-state Middle East peace deal.

    But Friedman apologised to lawmakers for his past harsh language at a confirmation hearing last month, and the Senate approved him on Thursday by a margin of 52 to 46.

    Two of the chamber’s 52 Republicans did not vote and two of the 48 Democrats voted against their camp to approve Friedman.

    Trump’s administration has been slow to appoint new ambassadors to replace those who stepped down at the end of former president Barack Obama’s term, and more than 70 posts lie open.

    But the Israel job was seen as a key bellwether of the new administration’s attitude to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Friedman’s nomination was welcomed by the Israeli right.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Twitter that Friedman “will be warmly welcomed as President Trump’s representative and as a close friend of Israel”.

    An Orthodox Jew and the son of a New York rabbi, Friedman is a bankruptcy lawyer who has worked on Trump’s behalf for the past 15 years. He joined the presidential election campaign last year as Trump’s adviser on Israel.

    Before becoming the ambassadorial nominee, Friedman was known as a vocal supporter of Israeli causes, including the building of illegal settlements on Palestinian land in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

    Israeli daily Haaretz revealed recently that he was a donor to the American branch of Ateret Cohanim, a far-right Israeli group that settles Jews in key locations in East Jerusalem, and especially around al-Aqsa, the most sensitive Islamic site in the region.

    He is also the president of American Friends of Beit El Institutions, which raises millions of dollars each year for a settlement close to the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

    He has clashed with American Jewish progressive groups, notably dubbing liberals “worse than kapos,” a reference to Jewish collaborators who worked as guards in Nazi prison camps.

    He has also dismissed the two-state solution – the vision of an end to the conflict in which Israel and a future Palestine live side-by-side within agreed borders.

    Trump’s administration insists it might support this idea if Israel comes to a deal, but has clearly softened the Obama administration’s tough criticism of Israeli settlements.

    Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein voted against Friedman and dubbed him “too divisive to serve in one of our nation’s most sensitive diplomatic positions”.

    And liberal Jewish lobby group J Street said it was “heartened” that the level of opposition to Friedman’s confirmation showed that his views were outside the US mainstream.

    But the Republican Jewish Coalition welcomed the vote, arguing “there is no question that the relationship between the US and Israel will grow stronger”.

    David Friedman has dismissed the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Westminster attack: Vigil held in Trafalgar Square

    {Mourners fill Trafalgar Square after police identify British man who killed four people near parliament.}

    Thousands of mourners have filled Trafalgar Square for a vigil for the victims killed in Wednesday’s car-and-knife attack in the heart of London.

    MPs and members of the Metropolitan Police were among those who held lit candles in honour of the victims on Thursday.

    Police raised the death toll from the attack to five after the death of a 75-year-old.

    “Those evil and twisted individuals who tried to destroy our shared way of life will never succeed and we condemn them,” Mayor Sadiq Khan said in an address to the crowd.

    “London is a great city full of amazing people from all backgrounds and when Londoners face adversity we always pull together. We stand up for our values and we show the world we are the greatest city in the world,” he said.

    Police have identified the assailant in the attack as Khalid Masood, 52, who was born in Kent, southeast England.

    Masood drove into pedestrians who were on the Westminster Bridge before being shot dead by police after fatally stabbing Police Constable Keith Palmer.

    Twenty-nine people injured in the attack are still being treated at the hospital. Seven are in a critical condition.

    Police said Masood had a string of criminal convictions and had been most recently living in central England.

    “Masood was not the subject of any current investigations and there was no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack,” a police statement said.

    “However, he was known to police and has a range of previous convictions for assaults, including GBH [grievous bodily harm], possession of offensive weapons and public order offences.”

    He had not been convicted previously for any terrorism offences, it said.

    In a statement to the House of Commons on Thursday, Prime Minister Theresa May said Masood was once investigated by intelligence officers over concerns of “violent extremism”.

    “He was a peripheral figure,” she said. “The case is historic, he was not part of the current intelligence picture.”

    The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group claimed responsibility on Thursday for the attack. It said on its Amaq website the attacker “carried out the operation in response to calls for targeting citizens of the coalition” of countries fighting ISIL in Syria and Iraq.

    It was not possible for Al Jazeera to independently confirm the claim, which did not offer any details of the attack or name Masood, casting doubt on whether there is any direct link between ISIL and the London killings.

    Joseph Downing, from the London School of Economics, expressed scepticism over ISIL’s claim.

    “To me this is something quite common over the last couple of years, over the terrorist attacks in Europe, that ISIL jumps on the bandwagon in the most horrific way and says ‘yeah, this our soldier’, when there’s actually no link between the person carrying out the attack and any particular group,” he told Al Jazeera.

    Police said eight people had been arrested after raids on six homes in London, Birmingham and other parts of the country in their investigation into the attack.

    Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Phillips, reporting from London, said: “The absolute priority of the police at this point in time would be to know what sort of accomplices, if any, the assailant had. What sort of assistance, if any, did the assailant have and whether he belonged to any sort of network.”

    May said those wounded in the attack included 12 Britons, three French children, two Romanians, four South Koreans, two Greeks, and one each from Germany, Poland, Ireland, China, Italy and the United States.

    Three police officers were also wounded.

    The last major attack to hit London was in July 2005, when a coordinated series of bomb blasts targeted its public transportation system during rush hour. The bombings killed 52 people and wounded more than 700 others.

    People lit candles in memory of the four victims killed on Westminster Bridge and outside parliament

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Antonio Guterres: Salva Kiir is ignoring famine

    {Secretary General Guterres says government in Juba refuses to acknowledge plight of 100,000 people suffering famine.}

    UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has accused South Sudan’s government of ignoring the plight of 100,000 people suffering from famine, 7.5 million in need of humanitarian aid and thousands more fleeing fighting.

    Guterres’ rebuke was delivered to the country’s president, Salva Kiir, on Thursday, mentioning “a refusal by the leadership to even acknowledge the crisis or to fulfil its responsibilities to end it”.

    “There is a strong consensus that South Sudanese leaders need to do more to demonstrate their commitment to the well-being of the country’s people, who are among the poorest in the world,” he said.

    The UN chief was also skeptical of Kiir’s intention to hold a national dialogue, in light of the country’s “systematic curtailment of basic political freedoms, and restrictions on humanitarian access”.

    In response, South Sudan’s deputy ambassador, Joseph Moum Malok, said the government “takes issue with the accusation” that it is responsible for the famine in two counties, adding that other parts of the country are affected by drought.

    He said the government “will spare no efforts to help address the situation and calls upon the international community to help address this urgent matter.”

    Guterres said greater pressure is needed if there is any hope of the leaders changing their approach, which means “first and foremost that the region and the Security Council must speak with one voice.

    The Security Council is divided over two ways to step up pressure on South Sudan’s government-an arms embargo, or sanctions on additional people blocking peace.

    Malok warned that an arms embargo and additional sanctions “would further aggravate the situation and would hit hard the vulnerable groups, as the previous experiences had proved.”

    South Sudan’s three-year civil war has devastated the country, killed tens of thousands, and contributed to a recently declared famine in two counties.

    The war began after a struggle for power between President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar. The pair signed a shaky peace deal a year ago, but fighting has continued.

    The top monitor of South Sudan’s peace deal, former Botswana President Festus Mogae, echoed Guterres’ call for a unified approach that also includes the African Union and the international community, saying the security, economic and humanitarian situation in the country “has steadily deteriorated to an unacceptable level.”

    “Across the board, there is a heightened sense of alarm over the fact that the situation is slipping out of control,” Mogae told the council. “We must now stand together to do something about it.”

    Guterres called for South Sudan's leaders to do more to help the 7.5 million in need of aid

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Hundreds feared dead in the Mediterranean Sea

    {More than 250 migrants are believed to have drowned after two partially submerged dinghies were found by a rescue boat.}

    About 250 people are feared drowned in the Mediterranean after two partially submerged rubber dinghies were found off the coast of Libya.

    Laura Lanuza, a spokeswoman for the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms, said its boat, Golfo Azzuro, recovered five floating bodies on Thursday close to the dinghies, about 30km off the Libyan coast.

    She said the vessels would typically carry 120-140 people each.

    “We don’t think there can be any other explanation than that these dinghies would have been full of people,” Lanuza told AFP news agency.

    “In over a year we have never seen any of these dinghies that were anything other than packed,” she added.

    Lanuza said the bodies recovered were African men aged between 16 and 25. They drowned apparently in the 24 hours prior to them being discovered in waters directly north of the Libyan port of Sabrata.

    A spokesman for Italy’s coastguard, which coordinates and participates in rescues, confirmed the five bodies were on board the rescue boat, which will remain in the area in case of any emergency calls.

    “It is a harsh reality check of the suffering here that is invisible in Europe,” Proactiva Open Arms wrote on Facebook.

    Despite rough winter seas, migrant and refugee departures from Libya on boats chartered by people traffickers have accelerated in recent months from already-record levels.

    More refugees died in the Mediterranean over the first nine weeks of 2017 compared with the same period in 2016, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says. From January 1 to March 9 this year, at least 521 people drowned while attempting to cross the rough waters compared with 471 in the same period a year ago.

    There were about 5,000 recorded deaths in all of 2016.

    More than 6,000 people have been rescued on the central Mediterranean route from Libya to Italy in the last few days, the IOM said on Tuesday. So far this year 16,248 migrants have arrived in Italy, up from 13,825 in the same period last year.

    Last month, European leaders signed a controversial plan to help stem the flow of African migrants to Europe. As part of the deal, the European Union will give $215m to Libya’s fragile government to step up efforts to stop boats in the country’s territorial waters.

    The EU will also provide support for the setting up of “safe” camps in Libya and the voluntary repatriation of refugees willing to return to their countries of origin.

    The plan has been criticised by several aid groups, however, that say leaders have abandoned humanitarian values and misrepresented conditions in Libya, where the UN-backed government of Fayez Serraj has only shaky and partial hold on the country.

    Since February’s agreement was made, consultations between the Libyan government, representatives of the interior ministers of Italy and other European countries have been ongoing.

    On Monday, Serraj asked for and additional $864m in military, rescue and emergency equipment to curb illegal migration across Libya’s border into Europe.

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • South Africa police warn of taxi rape gang in Johannesburg

    {A boy of 10 was forced to lie face down while his mother was subjected to a four-hour rape ordeal in a Johannesburg taxi, reports from South Africa say.}

    He and his mother were allegedly tricked into boarding the minibus taxi before she was assaulted and ordered to hand over her bank card and PIN number by the three armed occupants.

    It is thought to be the latest in a string of attacks by the gang.

    The first reports of the “rape taxi” were made a year ago.

    According to the Roodeport Record, the initial attacks happened in March 2016, with at least three taking place in one week last June. All took place in, or near, the Johannesburg township of Soweto.

    But it is unclear how many attacks there have been in the last 12 months, or if they are all by the same gang.

    Lt-Col Lungelo Dlamini told the BBC: “A group of three to four men driving in two separate [Toyota] Quantums, one grey and another white, pick up women pretending to be a taxi, rob them at gunpoint and then proceed to rape them.”

    Mr Dlamini said it was not known whether the two Quantums were working separately or together.

    {{Praying for her son}}

    So far, two women – including the mother – have talked to local media in South Africa, describing their ordeals.

    The second woman told Kaya FM how a man who had found her after she was attacked had helped another two potential victims he found in the same spot.

    She also said the gang had been carrying a card machine, according to Africa News Network.

    Both women were picked up during the day, the mother at 11:00, and the lone woman at 08:00.

    After the mother and son entered the taxi, the boy was made to lie face down on the floor, while the men raped his mother.

    The victim told EyeWitness News she had prayed during her ordeal that the gang would not hurt her child.

    South Africa has some of the highest rates of reported rape in the world.

    Minibus taxis are widely used form of public transport in South Africa

    Source:BBC

  • Nigerian migrants flown home from Libya

    {Libyan authorities on Thursday flew home 159 Nigerian migrants stranded after failing to reach Europe, in the second such voluntary repatriation operation this week.}

    “In coordination with the IOM (International Organization for Migration), we are repatriating 159 Nigerians… including three infants,” Badreddine Ben Hamed, head of Libya’s anti-illegal immigration force, told AFP at Mitiga airport.

    The Nigerians, wearing tracksuits and new sneakers, were driven to the airport near the Libyan capital in two buses.

    “I wish I could go to Europe but I can’t,” said a woman called Fate, carrying a baby in her arms.

    “I’m happy to be going home,” said another Nigerian woman.

    IOM head William Lacy Swing, who was in Tripoli on Wednesday, visited a reception centre for migrants accompanied by the UN special envoy for Libya, Martin Kobler.

    “We can no longer turn our back on the communities affected by the current migration crisis” in Libya, said Swing, who met with Libyan officials.

    Kobler said it was “a humanitarian imperative” to improve the living conditions of migrants and help with repatriations. “Voluntary return must be assisted,” he wrote on Twitter.

    A group of 150 nationals of the Ivory Coast, gathered from detention centres around Libya, were flown home on Tuesday.

    Six years since a revolution that toppled dictator Moamer Kadhafi, Libya has become a key departure point for clandestine migration to Europe via perilous boat crossings of the Mediterranean.

    The IOM has said 521 migrants died in the Mediterranean from January 1 to March 5, 2017.

    A young female migrant disembarks from a chartered aircraft that returned 155 stranded Nigerian migrants from Libya at Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos, on March 23, 2017.

    Source:AFP

  • Mugabe allies hint they could ditch his party

    {Zimbabwean war veterans, who have given President Robert Mugabe key support in past, vowed Thursday to rally behind “competent” candidates in next year’s elections even those from the opposition.}

    Chris Mutsvangwa, chairman of the association of veterans of the 1970s independence war, previously loyal to Mugabe, said the former fighters were ready to work with politicians considered enemies by ruling ZANU-PF.

    “We will not be bothered about political affiliation,” Mutsvangwa said. “We only want people who are competent.”

    “We can’t have a party run on non-democratic lines,” Mutsvangwa, told hundreds of the ex-guerrilla fighters at a meeting in Harare.

    Last year several war veterans’ leaders were arrested after issuing a strongly-worded statement denouncing Mugabe as “dictatorial” and calling on him to step down.

    “We have been voting people for the past years because they came from the political party that we were in even when you know that the person is not the right candidate,” said Victor Matemadanda, secretary-general of the association told the same meeting.

    “We were forced by party allegiance to vote for that person. We are saying that has come to an end,” he told hundreds of the former fighters at a meeting in Harare.

    “If the people chose a candidate don’t ask which party they come from.”

    ZANU-PF has picked Mugabe, who is increasingly fragile, to stand for re-election in 2018.

    In a surprise move Zimbabwean police last year used water cannon and teargas to prevent a meeting planned by the veterans to air their grievances against the regime.

    Starting in 2000, war veterans led the seizure of white-owned commercial farms in what Mugabe said was a reversal of imbalances from the colonial era.

    Some war veterans have also been accused of widespread intimidation and violence during past elections that have kept Mugabe in power.

    Their meeting on Thursday had been banned by the police and only went ahead after a high court order.

    President Robert Mugabe takes a tumble on the red carpet

    Source:Daily Monitor

  • Thousands flee DRC violence

    {Inter-communal violence in south-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, a top United Nations aid official in the country has said, warning the response was being outstripped by needs.}

    “Unless peaceful coexistence is fully restored between the two communities, humanitarian needs will continue to spiral out of control,” said the Humanitarian Coordinator in the DRC, Mamadou Diallo, wrapping up a three-day visit to the region.

    Some 370,000 people have fled the cascading violence across all six territories that make up the province in the last nine months, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated.

    The insecurity has disrupted aid operations resulting in what Diallo called “among the most urgent humanitarian hot spots in a country experiencing a worsening humanitarian situation.”

    The UN Humanitarian Coordinator led a group that included representatives from UN agencies, donors and non-governmental organisations to Tanganyika’s Kalemie and Manono territories.

    In Kalemie, the delegation visited the Kalunga site, home to some 17,000 people, where UN partners are providing emergency water and health care services amidst ongoing shelter concerns.

    “Speaking to the delegation, a displaced woman pleaded for education projects for the thousands of children living in the site, to avoid their further marginalisation,” OCHA said.

    As of mid-January 2017, 50,000 people who had fled the inter-community conflict in Tanganyika had arrived in Moba and in the outskirt of Kalemie where they are now living in extremely precarious conditions.

    On behalf of the international humanitarian community, the UN asked for $40-million to cover all the humanitarian needs, including $20-million for the most urgent, life-threatening needs for the displaced families.

    The DR Congo Common Humanitarian Fund and the UN Central Emergency Response Fund have recently allocated $5-million each for the response, with the Humanitarian Fund planning an additional allocation of $2-million.

    The humanitarian concerns came as the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for DRC, Maman Sidikou, briefed the Security Council about the deteriorating security situation and the need to implement the December 31 agreement on the electoral process.

    Under the agreement, President Joseph Kabila would stay in office until elections are held by the end of 2017.

    During this period, a “National Council for Overseeing the Electoral Agreement and Process” (CNSAP) would be set up, and a new prime minister named from opposition ranks.

    Source:Enca

  • ISS Today: Burundi keeps knocking at SADC’s door

    {The Southern African Development Community (SADC) may not seem such an exclusive club to many of its own citizens. After all, a few of its members – Swaziland and Zimbabwe spring to mind – systematically violate the club’s ostensible rules, regarding respect for democracy, the rule of law and governance especially, without evident fear of expulsion.}

    But the SADC club is nonetheless turning up its nose at two other countries that are trying to join.

    Burundi and Comoros have both been banging on the door of the club for many months. But SADC, at least for now, is not opening it.

    Last August, a SADC ministerial committee decided at a meeting in Maputo to send a SADC secretariat delegation to Burundi to assess its eligibility to join. The secretariat had already done a similar due diligence investigation of Comoros’s application.

    In February this year, the ministerial committee met again to discuss the secretariat’s reports on both countries. It referred their applications for memberships to a special sub-committee of SADC foreign ministers, according to officials.

    They made secret recommendations. South African President Jacob Zuma announced last week that the applications for membership from Burundi and Comoros would be discussed at the SADC summit in Swaziland last weekend.

    But this didn’t happen. The applications were referred to a broader meeting of SADC ministers, probably to take place in June.

    Official sources said the recommendation of the foreign ministers’ sub-committee was that neither country should be admitted as a member of SADC, at least not yet.

    “You wouldn’t expect SADC to accept a candidate with issues like that,” one official said, about Burundi.

    Another said the SADC consensus was that Burundi needed “to put its house in order” before being admitted. In effect, this demands that Burundi show good faith by engaging in political negotiations, led by the East African Community (EAC), with all genuine interlocutors – including the broad coalition of opposition parties, CNARED (The National Council for the Respect of the Arusha Agreement and Rules of Law), to resolve the country’s political and security crisis, which it has so far refused to do.

    The application of Comoros appeared to have better prospects and some media reports last year suggested it would succeed.

    But officials said this week that although Comoros “technically meets the criteria,” there was still no consensus among SADC members on its applications. Several countries were concerned at the country’s proclivity for political violence and coups (about 20 to date, successful and unsuccessful).

    Those criteria for membership are mainly adherence to democracy, economic development, inclusivity, good governance and the rule of law, SADC’s 15 current member states are telling the two aspirant members (some with their fingers crossed behind their backs, presumably).

    Why either Burundi or Comoros want to join SADC is not entirely clear, though it would not be entirely illogical for either to do so, at least geographically speaking.

    Burundi’s neighbour, Tanzania, is a member of SADC and co-member of Burundi’s proximate international organisation, the EAC. Comoros lies in the Indian Ocean, between Seychelles, Madagascar and Mozambique – all SADC members – and already shares with the other three island states membership of the Indian Ocean Commission, their proximate international organisation.

    Apart from the automatic increment of respectability that joining wider international organisations would normally bring to both countries, there is also a hint of “forum-shopping” in Burundi’s quest to joint SADC, regional commentary has suggested.

    The political negotiations supervised by the EAC to end the Burundi political and security crisis have stalled, amid growing regional disenchantment with Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza’s intransigence. The crisis has widened the rift between him and Rwandan President Paul Kagame, whom he has accused of stoking the armed rebellion against him.

    Does Nkurunziza perhaps hope, therefore, to tap into the anti-Rwanda sentiment that runs in SADC, and which has been engendered by the rivalry between Kigali and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a SADC member state?

    Stephanie Wolters, Head of the Peace and Security Research Programme at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, points out that Angola, another SADC member, is one of Burundi’s closest behind-the-scenes allies.

    She notes that Angola has already helped Burundi through the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) of which both are members. “Before Angola took over the ICGLR two years ago, it was seen as a vehicle for Rwandan and Uganda interests. But Angola’s leadership and its pairing of ICGLR-SADC summits has changed that for now.”

    If Burundi is hoping to use SADC in the same way, that strategy does not seem to be succeeding, at least for now.

    SADC itself appears to be following a different strategy for encouraging regional change, than its approach in the past. In 1997, it controversially admitted the DRC, just months after the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko and while the country was still embroiled in the conflict that was to suck in several nearby states.

    SADC’s strategy then was ostensibly to bring a troubled neighbour into the fold and to collectively try to help it resolve its problems from within. Although, Wolters points out, the massive potential market offered by DRC, and its significant natural resources – including the Inga hydro-electric projects, “were not negligible elements in SADC’s consideration.

    Is SADC’s apparently approach to Burundi different only because of its lack of resources?

    A senior South African official denies any contradiction, noting that it was Pretoria that drove SADC’s acceptance of DRC – and that was because of South Africa’s special interest in stabilising the country.

    Twenty years later, SADC has adopted instead – and apparently for the first time – what looks like a European Union-style strategy, setting conditions for membership which it hopes will incentivise aspirants to democratise and stabilise. This is what the EU did, successfully, with then-undemocratic countries such as Portugal, Spain and some Eastern European states after the fall of the Soviet Union.

    But is this really what SADC is now doing with Burundi in particular? Or does it simply not want to be burdened with the responsibility and the potential damage to its reputation of bringing on board such a delinquent neighbour?

    For whatever one might think of the wisdom of admitting DRC, it did commit SADC and especially South Africa, to try to rehabilitate the chronically turbulent country.

    Though the file is far from closed – and indeed DRC was a major issue at the recent summit – South Africa and SADC claim some success, citing the relative stability of the country.

    SADC would also point to the intervention of Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola in 1998 to save the Laurent Kabila regime from a Rwanda-led military intervention; and also the Force Intervention Brigade, comprising troops from three SADC countries, and which is still fighting armed rebel groups in eastern DRC.

    Another factor that might explain the different SADC approaches to DRC then and Burundi now is that in 2004, SADC leaders – probably as a result of the indigestion caused by admitting DRC – placed a moratorium on new membership, though not completely closing the door on new members in unusual circumstances. The aim was to consolidate the organisation. The exceptions were that after Seychelles pulled out, SADC admitted Madagascar to take its place, as it were, and then when Seychelles decided to return, SADC accepted it as a previous member.

    If SADC is seriously considering admitting Burundi and Comoros, it seems rather fanciful to hope, though, that setting them democracy, stability and rule-of-law conditions for membership will really cure their chronic bad habits, as aspirant EU members changed theirs.

    For one thing, there is a large credibility deficit in SADC’s strategy because of the yawning gap between SADC’s ostensible values and the actual practices of some of its members.

    And the EU has a whole lot more than SADC to offer new members; such as free access to the world’s biggest market for their goods, services – and perhaps most importantly, workers – as well as generous development funds.

    If SADC really hopes to get grudging democrats such as Burundi to plod in the direction of democracy and good governance, it needs to provide a better example and to tie a much bigger carrot to the end of the string. DM

    Source:Daily Maverick