{Addis Ababa – South Africa’s surprise election to the AU’s Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) on Tuesday, has been welcomed as an important boost for the country and for strengthening peace and security on the continent. }
After an absence of three years, South Africa was elected here on Tuesday at the AU’s Executive Council meeting on the eve of the heads of state and government summit which starts on Thursday.
President Jacob Zuma arrived here on Tuesday night and will on Wednesday attend meetings of the heads of state meetings which manage Nepad – Africa’s premier development programme – and the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) through which the 33 participating African governments scrutinise and criticise each other’s governance.
Officials said Zuma was likely to be grilled on xenophobia in South Africa, an issue which has been highlighted in the APRM report on South Africa. Zuma will present the third progress report on his government’s implementation of the recommendations which the APRM panel made in its initial report.
Meanwhile Dr Jakkie Cilliers, executive director of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) welcomed South Africa’s election on Tuesday to the AU PSC, Africa’s equivalent of the UN’s Peace and Security Council and the main continental body dealing with conflicts.
Officials said Botswana and Malawi were supposed to be candidates for Southern Africa but pulled out at the last minute because they said they were not ready.
So South Africa was asked to stand and was elected, with Namibia, to represent Southern Africa.
It received 44 out of a possible 47 votes of AU member states voting in the AU Executive Council of ministers who were preparing for the heads of state and government summit that begins on Thursday.
Officials said the election was recognition of the role South Africa is playing in continental peacekeeping, particularly in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
“It’s also important for South Africa as it tries to bolster its diplomatic leverage on top of its two recent terms on the UNSC (UN Security Council).”
The conflicts in South Sudan, Central African Republic (CAR) and the DRC are expected to be at the top of the agenda. The violence in CAR continues despite the presence of over 5 000 troops of the AU peacekeeping force Misca and over 1600 French troops.
On Tuesday the UN Peace and Security Council gave a mandate to a new commitment of over 500 EU troops to use force to try to quell the violence in CAR.
But Gerard Araud, France’s ambassador to the UN, told journalists on Tuesday that the UN Secretariat believed that 10 000 soldiers were needed to suppress the sectarian violence.
The African leaders are expected to deliberate here in Addis Ababa on how to reinforce Misca.
At a summit of the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region in Luanda earlier this month, which Zuma attended, he was asked by the Great Lakes leaders to help them solve the CAR problem.
His international affairs adviser Lindiwe Zulu said Zuma had agreed to help although no decision had been taken on what form this help would take.
The AU leaders are also certain to discuss the warfare which erupted between South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir and his former Vice President Riek Machar on December 15 and which rapidly degenerated into fighting between Kiir’s Dinka and Machar’s Nuer people. About 10 000 people are estimated to have died.
A fragile peace deal was reached between Kiir and Machar’s factions last week but has not been properly implemented.
And another informal summit of Great Lakes leaders is scheduled to take place on the sidelines of the AU summit here on Friday to discuss progress in the framework agreement which was signed last February to try to end the conflict in the eastern DRC.
As part of the framework agreement, South Africa contributed a battalion of troops to the UN’s Force Intervention Brigade which intervened decisively in support of the DRC army late last year to defeat the M23 rebels in the eastern DRC.
The next mission for the Force Intervention Brigade is to go after the armed rebels of the FDLR – the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda – but this campaign is not making sufficient progress, according to observers.
Daily News
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