The Post-Colonial States of Southern Africa

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

The former anti-colonial movements in southern Africa exercise, as governments, continued control over the sovereign states that emerged. 

The party-based regimes that emerged in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa were organized around ideology, ethnicity, or bonds of solidarity rooted in a shared experience of violent struggle. 

As such they have been able to survive economic crisis, leadership succession, and opposition challenges.

In effect, they would be, even though there were contested elections, effectively one-party entities.

In reality, therefore, a new elite secured through its access to the state a similar status to those who under the old system were the privileged few.

This was certain to breed dissatisfaction, of course. Because the majority of the electorate has now moved beyond the struggles to free their countries. 

Their expectations are measured against the promises and failures, rather than the expected reward for being liberated.

So these governments now try to claim that any form of injustice is rooted in the colonial past.

When the regime of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe lost support among the majority of people, it declared the white commercial farmers to be the root cause of all evil and initiated expropriation of their lands. But the main beneficiaries of the land redistribution were members of the new elite. 

Indeed, Mugabe had publicly declared that he would never make room for a political opposition party by categorically stating that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) would never be allowed to govern the country.

While Mugabe was finally ousted in 2017, his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) remains in power, following a disputed election that saw Emmerson Mnangagwa take over.

In Namibia, Sam Nujoma was president of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) from its founding in 1960 until 2007, and the first head of state of Namibia from independence in 1990 until 2005.

Another SWAPO freedom fighter, Hage Geingob, is now in office. He is the third SWAPO head of state. 

A survey conducted by the United Nations in 2016 showed that 37 per cent of the population was malnourished. Blame for this was placed on external factors.

Namibians are set to vote in the presidential and parliamentary elections in November this year. McHenry Venani, leader of the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM), has warned of SWAPO’s “greed.”

He wants to end SWAPO’s privilege and elitism where one can only benefit if they support a certain faction within the ruling party. But he is unlikely to prevail against Geingob’s political machine.

In South Africa, the post-Mandela years has seen major economic and political corruption, well publicized around the world. Power struggles inside the African National Congress (ANC) finally removed President Jacob Zuma last year. 

Under fire for large-scale embezzlement and nepotism, Zuma tried to remain in power by posing as an opponent of “white monopoly capital.” He mobilised resentments to those associated with the settler-colonial past, and aimed at discrediting competitors as sell-outs.

His replacement, Cyril Ramaphosa, has allowed political credibility to be regained among ordinary voters. But he has amassed an estimated fortune of $450 million mainly through his involvement in mining companies, and the divide between rich and poor continues to grow.

An African State on the Verge of Violence

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Many of us still remember the horrific genocide that occurred in Rwanda twenty-five years ago, in which upwards of a million people were slaughtered in just a three-month period.

Bu that little country in eastern Africa has a “mirror image” as its southern neighbor, one with similar ethnic turmoil. It leads to the same ever-present threat of massive violence.

In Burundi, like Rwanda, 85 per cent of the population are of Hutu ethnic origin, while 15 per cent are Tutsi. But unlike Rwanda, the country is run by an oppressive Hutu regime.

Since independence in 1962, there have been two events defined as genocides in Burundi: The 1972 mass slaughter of Hutus by the Tutsi-dominated army, and the 1993 mass killings of Tutsis by the majority-Hutu populace.

President Pierre Nkurunziza has ruled the country since 2005, winning election at the end of the 12-year civil war that killed more than 300,000 people.

Burundi is due to hold an election on May 20 next year, five years after President Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid for a third term in office in 2015 sparked a wave of unrest.

Nkurunziza was controversially nominated by the ruling National Council for the Defence of Democracy-Forces for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD-FDD). More than two months of anti-Nkurunziza protests, which were often violently repressed, left at least 100 dead.

A coup attempt occurred while Nkurunziza was out of the country. Facing resistance from Nkurunziza loyalists, it collapsed. Independent media was shut down and many opponents fled.

Since that time, at least 1,200 people have been killed and more than 400,000 others displaced, especially in Tanzania, according to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has opened an investigation.

Relations between Nkurunziza and the Catholic Church, to which the majority of Burundians belong, have been tense ever since the church opposed his bid for the third term in 2015, claiming it was a breach of the constitution.

None of this seems to have had much effect. In March 2018, the CNDD-FDD named Nkurunziza the country’s “eternal supreme guide.”

A referendum two months later saw Burundians overwhelmingly vote for constitutional reforms that could allow him to stay in office until 2034, although he has said he wouldn’t seek re-election next year.

The Burundi government has also been highly critical of reports issued by international organizations. Last December, it shut down the UN Human Rights office in the capital, Bujumbura, after 23 years, branding their investigations into crimes against humanity as lies.

The ruling party’s youth league, the Imbonerakure, has been accused of carrying out killings, kidnappings, arbitrary arrests and acts of torture and rape. 

Since the Ministry of Home Affairs approved a new political party, the National Congress for Liberty, in February, its offices across the country have repeatedly been vandalized.

Nkurunziza has announced he will not stand for election in 2020, but whatever his decision, it is unlikely to resolve the problems plaguing Burundi.

There are mounting worries for Burundi’s economy, which is slowly suffocating under the impact of economic sanctions.

This may force the president and his hard-line supporters into reaching out to opponents in a bid to ease the deepening crisis.

Bloc Surge Portends Rough Ride for Canada

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner
 

Like those proverbial creatures in horror films who never die, the Bloc Québécois, with its 32 seats following the federal election, is alive and well – yet again.

They were written off as dead in the last two elections, losing most of their seats to the New Democrats. The Bloc won only four seats in 2011 and 10 in 2015.

The tables were turned this time – the NDP went from 14 seats to two.

Disappointed Conservatives, who won 10, again failed to make gains in the province.

The result is stark: federal Liberals were left with 34 seats, while the nationalist blocquistes dominate Quebec’s 78 ridings.

It was also a contest between an ethnically diverse major city, Montreal, dominated by Justin Trudeau’s federalists, and a largely French-Canadian hinterland.

Nations don’t die, even when conquered by others. Ask, say, Poles or Serbs.

 “I find we are very much alive,” Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet remarked in reference to predictions the Bloc was dying. “We are coming back from far, and we will go still further.”

Nationalism is a critical concept that distinguishes how a community, group, or nation define themselves, their sense of belonging and allegiance, and distinguish themselves from others. 

The Bloc won big in the wake of last year’s victory by a nationalist party, the Coalition Avenir Québec, in the provincial election.

That government’s adoption of Bill 21, which enfored "state secularism" on government employees, reignited the nationalism versus multiculturalism debate. That evolved into the theme of defending Quebec’s interests.

It calls for teachers, police officers, and judges to be free of all religious symbols when on the job, and for those who provide or require formal identification to receive provincial government services to do so with their faces uncovered.

In the rest of Canada, which is now ideologically wedded to a civic liberal form of identity, one that shuns any forms of ethnic or religious collectivity, Quebec’s law was, not surprisingly, seen as a form of bigotry and racism (though religious symbols by themselves have little to do with “race.”) 

But for a national minority living in a compact “homeland,” one that has since 1759 seen itself as battling to keep alive its separate identity, it was a way of fending off its perennial fear – that it would eventually lose its identity and become a multicultural stew of people from anywhere and everywhere, as has become the case in the rest of Canada, which since the 1960s has jettisoned its British past.

Bill 21 is wildly popular in Quebec and francophones in that province are aware that no other federal party supports it. The rest is history. In effect, it was the ballot question.

The election provided other evidence of stark divisions in the country. The Prairie provinces voted overwhelmingly for the losing Conservatives. For Albertans, in particular, whose fossil-fuel economy is now under siege by the climate change activists, it was a disaster.

Calgary’s downtown towers are one-third empty. A minority Liberal government propped up by the NDP and Greens will never build another pipeline, nor will landlocked Alberta find much support from British Columbians, and certainly not from Quebecers, who are more concerned with environmental pollution than jobs in the oil patch.

A rough ride ahead, Canada.

Kurds Thrown to Wolves by the US

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

As the Kurds always tell the world, they have no friends but the mountains.

This was demonstrated yet again earlier this month, as the Kurds in war-torn Syria were deserted by U.S. President Donald Trump and left to the tender mercies of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is determined to wipe out any vestige of Kurdish self-rule in Syria.

The Turkish military incursion into northern Syria came after the Trump administration decided to withdraw American troops, which had offered a measure of protection to the Kurds.

Trump declared that, with the Islamic State largely defeated, the United States has no business in Syria any longer.

So the Kurds were reduced, as a fallback, to a quick alliance with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – also no democrat, nor exactly a friend, either.

“If we have to choose between compromise and genocide, we will choose our people,” declared Mazloum Abdi, the commander-in-chief of the Kurdish forces.

This has left open the possibility of an armed confrontation between the Turkish and Syrian armies in the buffer zone that Turkey seeks to create along its long border with Syria.

The Kurds, at least 30 million people, are the largest ethnic group in the world without a state of their own, but most live in Turkey and Iraq, and so the world’s attention has mainly been paid to the Kurdish minorities in those countries until now. 

In northern Iraq, the Kurdish Regional Government has been governing a virtually sovereign de facto state for decades.

In Turkey, on the other hand, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is an organization Ankara defines as a terrorist organization. Its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, is currently serving a life sentence in Turkey. Before he was arrested, Ocalan based his operations out of Syria.

In Syria, Kurds make up between seven and 10 per cent of the population -- some two million people. For decades, they were suppressed and denied basic rights. They were largely overlooked until the country descended into civil war.

The Syrian Kurdish militias, known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), are the military wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD). Fighting under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the areas they control in Syria are now known as Rojava, or Western Kurdistan.

The SDF has 70,000 soldiers and has borne the brunt of the fighting against the Islamic State, losing 11,000 fighters. But, by trying to cave out an autonomous region along the Syrian border with Turkey, they have drawn the ire of Erdogan. 

He considers them allies, if not indeed an arm, of the PKK, which has waged an armed campaign in Turkey that has killed more than 40,000 people since 1984. The YPG, after all, was spun out of the PKK in 2003. 

The only ones that have come out relatively well in this whole chaotic mess are the Russians, who are trying to act as a buffer and political go-between. A temporary ceasefire is currently in place to allow Kurdish forces to move away from Turkey’s border.

Perhaps Americans can’t afford to police the world’s tribal conflicts anymore, but Moscow has definitely increased its clout in Syria.

Trouble in a South American Country

By Henry Srebrnik. [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

A Pacific coast country in South America which has seen its share of troubles over the decades continues to do so.

Ecuador, which has a population of 17 million, has a long history of political and economic instability.

There have been periods of democratic rule, but they did not last all that long. Its economy, also, is nothing to brag about.

President Lenin Moreno, elected in February 2017, recently announced a two-billion-dollar fiscal reform package that led to street protests and transport strikes. The reform measures are aimed at improving the country’s economic revenue.

On Oct. 3 he declared a 60-day state of emergency in response to the nationwide protests that followed in the streets of the capital, Quito, and Guayaquil, the country's largest city. After thousands of protesters stormed the parliament building in the capital a few days later, he moved government operations to Guayaquil.

The measure suspended some civil rights, allowed authorities to commandeer public or private property and empowered the military to keep order.

Moreno also announced that Ecuador would be leaving the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), of which it is the smallest member, on Jan. 1, 2020 in order to increase its oil exports beyond the restrictions imposed by the group.

Prior to Moreno taking office, the country had been governed by President Rafael Correa for a decade.  

He won the presidency in 2006 on a platform criticizing the established political elites.

But Correa’s left-wing economic policies left Ecuador with high levels of public debt.

By the end of his tenure, reliance on oil, public expenditures, and international pressure caused a recession, resulting in government spending being slashed.

His governing leftist Alianza PAIS (Country Alliance) party threw its support behind Moreno after Correa left office. But the current president has been forced to clean up the mess left behind by his predecessor.

Among other measures, Moreno was forced to negotiate a $4.2 billion deal with the International Monetary Fund in February by instituting the current austerity policies.

Corruption has been an endemic problem in the country. When he was elected, Correa announced a “revolution against corruption.”

But this revolution never materialized. Instead, Correa eliminated the feeble anti-corruption mechanisms already in place and reduced the anti-corruption budget.

Last year Correa himself was charged with corruption as well as for his alleged involvement in the kidnapping of a rival lawmaker in 2012. He faces up to 12 years in prison if found guilty.

The most serious charges against Correa involve allegations that he took millions of dollars in cash from the Colombian FARC guerrilla group to finance his campaigns, and in exchange gave them free rein along the Colombian-Ecuadorian border.

As well, Correa’s repressive policies toward the media were described by Human Rights Watch as “Orwellian.”  He also allowed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to take refuge in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London.

Some of his former aides are already in prison, while Correa himself now lives in exile in Belgium.

A referendum designed to frustrate any attempt by Correa to return to power, which was approved by 64 per cent of the voters in February 2018, limits presidents to two terms, blocking him from running in the 2021 presidential election.

Even if he never comes to trial, the Correa era is over in Ecuador.

Can U.S. Heal its Political Divisions?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

Deep divisions and intense passions have seized American public discourse since 2016, alarming many academics. With the possible impeachment of President Donald Trump, these will widen further.

“We have these two sides aligned against each other,” Patrick Deneen, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, argues. 

“One is represented by liberal elites in major institutions who spend all their time denouncing the populists and the people, while claiming the mantle of being democrats. 

“And we have populists represented by their own elites who spend all their time denouncing elites but aren’t themselves especially savory characters.” 

They occupy different societies with different values, and the two major political parties are emissaries of those differences, which are increasingly irreconcilable.

Each side pursues ideological purity at any cost because it is increasingly the route to power.

For Prof. Deneen, the urgent challenge is not to eliminate either of these parties but to pressure the elites, both financial and cultural, to put aside their animosities and participate in what he refers to as a “mixed regime.”

“Partisans in the electorate don’t like each other,” observes Steven W. Webster of Emory University in Atlanta. “That encourages political elites to bicker with one another. People in the electorate observe that. And that encourages them to bicker with one another.” 

Over the past several decades, the policy preferences of Democratic and Republican elites and voters have diverged considerably on a wide range of issues. 

Democrats have moved to the left and Republicans have moved even more sharply to the right. As a result, the ideological distance between each party’s supporters and the opposing party has increased markedly.

Unfortunately the reality of sharp partisan divisions over policy issues makes the possibility of reconciliation and cooperation between those in opposing partisan camps much less likely.

Some historians have sounded a similar alarm. “How, when, and why has the United States now arrived at the brink of a veritable civil war?” Victor Davis Hanson, a historian with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, asks in a July 2018 essay in National Review. 

Hanson fears the United States is “nearing a point comparable to 1860,” a year before the start of the American Civil War.

“Left-Right factionalism is increasingly fueled by geography,” he contends. “Red and blue states ensure that locale magnifies differences that were mostly manageable during the administrations of Ford, Carter, Reagan, the Bushes, and Clinton.”

Hansen blames, among other things, globalization, which “created new iconic billionaires in high tech and finance, and their subsidiaries of coastal elites, while hollowing out the muscular jobs largely in the American interior.”

Robert Reich, a former secretary of labour under President Bill Clinton, who is now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, imagines serious social unrest, in which Trump’s potential impeachment lead to calls for his supporters to take to the streets.

Besides, he recently observed in a Sept. 22 article on the website Salon, “no president has ever been sent packing. Richard Nixon resigned because he saw it coming. Trump would sooner start a civil war.”

A dangerously polarized and partisan country would get worse.

China Increases Diplomatic Pressure on Taiwan

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

As the People’s Republic of China celebrated its 70th anniversary Oct. 1, the communist giant continued to increase its pressure on Taiwan.

It considers the island to be part of the country and is determined to isolate it diplomatically and eventually reunite it with the mainland.

In recent weeks, it pressured two small Pacific Island states to switch their diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.

Since Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party took office in 2016, seven countries – El Salvador, Panama, Sao Tome and Principe, the Dominican Republic, and Burkina Faso – have already switched their allegiance to Beijing.

Tsai opposes closer political integration with China, ahead of a Jan. 11 presidential election on the democratically ruled island.

The Solomon Islands changed its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China on Sept. 16.

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the Solomon Islands cabinet approved a resolution recognizing Beijing as the government of China.

China’s foreign ministry said in a statement it “highly commends” the decision to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

“We welcome this decision by the Solomon Islands and support the country to move forward in the development path it has chosen for itself,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.

The Solomon Islands had conducted a weeks-long review of its policy towards China, which was offering $8.5 million in development funds to replace Taiwan.

Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu accused China of engaging in “dollar diplomacy” to obtain recognition.

Four days later, the Pacific nation of Kiribati also broke relations with Taiwan and recognized the Beijing regime.

“We support this important decision by Kiribati as a sovereign and independent nation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters.

“There is only one China in the world, and the People’s Republic of China government is the sole legal government representing the whole of China.”

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry stated that it “deeply regrets and strongly condemns the Kiribati government’s decision, which disregards the multifaceted assistance and sincere friendship extended by Taiwan to Kiribati over the years.”

The statement said that Beijing had lured Kiribati into switching diplomatic recognition by promising full funding, rather than loans, for airplanes and commercial ferries.

Beijing’s drive to cut off Taiwan’s diplomatic partners has fuelled worries in Washington and among U.S. allies such as Australia. The Solomon Islands and Kiribati are both located in waters that have been dominated by them since World War Two.

Kiribati occupies a strategic location roughly halfway between the United States and Australia. The latter, along with Taiwan, has been a leading donor to Pacific nations, but Beijing is increasingly challenging that position.

The decisions by the two island countries were a major win for China as it seeks to turn a dwindling number of countries that recognize Taiwan into acknowledging the People’s Republic.

The losses leave Taiwan recognized by only 15 countries, mostly small nations in the Pacific and Latin America. If Taiwan eventually loses all diplomatic allies, it could weaken its claim to be a sovereign nation.

Still, domestic support for Taiwanese president Tsai has improved against a backdrop of rising anti-China sentiment in Taiwan amid continued anti-government protests in Hong Kong.

Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed early this year to start exploring a Taiwanese version of the governance formula under which Beijing guaranteed Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy when it was returned to China in 1997. Tsai has categorically rejected his overture.

Russia's New Presence in Africa

By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

Russia is seeking to bolster its presence across Africa by building relations with existing rulers, and political, military and business figures.

On May 28, the Kremlin announced that Sochi will host the Russia-Africa Summit, co-chaired by Vladimir Putin and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who also currently heads the 55-member African Union.

To be held Oct. 22-24, this is the first event of this kind in the history of Russian-African relations, with the heads of all states on the African continent invited, as well as leaders of major sub-regional associations and organisations. Roughly 3,000 African businesspersons are expected to attend this event.

Putin told them that Russia “renders comprehensive support to our African partners’ efforts in settling local conflicts and crises, countering terrorism and extremism, drug trafficking and cross-border crime, as well as other challenges and threats to regional and global security.”

During the summit, special attention will be paid to the current state and prospects of Russia’s relations with African countries and to the expansion of political, economic, technical and cultural cooperation.

During the cold war, the Soviet Union supported liberation movements in the developing world and backed insurgent communist guerrillas fighting in Angola, Algeria and what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

But when the USSR collapsed Moscow’s influence faded. In the 1990s, a weakened Russian Federation was too preoccupied with its own economic and political troubles to pose much of a geopolitical challenge.

Putin showed little interest in Africa in the 2000s. But western sanctions imposed in 2014 over the annexation of Crimea have changed that, and his recent interest in Africa is in large part pragmatic.

Moscow is now keen to find new markets and to strike new partnerships, and Africa provides inviting opportunities. Russian interests range from gold in Sudan and bauxite in Guinea, to phosphates and mineral resources in Mauritania, to diamonds in the DRC.

Securing valuable votes on the UN Security Council and worrying western nations are two other reasons for the Russian push in Africa.

In January, Madagascar inaugurated President Andry Rajoelina, who defeated 35 rivals in two rounds of voting. According to a report by the BBC Russian Service, he may have received campaign financing from Russia. The Russians also set up a French-language news service.

Russia is also getting involved militarily on the continent. So far it has also signed military cooperation deals with some 20 African states. Russian troops and contractors have also been on assignments in Egypt, Libya and Sudan.

It has a peacekeeping mission in the troubled Central African Republic, which allows Moscow to expand across the continent, while Russian companies strike lucrative mineral deals.

Russia has donated weapons to bolster the country’s fight against militia groups after receiving an exemption from a United Nations arms embargo.

On May 24, Russia said it was sending military specialists to the DRC to service Russian-made military hardware and equipment there. The military deal was signed after talks between Putin and his Congolese counterpart Denis Sassou Nguesso in the Kremlin.

Russia’s policy bluntly states its plans for Africa. The goal is to shore up Moscow’s power and, to borrow a phrase, “make Russia great again.”