News just broke that the Nigerian cabinet has been dissolved. I first heard about on Twitter. This is an excerpt from the BBC piece from about one and a half hours ago:
Nigeria's acting President Goodluck Jonathan has dissolved the country's cabinet, government sources say...The cabinet was picked by Mr Yar'Adua and correspondents say Mr Jonathan is now trying to stamp his own authority...
Mansur Liman of BBC Hausa says there had been rumours of the dissolution for some time and Mr Jonathan had already changed several senior personnel.
But our correspondent says this is the biggest move Mr Jonathan has made since becoming acting president and he is clearly plotting a new course for the government.
Nigerian acting president Goodluck Jonathan
This comes at a critical time, and the question is: are these news positive or negative? Will things get better after this, with Jonathan strenthening his control of the government? Or is this a further sign that Nigeria is slipping futher out of control? It is obviously way too early to say, and I, furthermore, have no detailed knowledge of Nigerian politics. Nevertheless these are some things to bear in mind:
1) Yesterday, a protest march and demonstration took place in Abuja yesterday. This is part of the text calling for action (at Naijablog):
Young People Power!
March 16 is the date that young Nigerians will march in Abuja to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
Time: 11am
Venue: National Assembly, Abuja (We gather at Eagle Square at 11am PROMPT)
Demands:
1) President Yar’Adua should resume, resign or be removed
2) The promise of 6000megawatts must be fulfilled
3) The 5-month fuel crisis needs to end now
This was organised by the group Enough is Enough Nigeria . A group of young people organised to protest for the current political crisisin the country, and organised via Facebook and other new media like Twitter. The move by Jonathan is in a way, a step in the direction demanded by this group, closin the door of the Yar'Adua administration.
2) As well as the political crisis, violence has affected the country recently in terrible ways: first, it was the violence on the town of Jos, which left hundreds of deaths. Violence between Christian and Muslims communities erupted first in January, and re-appeared again this month. As well as the inter-communial tensions this violence has highlighted the corruption of the police and the passivity of the military. See here the Human Rights Watch Report.On the Niger Delta, amnesty talks were disrupted yesterday by the explosion of two car-bombs outside a government building. The actions were claimed by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), who sought to "announce our continued presence".
3) All this has lead to fears, voiced yesterday by writer Wole Soyinka in converstion with UK newspaper "The Independent", that:
"Nigeria is close to breaking up and its leadership has descended into a "theatre of the absurd"...The veteran writer and civil rights activist told The Independent that his home country was now a "failed state" where ordinary people's "anger has peaked", with potentially lethal consequences. "Nigeria is looking at its last chance in the next year...
"If nothing changes, I cannot guarantee what recourse the people will take," the writer said. "The level of anger has peaked. I don't rule out Nigeria breaking up. That's what can happen to a failed state."
Wole Soyinka speaking at a rally in Nigeria
4) These has also led to heightened international preocupation for the future of the country, following the Niger Delta violence, the Christmas bombing incident, and the placing of the country on list of terror-watch. As blogged here before:
This growing concern has even led an "intelligence oficial in AFRICOM" to affirm "that Northern Nigeria could become like Western Pakistan" (AC 53,3), which in my mind leads to the follow-up question: Could Nigeria be the next Pakistan?...given the growing strategic weight of Nigeria on both the energetic and counterterrorism fields, could this country - like Pakistan - become a (borrowing a fashionable economic term): a country "too-big-to-fail", which will require closer attention, and intervention from the US?
Despite the justified concerns showed by Wole Soyinka, I believe today's move by Goodluck Jonathan is not a further sign of Nigeria's collapse, but a step on the right direction. Judging by the comments left on the online newspaper 234next.com, most readers believe that the disoultion of the cabinet suggests that Jonathan is ready to make some difficult decisions and take control of the country. I hope this is not too late, and wish Nigerian people the best in these exciting times.
Even though African politics, like politics everywhere else, sometimes bring a number of surprises, it is often the case that political affairs tend to be rather predictable. For example, in certain countries the outcome of elections is known well before they take place, as a result of the ruling party's dominant position in politics and society and its nearly total control of the media and public institutions. Generally however, people interested in following, analysing, (even trying to predict) African politics needs to deal with different situations and different degrees of uncertainty which follow from varying levels of information. The problem of “imperfect information” – to borrow a term from the game theory and political science jargon – is particularly accurate in undemocratic regimes, given that these are often the least transparent. Recent news coming from different African countries – all of which, curiously, are examples of national unity governments – can help us see how these different levels of uncertainty play out. And also how this uncertainty and lack of information, relates not only to the more or less democratic character of the regime, but also to how far citizen-driven media and ITCs have mad inroads into the public opinion landscapes of these countries.
The varying levels of information and uncertainty that can be distinguished in any given situation were brilliantly defined by the otherwise unsympathetic (to put it mildly) of the US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, back in 2002. In his now famous words:"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know."
In a few African countries, for a number of reasons, including: a more visible traditional media - TV, radio and, especially, newspapers (as this entry on A Bombastic Element notes) - more developed world of ITCs (with a brand new iHub), various blogs and citizen journalism initiatives, stronger connections to the international media and public opinion, etc – people can have access to a greater level of information, which in turn allows them to have a fairly accurate idea of what the situation is, and what is to be expected. The position of the Kenyan unity government is one such example and, as I have blogged before here (in Spanish though), it is widely known that the accountability of the government and the political class, falls well short of what it is expected, and that in-fighting within the government often hampers political decisions.
Thus, the news last weekend that Prime Minister Raila Odinga's decision to remove the Ministers of agriculture and education from their posts as a result of a fraud investigation, had been revoked by President Mwai Kibaki, was another example – even if this time a more serious one – of a known situation. Below you can see the NTV report on this decision.
A second degree of uncertainty relates to those situations where there is a general awareness of the situation, but the lack on information is important. This has been the case, for example, in the recent events in Cote d'Ivoire, where Friday’s announcement that President Gbagbo was dissolving the national unity government as well as the Electoral Commission to be named, came as a surprise. But only a relative one, given that the elections, planned for next month, had been repeatedly delayed since 2005, and that this time round, doubts had been cast on the electoral roll, after it was found that the electoral commission had fraudulently added nearly 500.000 names to the voting list. All these situation was only briefly covered by the traditional media, and citizen journalism and new media, only partly could cover for this absence, as Miquel brilliantly writes over at Subsaharska. This situation continued during this week, with some blogs and Twitter users – such as @hudin, @eliaws, @ourmaininafrica, @cartunelo, @tndzulo – commenting on the protests which occurred on Monday and yesterday, after there was a delay in naming a new government.
President Gbagbo makes his announcement - Foto Subsaharska
Finally, Cote d'Ivoire's neighbour, Guinea-Conakry, could be cited as an example of numerous unknown unknowns. Even though I am no specialist on Guinean politics, I get the feeling that, ever since the horrific events of September 28th last year (see the Human Rights Watch report here), the international opinion has been constantly surprised by the different news coming out from this country, not all of them bad. These include, in chronological order (and also from worse to better), the shooting of Dadis Camara in December and his swift exit from the country, the decision of the military to name not only a civilian leader, but an opposition leader, Jean-Marie Doré to lead the transition, and the recent unveiling of an interim government, made up of over 30 members both military and civilian, together with the compromise that elections will be held within six months. The unexpected nature of all these events – unknown unknowns – is mostly explained by the scarce information coming out the country – a good example of information however, is the journalist portal Konakry Express - as well as the rather obscure character of the Guinean regime.
Thus, the degree of "unknownledge", this is uncertainty, of any situation in (African) politics, is given by the information available. If we want to be able to understand these different situations then we must encourage the production of more and more reliable information, not only from traditional sources, but also from new media and citizen journalism. Initiatives that, although growing within African countries, are doing it unevenly and often facing serious difficulties, something that results in varying levels of information and certainty.
Last Tuesday it was the 20th anniversary of the announcement of Mandela's release from Robben Island. And what was practically the whole of South Africa talking about...? President Zuma's sex life!! As you probably know by now, a newspaper las Sunday published the exclusive that Zuma had fathered his 20th child. The baby born last October however, was the result of an extra-marital affair with Sonono Khoza (39), the daughter of football magnate and member of the World Cup organising committee Irvin Khoza. Ever since the story broke, all of the South African media, the blogosphere, the twittersphere has been of fire, discussing the matter. As an example, Thought Leader, the opinion portal of the newspapater Mail and Guardian, and the top ranked blog in Africa, according to Afrigator, has published numerous posts on the matter, by different columnists. Just listing some of their titles gives an idea of what are the most important problemas and aspects which derive from the whole story: for example, Michael Trapido - Is Zuma's sex drive out of control?; Marius Redelinghuys - Umshini wethu weSex; Janice Winter - Father of the nation? In that case, the personal is public, Dad ; Khaya Dlanga - The president is public property; Alex Matthews - Why Zuma's sex life in endangering millions; Christi van der Westhuizen - The ‘bonus’ of polygamy, but only if you’re ‘indigenous’ (Part 1), etc
South African President Jacob Zuma with his fifth wife Thobeka Mabhija, whom he married in January (Jerome Delay, Reuters)
I once read something along the lines that (can't remember or find the exact quote): "political scandals in Italy are about always money, and in England about sex", pointing out that each country has a distinctive character that dictates what constistutes a scandal and what is an acceptable, or unproblematic behaviour. In this case South African society and the country's recent history dictate a series of fault-lines which usually dictate how politics is conducted and how public opinion tends to get divided. Most of these fault-lines, which include: the racial legacy of apartheid, how to deal with cultural diversity in the "rainbow nation", the HIV-AIDS epidemy, Zuma's character and his contrast to both Mandela and Mbeki... have been touched in this saga, along with more universal concerns such as: the responsibility of politicians, and the public/private division. Thus, as the story broke the ANC refused to comment alleging that the party had "always made a distinction between people’s personal affairs and their public responsibilities. Insofar as we are concerned, the alleged relationship of the president and anyone should be treated as such”. On a similar note, Julius Malema, president of the ANC Youth League, argued that: “We are Africans and sitting here all of us [sic], Zuma is our father so we are not qualified to talk about that”; an explanation even more questionable as it sought to bring a cultural argument to defend Zuma's actions (in this case the respect for elders).
But the indefensible character of the extra-marital affair, together with Zuma's baggage, and the HIV-AIDS epidemy in South Africa, soon began to weight on the judgements passed on the President - who on Wednesday was forced to admith the paternity of the child (and announced that he would take two days off, because he was exhausted). Let us remember that Zuma was accused (and later acquitted) of raping a young HIV-positive woman in 2006, and that during the trial he admitted having (unprotected) sex with her and infamously declared to have had a shower to prevent being infected by HIV/AIDS (something which earned him a shower-head, courtesy of cartoonist Zapiro, only recently removed - more on this story here). This was an unacceptable behaviour from a South African public figure (and even more so from a future president), but Zuma appeared to have mended his way in last year's AIDS Day speech, widely praised by NGOs and pressure groups, and in which he announced that Anti-Retro Virals would be made available to all HIV positive babies, and that, although mistakes had been made, the government would now lead the HIV-AIDS fight in South Africa, and that himself was preparing to take an HIV test.
A Zapiro cartoon showing Zuma and his shower.
Now, the announcement of this extra-marital paternity threatens to un-do all his work on this deparment, and appears to be affecting his support among the public, and perhaps more crucially among members of the Alliance. Thus, the M&G reports today that leaders of the ANC Youth League, COSATU, and the SACP, although not making openly hostile comments, "are known to have opined privately that his behaviour was simply indefensible". I have written more extensively here, about Zuma's need for delicately balancing the forces within and outside his government if he wants to successfully lead the South African government. It also seems clear now, that the popular support that he enjoyed when he was invested in April last year is quickly diminishing on the face of contiuned economic hardship, and that the political support that he needs, is only being harmed by his "bedroom antics".
No one doubts that 2010 will be a momentous year for South Africa. But in politics, exciting things have been taking place for the past two years - specifically since Thabo Mbeki's ousting from the African National Congress (ANC). Then, barely 10 months later Mbeki was forced to resign, after the Pietermaritzburg Court ruled that the corruption charges against Zuma were unfounded and that they, furthermore, had been politically motivated - we have to remember here that these charges were central to the power struggle between Mbeki and Zuma and the reason for Mbeki's dismissal of Zuma as deputy president in 2005. Finally, the change in power was confirmed with Zuma's election as South African president in April 2009.
In political parties' terms, this was not a surprise, as the ANC's majority in South Africa has not been challenged by any other party - and is not likely to be anytime soon. The most important risk to the ANC's continuity in power, as numerous analysts point out, comes from internal fighting and divisions. One such challenge has already emerged, although not along the expected lines - most people saw as most likely a left-leaning block led by COSATU and SACP to challenge the ANC - but as a result of the Mbeki-Zuma fighting. Late in 2008 CoPe (Congress of the People) was created, and although it got relatively good result for a newcomer, it was far away from presenting a serious challenge to the ANC.
Nevertheless, if for party politics Zuma's taking over from Mbeki as president has not mattered much, there are many other aspects in which this Zunami! it has meant a total change. First, there is a clear difference in the backgrounds (both in class and ethnic terms) of Zuma and Mbeki. Zuma has become the first Zulu president of South Africa, taking over from Mbeki, a Xhosa (like Mandela). Also, while Mandela belonged to a royal lineage among the Xhosas, and Mbeki was born into an educated middle class family - both his parents were theachers, and Mbeki earned his BA and Master's degree in the U.K. (Sussex University), Zuma finished only his primary school. But, despite this clear differences, it is in their character that the starker contrast betweem Zuma and Mbeki appears.
Mbeki always had a serious presence, sometimes seeming even cold and aloof - perhaps even arrogant. He was a theoretical man, used to political dealings to be made secretly, outside from the spotlight, as they had been done by him (with great success) in exile and during the apartheid transition. For those interested in Mbeki's figure and his life, I can recommend Mark Gevisser's book "A Legacy of Liberation". Zuma is the total opposite to this: he's much more extroverted, laughs often, and has a charismatic - some may say populist-leaning - personality. For a more detailed analysis of his policies, you can read this recent special Concerned African Scholars bulletin.
Thabo Mbeki
Nothing however, encapsulates this difference better than their dress-code and their different public behaviour. Mbeki "black englishman" looks - elegant suits, pipe-smoker and a calm on-stage presence could not be further away from Zuma's "Umshini wami" ("bring me my machine gun") chanting in political meetings (see the video here)onstage dancing, and his use of traditional clothing. Zuma is also a polygamist, and last Monday he married Thobeka Madiba,his 5th wife - you can see pictures of the ceremony here. And is Zuma's character wasn't colourful enough, a new figure has emerged in South African politics, who's drawing most of the media attention: ANC Youth League (ANCYL) president Julius Malema. Malema's controversial remarks, often with a racial dimension, have been one of the talking points in South Africa in 2009 - together with his disappointing highschool grades, and his flashy life-style.
President Zuma dances during the campaign for the presidential elections (Photo Jonathan Clayton)
But behind Zuma's charismatic presence and Malema's politically incorrect comments, South Africa faces more serious challenges, which its politicians need to take care. Not only the global economic crisis, which is affecting South Africa greatly, but especially, the response to the crisis that is expected from politicians. Zuma came to power promising a left-turn in social policies, seeking to incorporate those left behing by Mbeki's neo-liberal orientation. But he also promised foreign investors and national capital that not much would change. This squaring of the circle appears as something impossible, and the disaffection gripping society may soon be reflected on politicians. The tripartite alliance (ANC, COSATU, SACP) is likely to suffer and, according to comentator William Gumede, a reallignment is already taking place. At present, the left flank of the Alliance - SACP, COSATU - is dissapointed with Zuma's government, whom they helped to power; and they would like to do something about it (a new "party of the left"?) but their social base is weaker than ever. Winning the support of "new poor" (not-unionised, informal workers, and those unemployed) remains the key challenge for the left. But this constituency is also being wooed by an emerging "nationalist-populist-traditionalist block" (Gumede), who's benefiting from Zuma's popularity and of whom Malema's ANCYL can be perceived as their leader. If Malema wants to be a serious candidate to a good position however, most people agree that he must learn the trade and tone down most of his interventions this coming year. A taste of whay may be hapening to South African politics from here to the ANC 2012 Centenary conference if the rift between the left block and the populist block continues, can be seen in the recent incident at the SACP conference, when Malema was heckled, booed and criticised for his lifestyle. To this, he responded by storming off and calling for the ANC to take actions. Now, a similar treatment from the ANCYL audience to SACP leaders is feared at the Kimberly conference happening today, something that has been tried to be avoided by a number of talks this Christmas seeking to bridge the rifts within the Alliance. We'll see what happens today but, there is no doubt that the excitement in South African politics is far from ending soon. Interesting times do lie ahead!
