Liberia’s Charles Taylor jailed for 50 years

Posted on May 30, 2012 | Leave a comment

Reuters Africa

By Thomas Escritt and Anthony Deutsch

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor listens to the judge at the opening of the sentencing judgement hearing at the court in Leidschendam, near The Hague, May 30, 2012. REUTERS/Toussaint Kluiters/United Photos

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – Former Liberian President Charles Taylor was jailed for 50 years on Wednesday for helping Sierra Leonean rebels commit what a court in The Hague called some of the worst war crimes in history.

Taylor, 64, was the first head of state convicted by an international court since the trials of Nazis after World War Two and the sentence set a precedent for the emerging system of international justice.

In an 11-year war that ended in 2002, Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front rebels murdered, raped and mutilated their way across Liberia’s West African neighbour, helped by Taylor as he profited from a trade in so-called blood diamonds.

“He was found responsible for aiding and abetting some of the most heinous and brutal crimes in recorded history,” said the Special Court for Sierra Leone’s presiding judge Richard Lussick, emphasising that the world was “entering a new era of accountability.”

Although shorter than the 80 years that prosecutors had sought, the sentence set a precedent for an international justice system aimed at deterring future war crimes. The court rejected defence appeals for leniency.

“It is really significant that Taylor’s status as a former head of state was taken as an aggravating factor as far as his sentence was concerned,” said Geraldine Mattioli-Zeltner of Human Rights Watch.

“That is a very important precedent and I hope that Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Sudan’s Omar Hassan al-Bashir take note.”

Accused of genocide in Darfur, Sudan’s President Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court. The court will soon start the trial of Ivory Coast’s ex-president, Laurent Gbagbo. President Assad does not currently face charges over the bloody suppression of an uprising. Read more…

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Posted in Africa - International, Humanitarian Issues, West Africa

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Lesotho rulinng party has most votes but will have to share power

Posted on May 30, 2012 | Leave a comment

Mail and Guardian

Lesotho’s ruling party has won the most votes but fell short of the required majority to govern alone and will have to form a coalition.

The Democratic Congress of Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili took 41 of 80 directly elected constituencies in the 120-seat Parliament but now has to woe opposition parties to form a government.

The remaining 40 parliamentary seats are awarded proportionally to parties according to the number of votes they won nationally in the tiny mountain kingdom surrounded entirely by South Africa.

A party needs 61 or more seats to govern alone but the DC is unlikely to muster 20 more.

The main opposition All Basotho Convention (ABC) took 26 constituencies while the former ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) took 12 and the Popular Front for Democracy managed only one.

Mosisili formed the DC in February after leaving the LCD, which brought him to power in the 1998 elections violently disputed by the opposition.

The ABC performed strongly in the cities, reflecting dissatisfaction amongst urban voters with the LCD and DC, but Mosisili regained his dominance through strong rural support, which made up two-thirds of his party’s constituencies.  Read more…

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Posted in Southern Africa

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S African film board classifies Zuma painting

Posted on May 30, 2012 | Leave a comment

Mail and Guardian

While meeting over “The Spear”, the Film and Publications Board has astonishingly seemed to imply it is obliged to suppress political criticism.

While meeting over “The Spear”, the Film and Publications Board has astonishingly seemed to imply it is obliged to suppress political criticism.

The FPB also promised on Tuesday to rate the infamous painting by Friday.

During the meeting convened to hear responses from City Press and the Goodman Gallery – but which was delayed at the last second to include representations from a complainant – the board said it did not have jurisdiction over newspapers, but rejected arguments that it similarly has no jurisdiction over art, cannot control the internet and that the painting no longer exists in its original form.

“Galleries are not areas prohibited from children,” said board chief operations officer Mmapula Fisha, who was chairing the meeting. “We feel that it really is our duty to classify that portrait.”

The organisation’s CEO, Yoliswa Makhasi recused herself from the matter last week, after saying (via a now-deleted Twitter account) that newspapers were trying to bar the board “from publishing the classification decision”, a decision that has officially not yet been made.

The meeting saw a lengthy exposition on the artistic meaning of The Spear by advocate Matthew Welz on behalf of the Goodman Gallery, with a special focus on the use of genitals.

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Posted in Southern Africa

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Sudans restart talks amid bombing accusations

Posted on May 30, 2012 | Leave a comment

Reuters Africa

By Aaron Maasho and Hereward Holland

ADDIS ABABA/JUBA (Reuters) – South Sudan accused Sudan of launching fresh bombing raids on its territory on Tuesday, casting a shadow over the resumption of talks to avoid a collapse into all-out war between the African oil-producers.

The reports, which could not be confirmed independently, came hours before the neighbours sat down to their first direct negotiations since a series of clashes broke out along their disputed border in April.

As officials gathered for the discussions in Ethiopia, Barnaba Marial Benjamin, information minister for newly-independent South Sudan, told reporters Sudanese war planes had continued bombing raids that started over the weekend.

“Today the Sudan armed forces are still bombing in Warguet area (Northern Bahr el Ghazal),” he said in the southern capital Juba.

“Maybe they want to negotiate from a position of strength as they usually do. This is not the first time they have done it.”

Sudan’s army spokesman al-Sawarmi Khalid was not immediately available to comment, but the government routinely denies bombing the South.

South Sudan split away from Sudan in July last year without settling a string of bitter disputes over the position of their shared border, oil transit fees, the ownership if disputed territories and other issues.  Read more…

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Posted in Southern Africa

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Malawi to revert to old independence flag

Posted on May 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

BBC

Malawian MPs have voted to restore the national flag of a rising sun scrapped two years ago by the government of the late President Bingu wa Mutharika.

Mr Mutharika, who died in April, changed it to a full sun to reflect what he said was Malawi’s move from a developing to a developed nation.

A BBC reporter says the move was deeply unpopular with the people of Malawi.

“You cannot rewrite history midway for no apparent reason,” the justice minister told the BBC after the vote.

A former economist, Mr Mutharika governed Malawi for eight years, but had latterly been accused of mismanaging the economy and becoming autocratic.

Following his death, his vice-president, Joyce Banda, took power and has reversed many of his policies.

She had fallen out with Mr Mutharika over his succession plans and left his Democratic People’s Party (DPP).  Read more…

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Posted in Central Africa, Southern Africa

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Coalition on the cards after tight vote in Lesotho

Posted on May 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

allAfrica

Lesotho’s election results were on a knife-edge on Tuesday morning, with the ruling Democratic Congress (DC) under pressure to form a coalition to retain power.

With 78 of 80 constituencies declared, the DC had won 39 seats. The All Basotho Convention (ABC), whose support has surged to make it the country’s biggest opposition party, had 26 seats, and the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) 12 seats.

The Popular Front for Democracy, a tiny opposition party, had a single seat.

Even if the DC wins the remaining two seats, it will not necessarily be able to take power on its own, since 40 more seats need to be allocated to parties on the basis of the proportion of the vote they won.

Lesotho has a “mixed member proportional representation” electoral system, similar to those of Germany and New Zealand, under which most members of Parliament are chosen in constituencies, but the remainder are allocated according to party lists.

The Lesotho Times quoted experts Tuesday as saying the LCD “is likely to be heavily compensated with proportional representation seats because it came second in most constituencies.”  Read more…

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Posted in Southern Africa

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East Africa’s oil frontiers and the rush for resources

Posted on May 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

African Arguments by Taimour Lay

Lake Albert

When you stand on the island of Rukwanzi at the heart of Lake Albert, your first thought, echoing perhaps the casual rhetoric of the region’s oil men, is that you are at the edge of a new frontier. But for its communities the lake is a centre, a point of connection and integration, the great body of water into which the White Nile flows, part of the vast rift valley that draws Africa’s citizens into mutual dependency. What happens here matters to half a dozen neighbouring countries. But the lines being drawn now, as neat and straight as the borders on colonial maps, mark not sovereign territory, but exploration blocks for oil and gas companies.

Just a few miles from Rukwanzi six Congolese were killed in September 2007, shot at by the Ugandan army while they travelled in a passenger ferry from the island to the DRC shore. It was revealed last week that Heritage Oil and Gas, the British wildcat explorer founded by former mercenary Tony Buckingham, played a key role in triggering that military operation after its staff had crossed illegally into Congolese waters.

The incident raises old questions about the dangers of resource extraction in the absence of regulation, accountability and transparency, just as the rush for hydrocarbons spreads to Kenya and elsewhere. But it provides a case study to test other dynamics too. UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) emails obtained during the investigation into Heritage suggest a new rationale was shaping Uganda-DRC relations at the time, one that is continuing today.  Read more…

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Posted in Business and Economics, Central Africa, East Africa

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