A 3.9-billion-dollar arms deal between South Africa and several European multinationals has plunged the country into its worst post-apartheid political crisis, with President Thabo Mbeki announcing an inquiry into allegations that the chief investigator of alleged corruption in the deal was an apartheid spy.

An arms deal worth about 3.9 billion U.S. dollars concluded between South Africa and several European multinationals has plunged the country into its worst post-apartheid political crisis.

On Thursday President Thabo Mbeki announced a judicial commission of inquiry into allegations that the chief investigator of alleged corruption in the course of the deal, Bulelani Ngcuka, was an apartheid spy.

Ngcuka is the head of the country’s national prosecuting authority and together with his team, has kept up a feisty investigation into the arms deal. Among others, he is investigating deputy president Jacob Zuma for allegedly requesting a bribe from Thales, the French defence company.

But a fortnight ago, the hunter became the hunted when allegations surfaced in news report that he had been the spy. An article in the South Africa’s City Press suggested that he was getting his back at senior figures in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) who had investigated him in the 1980s.

The degree of infiltration of the ANC by apartheid agents was high in the struggle against apartheid.

“The purpose here is to ensure that this matter is urgently processed and ensure that in a matter of weeks findings can be made so that we do not have a situation in which (the prosecuting) unit finds itself debilitated by these kinds of spy allegations,” said government spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe when cabinet announced the inquiry.

But apart from the political heat, questions are being raised about the benefits government claimed would flow from the arms deal. South Africa has entered into so-called “counter-trade” agreements with the arms companies where they would provide investment in return for the purchases.

A condom project reported by IPS last year has failed to get off the ground and has not created a single job. The mooted East London factory, bankrolled by Condomie and Ferrostaal – two German companies – was put on ice in April.

Yet government has painted it as a success story, claiming job creation and investment.

The Department of Trade and Industry which with the Department of Defence is responsible for overseeing the counter-trade benefits of South Africa’s hugest arms purchase ever. It highlights the holes in the system which has not yet established water-tight systems of monitoring and compliance.

Previous investigations by the Mail and Guardian newspaper have revealed similar disjunctures between claim and reality. Researcher David Botha of the Institute for Strategic Studies says the arms deal’s off-sets are in fact yielding the promised fruit.

“I am impressed with the results being achieved,” said the researcher, a former Armscor manager. He added, “Here’s a tremendous story and government’s not telling it.”

South Africa paid 3.9 billion U.S. dollars for four corvettes from the German Frigate Consortiums; three submarines from Ferrostaal; 28 Gripen fighters from BAE/SAAB, 24 Hawk jet trainers from BAE and 25 light utility helicopters from Agusta.

In return, it signed off-set contracts valued at 16.6 billion U.S. dollars.

Direct industrial participation (DIP) in the defence industry by winning bidders makes up 2.4 billion U.S. dollars, while indirect participation in the rest of economy comprises the rest. The latter benefits are called national industrial participation (NIP).

Critics say that it will be very difficult for South Africa to pluck the promised fruits as off-set deals around the world often fizzle out. But Botha’s research found that government’s clients had by the end of March met over a quarter (26.5 percent) of their commitments to the defence industry, valued at R3.7 billion (around 507 million U.S. dollars). “Orders have been placed with 38 local companies, and the estimated work content of the contracts placed is 3.6-million man-hours, or an estimated 1677 jobs,” says Botha.

Other benefits are more ephemeral, though as important. The defence industry’s contribution to the economy is negligible but the arms deal has globalised the industry, long a pariah because of its apartheid history.

Says Botha, “In the first place, the industry was visited by large numbers of senior representatives from European industry and defence forces that would not otherwise have been exposed to South Africa.” The Swiss Air Force has, for example, placed a non arms deal related order.

And shareholdings have also been signed, in many cases a lifeline to the local industry which has been weaned of the large subsidies paid by apartheid’s National Party governments for whom the industries were crucial.

While the first part of the offsets have been achieved quite quickly, says Botha, the rest of the contracts are likely to come more slowly. “There is a suspicion that the early successes reflect a tendency to go for the low-hanging fruit, and that it will become progressively more difficult to find acceptable projects as time goes by,” warns the researcher.

Information on the NIPS, the more substantial and difficult part of the off-set package is far more sketchy in Botha’s research and in government’s monitoring. The government’s team had approved 45 projects by the end of March 2003 but not many have moved beyond the drawing board and benefits are still only in the projections phase.

“These projects are expected to generate credits to the value of six billion U.S. dollars over between seven and 11 years. Thus over 40 percent of the total commitment of 14 billion U.S. dollars has already been approved after only three years,” says Botha.

Big projects collated in the research include: a solar panel manufacturing plant in the Western Cape with projected revenues of 20 million U.S. dollars a year; Filk Gold Chains in Cape Town with revenue of about 26 million U.S. dollars a year and which employs 50 people; assistance with agricultural and floricultural exports in the Western Cape have created 1,500 jobs.

But researchers are still divided on whether these investments are additional or would have happened with our without the arms deal.

A beneficiation project with Harmony gold mine in the Free State is projected to raise 37 million U.S. dollars in jewelry sales by April next year.

But as the case of Condomie and other projects show, the road between projections and realisation is long. South Africa’s Professor Paul Dunne in a forthcoming book argues that the projected figure of 65,000 jobs from the arms deal is ambitious and that international research shows that downstream employment creation is in fact limited.

The key weakness in the offset programme is the absence of independent monitoring and detailed accounting of offsets. Neither Botha’s research nor the government have provided details of how off-set credits are calculated.

Watch-dogs like the Trade and Industry committee at parliament do not have the capacity to properly audit the claims, while the Auditor-General Shauket Fakie who had undertaken to monitor the process will only do so when the first “milestone” for offset fulfillment falls due, which is only next year.

For now, the political and other costs of the arms deal outnumber the benefits for South Africa.

An arms deal worth about 3.9 billion U.S. dollars concluded between South Africa and several European multinationals has plunged South Africa into its worst post-apartheid political crisis.

On Thursday President Thabo Mbeki announced a judicial commission of inquiry into allegations that the chief investigator of alleged corruption in the course of the deal, Bulelani Ngcuka, was an apartheid spy.

Ngcuka is the head of the country’s national prosecuting authority and together with his team, has kept up a feisty investigation into the arms deal. Among others, he is investigating deputy president Jacob Zuma for allegedly requesting a bribe from Thales, the French defence company.

But a fortnight ago, the hunter became the hunted when allegations surfaced in news report that he had been the spy. An article in the South Africa’s City Press suggested that he was getting his back at senior figures in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) who had investigated him in the 1980s. The degree of infiltration of the ANC by apartheid agents was high in the struggle against apartheid.

“The purpose here is to ensure that this matter is urgently processed and ensure that in a matter of weeks findings can be made so that we do not have a situation in which (the prosecuting) unit finds itself debilitated by these kinds of spy allegations,” said government spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe when cabinet announced the inquiry.

But apart from the political heat, questions are being raised about the benefits government claimed would flow from the arms deal. South Africa has entered into so-called “counter-trade” agreements with the arms companies where they would provide investment in return for the purchases.

A condom project reported by IPS last year has failed to get off the ground and has not created a single job. The mooted East London factory, bankrolled by Condomie and Ferrostaal – two German companies – was put on ice in April.

Yet government has painted it as a success story, claiming job creation and investment. The Department of Trade and Industry which with the Department of Defence is responsible for overseeing the counter-trade benefits of South Africa’s hugest arms purchase ever. It highlights the holes in the system which has not yet established water-tight systems of monitoring and compliance.

Previous investigations by the Mail and Guardian newspaper have revealed similar disjunctures between claim and reality. Researcher David Botha of the Institute for Strategic Studies says the arms deal’s off-sets are in fact yielding the promised fruit. “I am impressed with the results being achieved,” said the researcher, a former Armscor manager. He added, “Here’s a tremendous story and government’s not telling it.”

South Africa paid 3.9 billion U.S. dollars for four corvettes from the German Frigate Consortiums; three submarines from Ferrostaal; 28 Gripen fighters from BAE/SAAB, 24 Hawk jet trainers from BAE and 25 light utility helicopters from Agusta.

In return, it signed off-set contracts valued at 16.6 billion U.S. dollars. Direct industrial participation (DIP) in the defence industry by winning bidders makes up 2.4 billion U.S. dollars, while indirect participation in the rest of economy comprises the rest. The latter benefits are called national industrial participation (NIP).

Critics say that it will be very difficult for South Africa to pluck the promised fruits as off-set deals around the world often fizzle out. But Botha’s research found that government’s clients had by the end of March met over a quarter (26.5 percent) of their commitments to the defence industry, valued at R3.7 billion (around 507 million U.S. dollars). “Orders have been placed with 38 local companies, and the estimated work content of the contracts placed is 3.6-million man-hours, or an estimated 1677 jobs,” says Botha.

Other benefits are more ephemeral, though as important. The defence industry’s contribution to the economy is negligible but the arms deal has globalised the industry, long a pariah because of its apartheid history. Say Botha, “In the first place, the industry was visited by large numbers of senior representatives from European industry and defence forces that would not otherwise have been exposed to South Africa.” The Swiss Air Force has, for example, placed a non arms deal related order.

And shareholdings have also been signed, in many cases a lifeline to the local industry which has been weaned of the large subsidies paid by apartheid’s National Party governments for whom the industries were crucial.

While the first part of the off-sets have been achieved quite quickly, says Botha, the rest of the contracts are likely to come more slowly. “There is a suspicion that the early successes reflect a tendency to go for the low-hanging fruit, and that it will become progressively more difficult to find acceptable projects as time goes by,” warns the researcher.

Information on the NIPS, the more substantial and difficult part of the off-set package is far more sketchy in Botha’s research and in government’s monitoring. Government’s team had approved 45 projects by the end of Mar. 2003 but not many have moved beyond the drawing board and benefits are still only in the projections phase.

“These projects are expected to generate credits to the value of 6 billion U.S. dollars over between seven and 11 years. Thus over 40 percent of the total commitment of 14 billion U.S. dollars has already been approved after only three years,” says Botha. Big projects collated in the research include: a solar panel manufacturing plant in the Western Cape with projected revenues of 20 million U.S. dollars a year; Filk Gold Chains in Cape Town with revenue of about 26 million U.S. dollars a year and which employs 50 people; assistance with agricultural and floricultural exports in the Western Cape have created 1,500 jobs. But researchers are still divided on whether these investments are additional or would have happened with our without the arms deal.

A beneficiation project with Harmony gold mine in the Free State is projected to raise 37 million U.S. dollars in jewelry sales by April next year.

But as the case of Condomie and other projects show, the road between projections and realisation is long. South Africa’s Professor Paul Dunne in a forthcoming book argues that the projected figure of 65,000 jobs from the arms deal is ambitious and that international research shows that downstream employment creation is in fact limited.

The key weakness in the offset programme is the absence of independent monitoring and detailed accounting of offsets. Neither Botha’s research nor the government have provided details of how off-set credits are calculated. Watch-dogs like the Trade and Industry committee at parliament do not have the capacity to properly audit the claims, while the Auditor-General Shauket Fakie who had undertaken to monitor the process will only do so when the first “milestone” for offset fulfillment falls due, which is only next year.

For now, the political and other costs of the arms deal out-number the benefits for South Africa.

India has the Gandhi memorial park in Delhi, the United States has its Vietnam memorial in Washington and the French have the Eiffel Tower, now South Africa is seized with how it will remember apartheid and establish a legacy project that speaks quintessentially of the country and its history.

Land and millions of dollars have been set aside to build a Freedom Park, a project to remember the past and to ensure it is never repeated. The park will be built in Pretoria, the seat of Afrikaner power during apartheid, but now the governing capital of the country.

The 52-hectare site has a purpose almost as ambitious as the size of the site. “In Freedom Park we give ourselves a chance to address issues of the present and future and commit ourselves as a generation to handing over an intact, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, prosperous and powerful nation to our children,” says Mongane Wally Serote, a poet, former Member of Parliament and now chairperson of Freedom Park.

Called a “heritage precinct”, it will incorporate a national monument, an interactive museum and memorial gardens which are already in construction. The rolling lawns, the largest part of the project, are meant as a place of contemplation and meditation.

“There are not many countries like this one which makes a fuss of its unity,” says Julian Beinart, an American judge of an international competition to design Freedom Park. Not one of the 47 entries from countries that spanned architects from Australia to the United States won because the Freedom Park brief is difficult.

“Often memorials marked the end of wars and death of people, so a universalist memorial is not so common. It’s difficult to conceive, because for so long designers have relied on classical forms,” says Beinart. Such forms include triumphal arches and projects like Trafalgar Square in London. “These were more memorials to winning wars than to making peace.”

The three entries selected as finalists in the Freedom Park competition (there was no winner) did not choose classical forms, but chose imposing designs including one that looked like a UFO, while another decided on structures resembling gigantic bee-hives.

“If you’re going to commemorate a whole cycle of struggle, you need a park that has dignity, simplicity and that avoids ostentation,” believes Revel Fox, chairperson of the judging panel.

Another judge, Max Bond also from the United States, says that Delhi’s Gandhi memorial comes closest to the right idea. With its sprawling parks, and a permanent flame, it is an oasis of contemplation and memory in the bustling city. He would also like to see elements of the Martin Luther King heritage centre in Atlanta replicated in South Africa’s Freedom Park.

“The scale of the buildings should not be intimidating,” says Bond. Freedom Park will be built on a hill opposite the hill on which the Voortrekker monument is built. The monument, built by the Afrikaner (Dutch) settlers who left the Cape to trek into the hinterland, constructed the domineering and austere structure as a permanent reminder of their fortitude and bravery.

In the anti-apartheid struggle, it symbolised apartheid power as it jutted out into the Pretoria skyline, dominating the horizon as its architects tried to dominate the country. Freedom Park should be different, not triumphal, say the designers.

It will also go back a lot further than apartheid and begin at the beginning with the theme of “Genesis” to take account of the paleontological treasures discovered in various parts of the country. The Sterkfontein site outside Johannesburg is the burial ground of skeletons millions of years old.

From Genesis, it will move onto a section capturing the history of indigenous South Africans (the Khoi and San people); the colonial and resistance eras; the apartheid and the struggle against it and conclude on the theme of Freedom.

Since 1994, a number of legacy projects have been undertaken, though on a much smaller scale. The most famous of these is the restructuring of the Robben Island prison into a museum. Robben Island, off the coast of Cape Town, was the prison island on which former president Nelson Mandela spent most of his 27 years jail-time.

Many other senior leaders of the struggle against apartheid were held there and it has been retained as it was then. An apartheid museum outside Johannesburg is also a popular legacy project.

Modelled on Washington’s holocaust museum, it begins with whites and blacks only entrances to give visitors a sense of what apartheid was. Last month, Johannesburg also inaugurated the Nelson Mandela Bridge, a different sort of legacy project that aims to link the largely white suburbs of the city to its largely black inner city. It is unusual in that it uses engineering to create unity.

As the next round of trade talks gets underway in Cancun, Mexico next month, it has emerged that Africa would benefit far more from the better access to the European Union and the United States markets than it does from aid.

The Economic Commission for Africa, a United Nations sub-agency, last week released its fourth Economic Report for Africa, dedicating it to plotting the path to “accelerated development”. A key instrument for development is the dismantling of trade subsidies, said the author Patrick Aseah.

“Abolishing OECD (the organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) agricultural subsidies would provide developing countries with three times their current overseas development assistance (aid) receipts. The elimination of all tariff and non-tariff barriers could result in static gains for developing countries of around 182 billion U.S. dollars services; 162 billion U.S. dollars in manufactured goods and 32 billion U.S. dollars in agriculture,” says the report which also criticises the United States’ farm bill passed in 2002.

“…the U.S. decision to introduce a six-year 51.7-billion-U.S.-dollar farm bill boosting crop and dairy subsidies will reduce agricultural prices, making it difficult for small African countries to compete,” it says.

Mozambique, for example, could offer its people much sweeter fruits if it could increase its sugar exports, said the country’s agriculture minister, Helder Muteia this week.

But this will depend on Europe improving the country’s duty free quota to the European Union. Every year, Mozambique can export 8,000 tonnes of sugar duty-free into Europe, but better weather and improvements in sugar production, means it is now a net exporter. The ECA report says the country has the potential to export 428,000 tonnes of sugar annually.

Overall, the report found that growth on the continent slowed to 3.2 percent last year, from 4.3 percent the previous year. But as the global economy picks up, the report predicts that growth will again grow beyond four percent this year. Boosting growth prospects are moves toward conflict resolution in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and in Angola, but the authors are concerned about the “contagion effect” of the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe and the war in Liberia.

Only five countries achieved the seven percent growth necessary to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals for improved development in the fields of education, nutrition and the advancement of young girls, among others. “The slowdown in regional (African) growth is also due to slower growth in four of the five largest economies in the region: Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Nigeria,” says the report.

Economist Asgar Adelzadeh of the UN Development Programme says growth is not the only measure that needs to be taken into account. “The quality of growth is what is important. It has to be job-creating and distributional in order to ensure that Africa begins to meet the Millennium Development Goals.”

The goals are set by the United Nations and are an effort to meet a set of development targets by 2015 which could halve poverty.

The weather and disease also dragged down growth. HIV/AIDS is reversing economic gains made in the early 1990 as the disease reaches its killing phase, while tuberculosis and malaria remain maladies that strip gross domestic product every year.

Conversely, three of Zimbabwe’s neighbours – Botswana, Namibia and South Africa – ranked with Mauritius and Tunisia as the star performers, both for economic management and for putting in place pro-poor policies.

The ECA’s economic policy stance index, which ranks each of the 53 countries on the continent, is a method of peer review that will be used by the six panellists who next month begin the New Partnership for Africa’s Development check of political and economic governance.

Countries are ranked on factors including: public budgets; an independent central bank and commercial justice system; a national development plan and a medium-term budget.

The ECA also adds points for factors like privatisation and for market liberalisation. The United Nations blames stuttering privatisation for slower growth, but African civil society opposes the sell-off of public assets because it reduces the role of the state in development. Instead, the ECA report punts more private-public partnerships, where the business sector enters into pacts with governments to deliver services and absorb the financial risk of an initial outlay.

Adelzadeh also believes the distribution of income is an important measure that should be included. “At the moment, a lot of growth in developing economies is leading to a concentration of wealth.”

In South Africa, sustained though, moderate growth spurts have not resulted in income redistribution. Over one in three working adults earn less than R6000 (800 U.S. dollars) a year. It is a pattern repeated in other African economies held up as role models.

At a macro-economic level, the report found many governments still profligate spenders, but said that where countries like Mauritius which were running up deficits exceeding five percent for improved education were making a good investment.

Economists have warned against low-deficit chasing for the sake of it. Keeping deficits unsustainably low can crowd out social spending. Nigeria, however, got a thumbs-down for busting its deficit to spend ahead of last year’s general election.

What is clear from the report, the fourth annual report, is that Africa must also increasingly chart her own path and reduce dependence on aid.

The figures are staggering: Mozambique, though the fastest grower, funds 70 percent of its fiscus from aid; Uganda is 50 percent aid dependent while Rwanda is 60 percent dependent. “There is mounting evidence that aid in large quantities is a double-edged sword,” says the report, “initially helping but eventually weakening a country’s economic performance.”

Aid crowds out private investment, a necessary factor for securing the seven percent growth rate needed for decent levels of development. And the report came out strongly against incoherent and inconsistent aid policies among many donor countries.

There was a silver lining among the clouds that are scattered across the report’s prognosis of the African economy. While foreign direct investment (fdi) has suffered, the continent has been less buffeted by the Sept.11 storm and the war on Iraq than anticipated.

Rising commodity prices – including those of gold and oil – have given a fillip to producer economies; while tourists have found safe and cheap havens on Mauritian beaches and in South African game parks.

“Between 1990 and 2000, tourism in Africa grew at an annual rate of 6.2 percent, well above the world average of 4.3 percent,” it says.

In addition, more countries are expected to benefit from the debt relief programme of the World Bank called the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, freeing up funds for social spending.

In addition, enhanced debt relief should staunch crippling capital flight, which is currently equivalent to sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP. Information on 30 countries computed over the past 27 years (ending 1996) shows that capital flight amounts to 187 billion U.S. dollars, ballooning to 274 billion U.S. dollars if interest is taken into account.

The big men of Africa, its heads of state, dominated Mozambique’s port city of Maputo last week as their cavalcades careened through the small city’s roads.

The convoys of between seven and 15 cars apiece – the size depended on the importance of the man inside the Mercedes Benz at the centre of the convoy – scattered ordinary citizens in their wake, filling the sleepy seaside air with their blaring horns.

They raced not only to the official sessions, but also between meetings to lobby for the top executives who will take the helm of the union from Sep. 2003 in its commission.

The African Union and its development initiative, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is Africa’s 14th attempt at a political and economic programme to pull the continent from its quagmire at the bottom of the development pile – and to bridge the massive wealth gaps between the rulers and the ruled on the continent.

The United Nations Development Programme’s annual human development index report released in Maputo last week concluded that the continent is unlikely to meet the set of basic human development indicators called the Millennium Development Goals by its slated date of 2015. Thirty-four of the world’s least developed countries are in Africa.

Alpha Oumar Konare, the former Malian president, was elected unopposed this week as the chairperson of the AU commission. As his name Alpha indicates, he is now one of Africa’s first men and was sworn in on Saturday when the meeting ended.

As the equivalent of the chief executive, Konare’s position will be vital to ensure the union does not go the way of all the other plans which were well-intentioned but moved little beyond their paper versions.

”He is a committed pan-Africanist and a great son of Africa,” said Mozambican president Joachim Chissano at Konare’s induction. Konare will work with nine commissioners, five of whom are women. It is the first time that a governing body on the continent achieves gender parity in its top structure.

The five women also elected at the AU meeting are Julia Dolly Joiner of the Gambia who takes charge of political affairs; Gawanas Bience Philomena, the social affairs commissioner from Namibia; Saida Agrebe, the human resources, science and technology commissioner from Tunisia; Elisabeth Tankeu, trade and industry commissioner from the Cameroon and Rosebud Kurwijila, the rural economy and agriculture commissioner from Tanzania.

A South African diplomat described Konare as ”very charismatic”. Added another, ”He’s highly respected as an influential political figure.”

The former secretary-general of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Amara Essy who also served as interim chairperson of the African Union from its formation in June last year, dropped out of the race when his home country, Cote d’Ivoire withdrew its support for his candidature.

Sources in the African Union said the heads of state wanted to elevate the position of commission chair to that of a head of state to give the Union gravitas. Essy was a former foreign minister.

Each of the nine commissioners are high-ranking public figures drawn from public life, the academe or the civil society sector. ”We wanted to lift the profile of the organisation. (World) Leaders will have no problem meeting Konare and we ensured that he will not be palmed off to co-operation and development ministers,” said a former UN envoy.

In his acceptance speech, Konare showed that his would have to be an outward-looking office to secure support. ”Africa cannot survive without a partnership with the rest of the world. Africa needs the support of the international community, the political and material support,” he said.

While his lobbyists are effusive about Konare, other reviews of the 57-year-old are mixed, with analysts pointing out that the former professor of history and archaeology failed to kick-start a discernible development programme in his native Mali. A BBC profile of him last year painted Konare as a ”master of spin”.

Konare was president from 1992 until June last year and previously served as sports and arts ministers from 1978. Between 1999 and 2000, he was chairperson of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African state (ECOWAS).

An ardent anthropologist, he is credited with being an energetic protector of Mali’s ample archaeological, academic and cultural histories. He takes up his post at the AU headquarters in Ethiopia in September. Konare is married to Adame Konare and has three sons and a daughter.

In addition to serving as chairperson of the African Union, he is also a member of the United Nations Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger and chairperson of the e-Africa Commission on New technologies.

His immediate tasks will be to ensure the Commission’s new structures start working properly quickly and to collect renewed funding for the African Union. Eight member countries are in arrears to the union.

The protocols or laws that will set the supranational standards for the union must also still be ratified by the required number of countries. These include the peace and security council, as well as a Pan-African parliament and the African peer review mechanism.

Through the centuries, Africa’s story has been one of outward migration – from the era of slavery to the present era of migration where hardship and a lack of opportunity have seen many people from the continent seek their better lives elsewhere.

Migration officials doubt whether this net brain drain can be reversed to a brain gain, but the leaders of the African Union (AU) want to harness the energy of the African diaspora to help the continent.

This week, African leaders, who have gathered in the port city of Maputo in Mozambique for the second summit of the African Union, have called on Africans across the world to invest their time, skills and capital in the reconstruction and development of their motherland.

”We must speed-up our work of strengthening our relations of co-operation and solidarity with the African Diaspora,” said South African President and outgoing chair of the African Union, Thabo Mbeki.

The African diaspora is a substantial and influential body of people. The World Bank estimates that the continent lost one third of its executives between 1960 and 1987 because its private and public sectors shrunk, leaving them with few opportunities for jobs and development.

The brain drain is costing the continent 4 billion U.S. dollars a year to replace them with expatriates from the west, according to a recent study by the University of Natal in South Africa.

It says about 23,000 qualified academic professionals from Africa emigrate each year in search of better working conditions.

The diaspora refers to Africans who have left the continent to settle in other parts of the world. The term is used both historically and to describe contemporary migrants.

President Mbeki revealed efforts were underway to bring the Caribbean diaspora into the African fold.

For Mbeki, diaspora links are also an attempt to fix the bonds that slavery and colonialism rent asunder: he extended an invitation to the AU leaders to join Haiti’s bicentenary celebrations of the end of slavery in Jan. 2004.

”In 1804, Haiti became the first black republic in the world, having defeated the armies of Napoleon that sought to maintain Haiti as a slave colony,” he said.

But diaspora links are increasingly vital financial relationships for developing economies. India and China have pioneered emigrant links with their homelands to encourage their ancestral and contemporary migrants to invest both time and money in the two countries.

Despite reservations on the part of some intellectuals living in Africa – who believe those Africans living in other parts of the world have lost touch with the realities of the continent – its leaders are determined to tap the skills and resources of the diaspora.

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) – a programme to kick-start the social and economic development of the continent – details an initiative to ”enlist the support of Africans in Diaspora (AID) in the effective mobilisation of resources by way of investment.

The programme’s architects see the diaspora as an essential part of the partnership: there are significant numbers of migrants and people who claim ancestral links to Africa in the United States, Europe and the Caribbean.

”NEPAD will put in place adequate incentives for regular and substantial transfers by the diaspora, especially as a means of boosting the volume of private investment in Africa. Furthermore, Africans abroad can and should be encouraged to play a significant role in terms of advocacy for their countries and the continent at large,” says a NEPAD policy document.

Primarily, this involves marketing that which is good in Africa to counter the continent’s ubiquitously dark image in the North, where major investment, aid and trade decisions are still made.

It is also about material assistance. Already, remittances (the term for migrant payments) to Africa accounts for more than donor aid flows to the continent.

In Eritrea, for example, remittances account for 83 percent of exports. In Mali, payments from migrants account for a staggering 20 percent of gross national product.

For several years, the Institute of Migration, a United Nations agency, has studied ways in which the diaspora can become a more formal development partner by linking migrants more formally with projects in their communities.

The institute also says remittances should be reflected in the national accounts. Currently, transfers are largely unchecked and no exhaustive studies have been carried out to determine their macro-economic value.

One part of the diaspora programme is to get Africans to come back home. Vincent Williams of the Southern African Migration Project in Cape Town says African leaders will have to study ways to get skilled people back.

Africa’s first task, he says, is to draw up databases to get an accurate sense of the number of people in the diaspora. ”It requires an understanding of why people leave and often it is not just about money. If you understand why people leave, you can address those issues,” he says.

To get migrants to come back requires a huge marketing drive, says Williams. And it should be complemented by incentives. ”(Calling on) their patriotism alone is not enough. There must be practical programmes and the potential to do better,” he says.

When it comes to the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, the United States’ preferential trade pact with 36 countries in Africa, the glass is half-empty or half-full depending on who you talk to.

If you are talking to representatives of the U.S. administration, the prognosis is rosy, with the glass filling up rapidly. AGOA was key this week to U.S. President George W. Bush’s trip to five African capitals. Before his visit, at a Washington briefing, he said, “AGOA is proving the power of trade”.

This week Bush visited Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria, the president’s first official trip to Africa, though he attended independence anniversary celebrations in the Gambia on his father’s – then President George Bush senior – behalf in 1992.

He boasted that African exports to the United States had grown 10 percent from its levels in 2001 to nine billion U.S. dollars. “From countries all across the continent of Africa, AGOA is helping to reform old economies, creating new jobs, is attracting new investment; most importantly (it) is offering hope to millions of Africans.”

This week, South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki said that, “AGOA has had a very big impact in terms of the development of our economy.”

African exports currently comprise two percent of total exports into the United States, the world’s largest market. Most goods are textiles and clothing, an area in which Africa enjoys a competitive advantage because of its natural resources and comparatively modest labour costs.

South Africa’s clothing industry has been saved because companies in the KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape provinces are using the AGOA benefits. Clothing exports to the United States jumped from under one billion U.S. dollars to eight billion U.S. dollars last year. While currency declines in South Africa explained some of the almost 800 percent increase, there is no doubt that preferential access can help emerging economies in Africa which have some export capacity.

It is one of 22 countries – 36 are eligible – with the infrastructure, resource and skills base to make use of AGOA. Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Swaziland and South Africa are the top six beneficiaries of the preferential trade agreement with the United States.

“I call on the U.S. congress to extend AGOA beyond 2008,” said Bush in Washington last month. He added, “We must extend AGOA to give businesses the confidence to make long-term investments in Africa.”

This week, Bush told countries he visited that AGOA would be extended.

Viewed through such a prism, the glass is half-full. But focus on AGOA from the south and the picture skews.

First of all, say critics, poor countries cannot trade their way out of trouble. “…we are convinced that trade between unequal partners cannot be the sole answer to Africa’s development,” said Leon Spencer, executive director of the Washington Office on Africa at a U.S. Congress hearing last month.

In addition, Spencer pointed out that exporting to the United States was complex and required more trade-related aid to enable more African businesses to take advantage of its benefits.

Leading British charity, Oxfam also criticised the U.S.’s contradictory trade policies in Africa: while AGOA is opening markets, America’s domestic subsidies effectively close doors not only to the United States, but also to secondary markets.

“Non-competitive U.S. producers battle unfairly with small farmers to produce items such as maize, rice, poultry, cotton for the world market,” wrote Irungu Houghton and Shehnilla Mohamed in the Mail&Guardian newspaper in Johannesburg last week.

They added: “The dumping of subsidised (U.S.) cotton has led to the loss of earnings of up to 250 million U.S. dollars to West African economies.”

-Womens rights in Africa took several leaps forward when the African Union’s executive council insisted that equal gender representation to its governing structure would not be diluted.

It also passed a far-reaching draft agreement on women’s human rights at a meeting in Maputo this week.

Diplomats gathered in the Mozambican capital revealed that a male lobby had attempted to change an agreement reached at the inaugural African Union meeting in South Africa which provides that five of the 10 positions for African Union commissioners would be reserved for women. They failed and the gender quota will stand, meaning the African Union will have more female commissioners than its European sister. “When we move, we move,” said an African deputy minister.

At the same time, the largely male gathering also passed the far-reaching, though awkwardly named, “Draft protocol to the African Charter on human and peoples rights relating to the rights of women.” This vital addition to the armoury of rights conventions on the continent will outlaw female genital mutilation and enshrine women’s equal rights if it is ratified by the AU.

But with several countries objecting to clauses in the draft agreement, the jury’s out on whether the AU possesses enough political will to make it more than a paper agreement.

Delegates said the gender parity debate was among the more stormy in a relatively quiet week of deliberations of the third session of the executive council of the AU – a meeting of foreign ministers from across the continent.

The commissioner positions are vital – the commission will be the nerve centre of the young African Union and will be the body that will make the union fly or sink. “This is a world first,” said an official from Southern African about the gender parity, adding that, “the gender quota stood” against efforts to torpedo it.

“There was no challenge to the principle [of gender parity],” said the African deputy minister, but the process was challenged.” The AU sought to achieve both gender parity and regional representavity with the election of the commissioners, a task that another diplomat called “impossible”.”

“The meeting had to choose between regional and gender representavity and gender won,” he said, adding that South Africa’s foreign minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma who is the outgoing chairperson of the AU council had pushed hard to keep to the principle.

Commissioners seeking election this week have been put forward by their regions and countries and many more male delegates had been put forward than women.They will be chosen through a points system, which is based on previously held positions including senior political and civil service jobs. Zuma said that women were generally not well-represented in senior public posts and should not be punished by the points system.

Sources said that Zuma delayed her plane trip back to South Africa on Tuesday night where she was to meet United States president George W Bush early the following morning in order to complete negotiations on the women’s rights agreement and to ensure the AU commission would be significantly controlled by women.

The draft changes to the African rights charter, agreed to before her plane took off for Pretoria, are wide-ranging and touch on all the thorny gender issues impacting on women in Africa. Most significantly, it seeks to get member states to outlaw both female genital mutilation and forced marriages, as well as shore up women’s inheritance and property rights. It also seeks to advance the most thorny set of rights of all – reproductive rights which include abortion and contraception.

Africa’s gender dinosaurs emerged as Sudan, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Burundi and Rwanda which all registered reservations to the draft agreement. Tunisia and Sudan both objected to an 18-year minimum marriageable age; Egypt, Libya and Sudan also oppose separation, divorce and marriage annulment by judicial order because Muslim men are allowed, by Sharia Law, to end their marriages verbally and unilaterally.

Sudan – a serial objector to the changes – together with Burundi and Senegal also objected to women’s rights to “control their fertility”; “the right to decide whether to have children, the number of children and the spacing of children” and the right to choose their own methods of contraception.

Libya, Rwanda and Senegal objected to the draft agreement’s authorisation of “medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape and incest” and even to abortion where a foetus may endanger the mental and physical health of a mother.

It has taken eight years for the gender amendments to the African Charter on Human and Peoples rights to get to even a draft agreement because its key advances are so contested.

“This protocol will fill a vacuum in the African Charter in respect to the rights of women,” concludes the draft agreement. Like all other protocols of the African Union, this one also needs to be ratified by 15 countries before Friday so it can stand as a policy of the fledgling union. (ENDS/IPS/AF/AU/IP/FK/SM/03)

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Protestors in three African nations are gearing for marches to coincide with the visit to five countries by U.S. President George W. Bush.

Putting final touches to posters that read “Bush is a weapon of mass destruction”, South Africa’s Anti-War coalition is reigniting its supporters – quiet since the official end to the war in Iraq – to try to persuade government to cancel the state visit.

Bush, joined by secretary of state Colin Powell and his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, will arrive in South Africa next week, the first leg of a five-nation state visit. While the White House reports that Bush has met 25 African heads of state, it is his first trip to the continent as head of state.

They bring with them a 500-strong entourage, 300 journalists, their own sniffer dogs -for security – and their own armoured cars.

In Nigeria, unions protesting against the oil industry are reportedly planning to also target Bush’s visit. There is a close confluence between the African trip and oil. While the stops in Nigeria and Senegal are purportedly to celebrate multi-ethnic and old democracies (Senegal is one of Africa’s older democracies) respectively, they are also two nations being eyed for their oil reserves. Looking to wean itself off the Middle East oil, America is eyeing West Africa’s oil with growing interest. In the medium-term, the economic giant hopes to source up to one fifth of its oil needs from Africa.

In Dakar, Senegal, the activists arraigned around the social forum under activist Samier Amin are also girding their loins for action targeting not only the U.S.-led war on terror, but also the U.S.’s contradictory social assistance and trade policies.

South Africa will not cancel the visit – it regards it as important even though it comes in the middle of next week’s second annual meeting of the nascent African Union. For Bush, the trip is also meant to secure Africa’s support for its ongoing efforts to rout out what it calls “terror networks”.

“America is committed to the success of Africa because we recognise a moral duty to bring hope where there is despair, and relief where there is suffering. America is committed to Africa because we understand failed states spread instability and terror that threatens us all,” said Bush in Washington last week.

Against massive public opposition, both South Africa and Kenya (not on the trip list) are putting the finishing touches to domestic anti-terror laws, while at the same time stressing the need for multilateralism.

The decision by the United States this week to tie military aid to 19 African countries including South Africa, to support its plans to dilute the influence of the International Criminal Court is likely to harden attitudes against the United States ahead of the strategic visit.

While most African nations held the line for multilateralism and against the war in Iraq, the continent has also been feeling the brunt of the U.S. penchant to go it alone.

Protests in Malawi this week against the government of Bakili Muluzi for its decision to arrest, with the help of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), five suspected al-Qaeda supporters, signify a growing demand for national sovereignty by the grassroots.

The U.S. decision to downgrade its representation to the World Conference Against Racism in 2001; its walk-out on the International Criminal Court; and the failure by Bush to attend last year’s World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa have all had ripple effects on the continent.

“It’s an excellent opportunity to discuss the world . post-Saddam’s Iraq,” said South Africa’s deputy foreign minister Aziz Pahad at a briefing this week. “Without multilateralism, you can’t tackle the problems of terrorism, HIV/AIDS and the financing of development.”

One area of focus and possibly thorny discussion is likely to include Zimbabwe. The United States has upped the ante on Zimbabwe, pushing for a more robust stance by South Africa and coming close to labelling it a terrorist state. “Notorious human rights abusers, including, among others, Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe, have long sought to shield their abuses from the eyes of the world.,” said Bush.

This is likely to come up in talks on multilateralism as Mbeki believes the solution to Zimbabwe’s crisis is sovereign, that it lies with the people of Zimbabwe. In Jamaica this week, he reiterated that South Africa would not take a more aggressive role in the neighbouring country.

Pahad said South Africa wanted to top its talks list with an interrogation of “post-Saddam Iraq” and the road-map agreement for Israel and Palestine. “Palestine and Israel are fundamental to solving all the problems that exist in the region,” he added.

What does political power matter if it is not matched by economic power? This is the rationale gripping South Africa ten years after the end of apartheid.

What does political power matter if it is not matched by economic power? This is the rationale gripping South Africa ten years after the end of apartheid.

Now for policy-makers, the most pressing challenge in South Africa is to change ownership patterns in the economy – where three quarters of equity is still in largely white hands.

To get out of its quagmire, government has drafted a Broad-based Economic Empowerment, also known as the black economic empowerment (BEE) policy. It took the policy to parliament last week, where law-makers invited a range of interest groups to comment – and all complained bitterly.

Empowerment is not new, but began circa 1994, when the Metropolitan Life insurance company became the first major corporate to sell to black shareholders. But the process has stuttered along slowly with annual ownership surveys revealing that change was too slow – now government has turned to legislation.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the largest trade union federation, fired a broadside, complaining that the draft law would benefit a small elite. “Promotion of a narrow approach to BEE creates a conflict of interest between those who want to use the state to profit themselves and their allies, and the majority of poor communities who are desperate for affordable services and job creation,” says COSATU researcher Elroy Paulus.

But Lionel October, the steward of the policy and a deputy director-general in the Trade and Industry department says there is a lot in the policy for workers. “I thought there’d be bigger buy-in from labour as the model is broad-based and provides support for employee share ownership, co-ops and union ownership. Skills and human resource development are central and they get equal weighting to ownership,” he says.

The mooted empowerment law sets out the three areas for transfer of wealth as equity, financing and training. The purpose is both to build a black corporate class, but also to ensure that affirmative action in workplaces is accelerated and that the unemployed -largely black, young and female – are trained and accommodated in the formal sector.

October says government believes that empowerment should drive economic growth, currently at a sluggish three percent.

“By increasing growth, you create a bigger middle class. Many foreign investors say that South Africa has a missing middle and that impacts on growth because there is little domestic spending,” he says.

But established businesses – largely white – represented in parliament last week said that the law could impact on growth by over-regulating the sector and making it difficult for small businesses to operate.

Small and medium-sized businesses are responsible for a higher and higher proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) in South Africa but are wilting under a welter of red-tape. Since 1994, government has fundamentally altered the legal landscape, introducing new tax, labour and company laws.

“We are concerned about compliance conditions imposed on prospective investors and we must warn against the possibility of undermining efforts to foster national cohesion and identity,” says Abri Meiring of the South African Chamber of Business (SACOB).

The Chamber represents largely white business which is worried that it will not be able to receive government contracts if they do not take on black partners. Such procurement is increasingly won by companies that can show significant black ownership and control.

But on the other side of the spectrum, black business representatives said government was being limp-wrested in its policy, not going far enough to accelerate black empowerment.

Don Mkhwanazi, the spokesperson for the KwaZulu-Natal BEE Alliance based in the port city of Durban, says the draft law is “almost apologetic” about its aims.

Mkhwanazi also seeks to exclude Indians from the ambit of BEE. Indians, who number almost a million South Africans, and include a large strata of merchants, among them, have benefited disproportionately from empowerment until now, he argues.

This view is likely to gain currency as other commentators have also sought to exclude white women from the ambit of historically disadvantaged people. Historical disadvantage has been defined as including white women but lobbyists are pushing against the provision.

In the era of the struggle against apartheid, a common cry was “Amandla, Awethu” which meant power to the people. Now the era is one of real power to the people, though opponents worry that it may be too small a portion of the population.

Of the 45 million South Africans, nearly 31 million are black, 5 million white, 3 million coloured and one million Indians.

What does political power matter if it is not matched by economic power? This is the rationale gripping South Africa ten years after the end of apartheid.

Now for policy-makers, the most pressing challenge in South Africa is to change ownership patterns in the economy – where three quarters of equity is still in largely white hands.

To get out of its quagmire, government has drafted a Broad-based Economic Empowerment, also known as the black economic empowerment (BEE) policy. It took the policy to parliament last week, where law-makers invited a range of interest groups to comment – and all complained bitterly.

Empowerment is not new, but began circa 1994, when the Metropolitan Life insurance company became the first major corporate to sell to black shareholders. But the process has stuttered along slowly with annual ownership surveys revealing that change was too slow – now government has turned to legislation.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the largest trade union federation, fired a broadside, complaining that the draft law would benefit a small elite. “Promotion of a narrow approach to BEE creates a conflict of interest between those who want to use the state to profit themselves and their allies, and the majority of poor communities who are desperate for affordable services and job creation,” says COSATU researcher Elroy Paulus.

But Lionel October, the steward of the policy and a deputy director-general in the Trade and Industry department says there is a lot in the policy for workers. “I thought there’d be bigger buy-in from labour as the model is broad-based and provides support for employee share ownership, co-ops and union ownership. Skills and human resource development are central and they get equal weighting to ownership,” he says.

The mooted empowerment law sets out the three areas for transfer of wealth as equity, financing and training. The purpose is both to build a black corporate class, but also to ensure that affirmative action in workplaces is accelerated and that the unemployed -largely black, young and female – are trained and accommodated in the formal sector.

October says government believes that empowerment should drive economic growth, currently at a sluggish three percent.

“By increasing growth, you create a bigger middle class. Many foreign investors say that South Africa has a missing middle and that impacts on growth because there is little domestic spending,” he says.

But established businesses – largely white – represented in parliament last week said that the law could impact on growth by over-regulating the sector and making it difficult for small businesses to operate.

Small and medium-sized businesses are responsible for a higher and higher proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) in South Africa but are wilting under a welter of red-tape. Since 1994, government has fundamentally altered the legal landscape, introducing new tax, labour and company laws.

“We are concerned about compliance conditions imposed on prospective investors and we must warn against the possibility of undermining efforts to foster national cohesion and identity,” says Abri Meiring of the South African Chamber of Business (SACOB).

The Chamber represents largely white business which is worried that it will not be able to receive government contracts if they do not take on black partners. Such procurement is increasingly won by companies that can show significant black ownership and control.

But on the other side of the spectrum, black business representatives said government was being limp-wrested in its policy, not going far enough to accelerate black empowerment.

Don Mkhwanazi, the spokesperson for the KwaZulu-Natal BEE Alliance based in the port city of Durban, says the draft law is “almost apologetic” about its aims.

Mkhwanazi also seeks to exclude Indians from the ambit of BEE. Indians, who number almost a million South Africans, and include a large strata of merchants, among them, have benefited disproportionately from empowerment until now, he argues.

This view is likely to gain currency as other commentators have also sought to exclude white women from the ambit of historically disadvantaged people. Historical disadvantage has been defined as including white women but lobbyists are pushing against the provision.

In the era of the struggle against apartheid, a common cry was “Amandla, Awethu” which meant power to the people. Now the era is one of real power to the people, though opponents worry that it may be too small a portion of the population.

Of the 45 million South Africans, nearly 31 million are black, 5 million white, 3 million coloured and one million Indians.

South Africa’s first significant female-led political party was launched in South Africa by Patricia de Lille, a former trade unionist and leader of the Pan Africanist Congress.

De Lille, one of the country’s top ten most popular politicians, is taking the ruling African National Congress head-on with her Independent Democrats. Several surveys show that De Lille is a nationally recognizable politician with strong support across the racial and physical geographies of the country.

A feisty 52-year-old leader, with the mien of a street-fighter, De Lille is aiming for five percent of the national vote in next year’s general election. “I always equate our democracy with a young tree and nine years into our young democracy this tree is growing skew. Now we can all sit back and watch this tree grow off course or we can take positive and decisive actions to rectify the situation,” she said to the rousing applause of 500 delegates who attended the party’s first congress on the East Rand of Johannesburg.

A native of the port city of Cape Town, De Lille began her working life as a laboratory technician in the paint industry, from where she was drawn into South African Chemical Workers Union. At the time, she notched up another first for a female leader. The union was affiliated to the National Council of Trade Unions (NACTU), which at the time was one of the country’s largest trade union federations. In 1988 she was elected national vice-president, at the time the most senior woman labour leader in the country.

From her base in NACTU, De Lille became active in the Pan Africanist Congress, a liberation movement that enjoyed more clout than it does today. At the negotiations to end apartheid, she took pole position in her party’s team. “[She] won respect for her firmness and clarity,” says the “A to Z of South African politics”, which chronicled the talks. In 1994, she was elected to parliament and has since earned a reputation as an anti-corruption crusader.

A R60-billion (about eight billion U.S. dollars) arms deal to re-equip the defence force has attracted numerous allegations of corruption and De Lille took centre-stage in opposing it. This has propelled her into the centre of national politics and imbued her with a reputation as a graft-buster.

“The ANC? They’re too corrupt. Look at the Yengeni business. Look at the Terror Lekota business,” complained Elana Fourie at the party launch.

The ANC’s former chief whip in parliament, Tony Yengeni, took a bribe of a discounted Mercedes Benz by one of the arms companies in the deal, while Defence Minister Terror Lekota was found in May to have failed to declare his private business interests to parliament as he is compelled to do. The two high profile corruption cases are alienating the ANC’s support base, some of whom are joining De Lille’s flock.

Dressed in a fusion-Xhosa-contemporary outfit with ukuchokoza marks dotted elegantly around her eyes, 20-year-old Dudu Shabangu from Port Elizabeth was also at the launch. She said, “I was not an ANC member, but I grew up in the Sasco [South African Students Congress] tradition. We looked to people like Tony Yengeni as role-models. Now you lose hope and faith.” She adds, “What I like is that she’s a woman. There’s lots that us as women can do. Women power,” she reflects, “for youth like me it’s the most important thing”.

The second issue De Lille will campaign on is HIV/AIDS to win the political support of a powerful lobby. “Thousands of our people die of HIV/AIDS each year; scores more will die in the next fifteen years. At least three HIV-positive people will sit in the leadership of this party,” she said to claps from the 500-odd launch supporters.

In South Africa, HIV and Aids have massive gender implications: most people infected and affected by the pandemic are women. Other strong gender policies include plans to beef up the resources and systems to fight women and child abuse.

With the disgracing of Winnie Mandela (she was found guilty of fraud earlier this year and resigned from parliament), De Lille stands to eclipse her as the country’s most popular female politician. “There’s this aura around Pat. I don’t know? It’s like Nelson Mandela, like Breyton Paulse (a national rugby player). I can say there’s something in her that draws you to her,” says Rodney Lentit who helps run the party’s Western Cape office.

“My father died a long time ago,” says an 11-year old girl from South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province.

“My mother died last year,” she says. “That will always stay in me because the life that I am living is not a good one.”

While AIDS deaths are not notifiable and stigmatisation in South Africa is high, researchers for the Alliance for Children’s Entitlement to Social Security (ACESS), believe the girl is an AIDS orphan. She is one of 1.5 million who have lost their parents to a disease that is beginning to peak and so kill off infected South Africans.

South Africa has one of the world’s highest rates of HIV/AIDS infection.

AIDS is the latest challenge to face South Africa’s poor children – officially there are 14 million children living in poverty, though ACESS says the figure is much higher. Spokesperson Laura Polecutt says the figure is closer to 18 million children and adds that they face a series of challenges: the inaccessibility of child grants; family breakdown; hunger and the difficulties of schooling in an era of cost-recovery and declining resources.

Recent research into children’s rights found that many children were being excluded from school because they could not pay fees, though legislation says that no pupils should be refused admission for not being able to pay. But school-teachers and principals pressurised by cost-recovery in turn put pressure on learners.

Said a10-year-old girl from Limpopo province, on the border with Zimbabwe: “My problem is that I am not having pens. The teacher sends us home to ask for school fees and my aunt doesn’t have money to pay.”

Government has started an inquiry into the affordability of school fees. It is still ongoing, though ACESS wants quicker action. “It should be noted that despite a fairly high (school) enrolment rate, the recent financial review of education reported that there are still about 300,000 children not in educational institutions,” says Polecutt.

Social Development minister Zola Skweyiya, who is leading a Child Protection Week which coincided with Children’s Day on Jun. 1, has acknowledged the problem is immense, but says government’s plans have renewed impetus. “Government is taking steps to the quickest possible progressive realisation of the constitutional rights of children.”

Vulnerable children under seven years old receive a monthly grant of R160 (about 22 U.S. dollars), though the child support grant, as it is called, has been dogged by problems since its inception in 1999. It is administratively tedious with many eligible children falling outside the net. “They wrote my birth certificate wrong – they put 1998 and it should be 1988 so I cannot get a grant as they say I am not old enough yet. I have tried to fix the birth certificate many times but it is difficult,” says a child from Mpumalanga province. Caught in such tangled red tape, the payment of the grant has only reached a small percentage of eligible children, though Skweyiya says an effort to sign up children is bearing fruit. “From a mere 60,000 in 1999, we now have 2.6 million children registered for the child support grant.”

And the net of children who receive support will be widened even more from this year because government has lifted the age for payment of the grant from seven years old to 14 years old.

This is a victory for organisations like ACESS which campaigned for the increase. Though they believe the grant should be payable to children up to 18 years old, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) agreed to lift it to include children aged 14 and younger. The increase will be phased in over three years at a cost of R11billion (1.5 billion U.S. dollars).

Research has shown that where the child support grants are paid, they are, together with old age pensions the lifeboat for many rural areas – one in three South Africans are unemployed so the grants are essential for more than just the old and the young.

In addition to getting more children to sign up for the grant, the week is also being used to teach families to spot and prevent child abuse; to investigate child rape and to publicise services for children who are so-called “AIDS orphans”. About R65 million (around 8.7 million U.S. dollars) has been set aside for care for them, though social workers say it is a tiny percentage of what is necessary to stave off the impact of the epidemic on children.

If her school blazer is anything to go by, 17-year-old Charmaine Mahaya is an achiever. Her blazer is decorated from the lapel to the bottom seam with a series of badges symbolising academic and sporting success at her Johannesburg semi-public school.

The final badge is the one she is proudest of: it says ”headgirl” and for her mum, a single mother, the honour has been doubled because Mahaya’s sister is also a junior school head-girl.

Mahaya, with a head for figures, says ”I want to be an investment banker, but I don’t know where to go about looking for a sponsor or for information”.

It is precisely for girls like her, those aged between 14 years and 18 years old, that the cellular phone company, Cell C, has started a national ”Take a girl child to work day” – a concept to shatter gender stereotyping and to encourage young school-girls to go into different careers.

It was a bold attempt to also change the view that women needed to be the equal of men – in fact, it was time to set different standards, said the mistress of ceremonies, Doreen Morris, a successful businesswoman and broadcaster.

She told a launch ceremony earlier this month that it was time to ditch the song from the musical ”Annie get your gun”, with the lyrics, ”I can do anything you can do”; it needed to be ”I can do anything, period”.

”(Girl children) need to know that you shouldn’t get into, say, nursing or hairdressing, just because that’s the kind of work women have always done. If you want to be a nurse or a hairdresser, do it because you love the work. And if you want to be an astronaut or chief of police or the state president or the person who finds the cure for HIV/AIDS, then there’s nothing to stop you except your own imagination,” said Cell C’s corporate social investment manager, Itumeleng Letebele.

Cell C has imported the concept from the United States where the Microsoft Foundation pioneered ”America’s Take our Daughters to Work Day” in 1993 – now a regular event which has ”succeeded in broadening the work ambitions of American women, significantly increasing the numbers of skilled women in the workplace”, revealed Letebele.

In South Africa, the occasion is being modified to take account of the need to reach beyond just middle-class schoolgirls into the areas of the community where the need is greater. Together with the Education Department, Cell C will choose girls from poorer schools.

Participating companies include International Business Machines (IBM), the South African telecommunications parastatal Telkom, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, First National Bank and Coca-Cola among other blue-chip companies who will each take 20 girls to work on May 8. Individual women can take their daughters or other young girls to work with them in a campaign the sponsoring company hopes will gain cachet.

At work, the girls will go through a work experience day, shadowing their mentors for a proper working day.

In addition to showing girls unusual careers, it is also an attempt to bring more women into the economy. Statistics show that while women comprise half the population, they own only half the national wealth. ”The day not only provides the general benefits the experiential learning but also clearly shows children the direct link between education and work,” says Thami Mseleku, the director-general of the Education Department.

Through the project, Mahaya is going to get a chance to join an investment bank for a day to see if the world of financial wheeling and dealing is for her. And for girls less directed and focused than her, the day could give them a sense of the choices..

Government and the AIDS movement are heading for another winter of discontent in South Africa as attempts to forge a national deal on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment fell apart at the weekend.

Despite a march by more than 10,000 people on the opening of parliament to lobby government to sign the deal, President Thabo Mbeki, during a televised interview last Sunday night, poured cold water on the draft agreement, claiming there was none.

The key civil society organisation on AIDS is the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which has a mass base and lobbies for effective treatment now that the pandemic is in its killing phase in South Africa. It is pushing for a national deal to galvanise society to fight HIV/AIDS, but also to secure a partnership among government, business and labour that will see each bring their ”efforts and resources” to the table.

Before they abruptly stopped negotiations, the parties had made good progress on outlining the key principles and priorities for tackling HIV/AIDS. The priorities were defined as prevention and education programmes, de-stigmatisation and anti-AIDS drug treatment.

The draft plan included a phased introduction of drug treatment for pregnant mothers, rape survivors and eventually, coverage of the entire population.

Research has shown that treatment with anti-retroviral drugs can prolong life, but activists estimate that 3,500 people die every week. ”We remember every child, every mother who has died of AIDS,” said TAC Zackie Achmat at last week’s march.

The TAC quoted a Constitutional Court judgement last year in which judges issued a call to society to act together. The judges had said that, ”The magnitude of the HIV/AIDS challenge facing the country calls for a concerted, co-ordinated and co-operative national effort….”. AIDS activists argue that the framework agreement is such a national effort, which has now been scotched by government.

Opposition has come loud and fast. The Congress of South Africa Trade Unions (COSATU) has criticised government’s stand, while the TAC is planning a civil disobedience campaign and a legal challenge to government if it does not respond by next month. Previous campaigns by the TAC have included the illegal import of generic anti-retrovirals from Brazil and Thailand for distribution to people living with HIV who needed them.

The TAC last year mounted a constitutional court challenge to government forcing it to provide a mother-to-child treatment programme to stem the transmission of HIV. It won the court case, with an order by the judges for government to provide such a programme. Not all of South Africa’s nine provincial administrations has implemented the decision, driving another wedge between civil society and the health authorities.

A comprehensive strategy on HIV/AIDS of government covered all the bases, said official sources and government now believed the framework agreement was superfluous.

At least 40,000 protesters in South Africa took to the tarmac in Cape Town and Johannesburg with a ringing anti-war message at the weekend, joining millions around the globe.

At the same time, South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki thrust the country into the middle of the peace effort by despatching a team of disarmament experts to Iraq, as part of the effort to stave off war.

”(Our people) prefer peace to war. They yearn for peace because they know from their experience that without peace there can be no development. Without peace we will fail in the effort in which we are engaged, to transform ours into a country of hope, and revert to the past on which we have turned our backs, a past of misery and despair,” said Mbeki in his annual state of the nation speech on Feb 14, kicking off a weekend in which the country nailed its colours to the blue mast of speech.

In Cape Town, a march of many shades of political and religious persuasion displayed how the anti-war message has broad acceptance and support. Babies pushed by their parents in prams emblazoned with posters made up the second row of the organisers. In the front row were leaders of the Anti-War Coalition and their midst included cabinet ministers, priests and imams in their hijab.

The main anti-war poster featured a ghostly grim reaper swathed in the U.S. flag’s stars and stripes. Other protests carried funnier messages like the group of drag queens, wearing elaborate dresses and carrying signs which read, ”War’s such a drag”. Another said, ”Time for regime change in the U.S.”. The United States is pushing for ”regime change” in Iraq as the main outcome of war.

It was a day which saw new definitions of demon and hero: British prime minister Tony Blair, U.S. President George Bush and Israel’s Ariel Sharon all came in for a drubbing. Osama bin Laden was hero for a day, his image decorating many T-shirts, declaring him ”innocent until proven guilty”. There was a large Muslim turnout for the Cape Town march, where the majority of the city’s population practices Islam.

The protest wound its way under Table Mountain, through the main Adderley Street and finally to a stop outside a desultory-looking United States consul general. A ring of barbed wire had been thrown up outside and the flag was furled into a ball, almost in fear. About 60 police officers stood guard until a U.S. representative collected a poster. Protestors stood peacefully at the barbed wire, listening to a series of speeches. Many threaded their posters into the barbed wire.

In Johannesburg, the protest also reflected a coalition unusual in South African politics, the differences put aside to deliver a message for global safety. ”Speakers attacked the government for allowing U.S. and U.K. warships on their way to Iraq to dock in Durban harbour; for parastatal Denel supplying the U.S. and U.K. armies with laser-guided sights and shell casings,” according to a march report.

Meanwhile, Mbeki’s Friday decision to send the disarmament experts to Iraq continued his efforts at diplomatic initiatives to ward off war. Mbeki has thrust South Africa into the international debate on whether an attack on Iraq is justified. Last week he sent an emissary – deputy Foreign Affairs minister Aziz Pahad – to Iraq, both as a show of solidarity and in an effort to get Iraq to co-operate wholeheartedly with weapons inspectors.

”These are the experts who led our country’s programme to destroy our nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, as well as the missiles for the delivery of these weapons in combat,” said Mbeki. ”The apartheid state built up nuclear capability, which the democratic order has neutralised through a programme of disarmament.

Mbeki revealed that United Nations secretary-general Kofi Anan and Iraq had both acceded to the South African offer. This team had won international acclaim for its disarmament expertise and looked forward to sharing it with the Iraqi government, scientists, engineers and technicians.

While Mbeki has faced internal criticism for the ruling African National Congress’s increasingly strident criticism of the United States, a growing anti-war movement is providing mass support for his position. While Mbeki did not join the marches at the weekend, by devoting as much of his key annual speech to an anti-war message he also clearly laid his colours to the peace mast.

In addition to calling for Iraq’s ”respect for the decisions of the UN Security Council”, Mbeki said such respect for multilateralism was a responsibility of all countries. He called for ”respect by all countries of the principle and practice of multilateralism, for the continuing responsibility of the UN with regard to issues of international peace and security, and the peaceful resolution of international conflicts”.

South Africa is marshalling developing countries in the United Nations to try and prevent war between Iraq and the United States rather than letting the US ride roughshod over the will of the majority of members of the international organisation.

South Africa is currently chair of the 115-strong Non-aligned Movement (NAM), which represents the majority of countries in the United Nations, and the African Union (AU).

South Africa has emerged as a loud critic of U.S. threats to attack Iraq, if the Middle East country did not prove it has destroyed its weapons of mass destruction to the satisfaction to the superpower.

”We have insisted that the Iraq question must be solved through the UN. The UN exists because of a global commitment to regulate the power of the powerful, in the interests of international peace and justice. This situation demands that we intensify the struggle for the strengthening of the multilateral system of governance. The UN is at the centre of this system, and is the only guarantee that the voice of weak, such as ours, can be heard,” says South African President, Thabo Mbeki. He was writing in a newsletter of South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC).

”We cannot accept that the powerful have a right to use their power either to marginalise the UN or disempower it to facilitate the pursuit of their war aims. Nor can we agree that the powerful have a right to use the authority of the UN and its prestige as a peace agency, to legitimise a pre-determined decision to wage war,” adds Mbeki.

The United States has repeatedly indicated that it is prepared to defy the UN and go to war against Iraq, without an undisputed mandate from the international community. After UN chief arms inspector, Hans Blix presented his report to the UN on Jan 27, South Africa backed inspectors calls for new time to continue their investigations in Iraq.

Greg Mills, the Director of the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), points out that South Africa is determined to strengthen the UN – in an attempt to improve global governance in favour of developing countries.

Mills points out that as one of the few countries to have destroyed its nuclear arsenal to the satisfaction of the UN, South Africa has a huge amount of credibility in the international community on questions of disarmament – and this can be used to help Iraq assure the UN that it has destroyed its weapons of mass destruction.

Ironically, Blix, among others, have described South Africa as an example of how Iraq should co-operate with the international inspectors during the search for weapons of mass destruction, if it wants to prevent a war. A decade ago, South Africa became the first country to destroy its stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Mbeki is scheduled to hold bilateral discussions with the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, on Feb 1, as part of worldwide efforts to avert a war with Iraq. The Blair government is one of the few that are giving unqualified support to U.S. preparations for a war on Iraq. Mbeki is expected to urge Blair to ensure the crisis over Iraq is resolved without resorting to war.

The South African government is also backing a peace mission by representatives of the country’s civil society, Roelf Meyer and Laurie Nathan, to ”determine the role of civil society, both globally and nationally, to help find a peaceful resolution of the Iraqi situation within the multilateral global system of governance and the UN”.

Presently, the two are in Iraq, where they have met with the country’s Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz.

South African cabinet ministers have also regularly been visiting Iraq – throughout the present crises – to urge it to co-operate with UN efforts to prevent a war, while insisting the United States must show restraint. However, Mills doubts that South Africa’s international political credibility will translate into enough political weight to deter the United States from going to war.

He argues that the United States may not see South Africa as an honest broker – because of the African country’s regular contact with Iraq and its anti-war rhetoric.

South Africa is worried that the international economic fall-out from a war with Iraq, which has the world’s second largest oil reserves, will damage the country’s and the continent’s economy.

Mbeki, commented: ”The inevitable sharp increase in oil prices and other negative economic consequences would condemn the African continent to a deep economic crisis. It would put paid to all the high hopes raised by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) initiative and the formation of the African Union. Instead, the peoples of Africa would have to confront the reality of even further impoverishment.”

NEPAD is a programme aimed at kick-starting the economic and social development of Africa.

Another corruption scandal involving company donations to political parties in South Africa has led to renewed calls for the regulation of the private funding of parties.

The New National Party (NNP), which is in a coalition government with the ruling African National Congress (ANC), suspended the South African Deputy Minister for Social Development, David Malatsi, from the party, on Friday.

They also called for South African President, Thabo Mbeki, to remove him from his cabinet post.

In a nutshell, Malatsi is alleged to have approved the development of a multi-million rand golf course estate in an environmentally sensitive area in return for a R300,000 (33,334 U.S. dollars) donation to the NNP from the developing company.

At the time of the deal, in Apr 2003, Malatsi was the Member of the Executive Council in the Western Cape province, in charge of the environment and planning. The matter has been referred to the public protector’s office, which is considering widening its investigation into to see if NNP leader and Premier of South Africa’s Western Cape province, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, knew about the donation. Van Schalkwyk has said he will not comment on the issue as an investigation is underway.

Malatsi has defied his party’s call to stand-down from his post and has denied any wrongdoing. He insists the allegations are ‘’unproven”.

The appointment and removal of ministers from the national cabinet is the sole prerogative of the South African President. Mbeki is expected to meet Malatsi as soon as possible to hear his side of the story and will then make a decision, says a spokesperson for the president. Mbeki is expected to make a decision quite fast, as he leaves South Africa on Friday for talks to end the conflict in Cote d’Ivoire, in France. He is only expected back in South Africa, next week.

This is only the latest in a series of scandals, involving donations from companies and individuals that have plagued South African political parties, over the past year.

Last year, the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance had to deal with allegations that it received donations from a German fugitive, Jurgen Harksen, in return for some of their officials supporting his efforts to avoid extradition from South Africa.

Harksen, who was wanted for fraud in Germany, was finally extradited to face the charges in his homeland after a legal battle lasting years.

And, the South African Deputy President, Jacob Zuma, recently faced reports in the local press alleging that he was being investigated for trying to secure a bribe from a company selling weapons to South Africa. Zuma has denied the charges.

The Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) says the latest scandal underlines the need for the regulation of private funding to political parties, in the country. Governance Analyst at Idasa, Judith February, says: ‘’Secrecy encourages this sort of corrupt behaviour. Private donations to political parties must be regulated. Full disclosure must become the norm. Transparency will protect the political process from further contamination.”

She points out that while South Africa has an array of impressive anti-corruption legislation – including the Prevention of Corruption Bill, which is soon to be passed by Parliament – there is no law to regulate private funding of political parties. This not only leaves political parties and their members vulnerable to corruption, but also more importantly it allows the wealthy in society to exert undue influence over the political process, says February.

The world-wide trend has been to regulate private funding to political parties through legislation and this may help to prevent yet another South African political party falling prey to the receipt of secret donations, she argues.

South African political parties have been reluctant to tackle the issue of private funding of political parties. The major parties have refused to take the lead, saying they will only open their books once other parties do so.

Traditionally, South African companies have also been reluctant to reveal which parties they have funded, although a couple of corporations have been forced to reveal what donations they have made, after non-governmental organisations requested details under South Africa’s access to information act.

The South African government also provides some funding for political parties based on their level of popular support.

However, the sources of the largest part of the funding for most South African political parties remains under wraps, for now.

Two major world meetings now underway, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, represent the axes of global plenty and global need.

South Africa, with the world’s second highest rate of inequality, has elements of both Davos and Porto Alegre. If one expands the analogy, then Major Parkie is a citizen of Porto Alegre – the face of need and of want in South Africa.

Wearing a translucent apron with the words ‘’Rosebank car watch”, he is a member of South Africa’s one million strong informal sector, where the average wage is R250 (28 U.S. dollars) a month. He works in Rosebank, a commercial centre with the headquarters of several top companies – a Davos world, yet he does not share in its prosperity.

Parkie has sad eyes and a sadder story. He once had a full-time job at a garage in Soweto, a shantytown in the outskirts of Johannesburg, but lost it after an accident. He has lost a son too and his pitiful earnings of 30 rands (3.3 U.S. dollars) on a bad day and 70 rands (about 8 U.S. dollars) on a good day make him wish for a ‘’proper” job, where a salary may be low, but at least it is regular. That way, he could provide better for his remaining child, wife and extended family.

‘’It’s better to get money month-end,” he says. President Thabo Mbeki’s great challenge is to get South Africa’s axes closer together, to close the wealth gap and that should be through a mix of job creation and through investment in social services, say progressive commentators.

But activists like Andile Mngxitama and Ann Eveleth of the National Land Committee lay the fate of Parkie and other poor South Africans at the feet of the political leadership which has chosen what they call ‘’neo-liberal” policy options.

Under this rubric are South Africa’s strict monetary and fiscal policies, which in the past five years have constrained public spending as government tackled debt. Debt payments now make up a much smaller percentage of gross domestic product (gdp) and government argues that this has freed up funds for social services which are growing in real terms after several years of stagnant spending.

In addition, the activists argue that by moving to World Bank inspired policies of cost-recovery for services like water and electricity, it is meant that people are losing services. Parkie says he gets free water, but pays for electricity, which he cannot always afford.

He is one of the lucky ones because research by the statutory Human Sciences Research Council says that 10 million people suffered water dis-connections in the period between 1994 and February 2002. In the same period, government provided water to seven million new recipients suggesting that the cost recovery policies were reversing development gains.

The Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC) also questions whether cost recovery has seen a decline in electricity consumption since 1994. Despite the fact that 350,000 people get power every year, consumption ‘s down, suggesting that people cannot afford electricity. ‘’The explanation clearly lies in the growing number of disconnections and self-imposed low consumption by the poor as a result of the inability to pay for electricity, ” say Mngxitama and Eveleth in a report.

Government is aware of the problem and has promised a free basic supply of water and electricity, though the provision has been slow. Mbeki has declared the next ten years as one dedicated to the fight against poverty. This focus change – from only macro-economic policies to social policies – is attributed to several reasons. The first is that research published last November by Statistics South Africa shows most black South Africans have grown poorer in the past 10 years as joblessness has become structural.

Labour leaders outside government also warn that the state’s privatisation programme has increased the joblessness crisis because parastatals like the telecomms operator, Telkom, the electricity parastatal Eskom and the transport company Transnet have all laid off thousands of workers to become more commercial in orientation.

In addition, the job market has shrunk as companies have mechanised, the state has cut the size of the civil service and the economy is restructured away from manufacturing to a services-driven economy.

A social safety net is vital, say government officials who say that a better welfare system and more public works programmes are in the offing. Another reason for a new focus is the symbolic importance of the election of Luiz Ignatio da Silva Lula to the presidency in Brazil.

His stress on keeping the balance between economic and social imperatives has been influential on the ruling African National Congress, which is similar in character to the Brazilian Workers Party. This is because it has the support of the dominant trade unions in the country and several former labour leaders hold cabinet positions.

Waiting for the changes are people like Caroline S’Thembiso who lack the skills the new economy requires because of a past of apartheid education. She sells the newspaper ‘’Homeless Talk” at a busy Johannesburg intersection. With her are three children who spend their days on the street because there is no one to take care of them in the Soweto shack-land she lives in.

S’Thembiso says she used to sell meat, but the newspaper and the hangers she sells give her a better turnover. She is homeless, cooks with paraffin and fetches water from a communal tap, yet she still feels government is doing ‘’OK”.

And that is because her gurgling, chubby 11-month old baby Sisipho gets a R120 (13.3 U.S. dollars) a month child grant. In survey after survey, people like S’Thembiso show themselves impatient for change but trusting of government’s best intentions. For Mbeki, the political challenge is to live up to this trust and to find the bridge between the worlds of plenty and of want.

African countries are getting ready to deploy troops to Burundi in an effort to enforce a peace agreement between rebel movements and the government – just in case increased diplomatic efforts to end the civil war fail.

South Africa, Mozambique and Ethiopia have begun meeting to discuss the deployment of peacekeepers to Burundi, where an internationally brokered agreement is being hampered because at least one of the rebel movements is refusing to sign a peace pact with the country’s transitional government.

Under the peace agreement, signed last year, the rebel movements and the then Burundi government formed a transitional government, which will run the country until democratic elections can be held. Only one of the four main armed rebel groups, the Palipehutu-FNL, has refused to sign the cease-fire and has continued to launch armed attacks on military and other installations of the Burundi transitional government.

South African Deputy President, Jacob Zuma, who is facilitating the peace-talks, is meeting with representatives of the Burundi transitional government and the rebel movements that have signed-up for the cease-fire, this week.

South African officials say the talks are aimed at: finalising arrangements for the return of the fighters and leaders of the insurgents to Burundi; the participation of the former armed movements in the transitional institutions of the state and Parliament; and the disarmament and demobilisation of the rebel forces and the building of a new, inclusive security apparatus in the country.

The talks have already yielded some successes, with the leaders of the rebel Palipehutu-Forces for National Liberation (Palipehutu-FNL) and the National Council for the Defence of Democracy-Forces for the Defence of Democracy, (CNDD-FDD) – who have both been in exile – announcing that they plan to return to Burundi in two weeks.

The two leaders – CNDD-FDD’s Jean Bosco Ndayikengurukiye and

Palipehutu-FNL’s Alain Mugabarabona – say they have concluded discussions on assembly points for their combatants in Burundi and their technical teams are currently working out the rest of the details of implementing the cease-fire agreement.

But, the cease-fire is being hindered by the refusal of Palipehutu-FNL, which is led by Agathon Rwasa, to sign the cease-fire and their continued attacks on the Burundi transitional government. Some of the rebel movements share the same name, but have different leaders.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Burundi transitional government claims their forces cannot always tell the difference between the rebel movements – which results in continuing clashes between those armed forces that have officially signed the cease-fire.. The rebel movements have rejected the transitional government’s excuse for what they consider unwarranted contraventions of the cease-fire. Despite the cease-fire, there have been continuing clashes between the rebel movements and the transitional government, in Burundi.

To ratchet-up the pressure on the armed groups outside the cease-fire and prevent unnecessary conflicts between the Burundi government and the rebel movements, efforts are underway to deploy an African peace force in the country.

The South African Minister of Defence, Mosiuoa Lekota, says the African mission would have to be a United Nations peace support operation. ”All indications – and expectations – are that it will have to be a United Nations operation, and that is where the funding will have to come from,” he says. He was speaking after a meeting with officials from Ethiopia and Mozambique, in South Africa, on Tuesday.

The meeting focussed on mandate of the African force and some of the technical and practical problems of a joint peace mission.

Jakkie Cilliers of South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies (ISS) points out that most of the troops will most likely have to come from Ethiopia. South Africa already has 700 troops in Burundi – who are protecting members of the transitional government – and does not have that many soldiers left who can be deployed on a peacekeeping mission, at short notice.

Mozambique also does not have much more that a company of troops, which it can deploy to Burundi. Ethiopia, on the other hand, has a large army that has recently been involved in a conflict with Eritrea – and is therefore ready for action. There have been indications that the peace force may be as large as three battalions.

The Burundi civil war heightened in 1993 and has claimed an estimated 300, 000 lives. The causes of the conflict are myriad, but include tensions between the country’s different ethnic groups

South Africa’s youngest political party, the United Democratic Movement (UDM), is set to hold its first national conference and unveil its official policies this weekend.

After only a year of campaigning, a recent opinion poll indicates that the movement is on the verge of becoming South Africa’s third largest political party — behind the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the crumbling official opposition, the National Party (NP).

And, says the head of the Department of Political Studies at the University of Port Elizabeth, Susan Booysen: “The movement is much better placed than its rivals to grow nationally.”

The UDM owes much of its support to the personal popularity of its two founders : former ANC leader Major-General Bantu Holomisa, and past NP secretary-general, Roelf Meyer. Holomisa was expelled from the ANC after he accused a Cabinet Minister of corruption. Meyer, tasked by the NP to form a broad political front to oppose the ANC, left the party after realising that “it had no future”.

The UDM however, does not have much to offer South Africa by way of new economic or social policies. It backs the government’s economic policies and harps on the country’s obvious social problems — without offering any real way of solving them. There also is no indication that its formal policies will be any more concrete than its vague discusssion documents.

What is clear is that the movement is determined to become a real player in South African politics by grabbing as many votes as it can — from whomever can deliver them. This has resulted in some unlikely political partners.

Holomisa has a sizable support in the Eastern Cape and a recent poll found him to be the third most popular political leader in the country. Meyer, on the other hand, is a drawcard for progressive Whites.

Last week, the movement elected Sifiso Nkabinde — a former ANC strongman and alleged warlord — as its provincial chairman in KwaZulu-Natal. He was also nominated for the position of UDM secretary-general. Last month, Nkabinde returned to his stronghold in the Kwazulu-Natal midlands after he was acquitted of multiple murder charges. His election is sure to secure the UDM a base in the province.

The movement is also actively canvassing support in the Northern and north-West provinces, home to many conservative Afrikaners and Black traditional leaders.

Meyer recently called on the White right-wing to join the movement. The UDM also is receiving a ready hearing from many relatively conservative Black civil servants who ran the former apartheid homelands and who feel threatened by the ANC government’s cutbacks in the civil service and are looking for a political home.

The ANC in South Africa’s economic heartland, Gauteng Province, is keeping a wary eye on the movement. People living in the province’s ever growing shack-lands have made clear their unhappiness with the ANC’s failure to deliver improved living standards.

It is perhaps ironic that the potential for this awkward alliance of disaffected parties and opportunistic splinter groups to become a major political force has been proven by the ANC. In many ways, the broad political platform the UDM is trying to nail together is much like the successful anti-apartheid fronts the ANC built to bring down the NP government.

The movement’s real challenge is whether it can hold itself together long enough for the obvious gaps among its present supporters to close. If they do, they may well become South Africa’s first real opposition party.