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Tuesday, January 12, 2010 3:10 PM EST
Zuma's polygamy undermines AIDS fight
On a recent drive through Soweto, the sprawling township that formed the heart of the anti-apartheid struggle, I was impressed by the ambition and honesty of the latest campaign by South Africa’s AIDS activists.
The billboards and posters on Soweto’s streets are blunt and unflinching. A real man, they say, is someone who “chooses a single partner” – not someone who defines himself “by the number of women he can have.”
It’s a rare campaign that directly addresses men, directly grapples with how men define their self-worth, and directly tackles one of the biggest factors in the AIDS epidemic: what the experts call “multiple concurrent partnerships” - the tendency of many men to have several sexual partners at the same time.
Too bad the entire campaign is being undermined by the most powerful of all the South African men: President Jacob Zuma.
Mr. Zuma is the most famous polygamist in a country that still allows polygamy. Last week he donned leopard skins and white sneakers to perform a Zulu dance as he celebrated a traditional Zulu wedding to his third wife.
Another wedding to a fourth wife is already in the planning stages. He is already the father of 19 children by at least six women.
The president has no embarrassment about his polygamy. His office has even issued a bizarre “press statement” about the wives, explaining that the Presidency has a “spousal office” to give administrative support to the three wives. The statement declared that Mr. Zuma has the “prerogative” to be accompanied by all three of his wives at official functions or engagements if he chooses. It also outlined the “areas of interest” of each of the three wives, as if they were cabinet portfolios.
Polls suggest that polygamy is not supported by the majority of voters here. But many South Africans strongly defend the practice, calling it a fundamental element in the culture of the Zulu nation.
In fact, Mr. Zuma’s public displays of attachment to Zulu tradition are one of the key reasons for his popularity among ordinary South Africans. He uses his Zulu rituals as proof that he is a man of the people – unlike his aloof predecessor, Thabo Mbeki. And in strictly political terms, the strategy is succeeding: the latest polls give the president a 58 per cent approval rating, while only 23 per cent of South Africans disapprove of him.
But while his polygamy might be a useful political advantage, it weakens and contradicts all of the work that Mr. Zuma has done in the fight against AIDS, which causes more deaths in South Africa than in any other country in the world.
In some ways, Mr. Zuma’s policies on AIDS and HIV have actually been fairly progressive. He has announced an ambitious plan to provide more anti-retroviral drugs to those with AIDS. He is trying to expand HIV testing, so that more people know their status. He has made all the right promises on HIV policy -- a big change from the days of his rape trial in 2006, when he famously testified that he took a shower after having sex with an HIV-positive woman to protect himself from the virus.
But all of this good work is being undermined by his polygamy, which sends exactly the wrong message. One of South Africa’s most astute political commentators, Justice Malala, put it this way: “No serious discussion has taken place about what example the captain of the ship continues to set for the nation in promoting concurrent, multiple sexual partnerships – the chief driver of the spread of HIV.”
He described polygamy as “dangerous, outdated and sexist.” The only reason that it remains, he said, is “because it serves men.”
Link to this postTuesday, December 15, 2009 8:10 AM EST
A bodyguard’s view of Nelson Mandela
JOHANNESBURG – Everyone knows the legend of Nelson Mandela: the man who saved South Africa from civil war, the man who is regarded today as a living saint, who endured 27 years in prison and emerged with forgiveness in his heart.
But what kind of man was this living saint for those who worked nearest to him – the humble bodyguards who spent countless hours at his side?
I got a glimpse into the human side of this legend from someone I met while I was researching a story on Invictus, the new Clint Eastwood movie about Mr. Mandela’s strategy of reconciliation during the Rugby World Cup in 1995.
The glimpse came from a man named Etienne van Eck, a former policeman who had served as a bodyguard to Mr. Mandela from 1994 to 1999.
Globe reporter Ian Bailey had spotted him at an Invictus screening in Vancouver last week, and put me in contact with him. The former bodyguard, now living in Canada, sent me a long and eloquent e-mail, and we later talked by telephone. He convinced me that the Mandela legend was equally authentic among those who saw him at close quarters every day.
Mr. van Eck remembers the fears of his own people – the Afrikaners – when apartheid ended and the black majority won power. Many were ready to flee. He remembers how Mr. Mandela calmed those fears and convinced the Afrikaners that they had an important role in the post-apartheid nation. He was “the most remarkable leader of our time,” Mr. van Eck says. “To say that I treasure my time with President Mandela as a profound privilege would be to understate how I cherish that experience and the memories of my time with him. He changed me.”
He told me the story of how Mr. Mandela had amalgamated two mutually suspicious groups of bodyguards – blacks from the African National Congress and whites from the former apartheid police force – into an effective unit that learned to overcome their mistrust and work closely together. “We grew to be friends, teaching one another important lessons,” he said.
He told me how Mr. Mandela had toiled to learn every nuance of Afrikaans, a language he had studied from the warders at Robben Island prison, even though it was the language of his oppressors. Once he was planning to address a group of farmers in South Africa and wanted to speak to them in Afrikaans, their language. He asked Mr. van Eck for help in translating his speech into Afrikaans. But when speaking to the farmers, he chose to address them with the most respectful and formal Afrikaans term for “you” – even though his bodyguard had suggested that a less formal word would have been acceptable.
On another day, Mr. Mandela was attending the wedding of Francois Pienaar, captain of the Springboks rugby team. He left his home too early, so Mr. van Eck quietly detoured and took a longer route to the wedding to ensure that they would arrive on time. “The president always stressed punctuality,” the bodyguard said. “It was all about respect for one’s host.”
Nine years ago, shortly after they arrived in Vancouver, Mr. van Eck suffered the death of his wife. He received a phone call of sympathy and condolences from Mr. Mandela. “I know you have the courage to turn tragedy into triumph,” he told his former bodyguard.
Reflecting on those words today, Mr. van Eck mused: “The world knows he has done exactly that.”
Sunday, December 6, 2009 8:06 PM EST
Sounds of revelling soccer fans will drown out naysayers
Returning to my hotel on Friday night after the World Cup draw, I found myself mired in a massive traffic jam in the middle of Cape Town – and got a glimpse of how South Africa could triumph as host of the global soccer jamboree next year.
The bumper-to-bumper traffic snarl was a result of the overwhelming success of South Africa’s first “Fan Fest” – the kickoff of the free outdoor parties where soccer fans will gather to watch World Cup events on giant television screens.
Cape Town had organized the party on several blocks of Long Street, a famed avenue of bars and restaurants in the downtown core. It expected 15,000 fans on Friday night for the musical show during the draw, but more than 30,000 showed up, forcing police to turn some away – and leaving me driving in circles as I tried to find a way through the vast mob at 10 p.m.
So enthusiastic were the fans that they even cheered for the politicians, a rare event in cynical South Africa. “Danny, Danny,” they cried, chanting the name of Danny Jordaan, head of the country’s World Cup organizing committee.
By 2 a.m., long after the music was over, the fans were still partying, still blowing loudly on their vuvuzelas, the noisy plastic trumpets that have infuriated the European and Asian officials. Finally, the police had to order everyone to clear the site.
The naysayers and the doom-and-gloomers, especially in the British press, have been obsessing over South Africa’s high crime rate as a harbinger of disasters to come. But I have a hunch that this World Cup will be remembered, instead, for the spirit and vibrancy of the African soccer fans who will fill up the street parties, the Fan Fests, the outdoor screenings and the parks and plazas.
Monday, November 30, 2009 10:32 PM EST
Why Ethiopians remain hungry
A casual visitor to Ethiopia’s capital city is quickly impressed by the smooth new roads and gleaming skyscrapers these days.
Sure, it has shacks and slums, but in comparison to most of Africa’s sprawling chaotic capitals, Addis Ababa seems to be a neat and tidy city, relatively well-organized and controlled.
Ethiopia’s new partnership with China is paying big dividends for the government. Not only is it providing the Chinese technology that allows Ethiopian authorities to block websites and spy on e-mails and cellphones, but it is also producing some of the smoothest new roads in Africa. Thanks to the Chinese-built highways, motorists can zip around Addis Ababa in relative ease, with few of the traffic jams that plague other African cities.
This is the city that the government wants you to see. But if you take a moment to ponder why the Ethiopian capital is so neat and tidy, you’ll understand why this country is still one of the poorest in the world.
Monday, November 23, 2009 10:03 PM EST
Winners and losers in Africa
Windhoek - Namibia’s election is still four days away, but the ruling party is already boasting of victory.
There are no qualms about fairness in this election. The results of the advance voting (by diplomats and seafarers) have already been released in the national media. Unsurprisingly, the ruling SWAPO party has a huge lead in the votes, as it always does.
Instead of keeping the advance votes confidential until the end of voting day, the government happily released the early numbers, and the ruling party then exploited those results in its campaigning.
“You must support the winner,” a SWAPO vice-president told a campaign rally a few days ago, citing the early results. “Do not waste your vote on losers.”
The release of the advance votes is yet another state-assisted advantage for SWAPO, the former liberation movement that has won landslide victories in every election since Namibia’s independence in 1990.
Television coverage is slanted heavily in favor of SWAPO. The main national broadcaster, the Namibian Broadcasting Corp., gave an overwhelming 82 per cent of its political news coverage to SWAPO in the first week of this month, according to an independent survey.
The next highest party was given a meagre 4 per cent of the television coverage, while the main opposition party got no coverage at all.
The opposition fared no better on the streets. When a small group of activists from the biggest opposition party tried to visit voters in a northern town this month, they were surrounded by 200 ruling-party supporters, including three hammer-wielding men. The opposition members were threatened with violence for entering the town “without a mandate.”
The election in Namibia this week, like most other African elections, is a foregone conclusion. Opposition parties do exist, but they don’t stand a chance.
With a few honorable exceptions (Ghana among them), this is still the normal situation in most African countries. The advantages of incumbency are massive. Ruling parties tend to stay in power, year after year, even decade after decade.
Sometimes, in conversations with Africans, I make an analogy between democracy and mobile phones. If you travel anywhere in Africa, the best cellphone service is provided in countries where there is lively competition among several private mobile phone companies. The worst is in countries where a state-owned company has a monopoly on cellphone services, or where there is weak competition between two companies.
Democracy is the same. Just like mobile phone consumers, African voters get better service from their government when there is vibrant competition among several strong parties, with power rotating fairly from party to party. Unfortunately it’s still a rare phenomenon, but perhaps it will change when Africans demand the same level of service from their governments that they expect from their mobile phone companies.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 7:35 PM EST
A South African dream, deferred
A year ago, I was at the formative meeting of a nascent political party that seemed to be triggering an earthquake in South African politics. The mood at the convention in suburban Johannesburg was boisterous, joyful, almost ecstatic. The delegates of the new party were dancing in the aisles and singing the songs of liberation as they listened to the speeches.
The party became known as COPE (the Congress of the People). Created by dissidents from the ruling African National Congress, it seemed to offer the first real chance of robust democratic competition in South Africa since the collapse of apartheid in 1994.
The ANC was adored as the party of Nelson Mandela, the party that liberated South Africa from white minority rule. But after 14 years in power it was accused of arrogance and corruption. With the creation of the new breakaway party, the long monopoly of the ANC was finally facing a real challenge.
As the new party marks its first anniversary, however, its political dream is rapidly fading, destroyed by disorganization and bitter infighting among its egotistical leaders. For those who hoped to see the ANC forced to compete for votes, COPE's decline is a depressing reminder that Africa's ruling parties can be extremely difficult to dislodge.
The decline began in early 2009 with squabbles between the party's two main founders, former ANC provincial premier Mbhazima Shilowa and former ANC cabinet minister Mosiuoa Lekota. Unable to agree on a presidential candidate for the national election in April, the party ended up choosing a compromise figure, a little-known Methodist priest, as its candidate for president.
The party was aiming for at least 15 to 20 per cent of the vote in the national election – enough to establish a strong base for future growth. Instead it wound up with 7 per cent, finishing third in the election, instead of the assumed second.
Since then, the feuding and squabbling has grown disastrously worse. Many of its top leaders have quit the party. One of its most famous members, the anti-apartheid activist Allan Boesak, resigned from COPE this month. He complained of “disarray” in the party, and accused the party of suppressing any critical voices. Another senior COPE leader, Lynda Odendaal, had quit the party earlier, complaining of internal power struggles. Several other top officials have also resigned.
A year ago, political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi told me that the new party could seriously weaken the ANC if it could capture 15 to 20 per cent of the vote. Now he is asking what went wrong. “COPE looks more like the Titanic – with an iceberg waiting ahead – than a credible alternative to the ANC,” he wrote in a recent column.
Certainly COPE seems mortally wounded. But it would be wrong to dismiss its formation as a meaningless event. Despite gaining only 7 per cent of the vote, it played a key role in preventing the ANC from retaining the two-thirds majority that it had previously enjoyed – an important victory for the opposition, since a two-thirds margin would allow the ANC to change the constitution unilaterally.
Just as important, COPE has shown that an opposition party can gain votes from blacks across the country. Until this year, South Africa's opposition parties were largely based on ethnic strongholds , whites or mixed-race voters. The rise of COPE has shown that many middle-class blacks across the country are growing discontented with the ruling party.
While it might ultimately be destroyed by its internal feuds, COPE has paved the way for future challenges to the ANC, keeping democracy alive in Africa's richest country.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009 2:32 PM EDT
Terrorism blues in Timbuktu
Timbuktu, Mali – The travel warning is blunt and a little frightening: Avoid all travel to Timbuktu and anywhere else in Mali's northern regions “due to the presence of armed groups and the threat of banditry and kidnapping, even in big cities,” says the warning by Canada's Foreign Affairs department.
The warning helpfully notes that an army lieutenant-colonel was killed in his own home in Timbuktu by “members of an armed group.” And it notes the European tourists who were kidnapped in the desert, northeast of Timbuktu.
Similar warnings have been issued by the United States and many European countries. American officials are banned from travelling to Timbuktu and anywhere else in northern Mali unless they have written permission from the U.S. ambassador. Canadian officials – including diplomats, aid workers and even military officers – have been prohibited from visiting northern Mali since the kidnapping of diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay last year.
Poor old Timbuktu. It was just beginning to develop a tourism industry. Tourists were attracted by its famous name, its ancient mud-brick mosques, its nomad culture, its desert festivals and its sand dunes. And now the tourism sector has collapsed, leaving the town to sink back into its traditional industries: the salt trade, goats, sheep, and smuggling.
Even in Bamako, the capital of Mali, many people are nervous about Timbuktu. I met one American scholar who formerly lived in Timbuktu who had abandoned the place because of the danger. When a local journalist heard that I was travelling to Timbuktu to write about the Fowler kidnapping and the terrorists who captured him, he looked alarmed and told me to be “very, very careful.”
Needless to say, I was a little apprehensive when I arrived in Timbuktu last week – and even more apprehensive when my two-day visit stretched into a four-day visit because Air Mali's sole domestic airplane was 31 hours late because of mechanical problems. Perfect for allowing more preparation time for kidnappers, if there were any.
In my four days in Timbuktu, I only saw one intrepid tour group – five people – along with one other tourist, an American woman with her own guide. The hotels and guesthouses were empty, and the local tour operators were bemoaning the cancellations. Yet they insisted the town was safe. “Tell everyone that it's calm and peaceful,” one guesthouse owner pleaded with me.
I don't know whether it was as safe as they said. But it's possible that the Canadian and U.S. warnings are exaggerated. Only one attack has happened inside Timbuktu itself. The battles and the kidnappings have taken place many hundreds of kilometres away from the town. With only a few hundred members at most, the main terrorist group in the Sahara is unlikely to attempt a kidnapping inside Timbuktu itself.
In any event, the tourists who stay away from Timbuktu are missing an incredible place. It's not just the ancient architecture of the old town, the homes of the explorers, the thousands of intricate Arabic manuscripts that have survived centuries in the libraries here, and the mystique of the Sahara surrounding the town. There's something more than that – a living culture that thrives to this day.
In interviews with locals, I sipped sweet mint tea, fragrant and hot. I drove south to the nearby Niger River, where villages hummed with activity. I talked to Moors and Songhai people and blue-robed and turbaned Tuareg nomads. One evening I went to dinner at a bar called Amnis Fude (“Thirsty Camel” in the Tuareg language). As I sat outside under the stars, a Malian blues band began to play a sinewy, improvised music that combined African rhythms and American blues melodies. The drummers set the beat on local instruments: a djembe and a calabash. The guitarists, who seemed to have listened to a lot of old Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix LPs, wailed away on solos that were the best I'd heard this side of Chicago.
Aside from me and a colleague, and a couple of friends of the band, nobody else was there. I'm hoping some day the band will be playing to the crowd that it deserves.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 6:51 AM EDT
How to win friends and influence people
On the desk of his embassy office, Somalia’s ambassador to Kenya displays an unexpected item: a Canadian flag.
His daughter insisted that he should put up a Canadian flag, so he did. After all, Ambassador Mohamed Ali Nur is a Canadian citizen, and proud of it, even if he works now as a Somali diplomat in Nairobi.
When I visited him at his office recently, he told me how much his family misses Canada. “They miss the snow,” he said.
To keep them happy, he takes his children to an ice-skating rink at a hotel in Nairobi – one of the few ice rinks in Africa. Almost all of his eight children can skate.
He happily chats away about Canada for several minutes before I have to ask him about more difficult issues. It’s clear, as we chat, that this is one of Canada’s biggest fans.
Canadians often don’t realize how much goodwill our country still enjoys around the world. After decades of generosity to the poor and needy of the world, Canada has earned a warm respect from many parts of the world. It gives us more influence than we realize.
Friday, September 18, 2009 3:20 PM EDT
Wondering Where the Lions Are
MASAI MARA, Kenya - At Kenya’s most popular wilderness park, the tourists who go on safari in their jeeps these days are seeing a strange and unexpected sight: herds of cattle, sheep and goats.
Livestock (and their herders) are invading the world-famous Masai Mara reserve. It’s the latest sign of the catastrophic drought that is afflicting much of Kenya, where almost 4 million people are now dependent on emergency food aid.
Desperate for grazing grounds as their grass shrivels in the drought, herdsmen from nearby villages are sneaking their cattle into the reserve, dodging the park rangers, often by bringing in their herds at night, but sometimes in broad daylight in the more remote stretches of the reserve.
In the morning, tourists can see the carcasses of dead cows, killed by lions and cheetahs that find the livestock to be easy prey. Unlike the gazelles of Masai Mara, cows are incapable of fleeing at 80 kilometres an hour when a lion approaches.
Masai Mara’s veteran guides are worried that the drought-induced invasion is a threat to Kenya’s wildlife, accelerating the conflicts between wild animals and humans. When the herders see their cows hunted and killed by lions, they sometimes take revenge. There are already cases of lions perishing at the hands of herdsmen who put poison into the corpses of dead cows where the lions are eating.
It’s just one example of how the drought is posing a serious danger to Kenya’s famed heritage of wild animals, which has lured tourists from around the world for decades.
In three districts of Kenya, for instance, more than 40 elephants have died over the past two months because of the effects of the drought.
At the famed Lake Nakuru national park, at least 10 rhinos have been moved to another park because of a shortage of pasture and water. Park rangers are creating artificial water points for the remaining animals because the rivers have dried up and the lake water is too salty.
And at the Tsavo West national park, at least 15 hippos have been found dead because of a lack of grass to graze on. Kenya’s wildlife service is feeding bales of hay to the hippos to keep them alive. Herdsmen have been bringing their cattle into the park, which in turn has induced the elephants to move out of the park, sparking conflicts with local farmers.
Saturday, September 5, 2009 7:41 PM EDT
South Africa’s new comedy hero
After overcoming their shock at the Canadian decision to give refugee status to a 31-year-old white man who claimed to be “persecuted” by black criminals, South Africans have quickly recovered their sense of the absurd.
South Africans are among the world’s funniest, most irreverent, scathing and acerbic commentators on daily events – equalled perhaps only by the Russians who joked their way through the dying decades of the Soviet Union. And they’ve switched on their highly tuned sense of the surreal to find some kind of meaning in the Brandon Huntley decision .
Mr. Huntley, as most readers know by now , is the white South African who managed to persuade a Canadian refugee board member to award him refugee status in Canada on the grounds that he would “stand out like a sore thumb” if he was forced to return to his homeland. He claimed that he was “persecuted” by black muggers and robbers who attacked him merely because of his skin colour.
South Africans were outraged at first, but soon they appreciated the ridiculousness of it all. Their reactions now are veering toward the droll and satiric.
One newspaper, the Mail & Guardian, suggested that the Canadian official who made the refugee decision would be a perfect sucker for a Nigerian email scam. The newspaper promised him a $1-million award for his “brave decision” in the Huntley case, and added: “As soon as you send a $50,000 (US) handling fee, the money will be transferred to your account.”
The newspaper also praised Mr. Huntley for his “dofness” – a South African term that remains obscure to me, but apparently is the perfect description of Mr. Huntley’s attitude towards life. “This is a man who is so damned lazy he couldn’t be bothered to report to police the seven vicious attacks on his person,” the newspaper said. “Respect.”
South African cartoonists have had a field day with Mr. Huntley and the Canadian refugee decision. Lumberjacks and Mounties have figured prominently in their satires of wooly-headed Canadian thinking.
Canada and Mr. Huntley even made a surprise appearance in “Madam and Eve,” the most popular cartoon strip in South Africa, revolving around the adventures of a typical white South Africa housewife and her black “domestic” (i.e., her maid). In the latest episode, Eve’s fearless 8-year-old cousin Thandi suggests that the housewife’s elderly mother should take a hint from the Huntley case and seek refugee status in Britain to escape the torment of having a maid who brings her chilled gin-and-tonics every day at 5 p.m.
But it is South Africa’s satirical news website, hayibo.com, that has enjoyed the most sport with the Huntley case .
“Survivors of the genocide in Darfur have issued a formal apology for overstating their case, saying they were forced to reassess the extent of their plight once confronted with the terrible story of South African refugee Brandon Huntley” the website reported in its mock coverage of the case.
“Sudanese refugee Abdul Wardi . said he could only imagine how tough things must have been for Hartley. ‘He spent a whole winter living in a basement in Ottawa. Could anything be worse?’”
Africa Diary Contributors
Geoffrey York
Geoffrey York is The Globe and Mail's Africa correspondent. He has been a foreign correspondent for the newspaper since 1994, including seven years as the Moscow bureau chief and seven years as the Beijing bureau chief. He is a veteran war correspondent who has covered war zones since 1991 in places such as Somalia, Sudan, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the author of three books including two books on aboriginal issues in Canada. He has received several journalistic awards, including a National Magazine Award and nominations for the National Newspaper Awards.