SA all wrapped up in central Africa

Reasons for its involvement hard to see, writes Africa editor Nick Kotch

which those who are blessed with the most abundant soil and seas are the most liable to be destroyed by nature’s munificence — tend to point to this part of the world for vital evidence. Crude oil and natural gas are the demons here.

“As the rest of the continent moves ahead, unfortunately it is the central African region that is of most concern, in terms of political stability, democratic governance, the distribution of resources and economic growth,” said Institute for Strategic Studies senior researcher David Zounmenou.

“The resources have always been exploited by external forces who ensure that suitable politicians are in office,” he said.

The CAR, a country bigger than France that lies at the very heart of Africa and is consequently stuffed with diamonds, minerals and timber, is arguably the weakest in a weak region, ranking 179th out of 187 countries in the United Nations (UN) 2011 Human Development Index. Life expectancy somehow managed to decline from 52 years in 1990 to 48 in 2007.

For two years the CAR was even an empire with its own tinpot emperor, the late Jean-Bedel Bokassa, whose coronation in 1977 was said to have cost the equivalent of the national budget.

France had groomed him and France removed him, in 1979.

In that same year, Denis Sassou Nguesso came to power in the Republic of Congo — not to be confused with its giant neighbour, now called the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mr Sassou Nguesso is still in the presidency, albeit after an interval in the 1990s, and was given full respect at last week’s Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA summit. Like almost all central

SA’s government and its military seem to be focused on the problems of central Africa — the geographical region, not the country — but the reasons for the growing involvement are hard to discern.

President Jacob Zuma spent yesterday at a summit in the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, dealing with the fallout of the chronic instability in the neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR), which comes virtually at the bottom of every positive index and near the top of every negative one.

Pan-African ideals about peace, security and good governance were invoked by Mr Zuma and his ministers when he decided to send 200plus paratroopers to the CAR in January. The language has become emotional since 13 of them were flown home in body bags after extraordinary battles in Bangui with Seleka rebels on March 23.

The tragic episode has propelled the previously unknown acronym of “CAR” into every household in SA. Broadcasters have struggled to pronounce the capital’s two-syllable name — for the record, it is not Bang-Gooey — and images of savage child soldiers marauding through tropical forest have somehow been conjured up.

Some truths, as ever in war, have been among the first casualties.

But what is for sure is that the region, stretching from Cameroon in the west to Chad in the north and the two Congos in the east and the south, is the most troubled in Africa. It punches far below its weight and there are few signs of that changing any time soon.

Yet SA is becoming more and more involved with peacekeepers and other military contingents in the Democratic Republic of Congo — with more on the way in a new intervention force in the eastern Kivu region — and in the CAR, and in Sudan’s Darfur region.

Advocates of the theory of the resource curse — according to African countries, the Congo is a former French colony and a significant oil producer which is getting closer to China. But 70% of its 4million people live in poverty.

Also in 1979, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo came to power in Equatorial Guinea. He is still there, Africa’s longest-serving leader, and oil has made his 650,000 people the richest on the continent per capita. But their rights are flouted more egregiously than just about anywhere else, according to Human Rights Watch and other monitors.

The list of presidential veterans goes on. President Paul Biya of Cameroon has been in office since 1982 and even his government’s allies would not claim that his era has seen dynamic innovation.

Comics joke that Mr Biya spends so much time in Europe that when he does come to his homeland it is on a state visit.

The sole topic of yesterday’s emergency summit of the Economic Community of Central Africa States — by general consent the least effective of Africa’s regional economic communities — in Chad was the CAR and what to do about it, two weeks after a rebel coalition called Seleka threw out Francois Bozize, a president who managed to last for 10 years.

“I’m surprised that the South Africans would want to embroil themselves any more in the CAR,” said a senior official with a UN agency in the region, wondering about SA’s and Mr Zuma’s involvement in the summit.

It was chaired by Chadian President Idriss Deby, who seized power in an armed rebellion in 1990 and was once an ally of Mr Bozize.

Seleka’s leader, Michel Djotodia, is now in the ever-wobbling driving seat in Bangui. Because he took power by rebellion last month rather than in a previous age, Mr Djotodia was barred from yesterday’s summit and the CAR was suspended from the African Union.