U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Integrated Regional Information Network for Southern Africa Tel: +27 11 880 4633 Fax: +27 11 880 1421 e-mail: irin-sa@irin.org.za
SOUTHERN AFRICA: IRIN-SA Weekly Round-up 19 covering the period 8-14 May 1999
ANGOLA: The balance favours rebels
The Angolan government acknowledged this week that the military situation in the country currently favoured the rebel army of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi.
Lieutenant-General Jose Ribeiro Neco, the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) chief of staff, said: "Although the scale has tipped in favour of Jonas Malheiro Sidonio Savimbi's forces, FAA have launched defensive operations permitting the government to control large areas of the country."
Diplomats in the Angolan capital told IRIN that as pressure mounted on President Eduardo Jose dos Santos to launch his pledged dry season offensive in coming weeks, morale in the Angolan army was low and that the latest draft campaign had only had a 20 percent success rate. They saw no medium-term end to the conflict.
UNITA says it will fight on
Meanwhile, UNITA's secretary-general, Lukamba Paulo Gato said the rebels would continue fighting in Angola until the government agreed to peace talks.
In a Mozambique radio interview, he accused the international community of only taking the government's views into account.
The Angolan civil war, which resumed in December after the breakdown of the 1994 UN-brokered Lusaka Protocol peace accords, would continue "until the two sides sit at the negotiating table," Gato said. In a statement released by its headquarters, UNITA claimed it now controlled the borders with Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia and that some of its units were within 70 km of Luanda. It said its army had better mobility, morale, equipment and skills than the FAA. "The SADC (Southern African Development Community) will not get militarily involved in Angola as has been reported," it said. "Zimbabwe has enough problems of its own and Namibia would not make a difference anyway. As long as South Africa is out of it, UNITA sees no threat from the region." Displaced people flock to capital
Angola's minister for Assistance and Social Reintegration, Albino Malungo, said this week that the country's humanitarian situation was "very grim" with an estimated 1.6 million people displaced by fighting and some 3.5 million "affected by the war" around the Central Highlands cities of Huambo and Kuito, and further east in Luena. In the past two months nearly a quarter of million internally displaced people had flocked to Luanda, he said.
Government mortgages oil sales for military equipment
Despite a financial crisis provoked by the steep downturn in global oil prices, the Angolan government is expecting to raise an extra US $1.5 billion this year to help fund its war effort against UNITA, financial analysts told IRIN this week.
The government last week approved the allocation of drilling licenses to BP Amoco, Elf Aquitaine and Exxon for three blocs in Angola's oil-rich deep waters. The importance for the government is that the oil companies are to make up-front down payments, known as signature bonuses, for the rights.
According to Patrick Smith, editor of the London-based newsletter 'Africa Confidential', the signature bonuses amount to around US $300 million for each drilling bloc. In addition to the oil companies, military equipment suppliers also have equity stakes in all three blocs enabling the government to finance its re-armament programme. The government is also close to winning a syndicated loan from the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS)valued at around US $500 million through mortgaging future oil production.
ZAMBIA: The rift with Angola
Zambia has welcomed a visit to Lusaka next week by the chairman of the Angola Sanctions Committee. The committee chairman, Ambassador Robert Fowler of Canada, is due to visit Zambia on 20-21 May as part of a regional tour to probe the loopholes through which UNITA has managed to evade a UN embargo on arms, oil, diamonds and flights.
Information Minister Newstead Zimba said the visit would give Zambia another opportunity to disprove Angolan allegations of Zambian gun-running to UNITA.
The DRC conflict bad for Zambian business
Trade between land-locked Zambia and its neighbours has been hit hard by the Great Lakes conflict, local business leaders told IRIN this week. The DRC war, the said, had destabilised the local economy along the border and forced some 28,000 DRC refugees to flee into Zambia.
"There has been a significant impact, particularly in the Copperbelt area," Economics Association of Zambia Chairman Moses Banda told IRIN. "Food and provisions used to be exported to the DRC, but we are unable to do that now."
Regional sanctions imposed on Burundi, and instability in Rwanda, had also compromised trade across Lake Tanganyika he said.
UNHCR ready for new influx
Meanwhile, UNHCR said it was preparing for a possible influx of fresh DRC refugees into Zambia's northwest Chiengi area should fighting around the DRC town of Pweto intensify.
Last chance for copper mines
The Zambian government anxiously awaited an announcement by the South African-based mining giant Anglo-American that it will go ahead with the purchase of its loss-making state-owned copper mines, financial analysts told IRIN this week.
Following the collapse of a bid by the Kafue consortium last year, "this is the last chance for Zambia to sell the mines," a commodity specialist at the London-based 'Metal Bulletin' told IRIN. With donor financial support contingent on privatisation of Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM), "it will be a major blow if it does not go through", he said.
ZIMBABWE: Flooding reduces Zambezi valley food production
Zimbabwe's northern Zambezi Valley, with an estimated population of 258,000 people, faces a reduction of about 50 percent in output of maize and cotton in the current harvesting season due to flooding.
Elliot Vhurumuku of the Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) told IRIN this week that the cotton harvest, which is the main source of income for the area, is expected to be about 15,000 mt, down from last year's 21,000 mt. He also said the maize harvest for the valley for this season stood at 8,964 mt, representing a decrease of 30 percent from last year and an 18 percent drop from the 1990s average.
Mugabe says he will remain at his job
President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe said he has no intention of resigning from office for the time being. Mugabe, 75, discounted reports this week that his governing ZANU-PF had agreed he would not contest the next presidential election in 2002.
"I know the door through which I came into politics and I know the door I should use to go out of politics," he was quoted as saying. No-one, he added, should dictate the way he should retire.
Cost of the DRC intervention
'The Financial Gazette' reported this week that Zimbabwe had spent the equivalent of US $12.5 million on its military intervention in the DRC. It said the intervention backing President Laurent Desire Kabila was costing US $1.7 million a month and that the money already spent was twice the annual budget of the foreign ministry.
NAMIBIA: Bubonic plague outbreak
An outbreak of bubonic plague in Namibia's Ohangwena district since April has so far affected 39 people, with six cases confirmed as positive, and no deaths occurring in health centres, the health ministry's permanent secretary told IRIN this week.
Dr Kalumbi Shangula said the plague first broke out in the under-developed northern district in 1983 with an average of 100 cases per year. "The worst outbreak was in 1985 when 355 suspected cases were reported and in 1991 when 1,092 people were affected, resulting in 45 deaths," Shangula told IRIN.
New unemployment figures
The Namibian government announced this week that unemployment had now grown to 35 percent of the country's labour force, with women making up the majority of those without jobs.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Youth and Sport told IRIN on the "strict, nationwide" unemployment figure stood at around 21 percent. But he said that the figures were under review because the job market was annually able to absorb only a quarter of the nation's school-leavers.
"When it comes to the issue of youth development in Namibia, the picture is bleak indeed," the minister of youth, Richard Kapelwa Kabajani, said in remarks to the National Assembly.
Officials at his ministry told IRIN that 35 percent of Namibia's workforce of some 547,000 were unemployed, and that 70 percent of that figure comprised rural women. This year, 16,000 school-leavers were competing for only 4,000 new jobs.
MALAWI: Government petitioned to postpone election
The four opposition candidates in Malawi's presidential election this week asked the High Court to postpone the 25 May elections in a writ claiming voter registration had been biased in favour of President Baskili Muluzi's governing United Democratic Front (UDF) Party. A lawyer representing the four candidates, Bazuka Mhango, said they sought a three-week gap between the last day of registration and election day. The registration process was extended from 3 May to 14 after logistical problems in drawing up the full list of the country's four million eligible voters.
But Malawi's information minister, Sam Mpasu, rejected the postponement request as "irresponsible". He said the candidates were trying to create a constitutional crisis.
LESOTHO: New elections
New elections in the Lesotho mountain kingdom would probably be held in April 2000, the government announced this week. The Interim Political Authority (IPA), which has governed the country since an attempted coup last year, said in a statement the election had been "tentatively" set for 8 April.
MOZAMBIQUE: Privatisation bill defeated
A bid by RENAMO, Mozambique's biggest opposition party, to privatise properties under state control was defeated in parliament this week by 125 votes to 118. Analysts in Mozambique told IRIN that RENAMO wanted to create a legal framework whereby people could claim back properties nationalised by the ruling FRELIMO party in the 1970s.
Johannesburg, 14 May, 1999 12:40 GMT
Contact IRIN-SA (Tel: +27 11 880 4633, e-mail irin-sa@ocha.unon.org) for more information or free subscriptions.
[This item is delivered in the "irin-english" service of the UN's IRIN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. For further information or free subscriptions, or to change your keywords, contact e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org or fax: +254 2 622129 or Web: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer.]
Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 1999
distributed by - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Volunteers in Technical Assistance Disaster Information Center lists: listproc@vita.org sitreps nat-dsr web: www.vita.org appeal fireline - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Southern Africa - http://www.vita.org/humanitarian/safrica