One of South Africa’s top diplomats will be making a bid to become Africa’s politics, peace and security chief on Saturday.
Jeremiah Kingsley Mamabolo, who has been South Africa’s ambassador at the UN, at the African Union and in Nigeria and Zimbabwe, has been shortlisted to become the African Union’s first commissioner combining the important political affairs portfolio with that of peace and security.
The election will take place at the annual AU summit to be held online. It’s the first time that South Africa is competing for a specific portfolio on the AU Commission though Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, now South Africa’s Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, chaired the AU Commission from 2012 until 2017.
PREMIUM!
Former president Jacob Zuma at the State Capture Commission in Parktown, 16 July 2019. Picture Neil McCartney
Former president Jacob Zuma was South Africaâs Donald Trump as he manipulated state machinery in order to stay in power and he must be held accountable for the damage he caused, says an expert. A former uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) operative has also claimed Zuma was the worst leader in exile who turned the ANC intelligence unit into a shambles and allegedly used tribalism to stay in power. Institute for Security Studies (ISS) senior researcher Dr Jakkie Cilliers said the culture of lack of accountability was instilled into the state, particularly the State Security Agency (SSA), during the Zuma years.
First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.
South Africa has been quietly but urgently trying to defuse what many fear is a ticking time bomb: the bitter dispute between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan over the giant GERD dam that Ethiopia is building on the Blue Nile.
Egypt says GERD – the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam – presents it with an existential threat because it will significantly reduce the flow of the Nile, on which it depends for almost all of its water.
Ethiopia, meanwhile, insists that it needs the vast reservoir, which will eventually hold some 74 billion cubic metres of Nile water, to drive about 6,000 MW of hydroelectric power, which it badly needs for the development of its mostly impoverished people.
Many strategies but little progress securing the Sahel
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Since it started nine years ago, the Sahel security crisis has claimed tens of thousands of lives, forcibly displaced millions, and triggered record levels of food shortages. Last year alone it claimed nearly 6 500 lives in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.