UPDATE:
The Atlantic has a nice piece on the legacy of Meles Zenawi, the ailing Ethiopian Premier.
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The African Union elected South African Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to head its executive arm, the AU Commission. Ms Dlamini-Zuma is a former wife of the polygamist South African President Jacob Zuma. I hope that with Pretoria’s success in having her elected to head the AU South Africa will take a more proactive role in leading the regional organization. As I have stated before, I think the organization needs “owners” in the form of diplomatically powerful custodians. Being the region’s biggest economy, South Africa is well placed to provide strong leadership to the African Union, if it wanted to.
Still on the AU Summit, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has been conspicuously absent, fueling speculation that he is critically ill. Rumors abound that Mr. Zenawi has left the country for a Belgian hospital – the Saint-Luc University Hospital in Brussels (where he is believed to be receiving treatment for an acute case of hematologic cancer). Some opposition groups have suggested that Mr. Zenawi may have died in hospital. The last time he was seen in public was on the 19th of June. Mr. Zenawi has led Ethiopia since 1991. His record has been a mixed bag of aggressive and ambitious development projects (with results, growth has averaged over 8.4% over the last ten years) and militarism and authoritarian tendencies that have seen many opposition members detained, exiled or killed.
And in Somalia, BloombergBusinessweek reports on the massive corruption in the Transitional Federal Government.
The nearly 200-page report lists numerous examples of money intended for Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) going missing, saying that for every $10 received, $7 never made it into state coffers.
The report, written by the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea and obtained by The Associated Press Monday, says government revenues aren’t even clear: The Ministry of Finance reported revenues of $72 million in fiscal year 2011, while the accountant general reported revenues of $55 million.
The Somali Government remains an unrepresentative shell, propped up by African Union forces and barely in control anywhere outside of Mogadishu. No elections are in sight (and rightly so. I have never been a fan of rushed post-conflict elections. See Liberia circa 1997 for details), instead the UN and the AU are presiding over a process in which Somali power brokers will put together a list of electors to appoint the next parliament. The current government’s mandate expires the 20th of August (next month).
Filed under: africa Tagged: Addis Ababa, Africa Union, African Union, Al-Shabab, amison, burundi peacekeepers somalia, cape town, Eritrea, Ethiopia, health concerns for Meles Zenawi, hematologic cancer, Islamic Courts Union, Jacob Zuma, Johannesburg, kenyan invasio of somalia, Kismayu, meles zenawi, meles zenawi feared dead, meles zenawi health, meles zenawi ill, Meles Zenawi sickness, Mogadishu, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, OAU, Organization of African Unity, Pretoria, Somalia, south africa, ugandan peacekeepers somalia, union of islamic courts
