Day: June 4, 2021

A well-aimed kick. A strong shove, body checks, shouting and a fight for dominance.

This isn’t a rowdy football (soccer) match. This is the latest session of the Pan African Parliament.

The continental body brings together African legislators to implement the policy of the African Union. And its latest session, this week, was suspended amid a physical scuffle over leadership that prompted this Portuguese-speaking delegate to call for help as a literal fight happened on the floor:

“Please call the police,” he pleaded, through a translator, over the official feed provided by South Africa’s government, as delegates in suits and traditional regalia shoved, kicked and wrestled with each other at the venue in Johannesburg.

“Please call the police, put an order here. It is urgent, it is urgent. You should call the police. Please call the police. Please call the police. This is urgent. This is urgent, please call the police, please call the police. Please. Please, call the police.”

Let’s go to the replay

VOA watched the two-hour ordeal. In the style of Africa’s favorite sport, football (soccer), here’s how the action unfolded:

We start on May 31 with all 229 MPs, taking to the field at this venue near Johannesburg. The goal: elect a new president.

The Southern African bloc, led by feisty, far-left striker Julius Malema of South Africa — the sharp-tongued leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters party — strode out onto the field with strong support of their region’s candidate, Zimbabwe’s Fortune Charumbira.

But they were met by a strong defense from their West and East African opponents, who each back a different candidate. The Southern side pushed their offensive, arguing that the leadership should rotate by region — a West African currently holds the top spot.

About 28 minutes into the first half, things got loud, with one faction chanting for elections. And then, a few minutes later, it got physical. In the five minutes of chaos that unfolded, members committed most of the classic red-card fouls: kicking, tripping, jumping, charging, striking, holding and pushing — basically, everything but touching the ball, though some members did try to grab the plastic ballot box. MPs also rushed the podium several more times before the speaker called things off.

And the post-match analysis

Here’s the Southern African take on it, from South African parliamentary spokesman Moloto Mothapo. The Pan African Parliament is not supposed to be a blood sport, he said.

“The two caucuses’ attempts to continue with electing the new president and ignoring advice from the AU that the well-established principle of geographical rotation within the union be observed is a sign that they do not value unity in the continent,” he told VOA.

From Nairobi, pan-African activist Daniel Mwambonu was quick to pin the blame on not just West Africa, but on the country that he believes taught them to play rough.

“The Francophone region is putting personal interests first,” he told VOA “… So basically, they are trying to reduce the African parliament into a dictatorship of some sort. What we witnessed in countries that are controlled by France, there’s actually coups every time we have a new leader, he or she has removed from power by the military. This situation we are witnessing in Mali is because these countries that were colonized by France and they actually behave like colonizers themselves because of the French assimilation policy.”

And from Ghana, Pan-African activist Sarfo Abebrese notes that no Southern African has held the presidency, which bolsters Southern Africa’s case for a change of leadership. But Abebrese, a lawyer, said the Southern team didn’t exactly play by the complex rules of the game.

“I do not think that I have much time to go into the nitty-gritty of the rotation argument,” he said.

“But suffice it to say that if you have a situation where South Africa thinks that they really, really need to have a candidate at the helm of affairs for the first time, they have to go by the rules, that is all that I can say. Get amendments done and Article 93 and then let’s get back and get the right thing to be done for the sake of Africa and for African unity and pan Africanism that the parliament is supposed to stand for.”

Mwambonu, who heads the Global Pan-Africanism Network, says a possible solution is to bring in more referees from civil society. Here’s the call he would have made.

“We’d have issued them a red card,” he said. “And if we were there, actually, we would not have allowed that chaos to happen. Because we are really passionate about Africa, and that’s what pan-Africanism is all about: putting the interests of Africa first.”

And that is one thing that all of the parties here seem to agree on: Africa, as a continent, was not helped by this. Nor, apparently, was this important legislative body: the parliament called off its presidential election, leaving the organization without a clear leader until they meet on the field again.

Source: Voice of America

Shops remained shuttered, some government workers hadn’t been paid and the town’s main hospital was laid to waste. But the Tigrayan fighters still claimed victory, swaggering through the streets of Hawzen with their guns.

It wouldn’t last long.

Hawzen, a rural town in the ethnic Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, is a microcosm of the challenge facing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed — and a warning that the war here is unlikely to end soon.

When The Associated Press arrived in May, Tigrayan fighters had recently retaken Hawzen from Ethiopian government troops, laying claim again to land that has switched control multiple times since the war began in November.

To the Ethiopian government, the fighters are terrorists who have defied the authority of Abiy in the federal capital, Addis Ababa.

But almost everyone the AP spoke with in Hawzen supported them and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, the party of the region’s ousted and now-fugitive leaders.

“The people elected us, so we are not terrorists,” said fighter Nurhussein Abdulmajid, standing confidently in the middle of the road with a gun on his shoulder, as a crowd listened. “He [Abiy] is the one who is the terrorist. A terrorist is someone who massacres people.”

Larger war

The battle for Hawzen is part of a larger war in Tigray between the Ethiopian government and the Tigrayan rebels that has led to massacres, gang rapes and the flight of more than 2 million of the region’s 6 million people.

While the government now holds many urban centers, fierce fighting continues in remote rural towns like Hawzen.

The AP was able to get through an Ethiopian military roadblock and cross the front line to get a rare look at a town held by Tigrayan fighters, who carried light weapons they said they had seized from opponents.

If anything, recent atrocities appear to have increased support for the TPLF.

One 19-year-old said she had been raped by an Ethiopian soldier and was now six months pregnant. After trying and failing to terminate the pregnancy herself, she is now desperately hoping someone in a local hospital will help her.

As soon as possible, she said, she wants to join the rebels.

“I want to go,” she said, as she broke down in tears. “You will die if you stay home, and you will die if you go out there. … I would rather die alongside the fighters.”

The AP does not name victims of sexual abuse.

The TPLF was on top of a coalition that ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades. That changed in 2018, when Abiy rose to power as a reformist. He alienated the TPLF with efforts to make peace with its archenemy, Eritrea, and rid the federal government of corruption.

Tigray’s leaders fought back. In 2020, after a national vote was suspended because of the pandemic, the TPLF went ahead with its own elections in the region.

Asserting that Tigrayan fighters had attacked a military base, Abiy sent federal troops into Tigray in November. Government forces are now allied with militias from the rival Amhara ethnic group as well as soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, who are blamed for many atrocities.

‘Protracted’ conflict

Abiy acknowledged recently that the highly mobile Tigrayan guerrillas were stretching the Ethiopian military, springing ambushes from the rugged highlands where they hide.

In April, the International Crisis Group predicted that entrenched resistance on both sides meant “the conflict could evolve into a protracted war.”

Billene Seyoum, a spokeswoman for Abiy’s office, told reporters on Thursday that “the suffering of Ethiopians who are victims of a situation that is not of their choosing is a source of pain.” Efforts to alleviate the suffering of Tigrayans “have been marred by various challenges given the complexity of any armed engagement,” she said.

Residents of Hawzen said the town of a few thousand people had seen fighting four times since November. Many spoke disapprovingly of Abiy, saying they no longer trusted him to keep them safe.

As the two sides fight, civilians are suffering heavily. More and more children are caught up in shelling in Hawzen and other nearby areas, with at least 32 admitted to the regional Ayder Hospital in Mekelle for blast injuries from December to April. Thirteen left with limbs amputated, according to official records.

Some of those victims might have had limbs saved if they had received first aid at the nearest health centers. But such facilities are shells right now — systematically looted, vandalized and turned upside down.

Eritrean soldiers set up camp in the Hawzen Primary Hospital, which once boasted of equipment ranging from X-ray machines to baby incubators. Now it is trashed and looted, and heaps of stones litter the compound where fighters had set up defensive positions.

Many Tigrayans from contested towns like Hawzen end up in camps for the internally displaced in Mekelle, mostly women and children.

And so the fight continues.

Source: Voice of America