Ethno-Net Database: Africa

Reports on Ethnic Relations / Rapports sur les relations éthniques

The following section is mainly consisted of part, full or summaries of articles taken from newspapers.
La section suivante est essentiellement constituée d'exraits, de la totalité ou de résumés d'articles issues de journaux .

Fresh fighting between a rebel movement headed by Agathon Rwasa and the regular army has displaced thousands of people in Bujumbura Rural Province, a local administrator said.
The administrator of Kanyosha Commune in Bujumbura Rural, Ernest Ndabakeneye, told IRIN Wednesday that the entire population of the Muyira and Ruyaga sub-counties had fled their homes following Monday's battle between the forces of the Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) and the army.
He said panic-stricken residents of Mboza, Buzige, and Busumba in Ruyaga sub-county also fled their villages and sought refuge at Kanyosha town, the administrative centre of Kanyosha Commune.
Residents of Muyira sub-county also fled to Buhonga and Muyira centres. "I don't have the exact number but the total population that fled in the two sub-counties might near 20,000," Ndabakeneye said.
The governor of Bujumbura Rural, Ignace Ntawembarira, had earlier said that all residents from areas neighbouring Nyabiraba Commune who had fled had since returned home.
Wednesday's fighting in neighbouring Kabezi Commune has, however, provoked a new wave of displacement. The administrator of Kabezi, Felicien Ntahombaye, told IRIN that the FNL attacked Wednesday military positions near Kabezi town, Masama and Mubone. He said two people were killed and four wounded.
Local residents fled to Kabezi centre and Mutambu Commune, to the east. Ntahombaye said local officials were trying to persuade the displaced to return home because the fighting had subsided.
This new displacement adds to the 10,000 other people who recently fled Muhuta Commune. Humanitarian actors in Bujumbura, the Burundi capital, said a joint evaluation of the situation carried out on 19 February found some 2,666 families in desperate need of food aid.
The administrator of Isale Commune, Severin Bagorikunda, told IRIN that 256 households, about 1,080 people, from Mbale in Nyabiraba Commune, who had taken refuge in neighbouring Isale had been without assistance for almost four months now.
Residents in Bujumbura Rural are frequently uprooted by FNL activity. The rebel group is the only armed movement that has refused to sign a ceasefire accord with the transition government of President Domitien Ndayizeye.
In a speech on Wednesday to parliament, government officials and diplomats, Ndayizeye said despite several meetings with FNL representatives at home and abroad it had rejected peace.
"It is right to think that the movement has opted on imposing war on the people and on the government of Burundi," he said.
He added: "On this issue, you are all called upon honourable MPs, honourable senators, ladies and gentlemen to each use your influence in persuading the movement to rejoin the side that is for peace."

The Japanese government is looking to extend its involvement in conflict resolution in Africa beyond just providing money to include participation in UN peacekeeping operations, an embassy official said on Wednesday.

"Japan would like to involve herself more in peace processes, especially the one in the Great Lakes region," Fuku Moto, the press and public affairs officer at the Japanese embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, told IRIN.
"We have sent the force into Iraq and are now thinking that maybe this could be extended to African countries too," he said.
Although a large contributor to many UN operations over the last decade, until its troops were sent into Iraq earlier in February Japan had not deployed troops to a combat zone since the Second World War nearly 60 years ago.
Japan's constitution bans soldiers from fighting overseas, however a 1992 law allows its troops to join UN and relief work abroad. But Moto said although there was consensus in Tokyo on the desire to become more actively involved in peacekeeping, there was no clear "method" as yet.
Tanzania's minister for foreign affairs and international cooperation, Jakaya Kikwete, appealed to Japan last week for help in refugee-related matters, especially for the swift repatriation of Burundian refugees from camps in western Tanzania.
Without giving details, Moto said funding for refugees and refugee affected areas would be considered as a possible beneficiary of increased Japanese involvement in the region.
Following the relatively successful implementation of a peace deal, signed late in 2003 between the transitional government of Burundi and the main rebel group in the country's decade-long civil war, many of the 350,000 Burundian refugees have begun to leave the camps. By the end of the month, up to 10,000 are expected to have returned home in the month of February alone.
Moto's comments follow the recent visit to Tanzania by Masaharu Kohno, a special representative of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at G-8 meetings and an official in-charge of sub-Saharan Africa.
Kohno's visit to Tanzania was a follow up of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development, held in Japan in October 2003, which highlighted the importance Japan gave to the consolidation of peace in Africa, Moto said.

Tripoli - Defence and Security Ministers of African Union (AU) member countries Sunday began proceedings at the second such meeting on continental defence and security in the Libyan town of Sirte, 450 km east of Tripoli.
Diplomatic sources here said the two-day meeting was expected to examine practical mechanisms for the execution of defence clauses contained in the AU Constitutional Act, before submission to the Union's extraordinary heads of state summit slated for 26-28
February on the shores of the Gulf of Sirte.
African defence and security officials, some of whom arrived in the Libyan city last Friday, include the Defence Ministers of Mali, the Gambia, Benin, Togo and Ethiopia, Ghana's junior minister of Defence, the Chadian Interior Minister and senior military and security officials from various African countries.
A number of other Defence and Security Ministers were expected in Tripoli Saturday before proceeding to Sirte Sunday.
The delegates are due to discuss several documents related to the common defence mechanism and the creation of conditions conducive for the launching of a joint African force.
The first meeting of Defence and Security Ministers of AU member countries held in March 2003 in Johannesburg, South Africa, was devoted to examining a policy aimed at enabling Africa ensure a common defence for its people, deal with disasters and armed conflicts and prevent unrest.
The decision to define a continental defence policy was adopted by the first AU Summit held in Durban, South Africa in July 2002.
The notion of a unified African defence policy was hinted over 40 years ago, coming in the form of a proposal by the late Ghanaian leader Kwame N'Krumah during the founding conference of the now defunct Organisation of the African Unity (OAU).
It took African countries four decades to decide on a unified defence policy.
The advent of the AU set the stage for new prospects in Africa, with the view to enabling the continent take care of its security situation, a fundamental factor of development, progress and prosperity.
Observers believe that Africa has realised that the end of the Cold War did not necessarily mean the advent of a period of security, democracy, stability and development throughout the world.
Against this backdrop, the continent has made great efforts to create a regional thrust in a bid to face up to the post-cold war era marked by the establishment of major regional blocs.
Through the Constitutional Act of the AU, the African continent has determined the conditions for the adoption of a common attitude necessary for its security and well-being.
In this regard, many African thinkers and intellectuals believe that Africa, the cradle of civilisation boasting a coveted geographic location, huge resource potentials and rich cultural heritage, must undertake measures to defend itself and its people.
An African diplomat in Tripoli, who requested anonymity, told PANA that organising the extraordinary summit on defence and security matters at the initiative of Colonel Moammar Kadhafi was "a clear appeal for the African people to go beyond the traditional conceptions on the issue".
According to him, this was also a clarion call to set up reliable security co-operation mechanisms at the continental level, under a unified African approach that contributes to global security and peace.

Namibia's land reform process is being questioned by some who find the pace too slow, while others argue that its benefits are debatable.
The Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act of 1995 provides for the acquisition of agricultural land by the government, for redistribution to Namibians "who do not own, or otherwise have the use of, agricultural land, or adequate agricultural land and, foremost, to those Namibian citizens who have been socially, economically or educationally disadvantaged by past discriminatory laws or practices".
The land reform process in Namibia is based on a "willing-seller, willing-buyer" principle, with the government having first option on any commercial farm for sale.
Only 30,720 people out of an estimated 243,000 landless Namibians were resettled by 2003, and critics have said the country's piecemeal land reform had moved far too slowly since independence in 1990, and delivered far too few tangible benefits to its land-hungry citizens.
The government has countered that its hands were tied, as some of land offered by the commercial agriculture sector was unsuitable for resettlement.
On Monday the authorities launched a Land Tribunal to "determine the purchase price in instances were there is a dispute between the owner of commercial agricultural land and the Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation, once that land has been offered for sale to the government," the ministry said in a statement.
Researchers have suggested that many beneficiaries were unable to sustain themselves on their allocated land, which has led to calls on government to provide more long-term support to new small-scale farmers.
Just 15 farms, a total of 6,483 hectares, were acquired for resettlement in 2001/02. Figures for 2003/04 are not yet available, but in late 2003 the government had acquired just 124 farms, totalling more than 700,000 hectares, since land reform began in 1995. Well below the target of 9.5 million hectares in five years.
Pressure has mounted for more radical measures, with newspaper headlines drawing comparisons to Zimbabwe's controversial fast-track programme. In recent months Namibia's farmworkers' union threatened to invade commercial farms in what they dubbed "land-sharing and not land grabbing". The union said the move was prompted by the eviction of farmworkers from farms across the country.
In a statement condemning the planned land invasions, the Lands and Resettlement Minister, Hifikepunye Pohamba, acknowledged that the "pace of acquiring land meant for resettling formerly disadvantaged landless Namibians is not moving fast".
He said this was because "some farmland offered to the government [was] totally unsuitable for resettlement purposes. Some of these farms offered are very stony and desert-like areas. Therefore, the ministry cannot buy these unproductive farms and put people on them".
Pohamba noted that land was a sensitive issue in Namibia and the entire southern African region, and had to be handled "with the utmost care". Upon launching the Land Tribunal, he said the land question in Namibia was both crucial and complicated, "in that it is the most important and primary means of production, because every development activity takes place on land".
His ministry was about to complete a database of all beneficiaries resettled over the years, their dependents and livestock.

Questioning Land Reform
In its "Vision 2030" statement, the ministry said the annual average resettlement rate was 2,222 people, and it was hoping to resettle between 68,000 and 70,000 by 2030. An amount of N $50 million (US $6.5 million) has been set aside over the next five years for the purchase of farms.
It admitted that the "acquisition of land and the subsequent process of land distribution and access, through resettlement and rehabilitation programmes, have so far proved to be a hard nut to crack. Its complexity stems from various inherent factors, such as land availability in relation to the skyrocketing demand for it".
The ministry is now questioning whether the current mode of land reform is the best one for the country. In an overview of its work, the ministry asked: "Does resettlement and rehabilitation (as part of land reform) contribute positively to the overall goals for national development, and if so, how much?"
Analysts have pointed to a lack of post-resettlement support as a major stumbling block to successful implementation of land reform policy.
A report by Namibia's Legal Assistance Centre (LAC), 'One Day We Will Be Equal ... A socio-legal perspective on Namibian Land Reform and Resettlement Process', said "the only reason that rampant starvation and malnutrition do not ravage the resettlement projects is because the government operates a food-for-work programme in virtually every resettlement project".
"Beneficiaries of resettlement projects are caught in a vicious [cycle] because of their poverty: they have to sell agricultural produce to obtain some cash, which in turn lands them in a food deficit situation."
It added that "one of the main criticisms against the resettlement programme has been that it does not provide sufficient training on how to effectively utilise land obtained from the government, nor does it provide access to modern farm equipment".
LAC researcher Willem Odendaal, who co-authored the report, told IRIN that "there's a definite lack of capacity building programmes". There was "a lack of transferring skills, basic technical skills and basic managerial skills to the beneficiaries on these projects".
"Another problem is that people are not close to markets. Also, if they are lucky to produce some produce for the markets, they don't have the means, the organisational or managerial skills, to organise themselves," he explained.
"It's very difficult for people to have access to credit to make improvements on the piece of land they are allocated, as there's definite insecurity in terms of the transfer of ownership of title deeds," Odendaal said. Many beneficiaries of land reform were unable to secure loans because they had a long-term lease agreement with the state, and not title to the land.

No Substitute For A Title Deed
The ministry has argued that "long-term lease agreements with the incumbent beneficiaries ... give new impetus to the resettlement programme in general, and will raise revenue to secure the long-term sustainability of the programme".
"Lease agreements will encourage beneficiaries to increase the productivity of their respective plots and add value to the resettlement programme," the ministry said.
However, the research conducted by LAC indicated that "lending institutions, inherently conservative in nature, are not likely to lend money based on collateral of uncertain legal title, although (in theory) a loan might be given on a properly registered 99-year lease which had some marketable value".
But there "is no substitute for clear and unambiguous legal rights to land [which was] absolutely necessary for [new] settlers to compete in a modern agricultural economy", the report added.
"If your property is not registered, then it has complications - in the sense that you cannot get a loan to improve your land, you cannot put land up as surety to improve the land and buy basic equipment," Odendaal said.
"Thus, the reality of life in the resettlement projects is of settlers being dumped on a few hectares of poor land, equipped with hoes and shovels, and expected to earn a living. This is a process certain to fail - a viable resettlement programme requires an infrastructure to support settlers while they gain access to the kind of substantial agricultural enterprises that can support a reasonable lifestyle," the report concluded.
With all this in mind, many resettled beneficiaries have opted to lease their plots, mostly to communal farmers from overgrazed areas, for as much as N $200 (US $30) a month. Some, said Odendaal, had opted to abandon their plots for a chance at a better life in urban areas.

Time For A Re-Think
A newly created Permanent Technical Team (PTT) on Land Reform will undertake a survey of 40 percent of the 124 farms acquired by government that are earmarked for resettlement, to "establish the socioeconomic profiles of the resettled people or beneficiaries", and review the existing policy and legal framework dealing with land reform and natural resources management.
The PTT hopes to develop "a comprehensive Land Reform Plan of Action". Pohamba has said this "Action Plan would then map out the future direction of land reform in Namibia".
Germany, the country's former colonial power, announced last year that US $7.8 million of a recent development aid package of US $25.66 million would go towards the country's land reform programme and to finance the PTT.
The LAC study argued that "the land reform and resettlement process must be carefully evaluated as a poverty-amelioration measure".
"Simply put, the future of small-scale agriculture in Namibia, as well as in the rest of rural Southern Africa, may be economically very limited. Therefore, resettling 100,000 or more Namibians on small-scale agricultural schemes may never be an effective way to reduce rural poverty," the report concluded.
The country is currently in the grip of a food security crisis, with some 650,000 people in a population of around 1.8 million said to need food aid this year.
A combination of ongoing drought and flash floods has severely eroded the coping ability of rural dwellers and subsistence farmers.
According to Odendaal, "in Namibia there's a history of how commercial farmers were supported with subsidies in the old apartheid days ... and in the dry season their subsidies just increased".
"It's very difficult to farm in Namibia, and I think government has been under-estimating climate conditions in this country," he noted. "People need to be able to sustain themselves, and [more than] 10 years into the resettlement programme, they have not been able to do so."
Namibia's land reform programme has not addressed the crucial issue of security of tenure for farmworkers.
Secretary-general of the National Farmworkers Union (NFU), Alfred Angula, said the drafters of the Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act missed an opportunity to enshrine security of tenure for farmworkers. Since the legislation was enacted in 1995, "nothing has changed" in terms of farmworkers' rights to live on land they had worked, sometimes for decades.
In the past few months 15 families have been evicted from farms where they lived and worked, an issue that has sparked debate in a country where racially skewed land ownership remains a sensitive topic.
Agricultural Employers Association (AEA) chairman Hellmut Fortsch told IRIN that imposing security of tenure - as was done in neighbouring South Africa - would lead to greater unemployment and make farming more difficult in the drought-prone country.
The NFU has taken some of these cases to court, but is finding it difficult. A lack of funding is one reason. "It has become more difficult for us to fight because you need a huge amount of money to challenge that in court, and we depend on the monthly [membership] subscriptions of workers. To fight evictions you have to go to the higher courts, and the lawyers are expensive," Angula said.
"Also, how do you fight it? Because there's no legal provision for security of tenure [for farmworkers]. There also might be numerous cases which we do not know of - the cases we have are only those where our members are affected," he added.
The government announced in mid-February that the cabinet had approved the introduction of a Temporary Intervention Policy of Eviction.
The Namibian newspaper reported that the policy would be aimed at farm labourers and their dependents, and would take into account their length of service on a farm. "Depending on these and other considerations, the policy should prohibit outright evictions in no uncertain terms," Information Minister Nangolo Mbumba was quoted as saying.
Last year Labour Minister Marco Hausiku set up a commission of inquiry to investigate recent evictions, but it failed to get off the ground because of a lack of funding.
Fortsch said the AEA had as yet received no communication on the new policy and it was too early for a new policy to be formulated on farmworker evictions, as negotiations among stakeholders were ongoing.
"Like any other industry, an employee who loses his job by way of disciplinary action or retrenchment, or whatever, has to leave his housing. The same happens to be true for any government institution - many teachers are living in peripheral villages in housing provided by government; the same is true with police officials. I don't think government can force anything on the agricultural sector, as far as providing housing after pensioning [off a worker], for instance," Fortsch said.
"You cannot have a situation where you do not employ someone, yet they are still staying on your land," he added.

Risks Involved
"The South African way of [ensuring] tenure rights, which is eight years in operation, is not seen as a good example of how to do it yet. One recommendation from [a commission looking into the issue] is based on the South African concept: if you've been working for 10 years for an employer then you get tenure rights. I've seen [reports that said] up to 300,000 employees in the agricultural sector have lost jobs because of that obligation on the employer [to provide security of tenure]," Fortsch said.
"What South African employers [presumably] have done is [applied a] forced retrenchment process, and outsourced many labour intensive functions [on their farms], keeping only core employees who they could afford to offer tenure rights," Fortsch explained.
A similar move by Namibian employers could negatively impact on the poverty alleviation goals of the government - over 30 percent of the population is unemployed. "So we will go into these negotiations [with government and unions] and point out that we cannot afford to lose any jobs", said Fortsch.

Politics
Land reform is inextricably linked to politics in Namibia. The country will hold elections this year, and the land reform question is back on the agenda.
The new interim policy on evictions was "probably the only real effort made by the ministry, so far, to look at aspects of farmworkers' tenure rights", said Legal Assistance Centre researcher Willem Odendaal.
"The [Agricultural Land Reform] Act did not really make mention of the rights of farmworkers, and this is an issue that has some serious implications for land reform - it can easily be used as a political weapon to cause a lot of havoc in the country," he said.
"This leaves us in a very difficult situation," said Fortsch, "with negotiations ongoing, we might come up with a solution. This is also a year of elections in Namibia, and anybody who has any political ambitions is trying to jump on the wagon, [making] demands."
Angula told IRIN a draft amendment to the Agricultural Reform Act was being finalised. "I have seen the draft, and security of tenure is mentioned, but we have a problem with some of the language," he said.
"In terms of having a peaceful country and crime free, one learns from your neighbours. What happened in Zimbabwe - the land-grab and those problems - if we want to be proactive, there are some measures we can take to avoid those problems. But if you're adamant, you might invite those kinds of problems. It's better to put programmes in place that suit both parties in terms of benefits with regards to land reform. The 'willing-buyer, willing-seller' [policy] is not going to work, as government does not have the money to purchase and resettle people and fulfil their needs, and the whole process is slow and frustrating to people who want land," Angula warned.
"People working on farms for long periods of time, who get dismissed or retrenched - what do you do with these people in the absence of tenure rights?" he asked.
Angula said the NFU's demands were simple: "Security of tenure for farmworkers now. They should also be allowed to work the land they live on for their own benefit. Otherwise, how will they sustain themselves if a farmer says he has no work for them? Because there's presently a lack of retirement funds and social-safety nets if you lose your job."

Pension Fund Planned
Organised agriculture believe they might have a solution. "For the long term we are looking at establishing a pension fund for farmworkers, so they then can take a third [of the funds upon retirement] to buy some housing scheme, and the other two-thirds will buy them a pension," Fortsch explained.
"The fund is special, in the sense that employees will be able to take out a home loan against the fund," a Namibian Agricultural Union statement said.
Final approval for the fund is anticipated at an AEA congress on 24 June this year.
The Permanent Technical Team currently reviewing the land reform process in Namibia is expected to have its report out by June this year.

BUSINESS DAY, South Africa

"Only 14 African states pass democracy test" (Jonathan Katzenellenbogen)

Only 14 of the African continent's 53 countries to be featured in a report published by the US's Boston University, which was launched yesterday in Johannesburg, are considered sufficiently democratic.
Last year the first report featured 13 countries, however with the election in Kenya of Mwai Kibaki as president the country finds a place in this year's report.
The countries featured are Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, SA, Tanzania, and Zambia.
The sole criterion for a country's inclusion in the annual African Leaders State of Africa Report is that a country be widely accepted as strongly committed to further democracy and free-market reform.
Charles Stith, the director of the African Presidential Archives and Research Centre at Boston University, says that the decision to include a country is based on the "general consensus" derived from the assessments of governments, United Nation's agencies, and nongovernmental organisations.
Speaking at the SA Institute of International Affairs yesterday, Stith said the report was intended to act as a counter to much of the negative comment on Africa's potential.
The report only contains the equivalent of SA's "State of the Nation" address of the presidents of the 14 countries and no independent editorial material. But Stith, who is a former US ambassador to Tanzania says it serves to highlight to a US audience that the continent is, "more than the sum of its problems".
Stith says Uganda, where President Yoweri Museveni last year proposed that the ban on multiparty politics be lifted if passed by a referendum, may be included next year. Namibia, he says, could possibly find a place in the report depending on the conduct of elections later this year.

Eleven African heads of state and governments began a two-day summit on Friday in the Rwandan capital Kigali, to review the continent's economic and political policies under the auspices of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
So far just Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Mauritius have signed up to form the first batch of nations to be reviewed on good governance, democracy, human rights, transparency and domestic business environment under NEPAD's African Peer Review Mechanism.
The purpose of the peer review is to foster the adoption of appropriate laws, policies, standards and practices that lead to political stability, high economic growth and sustainable development on the continent.
The heads of state are expected to agree on a timetable and format how to monitor individual countries that have signed up for the peer review.
"To ensure transparency and accountability in the review process, the heads of state are expected to draw up rules and procedures, which will be approved to guide the conduct of all stakeholders," Louis Napo Gnagbe, the media manager at the NEPAD Secretariat, said.
So far, 16 African governments have agreed to be rated on macroeconomic policies, transparency, human rights, democracy and the business environment. The peer review mechanism, established in 2003, seeks to counter Africa's reputation for bad governance.
"This will be done through sharing of experiences and reinforcement of successful and best practices including identifying deficiencies and assessing the needs for capacity building," Gnagbe said.
He told IRIN that guidelines had already been sent to countries that had agreed to be rated and review teams would be dispatched soon.
The 16 states that have signed up for review include Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Republic of Congo, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda.
Rwanda, a country experienced horrendous mass killings during the genocide of 1994, hopes that positive indicators from the review teams would help improve the confidence of donors and woo foreign investors.
"The process will entail periodic reviews of the policies and practices of participating states to ascertain progress being made towards achieving the mutually agreed goals and compliances with adopted political, economic and corporate governance values and socioeconomic development codes and standard," Gnagbe said.

Angola's main opposition party, UNITA, has launched another salvo against the government, accusing the authorities of dragging their feet over announcing a date for the country's first post-war general elections.
UNITA leader Isaias Samakuva told the Portuguese news agency, Lusa, on Wednesday that "nothing justifies" the delay, and called for an electoral timetable. Samakuva was reacting to comments made earlier this week by a senior official of the ruling MPLA party that it might be two more years before a national poll was held.
The former rebel group has called for elections by mid-2005. Samakuva claimed the government of President Eduardo Dos Santos was deliberately delaying the approval of a new constitution, a pre-condition for scheduling presidential and legislative elections.
"The Angolan people must regain their right to speak" through the ballot box, Lusa quoted Samakuva as saying.
He also alleged that the police had targeted UNITA members, and urged authorities to dismantle civilian militias armed by the government during the civil war, which ended in 2002.
"In the provinces there are quite a few problems - our members tell us that they have been intimidated by MPLA. The police also ignore our complaints, and this means that it is difficult for our members to work. In Lunda Sul [northeast] we have had two of our members disappear. When we asked the police to investigate, we did not receive any answer," UNITA spokesman Azavado Kanganache told IRIN.
The opposition has raised concerns since last year over increased incidents of intimidation of its members by individuals allegedly belonging to MPLA militia groups.
"The militia [UNITA referred to] are MPLA supporters who were given guns by the government just before the 1992 elections. During that time, anyone who wanted a gun, got one, and very often we saw young unemployed people in possession of these weapons. Today, these are everywhere in Angola and are being used to intimidate not only UNITA supporters, but also the whole society. It is difficult to say who is, or isn't, part of a militia group, since it is assumed that most Angolans have guns," said the coordinator of the Coalition for Reconciliation, Transparency and Citizenship, Kinsukulu Kama.
In 1991 the government armed its supporters in key towns, after accusing UNITA of not properly demobilising its troops. However, since the signing of the peace treaty in 2002 there have been numerous calls for civilians to hand over their weapons.
"Everybody needs to be disarmed - not only MPLA supporters," Kama explained. "Ordinary citizens should be encouraged to part with their guns. We need to move towards reconciliation, and having these weapons is not good for the future."

Rights activists in Angola have accused the authorities of riding roughshod over civil liberties after demonstrators this week were prevented from staging a protest against alleged government graft.
According to the protest organisers, police on Tuesday cordoned off access to the venue for the demonstration, a central square in the capital, Luanda.
"When we turned up for the demonstration the police turned us away - we were not even allowed to get out of our cars. In the areas surrounding the square there were hundreds of police, whose presence had frightened many people," Carlos Leitao, president of the Angolan Party for Democratic Progress (PADEPA) told IRIN.
Leitao said PADEPA, a small opposition party, had obtained the required authorisation from the provincial government to hold the protest.
Demonstrators were calling for President Eduardo Dos Santos to launch an investigation into allegations raised by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in January that US $4 billion in state oil revenue had disappeared from government coffers from 1997 to 2002.
The New York-based rights group called on the government to publish all the "Oil Diagnostic" reports, conduct audits of the state-owned oil company, Sonangol, and participate fully in international initiatives to promote transparency.
In 2001 Global Witness alleged the misappropriation of US $1 billion annually from Angola's state coffers over the previous two years.
Authorities in Luanda denied the allegations of corruption and said both reports were flawed.
"We are concerned that the government continues to ignore these allegations. If they are conducting themselves correctly, why have we not been presented with the facts? We want to see where the resources of our country are going," said Leitao.
Rafael Marques, the Angolan representative of the pro-democracy NGO, Open Society, said the clampdown had set a "bad precedent" as the country moved towards its first post-civil war elections.
"If the government forbids people to exercise their right to demonstrate, which is enshrined in the constitution, how then are citizens going to express their dissatisfaction with government policies in the future? We hoped that there would be more freedom now that the war is over, but we are still lagging behind in entrenching human rights," Marques commented.

Thirty-seven rebel fighters arrived on Tuesday in the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, from Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), aboard two planes of the UN Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC.
The arrival of the former rebels, loyal to the Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie-Forces de defense de la democratie (CNDD-FDD) faction led by Jean Bosco Ndayikengurukiye, follows Moday's arrival of 53 others, loyal to Pierre Nkurunziza's CNDD-FDD, who were also escorted home by MONUC officials.
MONUC is repatriating former combatants under its disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation (DDR) programme aimed at ridding the DRC of all armed foreign groups.
A MONUC political adviser, Ibrahima Dia, told IRIN that Ndayikengurukiye requested that his fighters be repatriated and sent to cantonment sites prior to demobilisation.
"We worked with Ndayikengurukiye, the Burundian army and the African Mission in Burundi to identify these combatants and to group them," Dia said.
He added that they were repatriated after MONUC had obtained all the required information about the former fighters. He said they came with 10 guns packed in cases in conformity with UN rules, as they could not travel with weapons. He said 479 rounds of ammunition were destroyed in Lubumbashi by MONUC and Congolese authorities kept the remaining weapons.
"We have a document asserting that the remaining weapons were not given back to combatants," he said.
The returnees said that by coming home, they were implement the ceasefire agreements signed by their leaders. "It is a great joy to come back home after fighting in Congo for six years," Arthemon Nzitabankunze, one of the returnees said.
He added that they hoped to join the country's integrated armed forces after their cantonment. Nzitabankunze, who was a commandant in Ndayikengurukiye's CNDD-FDD, said some 150 former combatants were still in the province of South Kivu, eastern DRC.
"There are no more combatants in Katanga region [northeast of DRC]," he said. "The remaining are in Kivu, at Uvira there are 50 combatants, in south Uvira there are 100."
The returnees were taken to an assembly point at Buheka, in the southern province of Makamba where they will join some 800 former combatants who are already assembled, Ndayikengurukiye added.
The former fighters loyal to Nkurunziza who were repatriated on Monday had also been based in eastern Congo. MONUC officials say it is difficult to establish exact figure of Burundian former combatants still present in the DRC.

The transitional government of Burundi should ensure that the country has a new constitution as well as an electoral law to enable it to move to democracy within the time stipulated in the 2000 Arusha peace accord, the president of the accord's Implementation Monitoring Committee, Berhanu Dinka, said on Monday.
Dinka, who is also the UN Secretary-General's Representative to Burundi, made the remarks when he opened the 17th session of the committee in the capital, Bujumbura. This session is expected to last five days.
A committee member, Jean Baptiste Mukuri, told IRIN that the committee was mandated to draft a constitution if the government failed to adhere to the accord's requirement to enact a new constitution during the second phase of its three-year transition.
"The Arusha accord authorises us," Mukuri, who represents the ABASA political party in committee, said.
In January, Burundian President Domitien Ndayizeye gave all political parties a preliminary project on the electoral law to approve and asked them to reach an agreement by March.
Under the Arusha accord, which was signed on August 2000 by 19 Burundian parties, elections should take place within the next nine months, before the transitional period expires.
However, the elections issue has generated disagreement within the implementation committee.
"It is not possible to organise elections unless we have a new integrated army incorporating all former rebel movements that have signed the Arusha accord," Gerard Bikebako, the committee member representing the former rebel movement Front national de liberation, said.
"This is not the only challenge," he added. "We have thousands of refugees and internally displaced people who have not yet regained their homes."
During the opening of the committee's session, members accused the government of failing to implementing some recommendations made in the accord, especially those dealing with the repatriation of refugees and the release of political prisoners.
The committee announced that it would summon five government ministers, including the defence and state ministers, to update it on progress made, so far, in the implementation of the recommendations.
"The defence minister will tell members how far he has gone with the cantonment of former combatants," a committee member, who requested anonymity, said.
Dinka urged all former rebel movements to assemble their former combatants urgently, to facilitate their demobilisation and reintegration into society.

"Africa at large: 15 Nations ratify African court protocol" (Abimbola Akosile)

Fifteen African countries, excluding Nigeria and Ghana, have ratified the Protocol establishing an African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights.
Member states include Algeria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Comoros, Cote D'Ivoire, Gambia, Lesotho, Libya, Mali, Mauritius, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Togo, and Uganda.
Barrister Femi Falana who briefed newsmen yesterday said the Protocol establishing the court, arose from the need to improve on the performance of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR), based on the African Charter of 1986.
The court is expected to arbitrate on human rights violation cases, and help correct and check various cases of human rights abuse taking place all over the continent. Its operations take effect from January 29, thirty days after Comoros Island, the fifteenth member state, ratified it last December 26.
Falana who is Secretary-General of the African Bar Association (ABA), said moves were being made to ensure the active participation of all African countries. He called on other countries that have not ratified the Protocol (including Nigeria and Ghana) to do so without any further delay.
"The Court will exercise jurisdiction in respect of cases alleging the infringement of human rights referred to it by the ACHPR as well as State Parties to the Protocol. However, individuals and non-governmental organisations can only file cases in the Court subject to the consent of a State Party", he stated.

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