Conflicts and insurgency in Africa & conflict resolution processes; South Africa's peace-making efforts in Lesotho, Burundi & South Sudan: Dr Vasu Gounden briefing

Meeting report

Additional agenda item
Ms S Kalyan (DA) proposed that the issue of President Omar Al-Bashir and the sub-judice rule be placed on the Committee’s agenda for the meeting, and this was agreed to by the Committee.

African Centre for Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD)
The Chairperson, in his introductory remarks, stated that South Africa (SA) was involved with organisations like the African Union (AU), the European Union (EU) and the USA in peace-keeping, peace-making and peace-building efforts on the African Continent. The Committee needed insight on how the absence of peace affected trade and economic growth on the African Continent.

Dr Vasu Gounden, Founder and Executive Director, ACCORD, provided an analysis of conflicts and insurgency in Africa and the processes of conflict resolution aimed to address them. He also provided insight into SA’s peace-making efforts in Lesotho, Burundi and South Sudan.

Dr Gounden recapped what he had presented to the Committee on an earlier occasion. He noted that by 2030, Africa would have 40% of world oil and gas reserves. Gas reserves amounted to $3 trillion. Consumer spend, by 2030, would be $2.2 trillion. The main challenge for Africa was how to harness this potential. 

He explained that there were two things that moved society. The first was technology, and the second was demographics. People tend to move when demographics changed. Technology, on the other hand, allowed people to move to new economies. The microchip had brought about movement into the information economy. Quantum physics was now causing movement into the space economy. The Committee was provided with figures on how the world’s and Africa’s population had exploded over time. He did note that a large portion of Africa’s population consisted of youth. This trend would continue into the future. By 2050 the under 18 of age population in Africa would be 1 billion. The advantage of having a large percentage of youth was that it could drive economies. However, Africa unfortunately had structural deficiencies. Populations in Africa were also becoming denser. By 2050, it was anticipated that Africa would have a larger urban population than rural. Africa thus needed to become industrialised. There was a need for the youth to focus their studies more on science. India’s success in information technology was largely due to this shift in focus. Africa needed skills.

Nigeria was ranked in the top ten countries with highest populations. A less known fact was that Ethiopia was going through rapid development. The public impression of Ethiopia was that it was suffering from famine. The development in Ethiopia was modelled on units in Singapore. Ethiopia had over 75 million people. A large portion of its population consisted of youth. In the last twenty years Ethiopia had gone through rapid infrastructure development.

He noted that governments could not prevent funds from moving across borders. The cell phone giant Nokia had a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) greater than Finland. Microsoft, Google and Uber had GDPs which were much higher than smaller nation states. There had been a rise of private enterprise and the decline of nation states. Globalisation of information was also happening. The globalisation of information and of the market economy had changed the relationship between the state and private enterprise.

The impact and influence of private enterprise, civil society and nation states within a country varied. The nation state should have a monopoly on security. It should have a separation of powers between the judiciary, the legislature and the executive. The private sector needed to be independent and diverse. It should have good infrastructure and needed to be regulated. Civil society should be independent, strong and diverse. If all three elements were present in a country then skills and resources were needed. However all three were not necessarily present in all countries.

Members were provided with a comparison of Burundi and SA. The security of Burundi was under the military. There was somewhat of a separation of powers but President Nkurunziza managed to manipulate Burundi’s constitution. Civil society was politicised in Burundi and the private sector functioned because of government. Burundi had a huge deficit on skills and resources which was considered a recipe for conflict.  SA, on the other hand, had a good mix of these three elements. Resources were also in abundance. The private sector operated independently from government. The main problem for the future was that SA lacked skills. Something needed to be done, in haste, to address the issue. He said that unemployment in SA was "getting out of hand". There was a need to engineer changes in SA. This had been done before by the Afrikaner apartheid government, from 1948 to 1990, to counter the suffering that the Afrikaaners had experienced under English rule. It would take a generation or two to complete the process of change. However, he pointed out that the apartheid government had built Afrikaans universities and schools, and in essence, at that time, there was a re-engineering of skills. There was also a re-engineering of capital with the introduction of Volkskas Bank and institutions like Sanlam. Engineering of opportunities was ensured with the Job Reservation Act which reserved jobs for whites. SA now had to re-engineer all that had been done in the past. Most persons in SA did not have access to opportunities and the job market was hectic at the moment.

He stressed that SA was not nearly as bad as Burundi. A politician who lost the elections in Burundi, as indeed in many other African states, stood to lose everything. In SA, a loss in a political election did not signify the end; in most instances the politician would get redeployed or could take up a post in the private sector. To make matters worse, there was heavy violence in Burundi.

He noted that a good example to emulate when building up a country was Sweden. It had taken decades to get to where it currently was. SA was managing to get there, but Burundi was moving back and forth. This did not mean that things were not happening in Burundi. Roads and dams were being built but it must be remembered that infrastructure development took time; for instance, a port took ten years to complete. However, politics in Africa changed very quickly as far as power was concerned. The President of Sierra Leone had informed ACCORD that he wished to build a dam. He was advised that it would take five years to complete. The President responded that he did not have so much time.

Dr Gounden said that realistically, it was best to try to mitigate conflict whilst development was taking place. Africa, over the next decade, had to brace itself for conflict whilst moving ahead. Much of the presentation thus far had been directed to highlighting the structural problems in Africa.

Moving to discuss insurgencies in Africa, Dr Gounden said that SA had to ask the question how it would balance domestic priorities with funding peace-making efforts in Africa. It had to be borne in mind that Africa was not only a burden to SA; there were benefits that SA derived from Africa as well. SA needed to invest in peace in Africa, especially in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. Inequality, poverty and unemployment caused conflict in Africa. It was worsened by Africa’s lack of skills. Africa also suffered from a governance deficit - and that happened particularly when states moved from a single party state to a multi-party coalition state. Some African states were not yet ready for the change. Conflict was worsened even further by poor quality of governance, a small tax base and a lack of service delivery. There was also the problem of illicit financial flows. From 1970 to 2010 illicit flows out of Africa amounted to R1 trillion. There was organised crime to the value of R870 million. Tax evasion and money laundering was also pervasive. Losses per annum amounted to R1 billion. The arms trade and maritime piracy caused huge losses to the Continent. The changing nature of governance and civic engagement would see more conflict.

He pointed out that there were large outflows from Burundi to neighbouring countries. A total of 182 000 Africans trekked to Europe and it was partly due to the trouble in Libya. The Libyan problem was much worse than the Burundi conflict. The ACCORD felt that if the option of the AU plan for the departure of President Muammar Gaddafi had been followed, things would have been much better. There were huge reserves of high quality oil in Libya, as well as many other resources. Oil in Libya was not difficult to sell. It was the cause of much of the conflict. A total of 400 000 people had been displaced. It was felt that there was not much hope for Libya in the short-term. In relation to insurgencies there was a somewhat asymmetrical approach to warfare. Beheadings and suicide bombings were used; these went back centuries. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) used both conventional and asymmetrical warfare. The ISIS controlled the oil in Iraq. They pumped out 3 million barrels of oil per day. Insurgencies were not rag tag. They were highly sophisticated, well-funded and highly skilled in information technology. It might be asked - who did they represent? but the answer was not always clear. Boko Haram, in its earliest incarnations, emerged in 2002 as an internally-focused movement against perceived Western influence over Nigerian government and society, specifically in terms of social and political issues, Early forms of Boko Haram comprised both moderate and radicalised wings. Al Shabaab emanated from radicalised remnants of the Islamic Courts Union, which controlled south-central Somalia from 2000 until the invasion of Mogadishu by Ethiopian-led forces in January 2007. Al-Shabaab initially focused on eliminating all external influence and interference from Somalia. Al-Shabaab’s ideologies were rooted in fundamentalist views of political Islam. Turkey had provided assistance to Somalia by building a new airport. Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab tried to perhaps address inequality, poverty and unemployment through a radical Islam ideology. Insurgent hotspots included Libya, Somalia and Kenya.

The Committee was given insight into the current dynamics of conflicts. In Burundi there had been debate over the third term for current President Pierre Nkurunziza. There had been different interpretations on the reading of its constitution and the 2000 Arusha Agreement. In July 2015 elections had been held and President Pierre Nkurunziza had been re-elected.

In South Sudan there were continued accusations of human rights violations on all sides of the conflict. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa had been appointed as President Zuma’s Special Envoy to South Sudan in February 2014.

In Lesotho in 2014 there was a constitutional crisis which required urgent intervention of SADC. There was a need for the deployment of South African police to guard installations and key political figures and promote security sector reform. In July 2015 an Extra-Ordinary Summit of Heads of State of the SADC Double Troika was hosted by President Zuma in Pretoria.

Dr Gounden said that SA would be required to continue with peace keeping and peace enforcement in parts of Africa. Enforcement by SA had only been done for the past five to six years. For SA challenges of enforcement in mediation efforts were how to incentivise without coercing, and to decide which stakeholder within a peace-making process should be responsible for ensuring compliance. Longer term challenges were likely to be continued political instability in countries where SA had devoted significant diplomatic and financial resources over the past two decades. Structural underpinnings of conflicts suggested that sustained engagements would be required for at least the next two decades.

Discussion
Ms S Kalyan (DA) commented that the presentation had been interesting. The presentation had alluded to the fact that the reasons for organisations like Boko Haram and ISIS emerging were due to historical inequalities. Some people, however, believed that they had emerged due to religious fanaticism. She asked whether the Democracy Charter was effective, as it was being ratified. There were fears that SA could be a target for terrorist attacks, and she asked whether SA was prepared for such attacks, whether its intelligence was keeping up with developments, and if the required capacity was in place to deal with threats.

Dr Gounden explained that there were two global phenomena manifesting itself in the world. There was firstly a political-ideological phenomenon and secondly a Fundamentalist Judaic-Christian versus an Islamic Fundamentalist phenomenon. The second phenomenon was that people were vying for the superiority of a belief system. China, Russia and former Marxist states were less radical in their old belief systems and had embraced the free market economy. Economic ideological differences were not so great any more. Everybody was competing for dominance in the economic sphere. A huge commodity was energy. The USA had discovered shale gas and was almost becoming self-sufficient. The oil price had almost dropped by 50%. China was also rising as a power. It wished to have a strong foothold in the South Sea. Africa was caught up in this economic competition. The economic powers aligned themselves with governments in Africa where they could benefit. Africa had strategic mineral resources. SA had $2.3 trillion worth of mineral resources. It was therefore obvious that there would be external interference. Large macro-economic warfare was going on. He noted that the USA was starting to pull manufacturing back into the country, and was starting to manufacture goods once again. China would be losing out due to this.

He continued to discuss the political-ideological phenomenon. Those competing with one another even had similarities; China and Russia both had an Islamic problem. Amongst Muslims there was an explosion of the dormant Sunni versus Shia conflict. There was also a battle between the fundamentalists and the moderates which could be seen in countries like Somalia. SA was therefore caught up in this broad problem. A major problem in Africa was disunity. He hoped that all African countries would buy into the Agenda 2063. Africa needed to industrialise. In order to industrialise there needed to be infrastructure. To get infrastructure energy was needed. All these things were thus inter related. Another problem was that African countries competed amongst themselves. If the conflict in Africa was to continue for another two decades then Africa’s population would have exploded. He felt that 2063 was a reasonable time and he was optimistic that things would be improved. He did, however, feel that in the meantime conflict would continue.

Discussion
Mr  S Maila (ANC) ***was concerned about ISIS and Boko Haram recruiting support in SA. He asked if there was any truth that recruitment was taking place and, if so, what was being done to deal with it. He was glad that the pirate problem around Somalia’s seas seemed to be something of the past, as not much was heard of attacks. He asked what strategies were used to deal with the problem? He also asked why  organisations like ISIS and Boko Haram seemed to prefer to deal with civil society organisations like the Gift of the Givers than with governments?

Ms O Maxon (EFF) also expressed her gratitude for a good presentation. She was glad that Dr Gounden had highlighted illicit financial flows out of African countries that were becoming a problem. The United Nations had been asked to look into the matter, and asked what the solution might be. It was indeed a challenge if it was going to take decades to build up nation economies as Sweden had done. Unlike Sweden, Africa was in constant conflict and hence it was a much bigger challenge. She asked what the role of the International Criminal Court in such matters was.

Mr I Mosala (ANC) commented that the world was taking note that Africa was rising. The West had always taken advantage of Africa, whether it was using colonialism or other means. He wondered if organisations like Boko Haram were creations of the West to destabilise Africa so that development could not take place. A stable Africa did not bode well for the West.

Ms D Raphuti (ANC) asked who funded organisations like Boko Haram. She felt that organisations like Boko Haram were a real threat and asked what Africa could do? She asked what advice SA could follow in order to be a success like Sweden.

Ms T Kenye (ANC) asked what had happened to the Nigerian girls that had been abducted by Boko Haram. She noted that insurgencies caused many deaths. She asked whether peacekeeping forces participated in the United Nations Security Council.

Mr M Lekota (COPE) pointed out that organisations like Boko Haram could not just be given funding and told to fight the existing government. There had to be a genuine basis for dissatisfaction. He conceded that external forces might come in and offer assistance to groups for their own benefit. Countries like Britain and France were known for this. He noted that Somalia was a country with many tribes that were forced into a single state. The same had been done with SA and Kenya. The effect was inter-group conflict. Burundi consisted of the Hutu and Tutsi tribes that were in conflict, with the same issues that had erupted in Rwanda. The cause of it all was a German theory which noted that the Hutus and the Tutsis were different, yet the two groups had the same language, culture and other similarities.  SA’s history also had German influences. There was a need to look at the causes of conflicts and what had started them. Western theories that had divided Africans should be discarded.

Dr Gounden noted that organisations like Boko Haram could have genuine grievances. In Africa, like many other places, there was inequality, lack of services, unequal distribution of wealth and resources.
This was the reality. It related directly to deficiencies that existed.

The Chairperson congratulated Dr Gounden on a very good presentation. He felt that SA, Africa and the World had a diplomatic nightmare on its hands when it came to Burundi. The USA, AU, EU and SADC had warned against elections being held in Burundi, but it nevertheless went ahead. President Nkurunziza had won the elections and he was to be inaugurated shortly. He said that if heads of state attended the inauguration then it was giving President Nkurunziza legitimacy. The question remained whether President Nkurunziza would allow peace brokering.

The Chairperson also pointed out that SA had deployed people to Lesotho. The architecture of Lesotho’s constitution needed to be looked at. For six months there had been an impasse in Lesotho. There was no guarantee that the coalition government in Lesotho would last a long time. Lesotho’s military needed to be depoliticised.

The Chairperson asked why President Salva Kiir Mayardit refused to sign a peace agreement with Mr Riek Machar. There were instances where military forces took over because they disliked the current president. The unfortunate truth was that sometimes the new president was no better than the previous president. It was common for prominent world leaders to turn a blind eye if there was benefit to be gained by them. He asked whether African leaders were aware of the state of affairs that had been presented to the Committee, and whether SA’s leadership aware of the state of things in Africa? He felt that the West was feeling insecure about Africa rising.  Perhaps what Mr Mosala said could be true. SA being part of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA (BRICS) Agreement also did not sit well with the West, The West also tried to stir up trouble with the conflict that Russia was engaging in. He noted that Dr Gounden was correct that the National Party government had engaged in white economic empowerment for their own benefit.  Much was done to counter British influences. Volkskas Bank was formed to counter Barclays Bank. Sanlam was started up to compete with Old Mutual.

Dr Gounden responded generally to the questions and comments made by members. He noted that he had recently enjoyed watching a television series called Vikings, which had been of great interest to him as he wished to understand how they had moved from being a violent society to one that was peaceful in present day. Vikings travelled the world to conquer nations and even went so far as Britain. Could it have been a process of evolution? It was part of reformation and formation of nations. Africa had gone through its own process, having gone through colonialism and world wars. It was not a new occurrence and played itself out over and over in history. He pointed out that the ACCORD presented the problems prevalent in Africa to individual governments. Many governments, however, did not see the bigger picture. They were too caught up in their own internal political problems. He noted that SA had bigger issues to contend with than the political squabbles that political parties were having in Parliament at present. One such problem was huge unemployment by the youth. He illustrated this with a USA example; USA might, internally, have fights between the Democrat and the Republican parties but when it came to external affairs, they had a united front. Politicians in SA needed to move towards that stance. SA needed to be more unified when it came to national interest and foreign policy. There were many issues that needed attention, and he cited a few, of water provision, energy and education.

The Chairperson noted that a discussion was needed on what constituted national interest.

Additional agenda item: President Al Bashir matter
The Chairperson asked Members to turn to the issue raised by Ms Kalyan. He reminded Members that at a previous meeting, on 12 August, the Committee was supposed to have been briefed by Deputy Minister Luwellyn Landers on the incident involving President Al Bashir, but he had informed the Committee that he could not do so as the matter was sub judice. Mr S Mokgalapa (DA) had asked for a legal opinion to be given on the matter, and the Committee had written to the Parliamentary Law Advisers requesting such opinion.

Ms Kalyan noted that the issue of sub-judice had come up during a parliamentary session in the House. In the meeting of 12 August, she pointed out that the sub-judice rule did not apply if a parliamentary committee wished to discuss the matter. On that day, judgment had been pending still, but since then the courts had advised that judgment was to be reserved. She felt that Deputy Minister Landers could thus address the Committee over the issue. She added that the DA had, on the previous evening, received a letter from the Speaker of the House, Ms Baleka Mbete, regarding the DA's motion of impeachment of President Jacob Zuma over the handling of the President Al-Bashir matter. The Speaker had, in that letter, conceded that her legal advisers had been wrong. The DA’s motion would thus be coming before the House. She thus felt that input from DIRCO on the issue was needed.

The Chairperson responded that it was difficult to accede to Ms Kalyan’s request as the Committee was still awaiting the legal opinion from the Parliamentary Law Advisers. 

Mr S Ralegoma (ANC), Ms Maxon, Mr Maila and even Ms Kalyan then agreed that the Committee should wait for the legal opinion.
 

Ms C Dudley (ACDP) agreed that the Committee should await the legal opinion but asked that DIRCO provide the Committee with information over the issue as the matter was to be debated in the House.

The Chairperson said that the issue was still sub-judice, and asked again if the Committee would be willing to wait for the legal opinion.

The Committee agreed to wait for the legal opinion from the Parliamentary Law Advisers.

The meeting was adjourned.