SOUTHERN AFRICA: IRIN-SA Weekly Round-up 13 covering the period 26 Mar-2 Apr 1999

ANGOLA: Security deteriorates across the country Security deteriorated across Angola this week recent as UNITA rebels shelled two provincial capitals and hit-and-run attacks were reported on roads in many areas of the country, diplomats in the capital Luanda told IRIN. The worst shelling was reported from the two besieged government-held towns of Malanje, some 400 km east of Luanda, and Kuito, 600 km to the southeast. Although no casualty figures have been provided, by Friday Portuguese and official Angolan media reports said scores of soldiers on both sides had died in battles outside the towns during the week. The diplomats, meanwhile, cited unconfirmed reports of three attacks within 100 km of Luanda itself. In one, they said an electricity pylon had been sabotaged near Catate to the southeast, but that the electricity power line had not been cut. Two hit-and-run attacks were also reported on the road outside Caxito north of the city. "It is unclear whether these attacks, which were isolated, were simply the result of banditry," a source told IRIN. "But with many roads in the country too dangerous to use thus forcing the humanitarian community to fly emergency food in, the insecurity has increased. There have been dozens of reports of attacks on goods vehicles or private vehicles around the country in recent days." Official media reports said UNITA forces had also resumed mine laying and the destruction of bridges on main roads of the northern Uige Province. The bridge over the Kuilo River, near the town of Sanza Pombo, 110 km west of the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), had been destroyed. The Portuguese news agency, Lusa, said rebel forces last Friday had captured the northern Uige town of Maquela do Zombo, which is situated on the DRC border 370 km north of Luanda. It quoted Uige vice-governor for defence, Fernando Jose Canga, as saying "UNITA columns were daily entering Angola from secret bases in the DRC". The capture of the town was not reported by the official media in Angola or confirmed by the government. UN Security Council concerned With an estimated 700,000 people displaced since the resumption of fighting last year, the UN Security Council said it was concerned at "the serious deterioration of the political, military and humanitarian situation in Angola." In a statement last week blaming UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi for the cause of the present crisis, it said, it was particularly concerned at the plight of the civilian population in UNITA areas. UNITA rearms UNITA purchases new weapons Analysts in South Africa and London this week said UNITA had recently acquired tanks, aircraft, helicopters and other military hardware likely to give it a new edge. The purchases had been financed by illicit diamond sales. They said the movement led by Jonas Savimbi, was now capable of switching tactics from hit-and-run guerrilla attacks to conventional warfare. The latest purchases included six Russian-built MiG-23 fighter jets and six Russian-built Hind Mi-25 assault helicopters which they said would enable UNITA to dent the air superiority Angolan government forces have enjoyed during nearly 25 years of civil war since independence from Portugal in 1975. Richard Cornwall, an analyst at the South African-based Institute for Security Studies, told IRIN: "UNITA is getting stronger every day, and now they have ended the government=92s monopoly on air power." The institute, he said, understood that the rebels had also acquired about 50 tanks, and 75 armoured troop carriers. "They also have major artillery and these are purchases which could change the course of the war." Most of the military hardware had been purchased from Ukraine and North Korea. It was mostly flown directly to UNITA-controlled air bases in Angola directly from Ukraine aboard large former Soviet Il-76 and AN-124 cargo planes. UNITA forces were also receiving help in "training and logistics" from its old ally, Morocco, Cornwall said. "The problem faced by the FAA (Angolan armed forces) is that they have poor intelligence on UNITA," the analyst said. Both experts agreed that government troops were demoralised, poorly trained and often having to fend for themselves. "It appears to be South Africans and Ukrainians who are operating the new equipment," the London analyst said referring to the new aircraft. The illegal diamond sales According to Christine Gordon, a London-based diamond specialist, since 1992 UNITA had earned between US $2.5-3 billion from sales of rough diamonds from mines it controls. "You can fund a very spectacular war with US $3 billion," she told IRIN. Despite the government recapture last year of the main diamond-producing centres in Angolas northwest Lunda provinces, UNITA still held mines in the north of the country close to the DRC border and around Mavinga in the southeastern province of Kuando Kubango. Angolas diamonds are high quality and easily distinguishable. But UNITA has been able to circumvent a UN embargo imposed last year banning the sale of diamonds without a government certificate. The analysts said a UNITA cross-border network smuggled diamonds to traders in Zambia, Namibia and the DRC, for onward sale to diamond-cutting centres in Israel - among others - rather than the open market. With the UN embargo still in force, the trade in UNITA diamonds is illegal - "but only if they catch you," Brown said. As many analysts believed, she said, "the actual implementation of the embargo had not been thought through." ZIMBABWE: Mugabe vows to go ahead with land reform Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has vowed to relaunch a controversial land redistribution programme that was blocked by the courts earlier this year, state media reported at the weekend. Mugabe, addressing his ruling party=92s central committee on Friday, said: "Correct procedural steps will be reinstituted where the court has found them flawed". He said the process would start again from scratch, regardless of international opinion, and follow the letter of the law. A court had ruled in February that correct legal procedure had not been followed in the cases of some 840 out of 1,500 white-owned farms the government had wanted to acquire for redistribution to landless blacks. The government has made repeated pledges since independence in 1980 to institute land reform, which has not been effectively implemented. "The government uses the land issue to drum up support, it has become deeply politicised," a political analyst told IRIN today. Under current legislation farmers are entitled to full compensation for land acquired by the cash-strapped government for redistribution. At a land conference last year, Western donors agreed to help fund the programme if they could be assured of its transparency and economic benefits. A Western embassy official told IRIN that donors were adopting a wait-and-see approach to be convinced that the governments new initiative is in keeping with the "process agreed at the land conference." Reform groups reject constitutional proposals Zimbabwean civic groups met this week to thrash out a new strategy following their rejection of the governments constitutional reform proposals which they alleged were an attempt by Mugabe=92s ruling ZANU-PF party to entrench itself in power. National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) spokesman Welshman Ncube told IRIN the pro-reform groups would boycott the governments constitutional review structure and pursue a parallel process based on popular participation. Last week, President Robert Mugabe said constitutional reform would proceed on the basis of a commission of inquiry. Its members would include the 150 deputies in the ZANU-PF dominated parliament, and a further 150 commissioners chosen by the government. Mugabe accused groups like the NCA - a coalition of churches, human rights activists, trade unions and professional associations - of "viewing the constitutional review exercise as an opportunity to seek immediate political and legal empowerment," the state-owned Ziana news agency reported. He said the current constitution, which vests enormous power in the hands of the presidency, was a legal document "perfectly in order and therefore can remain like that." The NCA recommended an independent commission to draft a constitution which would then be put to a referendum and enacted by parliament without amendment. "We are not prepared to run the risk of proceeding under a law which allows the president to do as he likes," Ncube said. "The people of Zimbabwe should be telling the government this is our constitution." ZAMBIA: UNHCR assisting DRC refugees Refugees who have fled to Zambia from recent fighting in DRC are to be moved in coming days away from the countrys far northern border town of Kaputa to a refugee camp further south. A UNHCR spokesman told IRIN on Friday that the refugees, who currently number about 20,000 in Kaputa and nearby villages, would be moved at the rate of about 1,000 a day to a camp at Mporokoso, some 120 km to the south. This he said would help ease the burden on Kaputa. Within the coming days, he added, a comprehensive vaccination campaign against measles was also planned. IMF disburses US $28 million The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved a loan of US $28 million to Zambia following the countrys qualification to the second stage of the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) initiated three years ago. "This is part of the US $349 million that has been agreed with the IMF to support economic and financial policies for the period 1999 to 2001," a finance ministry spokesman told IRIN. An IMF press release said the governments objectives for the 1999 economic and financial programme were to achieve real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of 4 percent, reduce inflation to 15 percent and strengthen gross reserves to the equivalent of one-and-a-half months of imports. A representative of Jubilee 2000, a pro-debt cancellation lobby group, told IRIN that loans to Zambia from the IMF were dependent on conditions such as privatisation and curtailing of spending on social services. "Conditions imposed by the ESAF three years ago have led to untold hardships such as retrenchments and a stringent cash budget for schools and health sectors," Father Peter Henriot said. "We need to have public transparency regarding any future loans that the government plans to acquire." Serious economic setbacks Last year, economic analysts said, the Zambian economy suffered serious setbacks, owing to adverse external developments, including the pronounced fall in copper prices, unfavourable weather conditions and unexpected delays in the privatisation of the Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM). The national currency, the Kwacha, depreciated by 39 percent, and international reserves fell by US $170 million to US $44 million at the end of 1998, or less than two weeks of import cover. Real GDP contracted by an estimated 2 percent in 1998, compared with growth of 3.5 percent in the previous year. A 35 percent decline in metal exports contributed to a significant weakening of Zambia=92s external position in 1998. Poverty remained a pressing problem in Zambia. According to World Bank estimates, in 1996 about 70 percent of Zambians were living in poverty, with 58 percent of the population lacking basic nutrition. NAMIBIA-BOTSWANA: Caprivi exodus slowing down The number of Namibians fleeing secessionist tensions in the northern Caprivi Strip south into Botswana had reached approximately 2,500 and was slowing down, a UNHCR spokesman said this week. "We understand that the exodus has now stabilised at that figure and that it has indeed slowed down," the spokesman said. The asylum-seekers, most of whom were being housed in the Dukwe refugee camp north of the capital Gaborone, claimed in interviews with Botswana officials that they were fleeing harassment and intimidation by Namibian state security forces. However, Phil ya Nangoloh, a spokesman for Namibian Society for Human Rights, who acknowledged that recent tensions in Caprivi had abated, said that many people crossing the border were not reporting to reception centres in Botswana. "These include, we estimate, some 3,000 San bushmen who have not formally sought asylum," he said. "There are still people trickling across in small numbers." The exodus started late in October last year. Last week, the governments of Namibia and Botswana said in a joint statement they "were convinced that the political environment in Namibia, specifically in the Caprivi region, was conducive to the return of the Namibian nationals." NAMIBIA: Climate change threatens food security The Namibian government said this week it was "very worried" by a set of reports suggesting the agriculture-dependent country was vulnerable to the impact of climate change, threatening food security and development goals in an already fragile environment. "The government takes this issue of climate change extremely seriously," Peter Tarr at the directorate of environmental affairs told IRIN. "Its the first time that we have exposed ourselves to the reality of climate change." Three reports by the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia (DRFN), the countrys first-ever studies into the impact of climate change, were last week presented to the Minister of the Environment, Philemon Malima. They confirmed what more generalised analysis over recent years had suggested: Namibias already largely arid climate is expected to grow dryer, warmer and more variable. The studies, based on existing data, highlight a trend of declining rainfall since the mid-1960s and rising temperatures. According to David Cole, the DRFN project coordinator, Namibia was projected to lose its self-sufficiency in water supplies by the year 2015. "We need to concentrate on developing a strategy to actually address these issues," Cole said. LESOTHO: Botswana announces troop withdrawal Botswana said this week it planned to withdraw troops sent to help put down a rebellion in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho by the end of April. Vice-President, General S.K Khama, said: "It is now the intention of Government to withdraw the BDF (Botswana Defence Force) contingent from Lesotho by the end of April this year." In his speech Khama said that the military intervention in Lesotho had achieved its objectives and the government was satisfied that the situation in Lesotho had stabilised sufficiently. Last September, Lesotho asked the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to intervene last September to help put down an anti-government rebellion, and troops from South Africa and Botswana were sent in. Khamas statement, however, contrasted with an announcement by the South African government a week earlier that it had no immediate plans to withdraw troops from the Lesotho, and a government spokesman declined comment on the move. Johannesburg, 2 April 1999 10:30 GMT