POLITICS-IVORY COAST: Mbeki Soldiers On

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Jan 28 2005 (IPS) - The past few days have seen South African President Thabo Mbeki push ahead with his initiative to bring peace to the Ivory Coast, even postponing his departure for the World Economic Forum. As the week ends, however, it is clear that the future of the West African state still hangs in the balance.

The forum, which takes place annually in the Swiss town of Davos, is attended by political and business leaders.

“It is sad to see Cote d’Ivoire falling apart…Mr Mbeki’s efforts are the last attempt to rescue the country. If it fails, then we shall seek UN intervention,” said Lambert Kouassi Konan, an Ivorian politician, in response to a question raised by IPS during a press conference in Johannesburg, Wednesday.

A former agriculture minister in the government of the Ivory Coast’s founding father, Felix Houphouët-Boigny, Konan and fellow opposition leader Alassane Ouattara were in South Africa this week for talks with Mbeki. The president also met Guillaume Soro, leader of the New Forces rebel group.

Mbeki is intervening in the Ivorian conflict at the request of the African Union (AU) – this after a January 2003 peace accord mediated by France collapsed.

For more than two years, the Ivory Coast has effectively been split into two, with rebels controlling the Muslim north and the government the south. A mutiny by disgruntled members of the Ivorian army on Sep. 19, 2002 sparked a wider conflict over long-standing grievances – notably claims by northern Muslims that government discriminated against them.

The mutineering troops, most of them from the north, were later to form the backbone of the rebel army that presently controls half the former French colony. Widespread atrocities, including torture and rape, are said to have been committed by both sides to the conflict since late 2002.

In earlier years, the Ivory Coast was considered an oasis of calm in a strife-torn region, although certain analysts claim that it was only the iron-fisted rule of Houphouët-Boigny – who died in 1993 – that kept ethnic and religious tensions in check.

The hope is that Mbeki will be able to bring the New Forces and President Laurent Gbagbo to the negotiating table ahead of general elections, scheduled for October.

Ouattara, a former Ivorian prime minister currently exiled in France, told reporters Wednesday that management of the elections could not be left in Gbagbo’s care.

“We believe that elections must be conducted by an independent commission. We want a guarantee of free and fair elections,” he said.

Another stumbling block relates to Gbagbo’s insistence that a referendum be held on changing article 35 of the Ivorian constitution.

This controversial clause was altered by former president Henri Konan Bedié to state that presidential contenders had to be born in the Ivory Coast, of Ivorian parents. The amendment was widely viewed as an attempt to stop Ouattara, a Muslim northerner variously accused of having either a Burkinabe mother or father, from contesting the 2000 presidential poll.

Bedié’s constitutional tinkering formed part of a broader campaign for “Ivoirité” (“Ivorian-ness”) which sought to marginalize immigrants who are said to make up about a third of the population.

Hailing mostly from Burkina Faso and Mali, the migrants came to the Ivory Coast at a time when cocoa, coffee and palm oil exports were booming – many taking on jobs that were shunned by Ivorians. However, falling cocoa prices in the 1990s opened the door to anti-immigrant sentiments.

As an Ivorian politician described it to IPS this week, some of those who joined the rebel movement have felt the cutting edge of Ivoirité.

“Most of these soldiers served in the Ivorian army without the necessary national identity card,” he said. “Suddenly, they were told that they were not Ivorian citizens.”

General Robert Guei, who unseated Konan Bedié in a December 1999 coup, made requirements for presidential contenders still more restrictive by stipulating that that they could not have held the nationality of another country.

To the anger of rebels and the opposition, an AU statement issued Jan. 10 endorsed Gbagbo’s decision to hold the referendum. The new amendment that will be put to the vote would allow people with one Ivorian parent to run for the presidency – a policy change that both rebels and opposition claim is insufficient.

“We believe the referendum is a useless exercise. Why should we waste time in a referendum? We can go directly to elections,” Ouattara said. “The AU must know that the referendum is not possible.”

“We are in an abnormal situation, and the Ivorian constitution does not call for a referendum in such a situation,” he argued.

The rebels have demanded that the constitution be changed to allow Ouattara to stand in the October 2005 poll before they disarm, despite Gbagbo’s demand that they lay down their weapons first.

Air strikes against rebel positions in November 2004 that led to the death of nine French peace-keepers deepened animosities in the Ivory Coast, also prompting a retaliatory attack from France that destroyed most of the small Ivorian air force. French and United Nations troops currently patrol a buffer zone between north and south.

The actions of Paris, in their turn, sparked protests against French nationals living in the Ivory Coast (France has a large stake in the Ivorian economy). Some 17,000 nationals were working in the Ivory Coast before the November 2004 incident, thousands of whom fled the country.

Reports this week noted that Guillaume Soro and Simone Gbagbo, wife of the president, are said to be amongst 95 people whom the United Nations believes implicated in serious human rights abuses over the past two years.

This may complicate Mbeki’s intervention – and the initiative he is spearheading to improve conditions elsewhere in Africa: the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

NEPAD seeks to attract investment to Africa in exchange for good governance. The question the South African leader could well be asking himself is how to make this vision take root in the Ivory Coast when those may occupy key positions in a future administration appear tainted by the events of their past.