Algerian independence war veterans said protesters demanding ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika step down after 20 years in power had legitimate concerns and they urged all citizens to demonstrate – another sign of cracks in the ruling elite.

The unrest poses the biggest challenge yet to Bouteflika and his inner circle which includes members of the military, intelligence services and businessmen.

“It is the duty of Algerian society in all its segments to take to the streets,” the influential National Organization of Mujahideen – veterans like Bouteflika of the 1954-1962 war of independence against France – said late on Tuesday.

Two branches of powerful Algerian labor union UGTA, representing tens of thousands of workers, also opposed the re-election plan.

“The members do not want a system that is linked to oligarchs,” the branches of Rouiba and Reghaia, two large industrial suburbs of Algiers, said in a statement, referring to close relationships between Bouteflika and business tycoons.

UGTA national Chairman Abdelmadjid Sidi Said is close to Bouteflika and had warned against instability after the first protests erupted two weeks ago.

In another sign of dissent, the national association of lawyers associations demanded that the authorities postpone the elections and set up a transitional government, a statement said. Lawyers have called for a protest on Thursday.

Tens of thousands of people have rallied in cities around Algeria in the largest protests since the 2011 “Arab Spring,” calling on Bouteflika, 82, not to stand in an election scheduled for April 18. He submitted papers on Sunday.

Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Gaed Salah reiterated that the military would not allow a breakdown in security.

“We are committed to providing safe conditions that ensure that Algerians fulfill their electoral duties,” the private Ennahar television statement quoted him as saying.

More protests?

After renewed protests on Tuesday, Algeria was largely quiet on Wednesday apart from one demonstration in the town of Bejaia.

Some officials from Bouteflika’s ruling FLN party have turned up at demonstrations. Several public figures have announced their resignations in a country where personnel changes normally take place behind closed doors.

An anonymous call for a general strike has gone largely unheeded but the leadership faces another test – an online call for a “March of 20 Million” this Friday.

Older Algerians still haunted by the civil war in the 1990s have tolerated crackdowns on dissent in exchange for stability.

But young protesters have no real connection to the war of independence that gives Algeria’s elderly leaders their credentials and, desperate for jobs, have lost patience.

Protesters have praised the military, which has stayed in barracks throughout the unrest. But analysts and former officials say the generals are likely to intervene if the protests lead to instability in one of Africa’s biggest oil producers.

Bouteflika, in office since 1999, said on Sunday he would run in the April 18 poll but call early elections to find a successor after holding a national conference to discuss reforms and a new constitution.

He has not spoken in public since suffering a stroke in 2013. He remains at a hospital in Geneva for medical checks.

In Paris, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Wednesday that France was watching the situation in its former colony closely but it was for Algerians to decide their future.

With more than four million people of Algerian origin in France, any upheaval across the Mediterranean would have a serious impact there. French officials fear an influx of refugees as well as a potential security crisis.

 
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In this episode of Straight Talk Africa host Shaka Ssali explores the challenges that lie ahead in empowering women and girls in Africa. His is joined by Johanna Leblanc national security and foreign affairs legal strategist and Hayde Adams FitzPatrick, co-host of VOA’s new television show “Our Voices.”
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Cameroon says three months after creating a commission to reintegrate separatist fighters who agree to disarm, only 20 rebels have surrendered. Separatists fear the commission may be a trap by the military to arrest and punish them.

Thirty-nine-year-old Julius, who for security reasons gives only his first name, is a motorcycle taxi driver in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde — but only since November.

 

That is when he says he escaped from a village in the English-speaking northwest, after the military raided his rebel camp.

 

Julius says the military killed 13 of his fellow separatist fighters.

 

He has since given up on violence to fight for an independent, English-speaking state within Francophone Cameroon.

 

But Julius refuses to hand himself over to Cameroon’s commission to reintegrate rebel fighters because he does not trust authorities.

 

“What happens on the ground is that if one military man is killed, in vengeance they burn down villages,” he said. “They have gone to the level of committing such atrocities to turn down now and blame it on the fighters on the ground. How do you imagine that those same fighters will trust that they will lay their arms and walk up to them. When they suspect, they shoot and kill.”

 

Julius returned from Nigeria in 2017, he says, after studying at a university. He had no intention of becoming a separatist until the military, he claims, torched his house.

 

Cameroon’s military denies abuses against civilians in battling the rebels and accuses the separatists of committing atrocities.

 

Rights groups say both the military and separatists are guilty of brutalities in the three-year conflict, with noncombatants bearing the brunt of the violence.

 

But authorities admit thousands of young Cameroonians have become separatists.

 

In December, Cameroon created the committee to reintegrate Boko Haram terrorists and rebel fighters and who agreed to disarm.

 

But less than 20 separatists have handed themselves over to Cameroon’s two reintegration centers.

 

Sixtus Gabsa, manager of the reintegration center in the northwestern town of Bamenda, says rebels who want to disarm have nothing to fear.

 

“Those who want to think negatively think that it is a trap. There is no trap in it,” he said. “I am giving you a guarantee, the head of state has given us a mandate to give our children the opportunity to come meet us so that they can stay in peace, live in peace so that we can take care of them and reinsert them in the society. We are even going to give them means to see how they can start a new life in a free and safe society.”

 

Gabsa says the centers offer rebels treatment for injuries, job training, schooling, and resources to resettle them back into mainstream society.

 

But Counselor Denise Mbarga at the Center for the Peaceful Resolution of Conflicts in Yaoundé says the government needs to create trust. He says asking the separatists to disarm while carrying out military raids sends the wrong signal.

Mbarga says nothing much can be expected from the commission if the government does not change its strategy. He says authorities need to show political will to end the war by carrying out sincere dialogue with the people and rebels because the military solution is failing.

 

The separatists, who claim discrimination against the English-speaking minority in majority French-speaking Cameroon, have been fighting for an independent state since 2016.

 

The government says more than 1,200 people have been killed in the fighting but has dismissed the thought of giving up any sovereignty.

 

 

 
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The son of Liberia’s ex-president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, an ex-central bank governor and current bank official were charged with economic sabotage late on Monday after investigations uncovered evidence of possible malpractice by the regulator.

The case is the latest twist in a long-running scandal prompted initially by the feared disappearance of newly printed banknotes worth $100 million en route to the central bank — the equivalent of around 5 percent of the west African nation’s gross domestic product.

Investigations by the Liberian government and the U.S. embassy last week established that the cash had indeed been delivered to the central bank.

However, the separate reports of the government and the U.S. embassy also highlighted possible discrepancies in the management of banknotes. The government also said a separate batch of banknotes worth $16.5 million remained unaccounted for.

Charles Sirleaf, who served as deputy governor of the central bank during his mother’s presidency, was arrested shortly after the release of the reports last Thursday, along with the bank’s former governor Milton Weeks and its current director of banking, Dorbor Hagba.

They were charged with multiple offenses during a public court appearance on Monday evening. These included economic sabotage, misuse of public funds and criminal conspiracy.

The court said Sirleaf and his former colleagues had printed extra banknotes for “their personal use and benefit.”

Sirleaf is expected to appear in court later today. Lawyers for him and the other two defendants did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The central bank was also not available for comment. All three men have denied any wrongdoing.
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It is Friday morning, and the southeastern fringe of Kibera slum comes alive as teams of women and youngsters converge on the edge of the Nairobi dam.

There, on its northern perimeter, some rake and pile garbage for collection while others plant saplings on cleared terrain.

Known as riparian land, the area they are planting is the strip adjacent to the dam that can absorb flooding. Under Kenyan law, this is public land and it may not be built on.

Their work might look like simple civic pride, but something more is going on: This is a message to developers who might want this unused land for themselves.

“Nairobi dam’s riparian land is not for grabbing,” said Yohana Gikaara, the founder of Kibera 7 Kids, a non-profit that works with young people in the slum.

Forty years ago, this shore was underwater and safe from land-grabbers, he said. At that time, the dam was a popular recreation site for residents of Kenya’s capital.

But years of siltation due to human encroachment and the dumping of waste saw the waters recede. Over that time the dam’s main water source — the Motoine River — was choked by garbage, leaving it just a thread of slimy effluent.

Today, of the original 88 acres the dam once occupied, only a chunk of water about half the size of a football pitch remains, said Gikaara.

Given that land near the dam is worth about 80 million Kenyan shillings ($800,000) an acre, the attractions for developers are clear.

Kibera residents like Gikaara fear the 30 acres of riparian land, and perhaps even the remainder of the dam itself, could disappear thanks to the booming property development industry.

“No one knows when [developers] strike,” he said. “You wake up one morning and find earth-movers in the neighborhood, and that is when you know you or your neighbor will soon be homeless.”

​Wrecking ball

Apartment blocks sprung up in 2014 on the dam’s southeastern flank and, in 2017, greenhouses began popping up too. That prompted non-profits in Kibera to raise the alarm.

Last year, the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) ordered the apartments to be demolished — because, said David Ong’are, the government body’s director in charge of compliance and enforcement, they had been built illegally on riparian land.

Any building near a water body must be between six and 30 meters from the high-water mark, depending on the type of water course, he said.

“The buildings that have breached this threshold at the Nairobi dam are going to be demolished,” Ong’are told Reuters in an interview, adding that some developers had filed court cases in an effort to halt that.

On’gare said more than 4,000 buildings built on riparian land in Nairobi had been earmarked for demolition to date.

One prominent site demolished last year was the South End Mall, which NEMA ordered flattened after ruling it had been built over a section of the Moitone River’s course, he said.

Pollution solutions

In January, Gikaara worked with lobby groups to oppose plans by a parliamentary committee to fill in the rest of the dam — ostensibly as a way to deal with the issue of pollution.

But, said local resident James Makusa, that was simply a ruse cloaked in the name of rehabilitating the dam.

“The real motive is to prepare the ground for property development,” said Makusa, who makes a living by scooping sediment from the Motoine River and selling it to construction sites.

Makusa views his job of clearing the river of sediment as a form of environmental conservation — a better way to rehabilitate the dam, and preferable to filling it with soil.

Mary Najoli, who heads the Shikanisha Akili Women’s Group, suggested another use that would protect the land. Her group, whose name translates as “using your imagination,” makes beadwork from recycled waste collected in Kibera.

But like many others in informal settlements, they lack a permanent venue from where to sell their wares.

“We would like to be allocated [a small area of] the dam’s land as a place where we can display and sell our beadwork. In return, we will ensure that the environment is clean and watch out for illegal encroachment,” she said.

​That might happen, said local MP Nixon Korir, whose constituency includes the dam.

However, he said, the process of reclaiming the land must be finished first: that includes clearing waste and ensuring the planted trees can sustain themselves.

Korir said the reclamation process, which started last year, was designed to benefit Kibera’s residents.

“The rehabilitated riparian land will be turned into a tourism site that can bring revenue and create employment,” he said.

Brighter future?

Juliette Biao Koudenoukpo, the director of the Africa office at the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), said Kibera residents were best-suited to keep Nairobi dam clean and safe.

“The people do not have any other alternative but staying where they are and caring for the dam because there is need to restore life here in Kibera through restoration of this dam and its ecosystem,” she said.

She blamed Kibera’s waste problem on poor urban planning, which meant open spaces had become dumping grounds — including the dam’s shores.

Meantime, some view the issue of pollution as a silver lining — among them is Ian Araka of the Foundation of Hope youth group, which combines garbage collection in Kibera with art, drama, traditional dance and poetry.

His 60-strong group has partnered with ASTICOM K Ltd., a social enterprise that is building a recycling factory in Kibera. He said the aim is to supply solid waste collected from the slum to the factory on a contractual basis.

Some will be collected from the dam’s riparian land, and there are plans to recycle polluted water for use by small businesses in the slum, such as car washes and sanitation services, he said.

“This project is going to unite and equip us with a voice to not only be able to chase land-grabbers away, but also invite developers to do something constructive with us,” Araka said.
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