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INSIDE AFRICA
Congo Peace Deal; Key Kenyans Meet with Annan; Ghana Hosts Africa Cup
Aired January 26, 2008 - 12:30:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FEMI OKE, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Femi Oke. Welcome to INSIDE AFRICA, your weekly window to the continent.
On the program this week, the Democratic Republic of Congo signs a peace deal with key rebel groups. Will it hold, and will it finally bring lasting peace to eastern Congo?
A significant development in Kenya. Kofi Annan brings together the two key figures in that country's political crisis.
And Ghana hosts the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament. We'll hear from one of the players, and you'll just have to stick around to find out which one it is.
We begin with a peace deal that could mark a major turning point for eastern Congo. The United Nations has high hopes that the agreement will finally bring a lasting peace for the region, and allow for the resettlement of more than 400,000 displaced people.
Richard Roth has details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Peace has been elusive in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. That may be about to change. The Congolese government and key rebel militias have finally signed what some are calling a historic peace deal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're quite hopeful that as long as this process is taking place, as long as the parties are negotiating and dialogue is kept up, that this latest agreement would go a long way in ensuring a return to normal life in that part of Congo.
ROTH: A peace deal that officially ended a five-year civil war in 2003 was supposed to disarm rebels in the area. It did not. In all, more than 20 armed rebel groups have continued to operate here, the most prominent one led by Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda. Last year, the government issued an international arrest warrant against him. Nkunda says he simply has been protecting his people from Hutu militias aligned with the government. All sides are accused of widespread atrocities.
GENERAL LAURENT NKUNDA, REBEL GENERAL: We're protecting them from negative forces, the FDLR (inaudible) are in this area. And they didn't allow to our people to live here.
ROTH: The fighting that this week's deal aims to stop has forced more than 400,000 people to flee their homes in the last year alone. It calls for an immediate cease-fire, a gradual withdrawal of all rebel troops from north Kivu, and the resettlement of displaced people. Many have been living in squalid camps, where malaria and malnutrition are rampant and medical care unavailable. Relief and human rights organizations hope the new agreement will allow people to go home and resume their lives.
ANNEKE VAN WOUDENBERG, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: We don't know if the different signatories will indeed adhere to what they have said they will do, but this is the best chance I've seen in eastern Congo for some time.
ROTH: The U.S., E.U. and A.U. have all pledged to support the agreement, and U.N. peacekeepers will be deployed to set up a buffer zone. But if there is anything that Congo's recent history has proven, it's that the promise of peace is not always kept here.
Richard Roth, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
OKE: Conflict has taken a heavy toll in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The International Rescue Committee says about 5.4 million Congolese have died from conflict-related causes since that country's civil war began in 1998. That would make this conflict the deadliest recorded since World War II.
Now, although the war officially ended five years ago, thousands of civilians continue to die every month. In a new report, the IRC says most of these deaths are caused by treatable illnesses.
Earlier, I spoke to one of the authors of that report, Dr. Richard Brennan. I asked him about the challenges of conducting a survey in such a huge developing country.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. RICHARD BRENNAN, INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE: Congo, as you said, is the size of Western Europe. Reportedly has less than 2,000 miles of paved roads.
We were fortunate, in that -- we work in seven provinces in Congo. So, we had colleagues on the ground who could help us logistically, and introduce us to local authorities and officials. So, that certainly facilitated our movement.
But it was very challenging. We chartered aircraft, we chartered boats, we went by canoe, four-wheel drive, a lot of work on motorcycles. We walked for miles and miles. And in eastern Congo, it's very mountainous, and walking up those mountains, we got plenty of exercise. And oftentimes under the hot sun. So it was very important to be motivating our teams. So we had very experienced staff with each of our teams in the field to make sure that the data collected was accurate, and it's difficult under these circumstances.
OKE: What was interesting about the survey? Was that people in the DRC aren't dying mostly from violent deaths because of conflict still ongoing in the eastern Congo, they're dying from -- the highest death rate was from malaria?
BRENNAN: That's right.
OKE: How do you explain that?
BRENNAN: There are still various militias that are causing insecurity in the eastern conferences (ph). When you've got bad guys walking around with guns, it's very disruptive to lives and livelihoods. Farmers can't operate, can't work their land. Markets don't operate. Vaccination programs no longer work. Clinics close.
So it's very, very difficult for parents to ensure a regular supply of nutritious food for their children. Sometimes people are forced from their homes into overcrowded and unsanitary settlements. Kids can't get back to (inaudible), so we can't have the main preventive measures that would normally be expected in those kind of environments. And when children do get sick, as they inevitably do, parents can't get the children treated.
So, the collapse of health systems, the collapse of transportation services and so on, all compounds to contribute to these high mortality rates.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
OKE: Dr. Brennan says a turnaround is possible for the DRC, as long as security improves.
Coming up on INSIDE AFRICA, Zain Verjee gives us a sense of the mood in Kenya, where there's been an encouraging development in that country's political crisis.
And later, the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament. We'll hear from one of the players. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
OKE: Hello again. You're watching INSIDE AFRICA.
Turning now to encouraging signs in Kenya. Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has accomplished work no one else has been able to. He persuaded President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga to discuss their country's political crisis face to face. The two rivals shook hands and pledged to work for peace.
In another promising development, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni got both sides to agree to set up a judicial commission to investigate alleged vote rigging in the country's disputed presidential election.
Now, CNN's Zain Verjee grew up in Kenya and has been covering the crisis for the last few weeks. She went to Jamhuri Park, where many displaced people are living, and gave us a sense of the country's mood.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZAIN VERJEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I've been in Kenya now, here at home for about three weeks now, and I, like most Kenyans, have been really shocked to see what's happening to our country.
This is a country that has always been so stable. But now, we find it wracked in violence, where different tribes are beginning to turn on each other. Even driving around Nairobi, which I have most of my life, to see paramilitary forces patrolling the streets and engaging in running battles with the citizens of this country is something that's been really difficult to see.
Also, we're usually a country that takes in refugees from other parts of Africa. We're the hosts, but now we find ourselves in scenes like this.
I'm standing in a place called Jamhuri Park, where there are internally displaced people here. Across the country, we have something like 250,000 people that have nowhere to go. They're afraid to be at home. They're afraid that they may be targets of ethnic violence. The aid agencies here have set up, they're giving people food aid, but it's something that's really been upsetting to a lot of Kenyans here.
The other thing, too, that we've been shocked by is that tribalism has come up, the ethnic question. There are more than 40 tribes here in this country that have historically lived with each other quite peacefully. There have been underlying tensions over things like water and grazing rights, but they've never really boiled to -- in an angry way and in an explosive way that they have of late. Many here have told me that it's the politicians that are exploiting the tribal differences for their own political gain.
Nevertheless, what we're hearing now is Kenyans want peace. They say that they want both sides -- Raila Odinga, the opposition leader, and President Mwai Kibaki -- to find a compromise and to find a way forward for this country. They're saying that what they're doing right now is this -- gumgoge tuone (ph). Let's wait and see.
Zain Verjee, CNN, Nairobi.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
OKE: Violence has flared repeatedly in the slums of Nairobi since the crisis began. We spoke to a member of the aid group Doctors Without Borders about the types of wounds medical staff have been seeing, and about the health care needs of Kenya's 250,000 displaced people.
DR. MARCELA ALHEIMEN, DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS: Once I've seen in Kenya, specifically in Nairobi and Mathare, one of the slums of Nairobi, there have been people that have been beaten, people with lacerations on different parts of the body. Mutilations of hands, arms, and (inaudible), some gunshots with half people that cannot access -- don't have access to health care, either because the health structures are closed, because the health staff has run away.
There we've seen as well a big problem is for chronic patients, like HIV patients and TB patients, tuberculosis patients. Many host populations (ph) that have received (inaudible), people being displaced, for instance, they ran out of drugs. So they cannot cope with all their normal -- the regular people they see, plus these new ones. It's difficult, especially in the slums, for people to be able to -- to access any health facility. Usually, we have to go, pick them up -- to pick the victims (ph) up to be able to bring them to our first aid stations to be able to stabilize them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OKE: Coming up on INSIDE AFRICA, Kenyan singer/songwriter Eric Wainaina raises his voice at his country's politicians. See you soon.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Making business news in Africa this week. Massive power shortages are disrupting lives and business in South Africa. The country has been experiencing rolling blackouts for weeks, in one case leaving hundreds of tourists hanging in a cable car over Capetown. President Thabo Mbeki admitted last month that his government had failed to plan properly for greater demand. New power plants are in the works, but are not expected to come online until 2011. Shortages have prompted South Africa's state-owned electricity company to cut power to neighboring countries, including Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
And the Kenyan shilling hit a 10-month low. Nairobi's "Business Daily" newspaper reports the shilling has lost about 13 percent of its value against the dollar since Kenya's disputed presidential election. Standard Bank, Africa's largest bank, says the shilling will come under increasing pressure if Kenya's political crisis continues.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
OKE: Good to see you again. You're watching INSIDE AFRICA.
Kenyan singer/songwriter Eric Wainaina has enjoyed a successful career singing about topics like corruption, poverty and human rights. Now, he is raising his voice against the violence that has recently gripped his country and against the politicians he holds responsible. Zain Verjee has that story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC)
VERJEE: Eric Wainaina sings of hope in Kenya amid the brutal violence that erupted after disputed elections in December.
The musician and activists tells me Kenyans of different ethnic groups have lived together for years. Eric blames politicians for fanning tribal flames to build their political base.
ERIC WAINAINA, MUSICIAN: In a sense for them, it's sport, but for everyone else it's -- it's life or death.
VERJEE: He insists the conflict is really about the gap between rich and poor. Kenyans need to stay calm, he says, and talk.
WAINAINA: There is one way that we're beginning to address it, is by sort of making jokes about the stereotypes more and more, just sort of having that sort of discussion, that frank discussion about what different communities think about each other.
VERJEE: KISS 100 Hello! -- on the air, Caroline Mutoko, a popular radio show host says she's fed up with politicians who won't make peace.
CAROLINE MUTOKO, KISS FM RADIO: We will not let them hold us at ransom.
VERJEE: She says politicians have failed Kenyans.
For most Kenyans, it's back to work, even as violence continues in some parts of the country.
MUTOKO: It's got to be a moment when you say shame on you, to both parties, because frankly speaking right now they're acting like brats.
VERJEE: Caroline says her listeners are more irritated than interested in demonstrations.
MUTOKO: I had a woman who called last weekend and said, "what's wrong with these people? I want to work."
VERJEE: Caroline has a message for the rest of the world.
MUTOKO: Don't give up on us, and give us a chance. And Kenyans are so resilient as a people. We will come back from this and we will not go to the edge.
(MUSIC)
VERJEE: Back in the studio, Eric says he's confident Kenyans will find a way out through diplomacy.
Zain Verjee, CNN, for INSIDE AFRICA.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
OKE: International superstar David Beckham is using his fame to draw attention to children's health issues in Africa. The footballer paid a surprise visit to Sierra Leone to highlight UNICEF's latest State of the World's Children report. It lists Sierra Leone as having the worst infant mortality rate in the world. More than one in four Sierra Leonean children dies before reaching the age of 5. Beckham learned about some of the most common health problems facing youngsters in developing countries.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID BECKHAM: Well, the first visit was early this morning, when we visited different villages and also different doctors, surgeons (ph), where, you know, a lot of the people go and get tested for HIV, or, you know, and, you know, find out about their pregnancy and (inaudible), and things like that. And then we went to another village, which was also pretty interesting. It was just a small village, but where, you know, where a baby had been delivered two nights ago. So that was special, and I went down there and gave some of the vaccines that were needed, and also some of the drugs that the babies need as well. So, it's been interesting so far.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OKE: Beckham also found time to play a little footie -- not that his young fans would have let him leave without playing a game. Football is easily the most popular sport in Sierra Leone, and (inaudible).
And there's more football ahead on INSIDE AFRICA. After the break, Terry Baddoo checks in on the Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Ghana. Find out which player he called on our football hotline. See you in a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
OKE: Hello again. Football fans around Africa and in fact around the world are focused on the Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Ghana. For the South African team, known as Bafana Bafana, it's something of a warm-up for the 2010 World Cup, which their country will host. Terry Baddoo tells us what to expect.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TERRY BADDOO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Femi, South Africa's chances of lifting the trophy don't look that good. That's because the 2010 World Cup hosts are in a bit of a transitional phase at the moment. That's to say they're not exactly at their best. They only qualified as one of the best (ph) group runners-up, eked out a 1:1 draw with Angola in their opening match in Ghana, suggesting there is a lot of work to do.
They have a great coach, though, a Brazilian master, Carlos Alberto Parreira, and they have a good record in Ghana, where they finished third in the 2000 Nations Cup four years after winning the tournament on home turf.
The captain (inaudible), Aaron Mokoena, joins us now on the line from Ghana.
(on camera): What do you feel about your -- your first game against Angola, where you basically scraped to draw?
AARON MOKOENA, SOUTH AFRICA CAPTAIN: (inaudible) Angola, we played in the World Cup in Germany, and we knew that (inaudible) give their all. And they showed us that, you know what, they are a hard-working team. And unfortunately we, you know, we gave away an end (ph) goal, but fortunately not (inaudible) to equalize, and a draw against Angola was a good result for us. I mean, in terms of football, we had brilliant football, so you cannot really taking that (inaudible).
BADDOO: You're a team in transition under Carlos Alberto Parreira. What are your realistic expectations for this tournament?
MOKOENA: I'm really -- we have a tight group, to be fair, a difficult group, more especially as we know that (inaudible) with the so-called new players or inexperienced players, or, yes, young players. But really, the ambition (inaudible) is all about, you know, qualifying for the quarter- finals. We know we're absolutely, you know, sure that I mean, it's possible. It's possible.
BADDOO: Now, you play the highest level for your club. What do you feel about the standard of play in the Africa Cup of Nations in general?
MOKOENA: You can see that, you know, there are a lot of players who play in the middle of (inaudible) trying to, you know, you know, to bring that (inaudible) side in them in this cup, in this African Cup of Nation tournament. The coaches as well. I mean, we have (inaudible) coaches now in African countries. So it's slowly changing. And like this -- this here as well, I mean the first games (inaudible), and we can see a bit of a different football, really. And which is good for, you know, for our continent.
BADDOO: Obviously, a lot of talent has come out of Africa already and gone to Europe. There is probably a lot more to come. Is the tournament swarming with agents from European clubs?
MOKOENA: Yeah. Yeah. I can say so, really. Because I mean, right now I mean, there are a lot of agents that are calling me trying to find out virtually who are the players in our team. So, it really shows that, you know, that there really are a lot of eyes (ph) for these African players, to especially going down to Europe and show what they can do. And they really hope more and more of them can -- they can really show what they're all about, so they can be able to, you know, to get chances and opportunities to go to play (inaudible) and experience what we experienced (inaudible).
BADDOO: What do you feel about the African Cup of Nations being played in January, mid-European season? Would you like to see it moved, as many people would?
MOKOENA: I mean, you know, it's always been a club (inaudible). But (inaudible) it's all up to the people, really. I would love really to see this Cup of Nations being changed to, you know, to a flexible, you know, date or month, you know. But, you know, we can always talk and talk and talk, but we have obviously people who can really decide actually what's best for the players.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
OKE: And that was Aaron "The Ax" Mokoena talking to our very own Terry "The Terrier" Baddoo.
And that's it for this week's INSIDE AFRICA. Next week, we'll be back with some more football news from the Africa Cup of Nations.
I'm Femi Oke. Until then, take care.
END
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