Africa News blog

Guinea junta’s new democracy pledge

Guinea’s acting ruler has promised to restore civilian rule and made clear that military leader Moussa Dadis Camara will be out of action for some time after an assassination bid – raising questions over whether Camara will return from hospital in Morocco.

Although Sekouba Konate did not explicitly declare that he had taken over from Camara, his pledge to create a national unity government with opposition figures has effectively sidelined Camara and made him the key player in the junta for now.

The timing of the move is significant, coming little more than a day after Konate visited Camara in a Moroccan hospital and then went on to hold talks with U.S. and French diplomats in Rabat who encouraged him to begin a transition to civilian rule.

But a healthy slice of caution is required.

Although Konate is a professional soldier who has not shown any personal political ambition, he is a junta stalwart who has enjoyed the trappings of power and whose democratic credentials have yet to be tested.

He promised to retire from the scene if no longer needed – a pledge reminiscent of Camara’s early vows that his rule was only temporary.

The threat of a counter-coup from within Guinea’s unruly army can never be ruled out. The prospect of a return to civilian rule will in particular alarm those soldiers who took part in mass killings and rapes on September 28 last year and might face justice over the atrocities which brought down global condemnation on the junta.

Is the “wonga” running out for Africa’s mercenaries?

Africa’s infamous “dogs of war” may still be going strong, but it seems the rewards of the mercenary life aren’t quite what they used to be.  

Only this month, Britain’s Simon Mann won a pardon for his part in a foiled 2004 coup attempt on Equatorial Guinea, an old-style adventure whose glittering prize was the central African state’s multi-billion-dollar oil riches.

Contrast that to reports last week that a band of South African and other mercenaries had flown into the chaos of Guinea to train up a militia loyal to the incumbent junta leader — on a salary put at barely $3,500 a month. 

That’s not bad money in most parts of the world, and there were reports that the company involved would have won extra remuneration in the form of minerals from Guinea’s fecund soil.

But it would have been peanuts to Mann, whose Equatorial Guinea coup was known as the “Wonga Plot” after the English slang for the money they hoped to yield in buckets. 

While mercenaries are often seen as in the business of bringing governments down, it is not new that they should be trying to prop one up, as is happening in Guinea.

Mann himself is reported to have worked for the Angolan government in the 1990s to help it wrest back control of a key port from rebels, and again for Sierra Leonean authorities in the 2002 civil war there.

Do Guinea’s dark days reveal junta’s colours?

In Guinea this week, at least 157 people were killed when security forces opened fire on a demonstration against military junta leader Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, according to a local rights group.

Much has changed since I visited the country in April and May this year. Then, the young Camara — or “Dadis” as most Guineans refer to him – did not look particularly dangerous despite his images staring out from walls, buildings and roundabouts all over Conakry, and cassettes of his speeches on sale in the markets.

“Long live peace” was the graffiti of choice, and if expectations of real improvements in living standards were low, at least soldiers were in the barracks rather than shooting in the streets.

What was clear then was that a certain degree of patience had been extended to Camara both domestically and internationally.

Relief that the power vacuum opened by the death of former President Lansana Conte had not collapsed into violence, and populist anti-corruption rhetoric carried most Guineans through the first uneasy months. At the same time the international community swallowed its distaste for a military regime with the sweetening promise of elections by the end of the year.

As long as peace and the election timetable held, and Camara himself wasn’t tempted into standing, Guineans and foreign partners would grit their teeth and give Camara and his National Council for Democracy and Development (CNDD) breathing space to manage the transition.

That patience, which had shown signs of strain in recent months, has now run out. International condemnation has been swift and harsh for the deaths at the demonstration.

An easy win in Mauritania?