African Media Coverage

May 1-15, 2008

Uganda: Daily Monitor
"If our leaders can’t respect themselves, they can’t respect us"
Published: May 13, 2009

I was in Khartoum a couple of weeks ago. A sweltering heat of over 40 degrees welcomed us as we descended the gangway from a Matatu-like Kenya Airways flight from Nairobi.

I was not in town to help the ICC arrest Sudan’s indicted President , General Hassan Al Bashir, who travels to selected friendly countries these days as an executive IDP (Internationally Displaced President) taunting the ICC to get him if they can.

Even If I had any delusions that I could become stupidly rich or win the Nobel Peace Prize or both for cornering Gen. Bashir on his own turf, the thought soon evaporated because the President was away in ‘friendly’ non-ICC compliant Ethiopia.

The previous weeks he had been in another friendly country with whom his Addis new best friends do not talk, Eritrea, It is obvious that while the ICC see Bashir as a villain, his neighbours see him as a bridge proving yet again that ‘one man’s terrorist’ could well be another man’s good friend or even liberator.

Read the article here.


South Africa: News24
"Darfur flare-up threatened"
Published: May 11, 2009

Khartoum - The latest rebel offensive on Ndjamena risks destabilising Sudan's neighbouring Darfur region where they are based and whose six-year civil war is inextricably linked with the Chadian rebellion.

Relations between Chad and Sudan have been difficult for more than six years with the two neighbours regularly accusing each other of supporting rebel factions fighting against their respective regimes.

Chad said on Sunday that President Idriss Deby Itno's forces have defeated the Union of Resistance Forces (UFR), an alliance of Chadian rebels led by Timan Erdimi, after they entered eastern Chad in hundreds of trucks on May 4.

A French military source said that the rebels had retreated back to the border with Darfur, although the rebels have insisted the fight is far from over.

Read the article here.

Kenya: The East African
"Returnees grow their own food"
Published: May 11, 2009

Mariam Abdalla worked on the farm, bit by bit, systematically pulling out weeds sprouting next to vegetables planted on the two-hectare piece of land.
Occasionally, she wiped her damp brow as she sweated in the sweltering heat. A dozen other women concentrated on the task at hand: dig, water, weed and pass the hoe.

Where there had been only sand and rock three years ago, green vegetables blossomed under the blistering sun.

“I enjoy working on this farm,” said Mariam with an easy smile. “I get free vegetables here.”

Mariam is among 60 formerly displaced women who run a vegetable farm at Galdi village, 35 kilometres southeast of Nyala town, the capital of South Darfur.

The village is one of a few relatively peaceful pockets of war-torn South Darfur and home to about 10,000 returnees from internally displaced persons’ camps.

Three years ago, Mariam was an IDP at Mosey camp, on the edge of Nyala, and had no way of producing her own food.