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46 Middle East and Africa The Economist May 5th 2018
2 la’s first-ever local elections in 2020. Sup-
port for the ruling party, known by its Por-
tuguese acronym MPLA, has slumped from
82% in 2008 to 61% in parliamentary elec-
tions last year. (Themain alternative is UN-
ITA, formerly a homicidal rebel army.)
At Luanda’s glitzy hotels the talk is of
Brazil,where a formerpresident nowsits in
a cell. “We need a kind of lava jato —several
ones,” says Francisco Viana, an MPLA
member and head of the Confederation of
Angolan Business Associations, referring
to a huge investigation into corruption at
Brazil’s state-owned oil company that net-
ted numerous politicians. However, Mr
dos Santos granted himself immunity
from prosecution before stepping down.
And after decades of horrific civil war, few
want to risk inflaming tensions. Yet Angola
is a young country, and memories of the
war—aswell as patience—are fading fast. 7
“MOZAMBIQUE is back,” says Presi-
dent Filipe Nyusi, hoping to per-
suade a recent gathering of fellow Com-
monwealth leaders that the buffeting his
country has faced in the past few years is
over. But his compatriots need convincing,
too. Some point to dramatic changes in
South Africa, Zimbabwe and Angola. Each
has a new leader who vows to correct the
bad habits of a recently ejected predeces-
sor. Why, they ask, can’t Mr Nyusi, who
succeeded Armando Guebuza in 2015, do
the same?
Mr Nyusi has three hard tasks. First, he
must accommodate Renamo, an opposi-
tion party that fought a guerrilla war from
1977 to1992 and rebelled againmore recent-
ly against Mr Nyusi’s Frelimo party, which
has run the show since independence
fromPortugal in1975.
Second, hemust revive the economy by
coming to terms with the IMF and foreign
donors who suspended aid soon after a
scandal involving $2bn of secret loans was
exposed in 2016. Third, Mr Nyusi must
chuck out and in some cases bring to book
the old guard aroundMrGuebuza, reputed
to be one ofMozambique’s richest men.
Mr Nyusi has done best with Renamo.
He has courageously met its long-serving
leader, Afonso Dhlakama, in his hideout.
Indeed, he is close to clinchingadeal onde-
volution that would let Renamo share or
win power in some provinces. But the two
still need to agree on how to demobilise
their armed men. Mr Nyusi hopes all will
be settled before national elections next
year, though some in Frelimo still hanker
after a “Savimbi solution”: that Mr Dhla-
kama should just be killed, aswasAngola’s
rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi, in 2002.
On the economic front, Mr Nyusi is
shakier. The high hopes that followed the
discoveryofvast reserves ofgas in 2010 are
far from fulfilment; large-scale production
is not expected before the mid-2020s. The
IMF has yet to be reassured that its request-
ed fundswill not be squandered. MrNyusi
waffles about sortingout themesswith the
banks involved in the loan scandal.
And he has not done enough to dis-
lodge his party’s corrupt old guard, as his
counterpart in Angola seems to be doing.
He has brought a few allies into the ruling
politburo and sacked the head of the army
and the intelligence service. But he is some-
what hamstrung by his lack of pedigree
among the generals; he is the first president
of an independent Mozambique not to
have fought in the liberation war. “Mr
Dhlakama is not our enemy, he is my
brother,” he says. “Our enemy is corrup-
tion.” If that is indeed the case, victory is
still a longway off. 7
Mozambique
Still in a hole
The president’s claimthat his country
has recovered is premature
Eritrea and Ethiopia
Could they make peace?
“LIKE Sarajevo, 1914,” said the late
Ethiopian primeminister, Meles
Zenawi, of the first gunshots fired onMay
6th1998. “An accident waiting to hap-
pen.” Neither he nor his counterpart in
neighbouring Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki,
imagined that a light skirmish at Badme,
a border village ofwhich fewhad heard,
could spiral into full-scalewar. But two
years later about 80,000 lives had been
lost andmore than half amillion people
forced from their homes.
No land changed hands. Two decades
on, Ethiopia still occupies the disputed
territories, including Badme, having
refused to accept the findings of a UN
boundary commission. But the conflict’s
miserable legacy persists. Thousands of
troops still patrol the frontier. Centuries
of trade and intermarriage abruptly
ceased. Ethiopia lost access to Eritrea’s
ports. Eritrea lost its biggest trading
partner and retreated into isolationism. It
has been on awar footing ever since.
But it is not so lonely these days. On
April 22ndDonald Yamamoto, America’s
most senior diplomat in Africa, visited
Asmara, the capital—the first such visit in
over a decade. Eritrea has been sanc-
tioned by the UN since 2009, in part for
allegedly arming jihadists in neighbour-
ing Somalia. But a panel of experts ap-
pointed by the UN SecurityCouncil
found no evidence of arms transfers and
advocates lifting the embargo. America
sounds open to the idea. Some reckon
sanctions could be removed this year.
Many inAddis Ababa, the Ethiopian
capital, are alsomulling a change of
course. With the appointment last month
of a newprimeminister, AbiyAhmed,
there is an opportunity for fresh thinking.
Abiy, whowas an intelligence officer
during thewar, promised in his inaugural
speech tomake peacewith Eritrea.
Hemay havemore luck than his
predecessors. In the years after the Ethio-
pian People’s RevolutionaryDemocratic
Front (EPRDF) seized power in1991, its
policy towards Eritreawas dominated by
the Tigrayan faction of the ruling co-
alition. Tigray shares a borderwith Eri-
trea and its people suffered heavily dur-
ing thewar. Abiy’s Oromo faction comes
with less baggage.
But any rapprochement would almost
certainly requirewithdrawal from
Badme. Thiswould be hard to sell in
parts of Ethiopia. And Abiywould need
something in return, such as access to
Eritrea’s ports, which Isaias has never
shownmuch interest in offering. More-
over, the threat fromEthiopia allows him
to keep smothering democracy at home
andmaintaining a huge army. “Making
peacewould be the end of him,” says an
Eritrean refugeewho recently arrived in
Addis Ababa. “Whywould he?”
ADDIS ABABA
Twentyyears after a pointlesswar, a newpremierponders rapprochement
Cold peace, hot border
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