Editorial: CAR crash

Another year, another bloody coup in Africa. This time it’s the Central African Republic that’s reeling after an assault by Seleka rebels on the presidential palace in the capital Bangui in late March left dozens dead, including 13 South African troops.

Seleka rebel coalition leader Michel Djotodia declared himself CAR president on April 2, replacing the deposed president François Bozizé, who has apparently fled the country. Bozizé himself gained power in a 2003 coup that toppled Ange-Félix Patassé, who still ranks as the only CAR president ever elected since the country achieved independence from France in 1960.

Djotodia’s Seleka government (“Seleka” meaning “alliance” in the local Sango parlance) is now trying to establish its legitimacy, with Prime Minister Nicolas Tiangaye naming a 34-member coalition cabinet on March 31, of which only nine ministers are from the rebel group.

Not a whole lot is known about Djotodia, but the Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that he is a multilingual intellectual trained in Russia, and from his political base in the country’s northeast, he has emerged as the leader of the Seleka — a loose association of five armed groups united in protesting against what they perceive as years of exclusion from the national political arena.

It looked like the CAR had reached some kind of political stability in January, when Djotodia’s Seleka alliance, which had closed in on Bangui for the first time in December, signed a power-sharing deal with the CAR government during a meeting in the Gabonese capital Libreville. Djotodia was to have been defence minister in the national unity government, but the deal soon fell apart.

Next, we’ll see if Djotodia can keep his fractious coalition of guerrillas and exiles together long enough to govern effectively. He is already allowing Bozizé’s Prime Minister Tiangaye to remain in that position as a sign of goodwill, and has vowed to rule in “keeping with the spirit of Libreville.”

According the AFP, he told supporters in Bangui that “we will talk with other members of Bozizé’s government who are still here. We will not conduct a witch hunt. I don’t know how long I will stay in power. In accordance with the Libreville agreement, we will organize free and transparent elections in the next three years.”

The landlocked CAR, bordered by Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Chad, is infamous as one of the world’s poorest countries, despite having extractable natural resources including diamonds, gold, base metals, uranium and timber.

The CAR has reportedly been producing 300,000 to 400,000 carats of diamonds per year, mostly from small-scale artisanal workings. The diamond trade is said to have helped in funding the coup, but there is concern in the country that worsening security in the northeast and the capital, which saw widespread looting during the coup, will dampen output going forward until security is restored.

The highest-profile North American-listed mining company active in the CAR is Toronto-based Axmin, which has its technically impressive, 4.5 million oz. Passendro advanced gold project in the south-central part of the country.

Axmin says that the transitional government has confirmed that “all lawfully and legitimately concluded contracts with the state will be honoured,” which implies its August 2010 mining licence is in good standing.

The biggest mining company recently active in the CAR is French uranium giant Areva, which has held, through its UraMin subsidiary, the small but high-grade Bakouma uranium project in the country’s Bakouma basin.

Late last year, the CAR government was considering a legal challenge against Areva over the closure of the project in September owing to security concerns. The Bakouma site had been attacked in June 2012, apparently by rebel forces Front populaire pour le redressement, led by general Baba Laddé.

The fall of the Bozizé government rippled into South African politics, as the country’s contingent of 200 troops, who have been stationed in the CAR since 2007, suffered the South African army’s worst defeat in the field since apartheid days.

South Africa’s main opposition party the Democratic Alliance is pushing to have the troops return home, arguing that their deployment to the CAR had only been to protect the narrow business interests of certain South African politicians.