Nyaruch Kuon anxiously holds the stick that her granddaughter used to lead her through a war zone to the primary school in Akobo. After a week of wandering, the old woman sinks down to the ground in a classroom between other displaced people. She wildly rubs her dull eyes on her wrinkled face. “I cried and cried and I wept over the death of my sons, until my eyes gave way,” she says.

Last month, when government soldiers set fire to her house, three of her sons died. Yesterday she lost her youngest son, killed by a militia affiliated to the government.

Never before has South Sudan sunk so deeply, never before has the misery been so great. Between 1955 and 1972 and again between 1983 and 2005, the South Sudanese fought for separation from the Arabized north of Sudan. Once independent, they attacked each other with so much venom, that an unprecedented humanitarian tragedy broke out: hundreds of thousands of people were killed, 4 million people fled, half of the 12 million South Sudanese became dependent on foreign food aid.
There is political solution is in sight. Both government and rebels camps are fragmenting, the economy is broke and the outside world does not know how to stop the violent implosion.
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A reflection on the Oxfam scandal

The area around the NGO worker’s tent is littered with cigarette butts, his sleeping mat surrounded with half-eaten food remains. Every day he eats beans and smokes two packs of cigarettes. His body is covered in tattoos. He does a lot of talking and does not listen much. I recently saw him establish a base for thousands of displaced people in a war zone. If you travel to the remote corners of disaster-hit countries you need to be a little crazy. Those who do it – aid workers and journalists – sometimes resemble psychopaths.
On the front line, aid workers and journalists run the risk of losing their naivety, their health and sometimes their minds. You feel like a mercenary or a fool. Three United Nations employees wrote a book about it in 2004: Emergency sex. Their bosses in New York wanted the book banned. They could not believe the passages which honestly talked about sex in response to violence and even sex during violence. They did not understand that it is precisely in these circumstances that the need for a hot body and a cold glass of beer is so dire.
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The pungent smell of raindrops in the dust after a long drought can make a Kenyan lyrical. There is a cacophony of mating sounds in the kraals of nomads where they live with their cattle. Sexually aroused donkeys keep the Samburu’s awake. It is raining heavily in Kenya; nature is reborn and every animal wants to reproduce. Six months ago, at the height of the drought crisis, three million Kenyans needed emergency aid.

Now birds chase after the fluttering termites. Fresh flowers smells on the wet earth. Children glide through the mud on their bare buttocks and try to catch the birds. “The world is laughing again”, says the young shepherd Lengai. “With drought, nature is silent, you cannot even hear goats and sheep from a distance anymore. Now they run and jump. Everyone is happy”.

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When policemen become rioters. This picture in the Kenyan Standard of the 20th of November shows it all.

On that day the Supreme court declined two petitions to nullify the 26^th of October repeat elections, won by sitting president Uhuru Kenyatta with 98 percent of the vote. The opposition under Raila Odinga refused to participate.

The electoral scene is most likely now going to switch from the court room to the streets: Jubilations in the case of Kenyatta’s supporters, demo’s in opposition areas.

Violence got dirtier this weekend. First, several people died when Odinga was welcomed at the airport by his supporters. His supporters that day also allegedly attacked cars owned by Kikuyu’s, seen as supporters of Kenyatta. As a revenge, presumably members of the Mungigi Kikuyu sect attacked Luo supporters of Odinga in a slum Saturday night.

With this rapid deterioration violence may get out of hand. And going by these pictures, the policy seems not to be neutral anymore.

Colorful butterflies flutter in the few rays of sunlight that penetrate the bottom of the humid jungle. At a water hole where two days ago poachers killed a forest elephant the stench of rotting flesh fills in the air. The biological cycle is particularly fast here; the poached animal has already for the most part been devoured by soldier ants and other insects. “This is the heart of the Congo Basin”, says German biologist John Kirchgatter, “this area is unique for its biodiversity”. John Kirchgatter works for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
A little further on a gorilla with a bulging belly sits leaning against a tree picking his ear. Attentively he follows his females who are eating leaves nearby. He coughs, then they answer. When there is no response, he calls “hu hu”, followed by threatening strikes on his chest. The wildlife park Dzanga Sangha is a haven for biologists and an abattoir for poachers.

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A red carpet was laid out at the airport of Banjul and a brass band played. That is how Yahya Jammeh was escorted out of the Gambia on Saturday night January 21. The dictator, with an oversized ego and a childish love for cars, wanted to take one of his Rolls-Royces with him, but the new president Adama Barrow put a stop to that.

The dignified departure of Jammeh from Gambia after 22 years was made possible by international negotiators. After his pledge Friday January 20 on television that he would resign – he had his rule extended after his election defeat by a declaration of a three-month state of emergency – yet he refused to immediately leave the country. He succeeded to get a good deal with the negotiators of the UN, the African Union and the regional grouping ECOWAS. A document of the three organizations praises Jammeh for its goodwill and statesmanship.

In the village of Tujereng, forty kilometers south of the capital, five torture victims throw their hands in the air -out of disbelief- when they hear about the document. “How is it possible that he could leave this way?”, says an old man called Ibrahim Jaban. “I want to do to him what he did with me. I want to kill him.” Jaban lost an eye and broke his shoulder blade during torture.
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In the narrow, muddy streets of Masina, one of Kinshasa’s popular quarters, the sound of rumba blends with hysterical singing from Pentecostal churches; the stench of rotting garbage is peppered with the smell of marijuana. By the site of a clogged sewer, women seated under umbrellas sell fresh pineapples, a man with a tray of eggs on his head steps over a drunk guy. On a wall is written boma biso, Lingala for “Kill us.”

There’s not an inch of space to spare in the crowd. A young man grabs me by my shirt. “What do you want here, are you looking for Filimbi”, he shouts. He’s a government spy, one of many to be found on the streets of the Congolese capital of 12 million inhabitants. Despite the official ban on demonstrations, Filimbi, a citizen group, plans a demonstration in Masina today, demanding the departure of president Joseph Kabila. But the secret agents begin arresting the protesters before they can shout “Kabila must go”. “We are not frightened by this repression anymore,” cries one Filimbi activist before taking to his heels. “We are ready to die.”
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The discourse about South Sudan these days is whether a genocide is in the making. The discussion is not about politics, not about power struggles, and certainly not about the development of the country. More and more horrors are being reported. Tribal hatred boils over.

Genocide requires a good organization, as was the case in 1994 in Rwanda. The authorities in South Sudan show themselves hopelessly incompetent in ruling the country. So when they really would want to have a genocide it is questionable that they can organize one. But in massacres they are highly skilled, as in 2013 when thousands Nuers were killed by soldiers of Dinka descent. And the opposition has shown itself to be capable of mass killings as well, see what happened in retaliation against Dinka’s in Bor and Bentiu in early 2014.
So it remains an academic debate whether or not a genocide is imminent. The number of large massacres is already frightening.

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“Let the horror begin”.

That may be a good summary of the reactions in Africa regarding the victory of Donald Trump.

Where Obama was Africa’s hero, Trump is seen as a racist.

My shocked sister in law jokingly but with a serious undertone said she expects me to send a rapid intervention force from Kenya to evacuate her family from the US.

Fears of mass deportation of Africans from the US looms more than ever, writes a Kenyan American in the Daily Nation. There are roughly 1.8 million African immigrants in the US, according to a 2013 survey conducted by the Pew Research centre, with the number doubling every decade, writes Macharia Gaitho in the Daily Nation. Trump’s threat to deport all illegal immigrants was a message that no doubt was badly received by both the African diaspora in the US and Africans in Africa. It was seen as based on exploitation of latent racism in the US, and that sought to capitalise on white resentment off two term Barrack Obama, a much loved man in Africa.

Africa did not feature at all in Trump’s campaign, only in references Obama’s roots in Kenya.

In Nigeria Bolaji Akinyemi, a professor of political science, described Mr. Trump’s victory as a worrisome development, according to the Premium Times.

Mr. Akinyemi, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs, said: “It brings uncertainty into international politics because the world now has to deal with a man who is inexperienced, does not understand the complexities of international politics and has no respect for anyone who is not white or American; I think that is dangerous.

“There has always been an ugly side to the U.S. just as there is with every country in the world but the good side in the U.S. has always prevailed so that in tackling American problems, the interests of the U.S. are not defined in antagonism to the interest of the whole world.

“But this victory of Trump is a victory of the ugly side of the U.S.”

Dapo Fafowora, former Nigerian ambassador to the UN, said Mr. Trump’s victory was a lesson to Nigerians and Africans to remain in and contribute to the development of their countries.

He added that “there is nothing in his background to suggest he has any durable interest in Africa.

Trump’s victory may give a push to populist nationalists in Africa. “I think it is a lesson for Nigerians; people should stay here and make contributions in developing our country.

“I think it is a good development for Africa that we should look inwards and try to develop ourselves without relying on any major economic power.”

African presidents all did send congratulations to Trump. Only the Liberian president could not hide her feelings.

Liberia’s President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf says she is disappointed that Hillary Clinton did not win the US elections.

In an interview with the BBC, Africa’s first democratically elected female president said: “We are extremely saddened by this missed opportunity on the part of the people of the United States to join smaller democracies in ending the marginalization of women”. At least some honesty here.

Biggest question off course is whether Africa will develop its own version of a Trump. Where Europe has already got its own Trumps in France and the Netherlands, Africa still does not have many. But don’t be fooled, in Africa many politicians come up with a lot of rhetoric, little substance, a lot of lies and show their illegal acquired wealth as proof of their capacity to lead. Africa will not be immune to populists.

Columnist Charles Onyango-Obbo concludes in the Nation: Now in Africa, we are not about to have a Trump(although the venality and cruelty of some of our leaders are probably worse), simply because elections are stolen or there is repression. But eventually, as we have seen recently in Ethiopia, the dams of anger will still burst.

Rwanda, around Kigali, September 2012
Girls at a private school. They say that all their friends have sugar daddies
Photo: Petterik Wiggers/Panos Pictures

Boys loiter at their usual hang out on the outskirts of a slum in Nairobi, when an expensive SUV stops. A young woman – flashy dressed, bright lipstick, high heels – walks on the muddy path to the car as the door swings open. “Lucky Devil”, the boys say. They know they have no chance with Sarah, because she has a relationship with a rich man, her sugar daddy.

Sarah’s friend and fellow student is called Kali. She is jealous. “I want a sugar daddy too,” she whines. “I also want to live a good life. I have so many friends with sugar daddies.”
A financial sponsor of an older age, who in exchange for sex and other entertainment provides a younger girl with what she needs: that’s a sugar daddy in Africa. Or a blesser, as these sponsors are called in South Africa. This relationship between young and old is also called generational or transactional sex.

Sugar daddies are not a new phenomenon, but there are on the rise. In the Liberian capital, Monrovia, I once saw a girl in a ragged T-shirt branding the inscription “Your boyfriend is my ATM”. In South Africa girls are looking on special websites for their blessers. “The phenomenon is increasing in both urban and rural areas,” says Kopano Ratele, an influential psychologist and professor at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences in Cape Town.

A study in Kenya earlier this year done by the communications company Well Told Story shows that two out of three respondents have no problem if someone has a secret wealthy lover. One in three does himself have such a “sponsor”.

In neighboring Tanzania previous research shows that a majority of both young people and their parents find transactional sex acceptable. “Girls want security, they want a good providing partner. Therefore they turn towards sugar daddies. They want to be independent of men”, says Maura, a Kenyan student of 25 years. “The problem for us guys is how can we compete with rich and experienced sugar daddies. Can we do better than them in sex?”

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Monday 18^th of July:

After the serious fighting that took place around the fifth independence anniversary of South Sudan on the 9^th of July some calm has been restored. But all the parties are sharpening their knives once more. The White Army, traditional Nuer forces, is preparing to march on Juba, former rebel leader and Vice-president Riëk Machar is hiding south of Juba, and the government soldiers with maybe their Ugandan allies are willing to go after him. When the resolution of the Igad Plus countries yesterday to send in peace keeping troops is not implemented soon, it is very likely that there will be another round of fighting soon.

Let the battle begin

Deeply rooted tribal schism underlies the conflict which flared up in July between on one side President Salva Kiir and his ally, army chief Paul Malong – both belonging to the Dinka ethnic group – and their Nuer rival, Vice President Riek Machar. Under the direction of these leaders South Sudan in the past five years has become a land of hatred and revenge. A young nation that is poisoned by feelings of tribal superiority.

“Dinka’s right,” “left Nuer. Even the signs to the UN camp in Malakal did not hide this tribal xenophobia when thousands of displaced people poured in after the outbreak of the first civil war in December 2013. In a UN camp in the capital Juba Nuers saw as the only solution a last fight to the death with the Dinka.

In a displaced persons camp near Bentiu Dinka and Nuers live strictly separated. Nyakuoth, mother of six children, had just removed the mud that entered last night into her hut of plastic sheeting, when I spoke to her. “The Dinka have destroyed my house. They murder us”, she said. They, that are the government soldiers. Nyakuoth did not dare to go outside the camp. “We will be killed if they do to us that quite terrible thing.” She meant rape.
The deep tribal hatred feeds the atrocities. A South Sudanese aid worker, who lived through the decades-long war of independence against (North) Sudan: “The difference with the war against the Arabs is that the supporters of President Kiir also go the countryside to destroy civilians. A war in which civilians are targeted, is a tribal war”.
Therefore, hospitals are burned down in areas of a rival tribe, are grandmothers being raped and children are slain. From the point of human rights the war in South Sudan has become one of the most brutal conflicts on the continent.

Southern Sudan has for centuries been oppressed and exploited by the Arabized north. From the beginning of 1800 onwards there were two million black slaves sold on the market in the northern capital Khartoum. South Sudanese of diverse tribes live together in an extremely rugged and inaccessible area with hardly any infrastructure and without any modern development. Before the arrival of the Arabs they lived peacefully together but the slave trade distributed that peaceful coexistence.

There were tribal conflicts during the first war against the north (1956-1972) and the second (1983-2003). In the interest of the fight against the common enemy they were however settled. Nevertheless from the two million dead in the second war most were victims of the conflict between South Sudanese themselves.

During the second war in the bush all kinds of opportunistic military alliances were formed, which were solidified by marriages and exchange of livestock. Now Army chief and then warlord Paul Malong dominated his region of Bahr el Ghazal, a dominance that he perpetuated by being godfather (and sponsor) of many young couples. Thus he became godfather of President Salva Kiir. Malong recently paid the bride price for the presidents new young wife. Such clan and tribal commitments determine the dynamics of how South Sudanese deal with each other, how they group themselves during conflict and how political alliances are being formed. “A primitive form of tribalism that barely exists elsewhere in Africa anymore,” says a South Sudanese minister. “That’s because the South Sudanese were separated by the war and lived isolated from the outside world.”

Many generations of South Sudanese have been living in tight tribal structures, and they know only violence with other tribes. “All South Sudanese are traumatized, high to low,” lamented a pastor last year. “Fighting it appears is the only way to get that trauma out of the way.”

This article was first published in NRC Handelsblad on Tuesday, July 12th, 2016

Photo Petterik Wiggers

He is a world-famous journalist but can’t show his face. To make an appointment one has to use different telephone numbers and go to a secret place in the Ghanaian capital Accra. Then suddenly he stands before me, without a mask. He turns out not to be a very flamboyant man, with his thick glasses he resembles rather the nerd of the school class than the hero of the people. Anas Aremeyaw Anas shows himself to be a real Batman. 

“I fight against the bad guys”, he says while he puts his wig with curly hair on for the interview and his mask with beads hanging from the front.  During the meeting my eyesight pierces through the beads. Anas excuses himself: “I want to be left to tell the next story. Because I do undercover work, I want to keep my anonymity. That has always been my secret weapon, it helps me to get into places and nobody recognises me”. 

Anus has many different appearances since he started work as a undercover journalist in 1999. He dressed like a rock to film smuggling activities along the border. And he acted like a madman to report on abuses in a psychiatric institution. He behaved like a beggar to catch money extorting policemen, or dressed up like an American oil worker in the Middle East to unmask a syndicate of dealers in the sex industry.

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His gaggling geese flee from the water that wildly flows from the battered forests. “Before”, points the old farmer Alfred Soi threateningly to the Mau summit above, “before, when were young, tribal elders warned us that destruction of these forest leads to the destruction of life. Why is it that politicians cannot see that? I wish I could curse them.”

The region of Kericho, in the southwest of the country, is the main tea growing zone of Kenya. Hundreds of workers on the rolling hills pick the leaves from the bushes. A car dangling sacks of jute makes its way through the mud and down the slope. The produce is weighed in the valleys. In the food kiosks in the town of Kericho everyone drinks tea. Almost a century ago the colonialists founded the first plantations. The zone at the foot of the mountain proved ideal for this. Tea became the green gold of Kenya. But for how long will that be the case?

Tea is Kenya’s main export product. The country is the third largest producer and the first exporter in the world, with two million Kenyans working in the sector. Samson Kamunya is deputy director of the Tea Research Institute just outside the city. “The tea varieties of half a century ago no longer grow. If we do not act, soon there will be no more tea around the Mau. The production is already going down”, he says. His institute observes a temperature rise of around 0.2 degrees each year. And it develops new tea plants to adjust to the climate change. “The climate has become unpredictable. For the first time we experience frost and drought. We had never seen that before.”
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A papal serenity hang in the air. Nairobi became inundated with women with white caps and men with white collars: hundreds of thousands of faithful flocked to the capital for the pope. A usual cynical view of the opportunist Kenyan politics was briefly replaced by a moral worldview. President Uhuru Kenyatta declared in the name of the Holy Father a new war on corruption. The pope watched his solemn declaration, as did the two former presidents Moi and Kibaki, who both were embroiled in major corruption scandals.

Kenyans easily go on their knees and cry out for God for earthly political affairs.

Supporters of Uhuru’s ally, Vice President William Ruto, recently organized weekly prayer services for a divine intervention to save the Vice President of “the neocolonial ICC”, the International Criminal Court. Ruto must defend himself in The Hague against charges of crimes against humanity committed during the election violence in 2007/8. Dozens of parliamentarians, tribal and religious leaders and other supporters of William Ruto raised their hands to heaven every week. Against the backdrop of a poster Ruto full of Bible verses.

“An unbridled form of contempt for the ICC”, called Chile Eboe-Osuji, a judge at the ICC, these prayer meetings. Which must cease immediately, he says. President Uhuru Kenyatta hit back: “No judge can deter Kenyans to pray.”

These prayer meetings fit, says the ICC, into a pattern of harassment. In Kenya one witness involved in the case of Ruto was killed and at least two are missing. The ICC issued arrest warrants against some Kenyans for the bribery of six witnesses for the prosecution against Ruto.

Kenyan and later ICC investigators began work immediately after the election violence in 2008. Uhuru Kenyatta, who was deputy prime minister, could count on the cooperation of the Kenyan secret service. But not Ruto, who was still in the camp of the opposition. So probably much evidence against Ruto was handed over to the investigators while potential evidence against Kenyatta was pilfered. The case against Kenyatta has stopped “for lack of evidence” earlier this year.

Prominent human rights lawyer Gibson Kamau Kuria called in a newspaper column the prayers for Ruto contempt of the ICC by Kenya. “The prayers must stop immediately, because they damage the law in Kenya and our international reputation,” wrote the lawyer.

For now, the papal visit, with all it’s blessings and prayers, has polished up Kenya’s international standing .

After the recent attack on the Raddison Blu hotel in Bamako new international focus will be put on the Sahel region. “Security” will have the prioritiy. In that lurk imminent dangers. A terror group led by the Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar claimed responsibiliy for the Raddison siege. The same group attacked the mines of the French company Arewa in Northern Niger in 2013. Will increased aid stop terrorism and the flow of migrants? A report from Niger.

‘Viva Europa! “, the villagers of Kodo cheer. Neven Mimica, the European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, has just visited their village in Niger. Their tribute to Europe does not express the hopes of hundreds of thousands of West Africans for a better future in Europe. No, the villagers praise the sharply increased European aid to Niger. By giving more aid the EU hopes to reduce the breeding ground for terrorism and migration.

But not everyone sees the benefit of it. “You Europeans do not understand Africa”, sneers the Nigerien journalist Boureima Hama. “Migration is big business in Niger, for the police, soldiers, government officials and the government. That you do not stop with additional development. ”

Aid to Africa, and in particular to the countries in the arid Sahel region, is once more high on the international political agenda. The drying region south of the Sahara was in the European perception a vast and remote area with extreme poverty and indigenous rebellions. Bad, but not threatening.

That vision has been adjusted radically within the past two years. The Sahel is now seen in Brussels as a dangerous area on the threshold of Europe. Against this background, the European Development Fund for 2014-2020 has made available almost 600 million Euros for Niger (18 million inhabitants). Western military aid is being increased. The UN sent a peacekeeping force to Mali, France stationed 3,000 soldiers in the region and America delivers drones and military advisers to Niger.

Niger is the main transit country and therefore critical to stem the flow of migrants from West Africa. This year an expected 120 000 immigrants will pass through the country. Last year that number was 80 000. Through the northern city of Agadez, the crossroads of the migrant routes, they migrate to North Africa. A large number tries to stay in Libya and Algeria. Others try to cross the Mediterranean and reach Europe.

All the migrants are young. Hassan Koroma from Sierra Leone is 21 and wants to study law. “My father lost his job and could not afford my tuition fees. I informed myself on the internet about the route to Europe and my football club collected money for me. With $ 700 I started my journey”,he says in the Nigerien capital Niamey.
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 Photography Anja Ligtenberg

Pink and yellow balloons hanging on the acacia trees sway, under the thump of a disco beat, in the wind.   In the schoolyard shrill voices of Maasai schoolgirls can be heard. They sing to the tune of ancient songs about brave warriors and dangerous lions. But the lyrics are different, because they call for the banishment of female circumcision and ditching the practice into the dustbin of history. While posing for a group portrait they unabashedly jut their pelvis forward. Then under the stars and a waning moon, they light hundreds of candles. The young girls are now ready for the important event tomorrow: the ceremony marking their transition to womanhood. But this time no blood will flow.

A zebra does not despise its stripes. The Maasai pastoralists in Kenya and Tanzania are proud of their tradition. The between one and two million Maasais have a culture of open doors.  In their shelters made of mud and manure every group member is always welcome. Together they undergo rites for the transition from one age group to the next, and together they receive instructions in social skills, sex and martial arts. That community spirit made the Maasai a formidable tribe feared by neighbouring peoples, and until recently protected them against external influences. But now a revolution has begun which is to the benefit of the generally submissive Maasai women. For the past seven years a campaign is being waged in Maasai land against the amputation of clits. The elders have even devised a new way of performing this ceremony for modern day girls: the great alternative rite of passage.

“Ngai Ngai” they chant

The next morning, a group of colourful warriors waits at the entrance of the kraal fenced with thorny branches. They perform traditional dances, making vertical jumps, their necks swaying like those of camels, to a rhythm of screams emanating from deep within their chest. In a winding snake like fashion the long line of girls approaches. The girls perform their own dance with rhythmic jerky movements of their upper body which makes the beaded necklaces around their necks swing in the air up to their chins. A hollow sound is heard from a kudu horn and the men at the gate start swishing their fly whisks made from wildebeest tails. “Ngai Ngai” they chant – the blessing of God for the girls! Now the girls have become women and it’s time to eat meat and dance.”

The young woman Nice looks fulfilled at the spectacle. “I am the change,” she proudly says. When she was nine, she was almost circumcised. “My grandparents took me out of school for the circumcision. In the early morning I escaped and hid in the bushes. I cried and cried. In the evening, upon returning to my ancestral kraal nobody wanted to relate with me. I had become an outcast”. For months she continued to resist until the family again let her go to school. She received support from the teachers who participated in a campaign by the medical organization Amref Flying Doctors against circumcision.  “So I became a role model for the Maasai”, she enthuses. Within the past seven years up to 7000 girls have been rescued by the campaign of Amref Flying Doctors in a quarter of Maasailand. {read more…}

Dominic Ongwen made a confused impression in the fishbowl of a courtroom at the International Criminal Court in The Hague recently. From behind the bulletproof glass a grandstand full of white people spied upon the 40-year-old Ugandan, a rebel leader who  for most of his existence led a wild life in the African bush.  Ongwen listened uncomfortable to the charges against him – heavy crimes of which he himself was a victim.

Perpetrator and victim at the same time. Shortly after his arrest mid-December in the Central African Republic the former child soldier who became a senior commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) had said: “I went to the bush as a blind and deaf person. It is the same way I have come. I am now like a new born child, who you cannot blame for doing anything wrong. I am like a mad man now.

The LRA has been the most murderous rebel group in Africa over the past half century. But also the Ugandan government soldiers committed atrocities. Maybe that’s why nowhere on the continent such fiery debate rages about what to do with perpetrators and victims. What judicial system can alleviate the trauma’s caused by this brutal and bizarre war that took place first in northern Uganda and later fanned out over the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic? Does peace sometimes contradict with justice, punishment with reconciliation? Do the West and Africa fundamentally entertain different conceptions of justice?

In 2005, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against five leaders of the LRA. Of those five LRA leaders Joseph Kony is still on the run. Three others were killed by him or died during fighting. The ICC formulated three counts of crimes against humanity and four counts of war crimes against Ongwen. These accusations are connected to a massacre on May 19, 2004 of more than fifty people in the hamlet of Lukodi in northern Uganda.

In the shadow under the roof of the grocery store in Lukodi all men shake their head resolutely. They say: No, Ongwen should never be released, he must for ever be locked up in The Hague for his committed sins. “At six o’clock in the afternoon the attack began. The LRA fighters shouted and shot,” says the old man Gibson Ogot. “They killed one of my sons. I saw how they threw a child into the fire. Ongwen is a monster.”

From intercepted radio contact between the attackers in Lukodi and the Altar, the command centre of the LRA, it appears that although Ongwen did not lead the attack, he played a major role in it.

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The number of ebola patients in West Africa is declining.But it will be a daunting task to completely eliminate the epidemic.Epidemiologist Ger Steenbergen works as a health expert at the Dutch Embassy in Ghana.He calculates that around 20 000 people have died last year of ebola. Last year, he travelled extensively in the ebola affected countries Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Steenbergen expects the last patient in June, but he warns against complacency.“We’re not there yet.Every patient with suspected symptoms should be tested.If even one case is overlooked, everything starts from the beginning.Everyone still should stay away from his sick neighbour, because he is potentially dangerous.It remains impossible for someone to give instinctive care to a sick person and touch him. “

Ebola is known since 1976, but this epidemic is unique.“In previous outbreaks in and around the forests of Central Africa, the virus died out by itself because of the remoteness of the affected villages.That does not happen this time, because in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea there were outbreaks simultaneously in villages, towns and slums.”Never before has an ebola epidemic raged on such a scale. “

From the beginning the fight was addressed incorrectly.The outbreak began in the place where the three countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea meet around the town of Guéckédou.Doctors without Borders (MSF) was first on the spot and used a script that was based on previous outbreaks in remote areas in the Congo.That scenario however was not applicable to the busy trade routes in Guéckédou.“According to the scenario, the patients were isolated.But you cannot just take people out of their home, place them in an internment camp full of nurses dressed in moon suits, to finally put them under the ground without any rituals and without relatives present to say goodbye.That is the reason the population attacked the camp of MSF and freed the patients. On motorbikes, lorries or buses they fled in all directions.”Then outbreaks started to happen everywhere.”

In the perception of many West Africans the world consists of good and bad spirits.Purification ceremonies are important for sending the deceased to the magical world of the ancestors.The epidemic exposed the gap between citizens and governments.

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The UN flight stewardess puts her goggles on and places a guard over her a mouth. “Welcome aboard,” she says, and aims a digital thermometer at each passenger’s forehead. “Do not sit in the front rows. We like to keep a distance from you.”

Almost all airlines have suspended flights to ebola affected Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. Experts had advised against a no-fly zone, because the virus does not spread through the air. But ebola has caused wide spread panic. A fear without borders. So the UN set up its own air service to allow aid workers to shuttle in an out. Cargo planes are unloaded at Monrovia airport by men in space suits. The crew aboard the Karel Doorman, a transport ship sent by the Netherlands, have orders not to set foot ashore when calling at the ports of the ebola countries.

“We are in the frontline,” shouts an American soldier in his camp at the Monrovia airport. Armoured vehicles pass by; a helicopter takes off for a patrol flight. More than 2,000 American soldiers are leading the fight against ebola in Liberia. In Sierra Leone, far fewer British soldiers do a similar job. Infections are on the wane in Liberia, thanks to a well-coordinated campaign, in Sierra Leone the aid agencies stumble over each other and the epidemic is not in retreat.

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Koert Lindijer returns to the village of Zèré, where in November he saw how Christians had been attacked and slain by Muslim gangs. Now the roles are reversed.

Amidst the rubble of the destroyed mosque of Zèré, in the middle of the Central African Republic, kids make mockery of the Muslim mode of praying. They push their butts in the air and jeer: “Allah, get the hell out of here “. The elderly also join in and shout: “We never want to see them here anymore.”

Deep hateful cries sound in all corners of the country. Christian youths with machetes cleanse the land of Muslims. More than a thousand mosques and Koranic schools have been smashed into ruins; more than a hundred imams have been killed. A handful of remaining Muslims has become trapped, and are sheltered in enclaves guarded by international peacekeepers. The roles are reversed in the Central African Republic. The country hidden in the heart of Africa, with the approximate size of France, is in an even greater chaos than it was a few months ago. The terror of one group has been replaced by that of the other.

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The communiqués of aid workers and armed groups in recent days sound like déjà vu for anyone who followed the war in Sudan between 1983 and 2005. “Our brave warriors, clobbered the opponents (the supporters of President Kiir) and will take Malakal within 24 hours,” was a statement this week in the name of the dissident forces of Riëk Machar. The current Vice President of South Sudan, James Wani Igga, while touring his home region Equatoria for new recruits urged civilians “to fight against Riëk Machar, to defend our democracy.”

The number of deaths since the outbreak of the conflict in mid-December is now estimated at 10,000. An estimated 400,000 people have been displaced. Aid agencies report 32,000 refugees who fled to Uganda and 10,000 to Sudan. Kenya receives 800 South Sudanese daily.

Optimism about a quick end to the conflict which began in mid-December has evaporated. The country which became independent in 2011 is now embroiled in civil war. The chance of a speedy peace between the warring parties of President Salva Kiir and his former vice-president Riëk Machar seems nil for now.

“There’s no way out. South Sudan has started a new war, “says Daniel Deng. He was a minor in the nineties when forced to fight in the war of independence against the Arabized northern Sudan. When in 1991 the then liberation movement SPLA did disintegrate, his family became the target of reprisals in Bor. History has repeated itself in the last weeks.

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It is eerily quit in Zèré. Until, in this empty village with burned houses in the west of the Central African Republic, the hammering of a piece of iron on a car rim tears apart the silence. The signal that the coast is clear. The village chief had told the team of Doctors without Borders – Holland (MSF-H) to ring a church bell, but there is no church, not anymore. Out of the elephant grass and from thick forest of mango trees people appear. First, one by one, and then large groups. Babies whose mouths had been gagged by their mothers start screaming. Men tap their foreheads against each other in greeting. Some of them carry machetes, spears, or an antique shotgun. After ten minutes, there is a cacophony of excited voices.

An old man grabs the arm of a MSF nurse. “We hide around the village, living like animals in the bush,” he wails. “We have no clothes, no salt, no soap, nothing to survive. The soldiers looted all our belongings. Our chickens, goats, our grain. “He shows me around. In the clinic, needles and pills lie in the grit. In the church charred roof beams have fallen on the pulpit. Some people were burned in their homes when, on the afternoon of 7 September, fighters set the village alight. Near the remains of a house lies a corpse partly eaten by pigs.

In the Central African Republic, a country lost in the heart of Africa, Militias have for several months been preying upon the population. This nation of four and a half million people is trapped in a cycle of revenge and crime. Several militias without any ideology are fighting each other and the population. It is chaos for personal benefit. Even compared to earlier nasty conflicts, like in Northern Uganda, Liberia and Sierra Leone, these thugs are motivated by sheer greed.

Marauding militias, looting gangs and foreign mercenaries fight for control of gold and diamond mines and squabble over villagers’paltry assets. Religious and ideological motives barely played any role when the fighting first broke out earlier this year, but after several months of chaos there appears now a dividing line between Christians and Muslims. The looters pulled a small Muslim minority – 15 percent of the population – gradually into their camp. Christians responded by setting up self-defence militias. They are increasingly out to eradicate Muslims.

A small and ineffective army of regional African peacekeepers fails to create even a semblance of order. Tens of thousands of civilians have been fleeing. They hide in the bush or seek safety in churches. Priests and imams warn of a potential genocide, if the fury among Christians against Muslims will further increase.

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