To appreciate the title of this news analysis a map has been generated. This map is a geopolitical map of the Central African Republic, CAR.
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It shows the geopolitical boundary of the CAR.
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Within this boundary, are located the primary neighbours of the CAR with shared boundaries: namely Chad, Sudan, Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo; five countries in all.
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Then there are the secondary neighbours with shared boundaries with the primary neighbours, namely: Gabon, Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya, Niger, Nigeria, nine countries; CAR's primary and secondary neighbours are 15 countries, that is more than a quarter of the countries in Africa.
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Events in this small country impacts the primary neighbours directly and the secondary neighbours through spill-over. Through this map we can see that the CAR is not a faraway distant land. The geopolitical boundary is the boundary of refugee outflows determined by the civil wars in the CAR.
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This is lesson number one. Africa is very much in CAR and CAR is in Africa. What happens in CAR is of societal relevance to her primary and secondary neioghbours.
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Second lesson to be learnt is appreciating the knee- jerk on-the-shelf-routine expression of concern by the international community whenever there is a violent change of government. No attention is paid on daily basis to the politics of the society that
foster violent non-constitutional change of government.
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The assumption is that constitutional governance is the norm and violent change of government is the aberration. So the African Union temporarily suspends the CAR from the organisation. On April 3, 2013, African leaders meeting on the CAR crisis in Chad declared they did not recognise Djotodia as President, and they proposed the formation of an inclusive transitional council and the holding of new election in 18 months rather than three years as announced by Djotodia.
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The problem with this advice is the formulaic response to violent change of government by the international community.
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Their advice is premised on the assumption that election of governments guarantees their stability and their legitimacy; and no thought is given to the record of President Bozize's government, whether he governed constitutionally or not.
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Bad governments are not ostracized or punished for their policy and when rebels seize power, they are regarded as dirty governors that can be made clean and respectable through the legitimation of election in the conflict situation culminating in the violent change of government.
Things like this are always knowledgable at the end of the day. Very good thing to know about I must say. Makes a lot of sense.