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AC Vol 40 No 10 6 August 1999 Vol 40 No 16 AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL SIERRA LEONE 3 MOROCCO Problematic peace The ceasefire is just about holding Our friend, the new king a month after the 7 July peace deal. The next stage - the Young King Mohammed VI faces a tide of economic and social demobilisation and disarming of problems bequeathed by his father Hassan II the rebel RUF - looks much shakier. The mass outpouring of grief after the death of King Hassan II, one of Africa’s most ruthless and And it's being made worse by the canniest rulers, is fast being overtaken by worries about the future, particularly the shaky economy. lack of foreign funds for rehabilitation. A week after his father’s sudden death from a heart attack on 23 July, King Mohammed VI went to Fez to lead Friday prayers. This was a critical signal of political and religious continuity. Surrounded by the Makhzen (the Palace-run political establishment) Mohammed VI took over as Al KENYA 4 Amir al Mouminin (Commander of the Faithful), Morocco’s spiritual head. Mohammed had accepted the Ba’ya (oath of allegiance) from his subjects immediately after Hassan II’s death. Leakey's big game King Mohammed’s assumption of the spiritual leadership told Moroccans that it would be Once more President Moi has business as usual for the Chérifien monarchy (which, as the title indicates, claims descent from the confounded his critics. After Prophet, as well as legitimacy through the role in the Independence movement played by the late meeting World Bank President King Hassan’s father, King Mohammed V). It was also a message to Islamists, whose best known Wolfensohn in London, Moi has appointed ex-oppositionist Richard leader, Abdessalam Yassine, remains under house arrest in Sale, that the regime does not envisage Leakey as head of the civil service. a shift in the ruling, anti-radical ideology. Leakey has just three months to Moroccans expect and want change. The diverse political class agrees that the new monarch push through a reform and budget- should quietly drop Hassan’s absolutist tendencies, already diminished in the 1990s. They also want cutting programme before Nairobi to slacken the royal grip on business; any inquiry into the monarch’s finances is prohibited by law. takes its case to the IMF and the Bank again. The late monarch built up a personal fortune of more than US$30 billion, consisting of about a fifth of the country’s arable land, total control of phosphate mining (Morocco is the world’s biggest exporter), the expropriated holdings of French settlers and a discreetly managed investment portfolio in the United States and Europe. ZIMBABWE 5 U-turns, screw turns Diplomatic polygamy Even while mourning Hassan, the feisty Moroccan press stepped up its attacks on the gross The latest international plan for inequalities that his reign had perpetuated. The Casablanca daily Le Journal excoriated the turning the economy around looks sound, in narrow economic terms. Kingdom’s ‘semi-feudal’ ruling class and called for a war on poverty and corruption and for radical In narrow political terms it ignores reform of the justice system and social sector. Close up, Hassan’s legacy is very mixed: his regime reality, including next year's was one of the worst abusers of human rights until the tentative political ouverture started a decade elections and the unpopularity of ago; some 12 million of the country’s 28 mn. people live below the poverty line; officially, about President Mugabe's government. 55 per cent of Moroccans are illiterate although non-governmental organisations say the figure is over 70 per cent; projected economic growth of 0.2 per cent this year will do little to cut C.A.R. 6 unemployment running at around 20 per cent; and Moroccans are saddled with a $20 bn. debt on top of a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy. More than ever, there are two economies: the dynamic Too close to call liberalising one of the Casablanca Bourse and the desperate poverty of the countryside. Whoever wins the presidential poll What made Hassan different from Africa’s other absolutists (such as his pupils and friends, starting on 29 August faces a huge former Zaïre’s Mobutu Sese Seko and Togo’s Gnassingbé Eyadéma) was his enduring ability to task in keeping order: the UN manage change and make himself useful to countries more powerful than his own. He was dismissed peacekeeping force is due to leave by diplomats when on assuming power in 1961, he said he wanted good relations with both the West soon afterwards. Incumbent and the Soviet Union because ‘in a Muslim country, bigamy is permitted’. In diplomacy, though, President Patassé is favourite to win, but not in the first round. Hassan was more of a polygamist, deftly running a Middle East policy that allowed him to have the highest level contacts, from Hamas, through the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Israel to Washington. His handling of the Africa dossier (he was one of Angola’s Jonas Savimbi’s strongest POINTERS 8 supporters and the backbone of the continent’s Francophone réseau) remained obscure to even the keenest Palace-watchers. Senegal, Liberia, For the West, Hassan’s great contribution was keeping the lid on Morocco and message-passing Britain/Africa & between Israel and the Arab world. That alone explains the appearance of US President Bill Clinton, France/Africa French President Jacques Chirac, Spain’s King Juan Carlos, Israeli Premier Ehud Barak, Presidential field; Gerald's jeep; Britain's Prince Charles at Hassan’s funeral in Rabat on 25 July. At the obsequies, much of the talk out of Africa; Jacques' jaunt was of Moroccan and Western fears for the future. 6 August 1999 Africa Confidential Vol 40 No 16 Desert kingdom or desert republic? Whether Rabat cooperates with the United Nations’ planned referendum independent observers believe it would win a referendum and Rabat, on Western Sahara next July will be a key test of King Mohammed because of the high number of voters registered in territory it controls. VI’s political muscle. His father, King Hassan II, marched troops into The next stage, assessing a further 65,000 names (from the ‘contested the territory shortly after Spain pulled out in 1976, a move condemned tribes’) which Rabat wants on the list, is due to end in November. by both the UN and the Organisation of African Unity. Hassan made Mohammed’s accession probably boosts the chances of a free the occupation of the Sahara a national cause and persuaded Westerners referendum. He may be less wedded to the idea of a Moroccan that if his troops were pushed out, the kingdom would collapse. Western Sahara than his father and the ubiquitous Interior Minister, That secured plenty of Western help for him in his war against the Driss Basri. Mohammed might be more responsive if there were Polisario Front. Based in camps near Tindouf, southern Algeria, the serious Western and UN pressure to stop Morocco's obstruction of Polisario badly damaged Morocco at first. Rabat now spends some referendum preparations. US$3 million a day on its occupation force, for comparatively little Mohammed doesn’t like Basri much and is improving relations economic return. Never good, relations with Algiers crashed in the late with Algeria’s diplomatically savvy President, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. 1970s and fears persist that it might go to war over the Sahara. Both After a warm exchange at Hassan’s funeral, the two are to meet this Rabat and Polisario have tried to obstruct UN attempts to hold a month to reopen their common border. Born in Morocco, Bouteflika referendum on the territory which they thought they would lose. strongly backed Polisario when Foreign Minister in the 1970s: he told Now preparations to vote, begun in 1988, are nearing an end. Last the 1999 OAU summit he hoped the UN would expedite the referendum. month, the UN gave lists of identified and eligible voters to both sides. In his first speech as King, Mohammed said: ‘ We shall renew our The lists have 84,251 names, of which 40 per cent were registered in commitment to perfect our territorial integrity, of which the issue of Polisario camps, 55 per cent in Morocco and the area of Western our Saharan provinces constitutes a central concern.' Mohammed is Sahara its troops currently occupy, and 5 per cent in Mauritania. no keener than his father to countenance losing Western Sahara. But Both sides have welcomed this, Polisario because it and many he may be more flexible if it comes to a negotiated settlement Mohammed, 36, comes to a taxing job underprepared. The long years serving in the disputed Sahara. Some believe Mohammed diffident new ruler says he wants to emulate his close friend, will cultivate the army as a counter-balance to the Gendarmerie Mediterranean neighbour and very constitutional monarch, Juan Nationale and civilian gubernatorial administration, which remain Carlos. Press profiles all dip into his curriculum vitae to note that tightly controlled by Basri. In the immediate wake of Hassan’s Crown Prince Sidi Mohammed is a four-star general and death, the line of army officers who professed their allegiance to ‘coordinator’ of the 200,000-strong Force Armée Royale (FAR), Mohammed by kissing the royal hand or royal shoulder ranged and that he spent a period in Brussels working in the office of the from senior generals to more lowly captains. The range of officers, then European Commission President, Jacques Delors. Hassan much broader than usual in expressions of loyalty at the annual was reluctant to groom his son to replace him until Mohammed was ‘Throne Day’ celebration, seemed to show the new monarch’s in his 30s, as was reflected in persistent but ill informed rumours determination to build a power base in the military.
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