Mitee in South Africa

[Steve Kretzmann <steve@moles.org>]

  >From Nigeria Today August 27th:
  
  OGONI LEADER URGES COMMONWEALTH TO EXPEL NIGERIA 
  
  Allies of executed Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa have lobbied ``moral
  leader'' South Africa as part of a campaign to have Nigeria expelled from
  the Commonwealth, they said yesterday. ``The Commonwealth needs to take
  that decision and to follow it up with the sanctions they have recommended
  but shied away from,'' Ledum Mittee, head of the Ogoni people's
  organisation MOSOP, told a news conference in Johannesburg. He said he met
  influential Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad on Monday to push his case,
  as part of a tour of major Commonwealth nations, and won sympathy but
  little else. ``South Africa has an important role to play. It has the moral
  authority,'' he said. ``But what was lacking (from our talks) was a firm
  commitment to take a leadership role.''  Leaders from Britain and its
  former colonies are due to decide at an October summit whether to expel
  Nigeria because of human rights abuses in the military-led west African
  state. Saro-Wiwa, a successful author and activist for his Ogoni people who
  live in an oil-rich delta in Nigeria, was executed in the middle of the
  last Commonwealth heads of state summit in New Zealand in November 1995. 
  President Nelson Mandela, who had been urging a soft line on Nigeria,
  joined enraged leaders in a decision to suspend Nigerian membership, with
  expulsion to follow in two years if the government did not improve its
  record.  Since then the Commonwealth has softened its
  stance.  Commonwealth Secretary-General Emeka Anyaoku said in South Africa
  last week that Nigeria was set to keep its membership.  ``I don't see
  expulsion on the cards,'' he said.  ``This sends a dangerous message to the
  regime that they are not being held accountable for their actions,'' said
  Mittee, one of several Ogonis acquitted at the trial where Saro-Wiwa and
  eight others were sentenced to death for murder.  He is the new leader of
  the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People and lives in London. A
  ministerial task group is to meet in London next month to make final
  recommendations for the October summit in Edinburgh. Anyaoku said Nigeria's
  pledge to hold democratic elections next year might save it from expulsion,
  but Mittee scoffed at the plans, saying it was a trick by General Sani
  Abacha's government.  Abacha took over from a previous military leader who
  annulled the results of 1993 presidential elections, sending Africa's most
  populous and oil-rich state into turmoil.  Limited sanctions were imposed
  but fell far short of the critical oil embargo that political opponents
  demand.  Apartheid South Africa quit the Commonwealth in 1961, jumping
  before it was pushed, and rejoined after Nelson Mandela became president in
  1994
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  Steve Kretzmann
  
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