Africa’s fifth longest service President who won Sunday’s election with 79,3% of the vote, elected to be with his soldiers rather than attend a ceremony celebrating his sixth term in the office he seized in a 1990 rebellion.

His army spokesman General Azar Bermourdoa Agoma read a statement on national television saying Deby had breathed his last while defending the nation’s sovereignty on the battlefield.

Perhaps further details will come from his his 37-year-old son General Mahamat Idriss Deby who has been named interim president.

We should not expect much from the media after the military imposed a curfew and shut the country’s borders following the president’s death.

Chad’s constitution and its legislative assembly have been dissolved.

This means the legal course of events following the death of the president, that would put the speaker in charge for 40 days until a transition or fresh elections are held, is not being followed.

At the weekend the military said it had stopped an approach on the capital N’Djamena by rebels of the Front For Chance And Concord in Chad.

The organisation that goes by the Acronym FACT has bases in neighboring Libya.

The Chadian army denies that FACT has seized control of Kanem Province 300 km north of N’Djamena and claims it has stopped the rebels in their tracks, killing more than 300 of then.

The 68 year-old son of a herder was a valued ally of the Western powers and a leading member of the Sahel group fighting jihadis.

The rebel advance that started on April 9 had the United States withdrawing non-essential personnel from its embassy in N’Djamena and the British Foreign Office urging nationals to leave Chad.

France, by contrast advised its nationals that there is no threat in N’Djamena.

The rebel action was an embarrassment for Deby who fought the election with a promise of bringing peace and security to the nation.

This is by no means the first rebel attack he has resisted.

In 2008 rebels advanced to the gates of the presidential palace in the capital before they were repelled with French military support.

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They burned their camp to which the authorities were trying to force them to return.

It is reminiscent of what happened in Pretoria and Cape Town last year.

Thousands of refugees from the conflict in Sudan  and Libya have been accommodated in Niger. 

The camp is in Agadez which is a major hub for Africans headed for Europe..

They say conditions are poor and the UNHCR must relocate them. They staged a sit-in outside the offices of the world organisation.

When authorities beat some of them and forced them into a vehicles to return them to their camp, it was burned down. More than 300 arrests have been made

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He was speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York as the first of migrants started arriving in Rwanda.

Rwanda’s taking in the migrants as part of a deal with the African Union and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

Most of them are from the Horn of Africa.

Libya reached a deal with the European Union to keep the migrants from crossing the Mediterranean into their territory.

President Paul Kagame insists his efforts to end the migrants’ misery in Libya does not involve him  taking any money from the EU 

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But it has not produced a winner to succeed the late President Bejii Caid Essebsi.

Voters will be back for  run-off by early November.

Tunisia has retained its status as a democratic model in a troubled part of the world.

Both headed for elections, Tunisia’s larger neighbours Algeria and Libya  would like to have some of that orderliness rub off.

Much depends on whether the final winner – which looks like a contest between television mogul Nabil Karoui and law professor Kaïs Saïed – is able to get to grips with the economic stagnation and unemployment that are preventing Tunisians from enjoying the fruits of their hard-won democracy.

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Economic and security problems have dogged the Mediterranean country squeezed between Algeria and Libya .

The Niba Tounes coalition of the late President Beji Caid Essebsi, whose death in July forced the election earlier than planned, has effectively disintegrated.

So the only relatively safe bet in this field of 26 candidates is that no-one will  emerge as an outright winner.

This will necessitate a second round between the two frontrunners by early November.

That will be after parliamentary elections that will shape the future of country that historically punches above its weight  in the African, Arab and Mediterranean worlds. 

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The Parliamentary speaker from the North African country, Mohammed  Ennaceur, has been sworn in as interim president until elections in October.

Bejii Caid Essebsi is Tunisia’s first democratically-elected president.

He became Prime Minister after Beni Ali was deposed in the Arab Spring of 2011.

Three years later, Essebsi was elected President.

He opened the political space but was unable to bring the property he promised because of sporadic terrorist attacks by Islamist fundamentalist groups that crippled the tourism industry which is the biggest foreign currency earner for the picturesque country nestled between  Libya and Algeria with views of Europe across the Mediterranean.

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Maltese naval vessels ferried the refugees ashore because the German-flagged vessel was not allowed into Valetta harbor

The migrants will be moved to Germany, France, Portugal and Luxembourg who agreed to take them in. They’ve come from Libya, where fighting around the capital Tunis has prevented naval operations curbing refugee boats starting the perilous crossing to Europe. So far this year, 356 migrants have drowned or gone missing on the Mediterranean.

Malta and Italy have barred rescue ships from their harbours.

The 67 aboard the Alan Kurdi, named after a three-year-old Syrian son of migrants who drowned in 2015, were in desperate straits on the overcrowded the vessel.

Two had already been evacuated because of  medical emergencies. 

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The International Oganisation for Migration fears the death toll from the sinking of two crowded boats could be high higher.

Djibouti has become a major launch site for migrants, mainly from Ethiopia, heading for the Arabian peninsula.

Crossing the Red Sea is less considered hazardous than braving the Mediterranean which claimed six lives a day in 2018, according to a United Nations report.

This figure takes in launchings from Libya in the east and Morocco in the west.

Yesterday’s tragedy underlines the harsh reality that vast numbers of people are prepared to risk their lives and those of their families seeking economically more prosperous  and politically more peaceful futures away from Africa.

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South Africa has twice proved the veracity of this.

In its first rotating term on the UN powerhouse between 2007 and 2008, the South African government – still in its heady days of President Nelson Mandela – appeared insensitive to human rights violations in Myanmar and Zimbabwe.

Eager to avoid a similar accusation in its second term between 2011 and 2012 South Africa voted for a resolution supporting “all necessary measures to protect civilians on the ground” from aerial against attacks by the forces of dictator Muammar Gadaffi. 

This led to military action that contributed to Gadaffi’s overthrow and killing which set off violence and insecurity from which the country still has not recovered.

South African protests that it never actually supported military action against Gadaffi drew chortles from observers who said it was dangerously naive of the South Africans not to realize their vote for a no-fly zone over Libya could possibly lead to anything else.

South Africa’s newly-acquired BRICS partners Brazil, Russia, India and China abstained in that vote.

Barak Obama’s U.S. Government reiterated that South Africa had merely done the right thing.

This was cold comfort for the African nations who insisted that Libya should have been left for the AU to sort out.

The Africans saw fit to put South Africa up for a third term in the diplomatic engine room.

Will South Africa be able to parlay this into eventually becoming the permanent African member on a reformed UN Security Council?

This will be the call not so much of fellow Africans but of the heavy hitters who would have to agree to the reforms.

The signs so far are rather ominous.

South Africa has sat so firmly on the fence on the fraught Ukraine issue that it has iron its soul.

In the year ahead, the Western powers on the Security Council are bound to take a tougher line against Russian aggression aimed at its western neighbour and its annexation of Crimea.

They will be looking for consistency from South Africa that has steadfastly cited moral grounds for standing against Moroccan aggression in north Africa and its invasion of Western Sahara.

European diplomats say South Africa’s decision to abstain in the UN General Assembly vote on human rights violations in Myanmar is disappointing.

There has been stronger language from Asian countries.

They are comparing South Africa’s refusal to vote in favor of human rights protection for Rohingya refugees with what they call discredited Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s abetting of genocide.

Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Lindiwe Sisulu has signaled there will be change in this stance and they are all eagerly awaiting the new position.

They will also look to South Africa to alter it abstention and actually support UN disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu’s call for an end to the use of chemical weapons by Syria.

Doing this would put South Africa at odds with Russia as it shows an increasing tendency to stay on-side with its BRICS partner.

In the vote for the new Interpol chief, for example, South Africa withdrew it’d candidate for the post and threw its support behind Russian Alexander Prokapchuk who eventually lost to South Korean Kim Yong Yan.

At stake over the next two years is more than merely irritating Western friends.

South Africa’s contributions and votes on the 15-nation Security Council will bring it directly into the cross-hairs of Donald Trump whose vengeful  petulance easily exceeds his short attention span.

If he doesn’t like something South Africa does it is easily within the realms of possibility that it might be made to pay by losing its favorable access to US markets via the American Growth and Opportunity Act or AGOA.

The Saharawi people, living under Moroccan occupation for 43 years,  will be grateful for having South Africa on the Security Council.Sisulu has promised South Africa will use its position to press for self-determination for the Western Sahara. By implication this means getting Morocco to quit the territory.

So, however we look at it, for the next two years South Africa will be playing high-stakes poker at the biggest game in town.

EndsIsumi

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The organization, that’s rescued more than 80 000 migrants at sea, says it fears it will see needless deaths go unwitnessed.

The Medicines Sans Frontiers rescue ship Aquarius is in Marseilles, having been de-registered in September.

MSF blames European countries for sabotaging those trying to save lives.

It particularly rounds on Italy’s righting Interior Minister Matteo Salvini who’s accused them of collaborating with human traffickers and running a taxi service for migrants to Italian ports.

MSF fears that ending its rescue service for migrants mainly from Libya will result in many more deaths at sea. 

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