An African Union 1st

(credit)

A weekend summit ended in the wee hours today, and from it emerged the 1st woman leader of the African Union.
She is Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (right), a physician and longtime public official in South Africa. Dlamini-Zuma narrowly won in her contest against the incumbent Chair of the African Union Commission. That would be Gabon's Jean Ping, an outspoken opponent of the International Criminal Court.
The election marked the 2d go-round for these candidates: as we then posted, in January neither garnered the necessary 2/3 vote. As late as this weekend, continued impasse seemed likely, with voting seemingly divided between the English- and French-speaking portions of Africa. The report of "'a definite sense of relief'" after Sunday's vote thus come as no surprise.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was the site of this year's summit. It had long been set for Malawi, but the AU pulled out after that country made clear that Sudan's President, Omar al-Bashir, was not welcome to come and go on account of his indictment by the ICC. (prior post)
The summit, indeed, began with talk of the ICC, the permanent court launched at Rome 14 years ago today. It too has new leadership, including Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of Gambia, sworn in just 4 weeks ago.
Specifically, there was a proposal to give criminal jurisdiction to Africa's regional human rights system. One report quoted Justice Gérard Niyungeko of Burundi, the President of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, as saying:

'An African court trying Africans will be more aware of the cultural, social environment and context of the crimes themselves.'

In a separate report, a representative of a Kenya-based NGO was quoted very differently; he called the plan "a sideshow that will not succeed." No post-summit reports indicate that the idea came to a vote at Addis Ababa, in any event.
All this provokes a question that only time will answer:

Will the advent of a new AU leader and a new ICC Prosecutor jumpstart a new relationship between the two institutions?

Sex and politics in South Africa

A demand that all government offices be filled equally by women and men is roiling the Republic of South Africa.
Earlier this month in Pretoria, "[h]undreds of women brought traffic in the capital to a standstill" as "they marched ... to hand over a memorandum demanding an equal gender representation in all state sectors." Among those who voiced their support for the proposal was the country's Minister of Communications, Dr. Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri (left), who urged the crowd: "Let's work collectively and confront hierarchy, no compromise and no going back."
The 50-50 proposal seems now to have fallen prey to the power struggle between factions of the African National Congress. Among those in the midst of that struggle is Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (right). Appointed the 1st woman Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Republic by President Thabo Mbeki, she is a reputed candidate to succeed Mbeki, and also the ex-wife of Mbeki's rival, Jacob Zuma. At a public meeting yesterday Dlamini-Zuma slammed opponents of the equity plan. Her core point in favor of equity:

Women in the majority of countries, if not in all, form more than half the population. And they produced the other half.