{"id":10776,"date":"2012-05-23T17:15:32","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T17:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=10776"},"modified":"2012-05-23T17:15:32","modified_gmt":"2012-05-23T17:15:32","slug":"malawi-ready-to-host-au-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2012\/05\/23\/malawi-ready-to-host-au-summit\/","title":{"rendered":"Malawi ready to host AU summit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Malawi will be a battlefield when the African Union convenes for its summit in July as regional blocks ensure that their candidates for the AU Commission chair triumph.
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\nThe summit will host elections for the AU Commission chair whose candidates are South Africa’s Home Affairs minister Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and the incumbent Dr. Jean Ping.<\/p>\n

The two were in a deadlock tie during polls that took place at the January elections held in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia where neither secured the required two-thirds votes to win the race.<\/p>\n

South Africa’s High Commissioner to Malawi Ntombile Mabude has said she expects Malawi to support the bid for Dlamini-Zuma as the new African Union Commission chairperson.<\/p>\n

Mabude said this in an interview with The Daily Times when she witnessed the arrival of the first consignment of fuel for Malawi purchased using a $35m loan facility provided by South Africa.<\/p>\n

“We expect that Malawi will support our bid. We need the support of Malawi. Not necessarily as a reciprocated gesture for what we have done but because we belong to the same block. We expect Sadc members to support our candidate,” Mabude said.<\/p>\n

South Africa has, besides providing the $35m loan facility on ‘soft conditions’, also been in the fore helping Malawi when President Bingu wa Mutharika died on April 5.<\/p>\n

Three days ago, several African leaders, including President Jacob Zuma of South Africa held a one-day meeting in Gabon to re-examine the thorny issue of a new AU Commission chair.<\/p>\n

But after a meeting last week between Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and a delegation from SA, the office of the Kenyan president called on Dlamini-Zuma to support Ping’s second term.<\/p>\n

Kenya argued that, as the position of the chairman and the vice-chairman rotates between Anglophone and Francophone countries, Dr Dlamini-Zuma’s ascendancy would result in the forced withdrawal of AU deputy vice-chairman Erastus Mwencha, a Kenyan.<\/p>\n

Relations between Kenya and South Africa have soured since the January stalemate. South Africa was accused of putting pressure on AU member states to back Dlamini-Zuma.<\/p>\n

Malawi President Joyce Banda told reporters in Lilongwe recently that her government was yet to make a stand on the matter but hoped Malawi would vote as a member of the Sadc block.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Malawi will be a battlefield when the African Union convenes for its summit in July as regional blocks ensure that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1496,466,258,2233,1497],"class_list":["post-10776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa-2","tag-au","tag-joyce-banda","tag-malawi","tag-omar-al-bashir","tag-summit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}