AFRICA:A year-end bright note in Ghana cannot make up for a saga of failure, war and bullying, writes Rob Crillyfrom Nairobi
ROBERT MUGABE ends the year much as he began it, with demands for him to step aside growing while Zimbabwe's economic and political crises threaten to destabilise the whole of southern Africa.
Yet the leader they call the Old Crocodile still has his jaws clamped around Zimbabwe. He may have come second best in elections and agreed to a powersharing deal but somehow he still looks far from vulnerable.
Meanwhile the country he fought to free is dying around him. At last count 600 people had succumbed to cholera. Children with the distended bellies of severe malnutrition are a common sight in a place once seen as the breadbasket of Africa.
Not for the first time the continent's year has been defined by the failure of its political leaders coupled with disinterest from the wider world, and flawed elections.
In short, it was a year of missed opportunities, says François Grignon, Africa director of the International Crisis Group.
"The international community failed to support a new prime minister in Somalia, peacekeepers in Darfur didn't stop things getting worse there, and in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo we had the signing of the Goma peace deal in January, only for that to fall apart," he says.
"Nowhere was it more obvious than in Zimbabwe with the failure to impose the outcome of the elections . . . on Mugabe."
For a while it looked like things might be different. With both Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai claiming victory in this year's elections, the two leaders agreed to divvy up ministries and create the post of prime minister for the opposition.
Then it all stalled. The year ends with relationships soured, hostilities renewed and hundreds dying from a medieval disease.
There was a miserable familiarity to the stories that dominated headlines elsewhere: war in Congo, absence of peace in Darfur, Somalia slipping back into anarchy, and the spectre of famine stalking a hungry land.
Only Kenya's bloody mix of ethnic and political violence came out of the blue. As results filtered in from the December 27th poll, something strange happened. Constituencies that had been voting all day for the opposition leader Raila Odinga were suddenly declared for President Mwai Kibaki.
By the time President Kibaki was hurriedly sworn in for a second term, his country - supposedly a haven of stability and an engine of growth - was in flames.
More than 1,500 people died and as many as 600,000 were forced from their homes as political rivals used tribal hatred to mobilise gangs wielding sticks, knives and golf clubs.
It took Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the UN, to bring the two sides together and forge a powersharing deal that installed Odinga in the new post of prime minister. For now the fighting has stopped and the "grand coalition" has managed to paper over the ethnic and land disputes.
But hundreds of thousands of people have yet to return home, and another leader who was supposed to herald a new dawn - free from graft and sleaze - has found it impossible to give up power at the ballot box.
The media spotlight meandered across the continent, picking out oft-forgotten conflicts for their 15 minutes before moving on.
The eastern portion of the Democratic Republic of Congo flared close to war in October. General Laurent Nkunda marched his rebel troops down the volcanic hills close to the regional capital of Goma to demand talks with the government. His muscle-flexing was enough to send a quarter of a million people on the run. Scores of women were raped as rival soldiers went on the rampage.
So too the suffering continued in Darfur, even as Sudanese President Omar al Bashir promised peace. His Antonov planes bombed rebel targets in July just a day after he toured Darfur's regional capitals releasing doves at every stop. Now he must wait to see whether judges at the International Criminal Court will indict him for war crimes and genocide - or whether his words of peace will be enough to get him off the hook.
In a year of chances not taken, it seems that perhaps only Somalia's pirates are bucking the trend. The ragtag gangs in speedboats have taken every opportunity to hijack tankers and freighters that dare risk the journey through the Gulf of Aden, collecting millions of dollars in ransoms.
But it is not all doom and gloom.
In a year that began with the fallout from a rigged election, 2008 ends with an unexpected boost to democracy.
After two terms as president of Ghana, John Kufour did exactly what he was supposed to do. He simply stepped aside, becoming one of only a handful of African leaders to retire.
Mugabe take note.