10 Longest serving leaders of Africa, Posted by Meosha Eaton

Feb 17 (Reuters) - Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is expected to win a fourth term in a tight election on Feb. 18, which could extend his time in office to 30 years.
Here are details on the top 10 longest-serving leaders in the Africa:



* LIBYA - Muammar Gaddafi (68**) 41 YEARS 5 MONTHS
-- Gaddafi seized power in a bloodless military coup in Sept. 1969.
-- Gaddafi has been able to maintain power for over 40 years by putting himself at the centre of the overlapping networks of interest groups -- tribes, influential families, the military and the revolutionary committees -- which hold power in Libya.
-- Analysts have said he uses patronage, handing out shares in the country's oil wealth to ensure loyalty, and uses his political guile to play one group off against another.
-- On Thursday Gaddafi supporters gathered in Tripoli to counteract online calls for an anti-government "day of rage" inspired by the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.



* EQUATORIAL GUINEA - President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (68) 31 YEARS 6 MONTHS
-- Obiang toppled his uncle Macias in a palace coup in Aug. 1979. A new constitution was adopted to usher in multi-party politics, nominally at least, in 1991. Human Rights Watch in Jan. 2011 reported flaws in the latest presidential polls in 2009, in which Obiang won 95.4 percent of the ballot. The authorities thwarted a coup bid in 2004 by a former British special forces officer, Simon Mann.



* ANGOLA - President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos (68)
31 YEARS 5 MONTHS
-- Dos Santos assumed the presidency of the mineral-rich country in Sept. 1979, four years into a civil war with UNITA rebels that ended in 2002.
-- The MPLA's landslide 2008 victory left rivals in tatters, letting dos Santos change the constitution and boost his powers.
-- A new charter has enabled the veteran ruler, who is widely expected to win 2012 elections, to remain in power until 2022 although there is speculation he will retire before then.



* ZIMBABWE - President Robert Mugabe (86) 30 YEARS 9 MONTHS
-- Mugabe became Zimbabwe's prime minister in April 1980 after independence elections. The former Marxist guerrilla became president in 1987 and has held fast to power.
-- Mugabe, 87 on Feb. 24, and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change were forced into a coalition government two years ago after a disputed poll in 2008 which led to mass violence, a flood of refugees into South Africa and a deeper economic crisis in the resource-rich state.



* CAMEROON - President Paul Biya (78) 28 YEARS 3 MONTHS
-- Biya took over in Nov. 1982 from President Ahmadou Ahidjo and won re-election for another seven-year term in October 2004. The central African oil producer is due to schedule a new poll later this year and Biya is expected to seek another term.



* CONGO REPUBLIC - President Denis Sassou Nguesso (67)
26 YEARS 11 MONTHS
-- Sassou Nguesso has been in power all bar five of the last 32 years. He seized power in a Feb. 1979 coup but then lost the country's first multi-party elections in 1992 to scientist Pascal Lissouba. He regained the presidency in 1997 after a civil war and was re-elected in 2004 for a further seven-year term.



* UGANDA - President Yoweri Museveni (67**) 25 YEARS
-- Museveni declared himself president in Jan. 1986 when he seized Kampala after a five-year guerrilla struggle. Museveni banned multi-party politics shortly afterwards but re-introduced it in 1996. Museveni is expected to win a fourth term in 2011 despite a strong challenge from third-time opponent Kizza Besigye.



* SWAZILAND - King Mswati III (42) 24 YEARS 9 MONTHS
-- King Mswati is sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch and was crowned in April 1987. Political parties have been banned in landlocked Swaziland since 1973. The king introduced a new constitution in 2006, but the ban on political parties remained. Mswati is frequently criticised by human rights groups as a dictator who runs the country as his own personal fiefdom.



* BURKINA FASO - Blaise Campaore (60) 23 YEARS 4 MONTHS
-- Blaise Campaore became head of state after deposing his predecessor, Thomas Sankara, in a coup in Oct. 1987.
-- Campaore has widespread popular support and won a landslide victory in presidential polls in Nov. 2005, taking 80 percent of the vote. A new law from 2005 prohibited presidents from standing for more than two terms but the Constitutional Court ruled the law could not be applied retroactively, clearing the way for Compaore's re-election in Nov. 2010 when he again won with 80 percent of the vote.



* SUDAN - Omar Hassan al-Bashir (67) 21 YEARS 7 MONTHS
-- In June 1989, Bashir overthrew the democratically elected civilian government of former Prime Minister Sadeq al-Mahdi and he appointed himself civilian president in 1993. He won his last elections in 2010.
-- In March 2009, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Bashir -- the first for a sitting head of state -- for masterminding a campaign of genocide in Darfur, where the United Nations said that 300,000 people have been killed in the long-running conflict. Bashir put the death toll at 10,000 people.
-- Bashir has refused to recognise the ICC and continued to travel, despite the arrest warrants. His defiance gained him support in Sudan, especially in the Muslim north where many are suspicious of the West.
-- Last month, around 99 percent of southerners voted to separate from the north of Sudan in a referendum held under a 2005 peace deal which ended decades of north-south civil war.
NOTE: **Age not precisely known.

Over 200 murders in South Sudan, Posted by Meosha Eaton

As reported by Reuters:


* Renegade militia attacks kill more than 200
* Death toll is double previous estimate
* Attacks raise security fears after referendum
(Adds northern denial)

By Jeremy Clarke
JUBA, Sudan, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Attacks by a renegade militia in south Sudan's Jonglei oil state killed at least 211 people, a southern minister said on Tuesday, doubling earlier estimates of the death count.

The violence has reignited concerns for the security of the underdeveloped region where voters last month overwhelmingly voted to declare independence from the north in a referendum.

South Sudan's army said forces loyal to George Athor, a former army officer who launched a revolt after losing in last year's elections, carried out attacks in Jonglei last week.

French oil group Total leads a consortium controlling a largely unexplored oil concession in Jonglei.

Army and government officials on Tuesday told Reuters the scale of the carnage emerged after searches found bodies of women, children and other civilians still lying in remote areas.

Pagan Amum, a senior member of the south's ruling party, repeated accusations that the north was trying to destabilise the south by arming militias -- but stopped short of directly implicating northern government figures.

"It was a massacre of our people and it is really very painful," he told reporters. "We are a society that is traumatised ... Guns are in a lot of hands."
"Today armed groups are being financed, being armed, being sent into southern Sudan from the north. You know that George Athor who just caused the massacre in Fangak, his guns are coming from Khartoum," said Amum, secretary general of the dominant Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).
Rabie Abdelati, a senior member of the north's dominant National Congress Party (NCP), denied the accusation.
"Athor's is a southern group and there is no connection between the NCP and Athor," he told Reuters.


MILITIA ATTACKERS
Southern government minister James Kok, who had just returned from Jonglei, told Reuters 211 people died in the fighting or later in hospital and at least 109 were wounded. His figures did not include casualties among the militias.
The dead included people who had just returned to the south to take part in the referendum, said the southern army spokesman Philip Aguer.

"Some were trying to flee the fighting and drowned in the river. Some were returnees from the north who were living under trees and were caught unawares," he added.
The referendum was promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between the mostly Muslim north and the south where most follow Christianity and traditional beliefs.

Last month's referendum was largely peaceful and the NCP, led by president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, said it accepted the result. The south is due to secede on July 9.
The latest killings underline the deep ethnic and political divides that remain in the south. Death counts topping 100 were reported in a spate of clashes between tribal groups and militias in 2009 and early 2010.

Athor was a senior member of the then rebel southern army during the civil war. He stood for the governorship of Jonglei as an independent in last year's general elections and took to the bush after losing, accusing the SPLM of fraud.
Two million people were killed and 4 million fled during the civil war fought over ideology, oil, ethnicity and religion.

The fighting also set southern tribe against southern tribe, with the north backing militias from rival ethnic groups. (Reporting by Jeremy Clarke; writing by Andrew Heavens; editing by Giles Elgood and Sonya Hepinstall)