Dakar, Senegal — The Senegalese president, Abdoulaye Wade, shot a diplomatic hole-in-one on Thursday, with the agreement between the two Malagasy leaders who he had invited to Dakar to make peace.
If lasting peace is restored to Madagascar, then Wade - and the group of African presidents and leaders who helped to broker the settlement - can indeed be proud that they have pulled off a diplomatic coup and found an African solution to an African problem.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the continent, the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, has also been trying to help achieve peace - this time to an even more complicated conflict, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has sucked in six nations.
Wade and company were lucky. Their peace mediation lasted less than 48 hours and ended in apparent success with the signing of an accord between Ratsiraka and Ravalomanana. .
Mbeki is finding it harder to keep all the Congolese talking at the Sun City resort, as some factions make their own agreements, leaving out others who feel they should be included.
On Thursday, as the Dakar peace accord was being savoured by most people in Senegal, Mbeki was obliged to step in once more, modifying his plan for a DRC deal for the second time in less than a week, to try to save the Congo talks in South Africa.
It may be an uphill struggle, but no one can continue seriously to accuse Africans of failing to try to resolve the conflicts on their continent.
Wade organised the Madagascar peace talks on the sidelines of a summit of the New Partnership for Africa's Development, Nepad, one of whose principles is that Africa's many conflicts need to be resolved.
He said it was a good opportunity for visiting African heads of state to get involved with mediating in the Madagascar crisis. Wade, along with the Ivorian president, Laurent Gbagbo, the president of Benin, Mathieu Kerekou and the Mozambican leader, Joachim Chissano, held the first round of talks, separately, with Ratsiraka and Ravalomanana on Tuesday night.
Although the Senegalese leader kept stressing to journalists that the Madagascar peace talks were organized by the Organisation of African Unity, the truth is that he personally convinced Ratsiraka and Ravalomanana to cross the continent and try to end their political tug-of-war.
Wade, 75, who was elected in an exemplary presidential poll in 2000, is known in Africa as something of a diplomatic maverick, who is prepared to stick his neck out and get his hands dirty in crises that other leaders shy away from.
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Madagascar is one example. But Wade has also offered his services outside Africa - to help bring peace to the Middle East and mediate in the intractable Kashmir problem. He is often prepared to give things a try because he is not afraid of failure nor afraid to speak out. He was one of a small handful of African leaders who denounced the flawed elections in Zimbabwe.
Wade also loves to play to the gallery - and to journalists. Standing proudly by Ratsiraka, as he lined up beside his "younger brother" Ravalomanana, while the full text of the Madagascar peace accord was read out by the OAU secretary-general, Wade positioned himself perfectly for the photo opportunity that would put him on the front pages of African newspapers and internet sites, heralding an African success story.
Almost as if he were a golfing champion, having scored a hole-in-one.
