Critics ill-informed about NEPAD peer review

During the past week there has been much ado about the NEPAD Peer Review Mechanism (NPRM). During this debate, there are some in our country who have sought to present themselves as the greatest champions of democracy and human rights in Africa.

These have then argued that we, as opposed to the champions, are seeking to perpetuate what they have described as "African politics as usual". This latter phrase is meant to convey the notion that "usual" African politics means the denial of democracy and human rights.

The specific accusation is that we seek to perpetuate this "usual" African politics by excluding political governance from the areas covered by the NPRM. It is then said that this will destroy the credibility of the NRPM and render it useless.

However, as we will explain, the self-appointed champions of democracy and human rights in Africa have not only displayed a dangerous level of ignorance and confusion about the evolution of our continent. Objectively, they have also made the statement that Africa's political leaders cannot be trusted to promote and entrench democracy and human rights on our continent.

To sustain this view, some of them have resorted to the invention of meetings and interactions that have never taken place, claiming the authority of unnamed "diplomatic sources". These include interactions between ourselves and the Heads of State of Libya and Nigeria, which, it is falsely alleged, resulted in the non-existent decision to exclude political governance from the governance issues over which the African Union (AU) has oversight responsibilities.

Let us explain, once more, what is involved in the African peer review system, based on the decisions that have already been taken by the member states of the African Union. In this regard, it is critically important to understand that this review system contains both voluntary and obligatory categories. This derives from the nature of the decisions taken by the AU, or inherited by the latter from the OAU.

Matters of political governance among the member states of the AU are governed by such instruments as the Constitutive Act of the African Union. This law has been approved by the various African parliaments, including our own. As with any law, its observance is obligatory and not voluntary. In reality the Constitutive Act is an African treaty that binds all member states of the AU to its provisions.

With regard to matters relating to political governance, the Act contains the specific objectives of "Respect for democratic principles, human rights, the rule of law and good governance." Among its Objectives, it states that it will:

• "Promote democratic principles and institutions, popular participation and good governance; and,
• "Promote and protect human and peoples' rights in accordance with the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and other relevant human rights instruments."

In its preamble, it further states the determination of the AU "to take all necessary measures to strengthen our common institutions and provide them with the necessary powers and resources to enable them discharge their respective mandates effectively."

One of these institutions is a Court of Justice of the Union, which is provided for under Article 18 of the Constitutive Act. Obviously, matters contained in the Act would be subject to adjudication by this Court.

Under Article 23 dealing with the "Imposition of Sanctions", the Act says:

"any Member State that fails to comply with the decisions and policies of the Union may be subjected to other sanctions, such as the denial of transport and communications links with other Member States, and other measures of a political and economic nature to be determined by the Assembly."

All these matters contained in the Constitutive Act, which relate to the issue of political governance, constitute a set of obligations that bind all member states of the AU. There is nothing voluntary about them. It would therefore be fundamentally wrong to submit them to a voluntary peer review system and negate the decisions of the AU making them a compulsory part of the tasks facing the member states of the Union.

As we have said before, NEPAD is the socio-economic development programme of the AU. It is not an organisation separate from and apart from the AU. At the same time, the NEPAD programme was approved through a simple decision of the Assembly of the Union. Important as that decision is, it does not and cannot have the force of an Act of Parliament. This applies equally to our own national socio-economic development programme.

NEPAD has various socio-economic targets or perspectives. Among these are such matters as the reduction and elimination of the unsustainable African debt, the mobilisation of domestic capital to increase the levels of investment in our economies, increasing intra-African trade and improving African access to modern technologies of various kinds. None of these matters is or can be subject to any law binding on the members of the African Union. To attain these objectives requires both the necessary programmes and cooperation among the participating member states.

In principle any member state of the African Union can elect to opt out of NEPAD if it disagrees with it or believes that it does not need to enter into the development partnerships that NEPAD seeks to build and encourage. To this extent, it is therefore a voluntary programme and has a radically different standing from the place and status of matters prescribed by the Constitutive Act.

Nevertheless, despite the voluntary nature of the NEPAD process, the AU decided that provision should be made for oversight over the implementation of NEPAD decisions to encourage their implementation. For this reason, it decided that there should be established a NEPAD Peer Review Mechanism (NPRM). Perfectly logically, it further decided that because of the voluntary nature of NEPAD, accession to the NPRM would be voluntary.

This particular mechanism was never intended to replace other "peer review" institutions of the AU, such as the African Court of Justice. There has therefore never been any intention for NEPAD to establish its own Court of Justice that would, among other things, ensure good political governance as visualised in the Constitutive Act. In addition, nobody has ever said that NEPAD would establish such an institution.

We must also make the point that in the context of the AU, "peer review" has been mentioned only in the context of NEPAD. This was not accidental. To clarify what is meant by a "peer review", we will now quote from a document prepared by the Directorate for Legal Affairs of the General Secretariat of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), written by Fabrizio Pagani. As our readers know, this Organisation includes all the developed countries. It has assisted us in the work of establishing the African peer review mechanism.

The OECD says: "Peer review can be described as the systematic examination and assessment of the performance of a State by other States, with the ultimate goal of helping the reviewed State improve its policy making, adopt best practices, and comply with established standards and principles. The examination is conducted on a non-adversarial basis, and it relies heavily on mutual trust among the States involved in the review, as well as their shared confidence in the process.

"The effectiveness of peer review relies on the influence and persuasion exercised by the peers during the process. This effect is known as 'peer pressure'. The peer review process can give rise to peer pressure through, for example:

1. a mix of formal recommendations and informal dialogue by the peer countries;
2. public scrutiny, comparisons, and, in some cases, even ranking among countries; and
3. the impact of all the above on domestic public opinion, national administrators and policy makers. Peer pressure does not take the form of legally binding acts, (such) as sanctions or other enforcement mechanisms."

Elsewhere in the same document, the OECD says: "Other mechanisms for monitoring and ensuring compliance with internationally agreed policies and norms may be distinguished from peer review, as follows: Judicial proceedings, fact-finding missions, and reporting and data collection."

It makes the point that, of course, fact finding missions and data collection may be part of the peer review process. But peer review must include "an assessment of the performance of the State" by other States.

Work is proceeding to establish the NPRM in the manner explained by the OECD. By the time of its launch, scheduled for February 2003, all matters relevant to its effective functioning will have to be resolved.

One matter that must be clear in the context of everything we have said is that it would be fundamentally wrong and a radically regressive act for NEPAD to seek to undermine the obligatory nature of the provisions of the AU concerning political governance. Yet this is precisely what our self-appointed champions of democracy and human rights in Africa are demanding.

To subject political governance to a peer review mechanism as explained by the OECD, would make compliance with the prescriptions about democracy and human rights contained, for instance, in the Constitutive Act, open to "horse trading" among the member States that would have acceded to the NPRM. In addition, it would exclude those member States of the AU that would have elected to stay outside the NPRM. The AU decided that all this would be wrong and therefore put the obligations about good political governance in a legal instrument.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that the NPRM will not and cannot have the institutions to compel good political governance, its discussions and reports must and will include the issue of political governance. This matter has never been in doubt, except in the minds of our self-appointed champions of democracy on our continent.

In its statement issued on 3 November 2002, the NEPAD Implementation Committee recommended that "the specialised commissions, units or organs of the AU responsible for democracy, political governance and human rights be tasked to conduct technical assessments" for the African Peer Review Mechanism.

It further stated that the AU should establish the necessary mechanism to discharge this function, even as the NPRM coordinates the fulfilment of this function, "as a transitional arrangement".

As a country we have a number of obligations both to ourselves and the rest of our continent. These include ensuring the attainment of the goals of democracy, human rights and good political governance as elaborated in such legal instruments as the Constitutive Act and the African Convention on Human and People's Rights. They also include that we work tirelessly for the accomplishment of the socio-economic developmental objectives contained in NEPAD.

Ill-informed advice based on ignorance and contemptuous prejudice does not and will not promote the achievement of any of these objectives.

Environment Month

Poverty and inequality threaten the environment

As South Africans mark November as National Environment Month, one of the country's main challenges is to understand to the relationship between poverty, inequality and environmental degradation - and respond effectively.

The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), held in Johannesburg earlier this year, resulted in a global commitment to a number of clear targets and practical steps to tackle poverty and environmental degradation. National Environment Month challenges all South Africans to translate this global commitment into local action.

The WSSD recognised that a decade after the Rio Earth Summit, the state of the world's environment is still fragile. It is predicted that by 2032 half the world will be short of water, 70 percent of our land surface will be urbanised, and there will be another 2 billion people to feed. Already a third of the planet's fish stocks have been depleted.

The WSSD also recognised that it is the poor who suffer most from environmental problems, since it is they who have inadequate access to natural resources and live in degraded environments.

Global inequalities and patterns of poverty, perpetuated by unsustainable economic practices, are reflected in South Africa. We are one of the most unequal societies in the world and these inequalities reflect the racial and gender divisions created by apartheid.

Many South Africans continue to live without adequate water and sanitation. The majority of women in South Africa are unemployed. Almost half of the women who are employed earn less than R500 a month and as many as 60 percent of female-headed households are classified poor.

The growth of about 23 percent of children under the age of 6 is stunted, indicating a lengthy period of under-nutrition. The most seriously affected children are those in rural areas. The infant mortality rate is 8-10 times higher for Africans than for whites.

But what has this got to do with the environment? There are complex links between poverty, wealth and environmental degradation in South Africa, and this impacts directly on the quality of life of people.

It is the wealthy who produce the most waste, and consume the most resources - in particular water and energy. It is the poor who live close to waste dumps, who live in areas close to mine dumps, are forced to drink unportable water from lack of choice, experience poor waste management, live with air pollution in their homes from smoky imbhawulas and who have raw sewerage running down streets.

Much environmental degradation is a result of over-consumption of resources and over-production of waste by a minority of rich consumers, most of whom live in urban areas.

The contrast between those who consume and waste too much, and those who have too little, is apparent in South Africa with its high levels of inequality. We are a striking example of the concept of environmental injustice where, as a consequence of unbalanced power relationships, the poor often largely bear the costs of unsustainable and unjust practices.

The relationship between poverty and environment often appear as self-perpetuating cycles. For example: many poor rural South Africans are living on inferior land; in their attempt to make a simple living they contribute to the downgrading of their environment; the impoverished environment makes their poverty worse, which in turn puts more pressure on the environment. Such cycles are hard to break and even more difficult to reverse, and they move us away from sustainable development.

South Africa is not just a country where the problems of sustainable development are easy to observe. In addition, we are a country that, since 1994, has shown the world many innovative solutions to these problems.

Since 1994, we have been implementing the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). We embarked on a major social programme to progressively achieve universal access by all to adequate housing, energy, education, health, water and sanitation. Through these programmes, living and livelihood conditions have improved for millions in a short space of time. The delivery of basic services aims to reduce inequality and poverty.

Much of this investment has directly benefited the poor, improving access to electricity, safe water, new schools and health clinics. The mass electrification programme has brought electricity to more than 3.3 million homes. The water programme has also made great progress and by 2001 had provided basic water supply to more than 7 million people and provided 400,000 people with basic sanitation services. One of the most remarkable achievements is the building and transfer of low-cost housing through the National Housing Programme. As of June 2001, over 1.1 million units had been delivered, accommodating 5.7 million people. This represents a phenomenal 14 percent of the total population of the country.

The goal of equity and poverty eradication has also been pursued through providing more equitable access to natural resources, with significant changes made in the areas of water, fisheries and land. South Africa is implementing a land reform programme in order to right historic wrongs, develop agricultural productivity and provide a basis for sustainable livelihoods. Secure land tenure is important for the success of attempts to encourage investment into previously underdeveloped areas through the Spatial Development Initiatives, and to improve local resource management and economies through community-based natural resource management programmes.

At the more local level, South Africa has made significant strides in the achievement of sustainable development objectives. Our system of democratic and non-racial local government is only 18 months old, and in many areas it is still finding its feet. But we have established the structures for democratic participation of local communities in the preparation and implementation of plans for sustainable development, through the process of drafting integrated development plans.

While South Africa has achieved much, we continue to face huge challenges of poverty and environmental degradation. These worsen with economic development that is not sustainable. In order to move forward on a sustainable basis, we must reflect on how we are consuming and polluting our limited natural resources. Sustainable development means ensuring that we meet our natural resource needs whilst ensuring that out children will be able to meet theirs.

Higher education

New policy champions development of African languages

As part of a commitment to promoting multilingualism in higher education, South African languages other than English and Afrikaans will in future be used for instruction in universities, technikons and other institutions higher education.

Government's Language Policy Framework for Higher Education, which was approved by cabinet this week, aims to promote the development of African languages in the medium to long-term for use as academic and scientific languages.

In doing so, it acknowledges that English and Afrikaans are currently the dominant languages of instruction in this sector. The policy recognises "in the light of practical and other considerations" the need to work within the confines of the status quo until other South African languages have been developed to a level where they may be used in all higher education functions.

Minister of Education Kader Asmal said the policy framework was intended to foster a common sense of nationhood that is consistent with the values of democracy, social justice and fundamental rights, which are enshrined in our Constitution.

"The policy also recognises the need to ensure equity of access and fair chances of success for all who seek to realise their potential through higher education," he said.

The development of all South Africa's languages will be among the policy issues discussed at the ANC's forthcoming National Conference in December. A draft resolution to be considered by the Conference urges government to "accelerate the programme to develop and promote all the languages of our country, particularly previously disadvantaged languages". Education would clearly form a central part of this programme.

Through the policy framework, higher education institutions are encouraged to develop strategies for promoting student proficiency in designated languages of tuition. Multilingualism should be encouraged through, among other things, requiring students to be proficient in an African language for a range of academic fields of study. Planning and funding incentives are to be used to promote the study of South African languages and literature.

The study of foreign languages, particularly those that are important for the country's cultural, trade and diplomatic relations, will be promoted through similar strategies.

Asmal said the policy framework acknowledged the importance of retaining Afrikaans as a medium of academic expression and communication in higher education. The sustained development of Afrikaans could be ensured through a range of strategies, including the use of Afrikaans as a primary, but not the only, medium of instruction at some institutions.

All higher education institutions are now required to develop their own language policy in accordance with the policy framework adopted by government.

More Information:

• Department of Education

South African history

'Get your facts right'

It is certainly the case that "Justice is Truth in Action", as Pan Africanist Congress deputy president Motsoko Pheko wrote in the Sowetan this week. However, taking this as our motto, South Africans should count their blessings that they do not have to rely on Pheko to identify this truth.

Pheko (who is well known for writing poorly researched and badly written attacks on the African National Congress) has provided us with one more demonstration of his complete lack of respect for facts of history.

Pheko says, "in 1943 a historic document called African Claims by Africanists which was drafted by Muziwakhe Lembede, AP Mda, Nyati Pokela, Mangaliso Sobukwe, Mfanasekhaya Gqobose and others declared: 'We, the African people, demand that the present allocation of 12.5% of the surface area to seven million Africans, against 8.5% to two million Europeans, is unjust and contrary to the interest of our country"'.

In passing let us mention that in 1943 all of those named were members of the African National Congress Youth League, with Lembede serving as its first President. (As it happens, Lembede sadly passed away in 1947, twelve years before the formation of the PAC).

The document Pheko quotes from is actually entitled 'Africans' Claims in South Africa'. What is more, none of the people mentioned by Pheko were in fact part of the committee that drew up the document.

The committee was chaired by Z.K Matthews, and included among its members Govan Mbeki, Dr. Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Moses Kotane, Edwin Mofutsanyane, Rev. Z Mahabane, and Rev Selope-Thema. Dr AB Xuma, who was then serving as President General of the African National Congress, was 'Secretary-Organiser ' of the Committee.

Xuma had been instrumental in forming the committee under the auspices of the ANC and was widely congratulated for having assembled such an eminent panel of African intellectuals from such a diverse range of ideological backgrounds

More remarkable was the fact that these people were able to draft a common document, around which ANC united at its Annual Conference in 1943. This alone contains a lesson as to why the PAC failed, where the ANC succeeded, in uniting our people in the struggle for freedom.

Writing in the preface to African Claims, Dr A.B. Xuma said that the document was "our way of conveying to [the world] our undisputed claim to full citizenship. We desire them to realise once and for all that a just and permanent peace will be possible only if the claims of all classes, colours and races for sharing and for full participation in the educational, political and economic activities are granted and recognised."

Xuma goes on to say that: "To the African people the declaration [of African Claims] is a challenge to organise and unite themselves under the mass liberation movement, the African National Congress."

Later in his article Pheko insults our intelligence when he claims that "the ANC's Freedom Charter, which was written by the white friends of ANC leaders, betrayed the land question". In fact, it was the same ZK Mathews who chaired the committee on African Claims that also proposed to the ANC that it draw up a Freedom Charter.

Having adopted his idea the ANC set about to consulting thousands of South Africans, black and white, from every corner of the country and station in life to contribute to the demands of the Freedom Charter.

Far from being a 'betrayal' as Pheko alleges, there is a direct line of thought and action, which unites 'African Claims' with the 'Freedom Charter' and both of these documents with South Africa's current Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The universal truths contained in these august documents have inspired the ANC, together with millions of South Africans, to pursue justice in action. We certainly have a long way to go in realising the demands contained in them. Among the most pressing issues is the ongoing question of land redistribution, which Pheko rightly identifies as 'a delicate egg, which must be handled with care'.

But, in this quest for justice we certainly will not be relying on Pheko to inform us on the facts of this matter, nor any other.

More Information:

• Africans' Claims in South Africa, December 1943

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