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BRIEFING
17
June
2003
INTERSEARCH
Dr. J.A. du Plessis
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Management Briefing – 17 June 2003
SOUTHERN AFRICA: BEYOND DEMOCRACY (PART 1)
Introduction
Sometimes it
becomes necessary to introduce the reader to some new and disturbing The imminent changes will impact on every government, business, farmer, organisation and household in Southern Africa. No one will escape the impact. This report deals with the broad developments in the region (part 1). Subsequent papers will deal with individual countries – South Africa (part 2) and other countries (part 3).
Beyond democracy
The concept “beyond democracy” indicates that a major shift is underway in Southern Africa – not only in perceptions, but particularly also in political institutions and the dynamics of society at large. The present situation in Southern Africa reflects a dynamics where two comprehensive components are constantly interacting. The one component deals with institutional change where institutions such as the African Union (AU) and Nepad are still under construction. The other component comprises issues such as poverty, food shortages, conflict and HIV/AIDS. “Beyond democracy” implies that the political optimism of the late 1990’s in the region has come to an end. Governments increasingly experience delivery problems to societies that have become inherently unstable, are lacking resources and are without skills. The decay of society in Southern Africa has become so all-embracing that “democracy” has run out of options and ideas. The typical political election has put state power in the hands of politicians. However, in many cases this transfer of political power did not include a transfer of capabilities to feed the hungry and tend to the poor and sick. In many countries in the region society is festering like a septic wound – and democracy cannot cure it! The link to the G8
This was the third year that African leaders attended the pre-G8 summit in France. It also became evident that the agenda of the G8 nations has shifted. The summit took place within the new post-war situation of international relations, the continuous threat of terrorism and the revival of the global economy. It is clear that an important shift in perception also occurred. For most of the G8 nations the issues of dominant importance were now closer to home. The case of Africa has shifted to the periphery of the agenda. It comes as no surprise that quite a number of journalists commented that Africa received very little attention at all. It also has to be remembered that the linkage between the G8 and Nepad was constructed in terms of the Nepad proposal for good governance, human rights, absence of corruption and the rule of law in exchange for G8 economic support. The agreement was concluded with the specific understanding that Africa would implement the whole aid package: an African solution for African problems. The G8 responded in France with a promise to improve delivery of humanitarian aid to the suffering populations, to end food shortages and to fund and provide technical support to the proposed African peacekeeping force.
The
African Union under construction
It is in the composition and functioning of the AU that the G8 condition of good governance will have to be met. The former Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was never able, since its establishment in 1963, to bring into effect a culture of good governance. President Mbeki indicated at the World Economic Forum in Durban that the new structures of the AU are slowly but certainly getting off the ground. However, he had to urge members to pay their membership fees to the AU. Some ten members were barred from speaking at meetings because their membership fees had been in arrears for two years and more. Ratification problems
Member countries do not always show a willingness to act on mutual agreements. By the middle of 2003, only 12 countries have ratified the protocol needed for the establishment of the Pan-African Parliament – the yes vote of some 15 countries is still needed. The African Peace and Security Council (PSC) that was designed to rid the continent of its endemic conflicts and coax authoritarian leaders back to good governance is still short of the necessary support. Out of 53 states only 5 have ratified the PSC, while a further 26 yes votes are still needed. AU
– complex and costly
In terms of structures and procedures the AU is already very complex. What the European Union developed over 50 years the AU has achieved with only a few pages of proposals on paper. The management cost of the OAU was $37 million per annum while the AU with its 18 institutions could cost between $100 million and $120 million per annum. Mbeki has indicated that the African countries do not have the money to fund the AU, in spite of the proposed extensive administrative bodies to run the whole operation. Apart from funding, the necessary expertise to manage and run the AU could pose an even bigger problem. G8 – focus has changed
The focuses of G8 members have changed in the present post war climate. The US major foreign policy priorities are now in the Middle East – to keep Afghanistan stable, to support Pakistan and keep Iraq safe from new domestic tension and unrest. Since December 2002 the EU has entered the final track for the enlargement of the union, incorporating former communist countries from Central Europe. Japan does not only have to deal with a struggling economy, but must keep a cautious eye on developments in the Korean peninsula. Africa does not function in these new priorities and therefore the substantial funding needed for the AU’s structures seems highly unlikely at this stage. The AU’s leadership planned for the ultimate “nice-to-haves” and not the absolute necessities here and now. It is not even certain whether the various countries in the region would be politically ready to join such an organisation, even if the funding were to be provided. There is an uncomfortable feeling that the AU leadership misjudged and misread the present situation in the subcontinent.
The never ending issue – conflict The critical conflict issues presently are in Liberia and the Ivory Coast in West Africa, the eastern part of the DRC and Burundi in Central Africa and Zimbabwe in Southern Africa. The DRC and Burundi are directly related to Southern Africa because of troop involvement. These conflicts are not the only ones, but they are on the critical list. The Senegalese based “African Rally for the Defence of Human Rights” reported in May 2003 that no “fewer than 19 African countries showed signs of peace breaking down”. Increasing
ethnic conflict
Closer analysis indicates that the nature of conflict has been changing in the region. The conflicts in both the DRC and Burundi are not between states but between ethnic groups inside the country, very often spilling over the national borders into an adjacent country. Even then, the conflict remains ethnic in nature. The present conflict in the capital of Ituria, in the Bunia province of the eastern part of the DRC, is between the Hema and Lendu tribes where an estimated 50 000 people have been killed in ethnic clashes since 1999. Peace
agreements without peace
The conflict continues despite a peace agreement that was reached in April 2003. A peacekeeping force of 700 troops from Uruguay proved to be ineffective and 600 policemen who had been sent from Kinshasa fled from the conflict area.
A peace treaty was signed in Burundi in December 2002 to end the ethnic violence between the Hutu and the Tutsi. The ethnic intolerance is so intense that the army is equally representative of Hutus and Tutsis and, according to the peace agreement, a Hutu president has now been replaced by a Tutsi president. Some 300 000 people have already died as a result of this conflict. Typical of ethnic conflicts, the casualties are very high and very brutal and mostly directed against innocent civilians. Against this background the call went out for an African peace force to stabilise the situation. The African force of the PSC is not yet in position and therefore South Africa, Mozambique and Ethiopia agreed to send 3 000 troops into the troubled zone. The initial cost is estimated at R907 million per year and will have to be carried by participating countries, in the hope that external funding will be possible at a later stage, for the AU cannot yet fund any peace operation. The present model for conflict resolution in the region is basically the Mbeki design where political leaderships are brought together and an interim government is formed with elections held at a later stage. The dilemma with ethnic conflict is that it does not fit into the democratic mould of a one-man one-vote election system. Very often an election tends to exacerbate the conflict situation.
The United Nations – planning for 2015
The present UN targets of poverty reduction, lowering of infant mortality and provision of primary education are included in the broad objective of halving poverty on the continent by 2015. Halving
world poverty by 2015
This will imply a demand for drastic debt relief, increased aid and fairer trade practices for African products, particularly in agriculture. At present farming accounts for 70% of African employment and UN agencies indicated the discrepancy that “poor countries are undercut by the subsidies offered by rich countries, while simultaneously facing protectionist barriers if they seek to export into North America, Europe or Japan.” Agricultural subsidies were one of the critical issues for Africa at the G8 summit at Evian in France. President Jacques Chirac of France always resisted any real change to the structure of Europe’s subsidies, but this time he risked a proposal that Europe should stop subsidising its food exports to Africa if the US did the same. He did not receive the backing of Prime Minister Tony Blair and agricultural subsidies were not discussed.
A UN Human Development Report stated that “Africa contained 34 of the 49 least-developed countries on the globe with 300 million people living below the poverty line.” The UN estimates that Africa needs up to $35 billion a year to meet its millennium goals, aimed at halving world poverty by 2015.
Warning signals that
went up – and unnoticed! Since the beginning of 2002 a steady release of warnings has been issued by the UN and other relief agencies about the situation in Southern Africa. ·
“Good [cereal]
production may not be enough to sustain people as it would have been 10 years
ago." (Neil Marsland. Regional food security adviser for Save the
Children UK and co-author of a SADC report. IRIN. 7 May 2003) ·
The
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies launched an
emergency appeal for Southern Africa. The Federation also warned that the
policies of donors, governments and humanitarian agencies would soon lag
behind the region's growing challenges. (IRIN 28 May 2003.) According to the Federation "The
interaction of HIV/AIDS, failed health care, poverty and food insecurity had
created an unprecedented disaster conventional intervention could not
contain." · Alasan Senghore, head of the Federation's Southern African delegation in Harare was quoted as saying that "the humanitarian world is deep in uncharted territory and the map from the past will not guide it through the future."
· The explosive combination of acute food shortages and the HIV/Aids pandemic has called for a "total rethink" when dealing with Southern Africa's current humanitarian emergency. (Meeting of UN agencies and NGO's organised by UN Aids and the UN Regional Inter-Agency Coordination Support Office (Riacso) in Johannesburg, November 2002.)
· "The connection between HIV/Aids and food security has not always been recognised. The food crisis is the manifestation of a larger HIV/Aids crisis." (Urban Jonsson, UN Children's Fund Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa.) "And around July
and August (2002
According to Jonsson the initial response to this "new" type of famine was mixed. "When I discovered this in July ... I said this was an HIV/Aids-induced famine. And people were saying 'no don't complicate things' and I said 'but it is complicated'." · The turning point in the debate about food shortages came with the recent visit of James Morris, the UN Special Envoy for Humanitarian Needs in Southern Africa, when he extended the focus on the famine to include HIV/Aids. He came out very strongly, saying, “that food is absolutely necessary, but today it will not solve the problem because the underlying causes of the HIV/Aids pandemic will not make this famine a normal famine.” Jonsson added to this: "In the traditional famine, people could cope by tightening their belts. They can't do that anymore if one-third is HIV-positive. They need more and even better food.” (IRIN. 12 November 2002) The
new game rules for government and
business
A recent report by SADC's regional
Vulnerability Assessment Committee stated that: "The impacts of HIV/AIDS
on food security in the context of the 2002 food emergency are strong and
negative. It also suggests that these impacts are complex and require urgent
and innovative responses in the 2003-04 marketing year and beyond." Any effective planning will have
to take the following from the SADC report into consideration: ·
Awareness
of the decline in quantity and quality of labour should be an integral part of the programme
design in areas with high HIV/AIDS prevalence. An exact and precise knowledge of the levels
of HIV/AIDS infection is of primary importance for government and business.
It will enable government to prepare properly for the pandemic and will give
business an idea of the future size, and productive capability, of the labour
force and the cost of maintaining productivity. · Food-for-work programmes, for example, should be designed so that the type of labour expected would be consistent with the capacities of adults who are not at the peak of their health. The key concepts here are the “type of labour”
and the “capabilities of adults
(labour)”. What is implied here is an HIV/AIDS induced restructuring of the
labour market. This may open up a Pandora's box of labour problems and human
rights issues, but it is also an indication that HIV/AIDS has been writing a
new scenario that is not in line with present political and legal thinking. What “type of labour” is inaccessible to
“adults who are not at the peak of their health” due to HIV/AIDS? It could,
for example, be argued that medical personnel need a sharp sense of judgement
with patients and should therefore be “at the peak of their health”, for they
deal with life and death situations. This can also be said of airline pilots and
radar operators. But what about the heavy duty truck drivers who are criss-crossing the main roads of Southern Africa day
and night? Certainly, they have to be “at the peak of their health”, but it
is also known that they are one of the most infected groups in society. There is little doubt that HIV/AIDS is bound
to change the present way in which society and people perceive themselves –
and this will not be a comfortable process. ·
Given the
fundamental decline in income and agricultural production experienced by
HIV/AIDS affected households, the analysis supports the need for continued
consumption-oriented assistance to these households in the form of safety net
programmes, even after the immediate emergency has passed.
HIV/AIDS affected households will take longer to 'recover' from a shock and may
never fully do so. This will lead to an abnormal composition of
society for decades to come. There will not be a quick fix after HIV/AIDS has
gone. Large segments of society, due to the high
infection rate, will need help for a long time to come. This could lead to inequality in society in
absolute terms. This new inequality will not be a result of a lack of
democracy, but it will be HIV/AIDS induced. As the pandemic expands it will impact on the
demographic profile of the region. The productive section – 19 to 49 years of
age – is under most pressure. As this process continuous it could be expected
that democracy will steadily decline. This may result in an HIV/AIDS induced
change of political thinking and institutions in the region. ·
A change in the ratio
of labour to value would mean interventions with technologies
that don't require a lot of labour but have high returns. Industry and commercial agriculture are
already confronted by this challenge. (High) technological intervention may
safeguard productivity and markets, and therefore allow the company to
survive, but its impact on job creation will be devastating. In this regard governments in the region face
some serious challenges in decision-making. Eventually HIV/AIDS will compel
governments, business and labour unions to rethink their total strategy for
survival.
· The economic stress caused by HIV/AIDS can become so severe upon a household that engaging in or continuing with income generation activities no longer becomes an option. (SOUTHERN AFRICA: New approaches needed to food security. Johannesburg, 7 May 2003, IRIN.) What is stated here in the IRIN report is not only applicable to households. It can also be stated of regions or countries. Somewhere in the functioning of any system infected with HIV/AIDS there will be a critical threshold that will, when surpassed, endanger the survival of the whole system. This creates a situation where structures just cannot cope and become dependent on external support. This is equally true for the grandmother on a state pension who is responsible for her ten or so grandchildren without any parents and for a government that has run out of capabilities to feed its own population. In the one case the catastrophe is only on a larger scale than the other. The result is a segmented society where the differences between the well-off, poor and super poor will be very pointed. This possibility will not be the result of a politically induced poverty, but an HIV/AIDS induced one. This problem cannot be fixed at the ballot box. Time to reconsider
The dynamics of the situation in Southern Africa is not always easy to understand. The political
leadership of the AU is planning for a future which cannot be realised in the
present context. They have neither the money nor the expertise for
implementing the 18 new AU institutions on the drawing board They do, however, expect the G8 to become involved in most of the financing of the projects. The political leadership rarely addresses the threat of HIV/AIDS to the region. The UN and other international agencies have done this very effectively, but whether this information has really impacted on the political leadership remains unknown. It does not really feature in AU planning. The UN has outlined the needs of the continent and the massive amounts of money needed if poverty has to be halved by 2015. In spite of this, conflict after conflict reverts back to ethnic fighting and basically prevents any aid and support from outside. Behind the wall of poverty, ethnic clashes and a political unwillingness to understand, HIV/AIDS has quietly been eroding the cohesion of society. By 2003 the UN and other agencies have started to loudly blow sirens on the region without apology – the time for some serious new thinking is here.
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