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On Governance And Accountability

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Prof. Haruub Othman
On Governance And Accountability.


[Discussant's Remarks at the Pan-African Forum on the Commonwealth Principles on the Accountability of and Relationship between the Three Branches of Government, organized by the Commonwealth Secretariat, 4 - 6 April 2005, Inter-Continental Hotel, Nairobi}

Only last Friday I was looking at a book written by a Dutch diplomat, Roel Van Der Veen, titled 'What Went Wrong with Africa'. I was reminded of a book written some thirty years earlier by a French agronomist, Rene Dumont, called 'False Start in Africa'. In order to truly understand what has gone wrong in this continent, we have to admit first that we really did have a false start.
The struggles for independence in this continent were struggles for democracy, development, human rights and ethical governance. All the independence and liberation movements insisted throughout that they were committed to democracy. Almost all of these movements enshrined in their constitutions the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In fact, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was enshrined in the OAU Charter.
But once political independence was attained, the first victim was democracy itself. To develop, we were told, we had to sacrifice the luxury of democracy. To fight imaginary enemies, we were required to forego human rights. Starting from Ghana in 1961, most African countries passed Preventive Detention Acts. In fact, Ghana copied that from apartheid South Africa, which promulgated such an Act in 1959. Ironically, the first victim of the act was Timothy Adamafio, the man who introduced the Bill in the Ghana Parliament in the first place. The scenario was repeated in Kenya, where Jaramogi Odinga who, as Vice President and Minister of Home Affairs had introduced the Bill, came to fall victim to it. In the then Tanganyika, now Tanzania Mainland, Oscar Kambona, who was the Home Affairs Minister and therefore the person who sent the Bill to the National Assembly, was lucky enough to flee to London before the Act caught up with him. But Orton Chirwa was not so lucky. As Justice Minister and Attorney General, he sent to Parliament a Bill establishing traditional courts in Malawi where the accused were not entitled to defence lawyers. When President Banda's security agents kidnapped him, his wife and son in Zambia and took them across to Malawi, they were tried in a traditional court and were sentenced to death. Orton Chirwa died in jail.
We in Africa, committed our first sin when in 1963 we condoned the overthrow of an elected government in Togo and the assassination of President Olympio. After that we could only stand and watch as several military coups and assassinations of political leaders took place.
The hopes of African masses that independence would bring development and a better life were squashed by mismanagement and misdirection of our resources. We went into grandiose projects that had no relationship to our circumstances and embarked on programmes that were of no direct benefit to our people. We borrowed heavily, and instead of investing those financial resources in productive areas, we went on a shopping spree to satisfy our conspicuous consumption patterns. We have been living in the South as if we were citizens of the North.
We must admit that the economic, social and political crises that have been facing us are of our own making. And the only one who can lift us out of this quagmire is ourselves. The thinking that the West can come with a Marshall Plan' to help us from this situation is a myth. The West cannot help us create another Japan that would compete with the United States. The hope that we can replicate the example of the so-called 'Asian Tigers' is misplaced. In any case, the last crisis had shown that the 'Asian Tigers' were just paper tigers. It has to dawn on us that we are on our own. It is to the self-interest of Western Europe to help Eastern Europe and North Africa; otherwise millions in those areas would want to cross over to Western Europe. It is understandable when Japan pours a lot of resources into South-East Asia, otherwise they are likely to witness yet again the ΠVietnamese boats'. But what would be the self-interest of Europe to help Africa South of the Sahara? Can we, in our small canoes, sail to Fortress Europe?
What can be done then? We must realize that development and democracy must go together. They are sides of the same coin. Democratic development therefore entails the following:
* Ethical Governance;
* Observance. promotion and protection of human rights. When we talk of human rights, we include the rights of women; the rights of children; workers' rights; the rights of the disabled, ethnic and linguistic minorities; and most importantly, the rights to life. livelihood, education, health and peace;
* Full enjoyment of national resources and their equitable distribution;
* Rule of law, accountability and transparency;
* Constitutionalism.
In most of our countries, we have embraced the notion of the separation of powers, though the practice indicates otherwise. How can we talk of the separation of powers when the President is part of Parliament? When an Act passed by Parliament, cannot come into force until it is assented to by the President? When the President, appoints High Court and Court of Appeal judges? When the Speaker of Parliament and the Chief Justice are in the line of succession? When Ministers sit both in the Cabinet and Parliament?
In many of our countries, we have an electoral system that is based on first past the post. A party can get 40% of the votes and yet acquires less than 10% of the seats in Parliament. A President can be declared elected by getting 30% of the votes.
We have a judicial system that is iLL-equipped, denied of resources and overwhelmed with cases. How can we say, as we do in Malawi and Tanzania, that a constitutional case can be determined by a Bench of three judges, while you do not have the resources of bringing the three judges together, and yet a case which carries capital punishment can be determined by one judge?
We need to start afresh. Those who talk of a Second Liberation definitely have a point. We need to look again at our structures of governance. We need to redefine our priorities. We need to inculcate into our societies new values and ethics. The spirit of patriotism and solidarity that was there in the first years of independence must be rekindled.
We need to look into the following and see if we can develop a common pattern in Commonwealth Africa, if not in the whole continent.
i) The enormous powers of the President must be reduced. What we have created is an "Imperial Presidency". The President is the Head of State, Head of Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. He (and there has been no female President so far) appoints Ministers, Ambassadors, Regional and District Governors, Permanent Secretaries, Directors of Departments and Vice-Chancellors of public universities. Under the Preventive Detention Act, he can put somebody in jail without trial, and he can also allow a death penalty to be carried out.
ii) Either we have a legislature fully elected under a Proportional Representation system, or we have a combination of a PR system and a first-past-the-post system. The legislature must represent the diversity of the population in their ideological/political beliefs, cultural/ethnic/linguistic composition, gender balance and class differences.
iii) The Courts must be accessible, especially to the poor and the disadvantaged in society. There has developed now in our countries a strong trend of buying rights. We keep saying that justice delayed is justice denied. But our courts are overwhelmed, and hundreds of people languish in jails waiting for the determination of their cases.
iv) Provision of legal aid to the poor must be compulsory in our legal systems.
As I said before, democracy and development are sides of the same coin. Our development must be people-oriented. We must dispel this notion that outsiders can bring development to us, or that ideas and expertise can only come from the IMF or the World Bank. In order for development programmes and projects to be owned by ourselves and be relevant to our needs, they must emanate from us. Foreign imposed solutions to our problems cannot work.
On the development agenda, we need to go back to the drawing boards, and take another look at the ŒLagos Plan of Action' and the African Common Market idea and also come up with alternative development strategies to SAPs, ERPs and other IMF and World Bank edicts.
Last year SADC came out with Election Guidelines for the Region. Before that also SADC passed a resolution that member-countries would not recognise any government that comes into power through unconstitutional means. The countries of West Africa, grouped together in ECOWAS, also produced a similar resolution; and its application was very effective in the recent Presidential succession episode in Togo. These efforts must be supported and strengthened.
The AU at its last Summit in Addis Ababa has agreed to the establishment of an African Court of Human Rights. Though no country yet has been found to host the seat of the Court, we must exert our pressure on the AU to put the Court in place soon.