Major blow to Africa"s renewal ideals

Original Post Date: 2002-11-01  Posted By: Jan

From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 11/1/2002 8:37:33 AM
Major blow to Africa"s renewal ideals

[Note: This is quite a laugh. This is a subtle way for Africa to stand back and never have to criticise Robert Mugabe. Subtle eh? It goes to show that all of Mbeki’s talk is just hot air. Its all just smoke and mirrors to cover the fact that Africa is going to become a huge socialist continent. Jan]

President Thabo Mbeki says there will no political peer review as part of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), confirming the major blow to the original high ideals behind the vision for the continent’s renewal. Mbeki’s statement was at odds, however, with one made by his deputy, Jacob Zuma who indicated yesterday that a peer review would apply to economic and political governance issues. Diplomats were shocked by the statement that political and human rights matters would not be subject to peer review and described the developments, if true, as a setback for Nepad. Despite the contradictory statements, diplomats said that there were indications that SA had succumbed to pressure from other African countries, including Libya and Nigeria, to confine peer review to economic and corporate governance matters. The signs are that a deal had been struck in the last few days, with few in government being privy to the details. What SA may have received in return for agreeing to the exclusion of political peer review is unclear, but there has been considerable haggling for some time over the location of still to be established African Union (AU) bodies such as the parliament and court of justice.

There has been no explanation from government for the stream of contradictory statements since Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad’s bombshell to the press at the Union Buildings on Monday morning that there would be no political peer review. He said AU institutions would uphold governance standards. Prior to his departure for Nigeria on Tuesday evening, Wiseman Nkuhlu, head of the Nepad secretariat, insisted that political governance was still part of peer review and that there was “no confusion” on the matter. Nkuhlu, who is also Mbeki’s economic advisor, is attending talks ahead of the meeting of the key heads of state committee tasked with implementing the vision for the continent’s renewal. Mbeki is scheduled to attend the talks in Abuja, Nigeria, over the weekend. Under the mechanism endorsed by 15 heads of state on the implementation committee, any agreement to undergo a political peer review would have been purely voluntary.

Mbeki told a press conference yesterday after talks with visiting Greek President Constantinos Stephanopoulos that Pahad was correct. He said that Nepad was the socioeconomic programme of the AU and therefore peer reviews would be about socioeconomic issues. He said that peer reviews did not occur in the AU context because there were institutions, such as the African Commission for People’s and Human Rights and the Pan African Parliament, which oversee matters of democracy and human rights. Hours later Zuma said that political peer review remained a critical part of the peer review mechanism of Nepad. He said it could not be removed and Pahad must have been “understood in a different way”. He said the peer review was intended so that the behaviour of countries in Africa could be understood so that “we can be in a position to deal with matters that affect the continent”. The Group of Eight, the world’s richest countries, that came up with an Action Plan for Africa at their summit in Canada in June, have yet to respond to the exclusion of political peer review. They have stressed that the plan is a commitment by Africa to change its course.

Source: Business Day (SA)
Published: Thu 31-Oct-2002
Authors: Jonathan Katzenellenbogen and Wyndham Hartley
URL: http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID…br>

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