Thank you very much for posting the three thought-provoking, sensible and reflective essays with differing perspectives on the impact of Obama [http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/current]. They offer in complementing ways to outsiders like me additional understanding of how to read some of the substantive contentious issues. With this posting, Pambazuka News shows once again its relevance in information sharing.

Henning Melber tackles the critical issues surrounding the EU-African summit.

Gone are the days of perpetuating historically entrenched interests and relations between “old Europe” and its in the meantime sovereign African colonies as unchallenged integral part of a global economic and political system in favour of the imperialist powers. The former hunting grounds for slaves fuelled European early capitalist development and pushed the continent ever since into structural dependency from a world market, which benefited others. Africa remained on the receiving end since then. But with increased competition for its natural resources, African economies emerge as a new attraction for a multiple range of potential partners, allowing the governments more choices than ever before.

The preparations for the EU-African Summit in Lisbon during December happen in the midst of what could be termed a new scramble for Africa’s resources. At a time when the US-American administration under the outgoing president Clinton enacted the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) to secure mainly its own interests through a new preferential trade scheme, the trade department at the EC headquarters in Brussels initiated negotiations for a re-arrangement of its relations with the ACP countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific through so-called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The declared aim was to enter an agreement meeting the demands for compatibility with the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The EPA negotiations have since then entered critical stages and should have been finalised by the end of this year. They provoke reluctance if not fierce resistance of many among the ACP countries, who feel that Brussels seeks to impose a one-sided trade regime in its own interests.

Meanwhile China as a new kid on the block expands aggressively into African markets and seeks access to the fossil energy resources and other minerals and metals it urgently needs to fuel its own further rapid industrialisation process. In a matter of time, India, Brazil and Russia (as well as a number of other actors such as Malaysia and Mexico) are likely to add further pressure to the scramble for limited markets and resources. It appears at times, that the criticism often raised these days in the West against China and other potentially emerging competitors is more so an indicator of an increasing fear for losing out on own interests than being motivated by a genuine concern for the African people.

The interests guiding decision-making in this new constellation are illustrated prominently by the discussion over Zimbabwe’s participation in the summit. The overwhelming majority of EU member states seem to be prepared to accept the presence of President Robert Mugabe in violation of the own sanctions decided earlier on. The main argument is the concern that his exclusion would result in a boycott of most African countries, weaken Europe’s status among African governments and thereby strengthen the Chinese influence further. More pragmatically, it is also maintained that using Mugabe’s presence for a discussion over the situation in Zimbabwe would allow the further pursuance of a negotiated solution. This could strengthen SADC’s mandate to Thabo Mbeki for seeking an acceptable exit option for the aging despot and a political solution to the ongoing crisis.

The new rivalry between external players strengthens at the same time the political bargaining role of African governments. In the presence of alternatives to the historically established exchange relations, their heads of state can easier agree on signs of solidarity among themselves, threatening to turn a back on Europe if it is not complying with their demands – such as the one to include the Zimbabwean despot in the list of invited guests.

The long lasting dependency syndrome, which characterised the North-South relations, is replaced by a feeling of having alternative choices at hand. While this expands the action radius of African governments, it has not necessarily a positive impact on improved governance. Quite the opposite: it might create new exit options for kleptocratic regimes to once again being able to literally get away with murder.

* Henning Melber is the Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

This paper was presented to the Africa University Annual Conference on the 'Commemoration of the Legacy of Dag Hammarskjöld', held in Mutare, Zimbabwe, 24-26 September 2007. The author, Henning Melber, was prevented from participating in the event, since the Zimbabwean embassy had informed him a day before his departure from Sweden that the immigration authorities in Harare had turned down his visa application.

During a visit to India in early February 1956, Dag Hammarskjöld presented one of the very rare impromptu speeches of his career as second Secretary General to the United Nations (1953-61) when addressing the Indian Council of World Affairs. Prompted by a moving encounter with local culture performed in his honour earlier on, his mainly extemporaneous speech explored the dimensions of human universalism. A commonality beyond Western – or, indeed, any other culturally, religiously or geographically limited – ideology or conviction.

'It is no news to anybody, but we sense it in different degrees, that our world of today is more than ever before one world. The weakness of one is the weakness of all, and the strength of one – not the military strength, but the real strength, the economic and social strength, the happiness of people – is indirectly the strength of all. Through various developments which are familiar to all, world solidarity has, so to say, been forced upon us. This is no longer a choice of enlightened spirits; it is something which those whose temperament leads them in the direction of isolationism have also to accept.'

Isolationism is a phenomenon guided by a lack of reality, or by selective perceptions, found often by leaders and their followers. It is a universal feature, and not confined to any particular society or group. By no coincidence it was the British Lord Acton, who stated, within the society considered to be one of the cradles of the modern day political system called democracy, that power corrupts, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Former liberation movements, who, after long and painful sacrifices by the oppressed people fighting against colonial occupation ultimately secured the fundamental right of self-determination and seized the legitimate political power based on popular vote, are not protected from these temptations. As a result of such 'limits to liberation', Zimbabwe is in the midst of an ongoing crisis. The 'political economy of decline' can hardly be ignored by anyone living in or having insights into the social and political realities. Even though Zimbabwe has frequently denied the freedom of movement and the freedom of expression to those seeking to form or to articulate a view on the ground; just as the apartheid settler colonial regimes of Rhodesia, South West Africa and South Africa had done during earlier (and definitely not so good old) days.

Notwithstanding such disturbing features of limiting the freedom of individuals, to which numerous (and much more serious) incidences against its own people over the years since the Gukurahundi of the mid-1980s in Matabeleland have alerted us, some maintain the impression that ‘business as usual’ exists (- and maybe it does?). There remain ‘professional denialists’, who continue to dismiss any such notion – even if the authorities of a state without any serious crisis of legitimacy could afford to allow visitors to enter their country freely. Zimbabwe’s ambassador to neighbouring Namibia (where an increasing number of Zimbabweans are seeking refuge and thereby testify to the ongoing crisis at home) stated in an interview to the state-owned daily newspaper as late as mid-September 2007 that, 'Zimbabwe […] is a peaceful paradise and politically stable since 1980'. Asked how the political situation in his country can be resolved, he answered: 'The question is misleading because it assumes that there is a political problem in Zimbabwe. This is not the case. There is no political situation in Zimbabwe.' According to most others, and in direct contradiction to the diplomat’s view, there clearly is.

These more critical views do not have to be a part of or closely affiliated to any of the organised political rival groupings contributing to a chronic state of protest, unrest and repression spiralling the country’s people further into misery and suffering. The sub-regional body, SADC, has officially acknowledged the need to mediate, with the goal to bring the decline to a halt and the country back on track towards a peaceful future in stability. The Communiqué of the Extraordinary Summit of the SADC Heads of State held, because of the Zimbabwe crisis, on 28-29 March 2007 in Dar-es-Salaam, however, provided a classic example of a dilemma, when it 'reaffirmed its solidarity with the Government and people of Zimbabwe'. In this case, obviously, one can hardly have it both ways.

It is fair to assume that Zimbabwe 'has posed fundamental questions about the extent to which SADC members can and should intervene in the internal affairs of other member countries for the sake of regional interests. […] SADC has been slow to respond to the crisis. It has failed to replicate the positive solidarity that SADCC members once levelled against apartheid South Africa.'

Notwithstanding the reservations provoked by the ongoing double-bind message by SADC as the sub-regional organisation as well as individual SADC member countries, the latest assessment of the International Crisis Group (ICG) concludes that the regionally negotiated solution would be the most feasible option for Zimbabwe:

'The next few months present a moment of truth. […] SADC and its member states have the capacity to reverse a downward spiral which increasingly threatens the region’s stability but they must be prepared to support the initiative they have begun and Mbeki’s mandate. This means using economic leverage, conditioning a recovery package on performance and making clear that if there is no cooperation they will not hesitate to call the initiative a failure and reject elections that are not a product of their mediation and do not comply with SADC’s own democratic standards.'

Such pro-active policy is a kind of interference, which corresponds with the new political realities and a common understanding as codified in the currently applicable documents guiding African continental politics. The Constitutive Act of the African Union (AU) deviated in a substantial paradigm from the fundamental principles of the earlier Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

The non-intervention into matters of member states had been a hitherto holy principle, on which the OAU based its continental policies. The AU constitution has replaced this by a clear notion of collective responsibilities, which under grave circumstances even justify joint intervention into the internal affairs of the member states. This new approach has already provided results by means of a visible implementation on several occasions.

Along similar lines and despite all critical analyses - justified with regard to the reluctant pursuance of the noble goals defined - The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and its African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) have created a corresponding new paradigmatic framework for good governance and the commitment by African states to comply with such defined standards. It could do no harm to measure those governments not volunteering to this screening exercise according to similar criteria and seek their application. Similarly, as suggested by SADC at its last ordinary summit in August 2007 in Lusaka, a few among the growing number of voluntarily retiring elder statesmen and former presidents might be a suitable task force to seek negotiations with an aging autocrat reluctant to give up power.

But seeking a lasting solution for Zimbabweans means more than entering into a negotiated compromise in terms of power sharing among segmented political elites representing different interests, while offering guaranteed protection for perpetrators if they comply with such controlled change. In an analytically remarkable Pastoral Letter released by the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference on Holy Thursday of 2007, the internal, class-related roots of the current Zimbabwean crisis were highlighted:

'Black Zimbabweans today fight for the same basic rights they fought for during the liberation struggle. It is the same conflict between those who possess power and wealth in abundance, and those who do not; between those who are determined to maintain their privileges of power and wealth at any cost, even at the cost of bloodshed, and those who demand their democratic rights and a share in the fruits of independence; between those who continue to benefit from the present system of inequality and injustice, because it favours them and enables them to maintain an exceptionally high standard of living, and those who go to bed hungry at night and wake up in the morning to another day without work and without income; between those who only know the language of violence and intimidation, and those who feel they have nothing more to loose because their Constitutional rights have been abrogated and their votes rigged.'

This insight is of relevance not only for Zimbabwe. It is relevant for all societies marred by antagonistic forces culminating in extreme social disparities, where a privileged few feast at the expense of the marginalised majority. This includes (though is anything but confined to) the societies in (southern) Africa, who for both external as well as internal limiting factors have not managed to overcome the colonial legacy and its fundamentally unjust and discriminating social structures and corresponding mental dispositions.

This paper opened with a quote from a rather spontaneously motivated speech by Dag Hammarskjöld in 1956, documenting his firm belief in the unity of humankind and its shared values and norms. Much remains in this world, even half a century later, as a continuing challenge to enhance such understanding. A challenge, which clearly embraces the need to reduce the gross imbalances, which, in a very concrete and lasting material sense, prevent the full implementation of such universal ethical and moral norms to the benefit of most, if not all, in this world of the early 21st century.

But the lack of progress does not mean that Hammarskjöld’s words and visions were neither practical nor realistic. For him, the work of the United Nations should build on the commonality of humankind, its conduct and experience:

'With respect to the United Nations as a symbol of faith, it may […] be said that to every man it stands as a kind of "yes’ to the ability of man to form his own destiny, and form his own destiny so as to create a world where the dignity of man can come fully into its own.'

These words should continue to serve as an invitation to jointly turn all corners of this world into a better one to the benefit of the ordinary people. 'In such a world', the late Secretary General further clarified in no uncertain terms, 'it is impossible to maintain the status of "haves" and "have-nots", just as impossible as it has grown to be inside the nation state'. The challenge to turn his words into social and political realities remains on our agenda. It includes the southern African region in general, and, in particular, Zimbabwe.

Such a demand is by no means a Eurocentric fantasy of neocolonial or imperialist interventions, as so often claimed by those local elites under siege, simply because they are measured and judged against universal standards and values relating to fundamental and undivided human rights based principles and norms: the same principles and norms, they claimed to be fighting for, when fighting against settler-colonial minority regimes denying them those rights. The same rights they are now denying to so many among their 'liberated' people. The current necessity to take sides is by no means drawing a dividing line along race or the North-South axis, as relevant as such criteria for historically rooted privileges, identities and interests might generally be. Instead, such dismissals of human rights-related notions are nothing more than a smokescreen, a constructed escape route for those, who try to get away with cheating again the 'wretched of the earth'. As a pan-African human rights campaigner clarified:

'I have heard some people argue that the "enemies" of Africa now crying about human rights did not burden their conscience with such luxuries when benefiting from 400 years of industrial scale slavery, colonialism and brutal exploitation of Africa and its peoples. In other words, that ‘white farmers’ deserve some of their own medicine. Not only does such thinking reduce Africans to the moral bankruptcy of colonialists, it also fails to understand that it risks granting unlimited and indefinite power to Africa’s actual and imaginary liberators such that we may all end up being shackled by them. Africa’s liberation movements drew their moral strength from the fact that on the balance, they fought for social justice, human rights, equality and democracy – for all […].'

The 25-year old unemployed Harare woman Ndakaitei captured the sentiments after three chimurengas on behalf of a frustrated post-independent urban youth when she cried out: 'We desire a future that is not like the present!'

Notes and references

I owe this information (and the quotes) to the fascinating manuscript submitted by Manuel Fröhlich on ‘The Unknown Assignation’. Dag Hammarskjöld in the Papers of George Ivan Smith for forthcoming publication with the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in its new Critical Currents occasional paper series. This will then – like many other publications - also be available on the Foundation’s web site:

Dag Hammarskjöld, ‘The United Nations – Its Ideology and Activities. Address before the Indian Council of World Affairs 3 February 1956’. In: Andrew W. Cordier/Wilder Foote (eds), Public Papers of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations. Volume II: Dag Hammarskjöld 1953-1956. New York and London 1972.

Henning Melber (ed.), Limits to Liberation in Southern Africa. The unfinished business of democratic consolidation. Cape Town: HSRC Press 2003.

Suzanne Dansereau/Mario Zamponi, Zimbabwe – The Political Economy of Decline. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute 2005 (Discussion Paper; 27).

A recent volume included a variety of case studies from SADC countries ranging from better to worse practices with regard to state presidents (not) leaving office, including Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe; see Roger Southall/Henning Melber (eds), Legacies of Power. Leadership Change and Former Presidents in African Politics. Cape Town: HSRC Press and Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute 2006.

Rotimi Sankore, ‘Pan Africanism and the Zimbabwe Crisis’, Pambazuka News, no. 319, 12 September 2007.

* Henning Melber came to Namibia as a son of German immigrants in 1967, where he joined the liberation movement SWAPO in 1974. He was director of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek (1992 to 2000) and research director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden (2000 to 2006). He is presently the executive director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation.

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The internationally renowned African scholar Mahmood Mamdani is said to hold the view that the only feature of post-colonialism he is aware of is the post office. He tries to suggest that true Independence as liberation from the structures, contents and ideologies of the colonial era remains a remote goal.

Decolonisation was more so a hand-over of formal political power, while social structures and hierarchies - as well as mindsets - remained largely intact.

Little has changed in terms of a shift in power relations or alternative concepts of power. This includes the political sphere with regard to the character of political dominance. Looking back at the 17 years since Namibia's formal Independence one is tempted to agree with Mamdani's sobering conclusion.
As if to make a point, the current political culture is a far cry from the liberating gospel originally preached. Not that there was - realistically and in retrospective - much to be expected (although we did). After all, more than a century of colonial occupation took its toll. Apartheid was anything but a fertile ground to socialize democrats and to allow for the internalization of fundamental respect for human rights and differing opinions. Nor was the authoritarian organization of the exile situation under the liberation movement Swapo an alternative to repressive control.

The movement's recognition as the sole and authentic representative of the Namibian people by the General Assembly of the United Nations in the mid-1970s was a celebrated diplomatic victory in our ranks and within the supporting solidarity movement. What we then did not realize: it was also a very undemocratic notion, based on exclusion. It handed over the sole power of definition of legitimate Namibian identity to the leadership of one (admittedly by far most relevant) among several organizations. Those not members or followers of Swapo were not entitled to any representation to shape the guiding principles leading into Namibian nationhood.

Despite a constitutional framework, which laid the foundation for a pluralist, human rights oriented and democratic society (as a result also of the international - meaning Western - desire to control and limit social change), Namibia since then became neither more tolerant nor more democratic. Nor did the majority of the formerly colonized population reap any meaningful material benefits from the shift in political power (forget about the fat cats). Poverty remained chronic, so did other forms of destitution. Violence against women and children has abhorrent dimensions, and the self-enrichment by members of the new elite seems to have no limit. Educational services and health provisions deteriorate, and Namibia's rank in international standardized surveys (as problematic and dubious as some of these might be) did not improve. Instead, we are campaigning for a status as an “as if Least Developed Country (LDC)”. What a shame.

Namibia started under a United Nations supervised transition to a sovereign state as the darling of the international community. In the meantime it has become - in the words of Joe Diescho - just another African country; which, of course, it is. The way Diescho uses the image, plays with the existing Eurocentric stereotypes, that this is nothing to be proud of. But did we not have the opportunity to build a society offering reasons for pride, self-respect and confidence as an African country, which used its opportunity to present evidence that this is nothing to be ashamed of or associated with negative stereotypes?

The honeymoon is long over. Hardly noticed, all Nordic states - once the pioneers among the Western countries, which supported Swapo and the Namibian people for the right to self-determination - have reduced diplomatic representation below the rank of ambassadors or even closed their embassies. Their bilateral development cooperation is shrinking continuously. Norway has withdrawn years ago, and Sweden will be closing its offices next year. Finland's ambassador - who dared to publicly share criticism over the government's dubious priorities to engage in a war in the Congo instead of reducing poverty at home - was requested a decade into Independence not to return from his annual leave at home. He was never replaced on an ambassadorial level, nor was the Swedish ambassador whose term ended shortly afterwards. The government seemed not to be bothered by such visible loss of legitimacy among these good friends. Instead, other alliances were consolidated with countries such as Zimbabwe, China, North Korea, Russia and other states hardly known as welfare societies or for their democratic achievements.

Looking at the hype of the last few weeks and months, one has no reasons for optimism. John Makumbe, who was denied to deliver his lecture on Zimbabwe as originally announced on the campus of UNAM, sees the writing on the wall. Let's hope he is wrong. Students only a few weeks earlier felt a need to demonstrate in support of the University's chancellor and Founding Father of the Republic in a political and legal dispute not related to the university at all. Sadly enough, they did not come out as forcefully to defend academic freedom, which was so blatantly violated by the same person, when intervening to prevent the internationally well known Zimbabwean academic from presenting his lecture, thereby making a mockery of the country's highest research and teaching institution's autonomy.

Interesting too is that almost everyone - despite controversial views - seems to accept that the NSHR submission to the ICC touches upon the (undefined) notion of national reconciliation. It does not. It seeks to hold high-ranking office bearers in the former liberation movement accountable for human rights violations within its own ranks. This addresses issues of internal oppression against own members, including rape, torture, execution and murder by neglect. That some among the many victims were suspected to be spies is not the point.

The point is, that many were not, and that the treatment as such violated any minimum standards of a human rights based culture, as the kind of injustice practiced under the Apartheid regime against which we were actually fighting.

Those few hundred who survived the ordeal (while most others did not) have ever since their return in mid-1989 asked for an admission that Swapo did wrong and should deal with the issue instead of sweeping it under the carpet. Seeking to enforce such demands after painful 18 years of denial by trying to use international legal options at hand (even though the effort is doomed to fail for formal reasons) is declared an act of national betrayal and heresy. This merely confirms the misperception among the political rulers that their party organization is in their eyes identical with the nation and the state. They are untouchable and above the law. - Instead of hiding behind such a misleading smokescreen, they should regain legitimacy and moral commanding heights by dealing with the failures if not within the national judicial system then by an honest and fact seeking investigation initiated by themselves. Otherwise the rule of law will soon end as law of the rulers.

Instead, once again, it's the old game of blaming and accusing the messenger for disclosing the worrying moral decay when it comes to the state of the nation. The so-called misguided elements allegedly seeking to orchestrate a vendetta for merely personal frustrations (which these victims undoubtedly and understandably also have) are singled out and blamed. So are those media, which dare to make it a public affair and provide a platform for the dissenting voices in civil society. Far from dealing with the matter, it is dealt with those who dare to join the demands for transparency and accountability through efforts to limit their rights to do so. It is about getting rid of inconvenient truths and their advocates, not about addressing the root causes of the affairs.

Just as with John Makumbe and the likes: prevent them from speaking out, as if this would allow ignoring what is going on. At the end, we might indeed end in a similar state of affairs as his home country, in which so many dedicated citizens were forced into exile once again. This time by those who claimed to have liberated the people. So far, differences do however still remain: Namibia's head of state generously offers one-way tickets to unwanted dissenting voices. They are neither arrested nor killed. Not yet. But his softer approach is already another form of liquidation.

Namibia lacks civility defined as an agreement to disagree agreeably. But Independence is something to fight for, daily and always. Solidarity should be with them, who dare to do so and challenge the sell-outs to individual privilege, who are occupying state power and shy away from taking responsibility in the public interest. Their duty would instead require acting not only in their own interest, but in the interest of all they claim to have liberated. Like in so many other societies, however, those will ultimately have to accept and execute such responsibility themselves, guided by their own convictions and values, against all odds. The fight for ownership over the definition of what is supposed to be acceptable and what not is far from over. It has just started.

* Henning Melber joined Swapo as a son of German immigrants in 1974. He was director of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) between 1992 and 2000 and is currently the executive director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala/Sweden.

* Please send comments to or comment online at

Black economic empowerment (BEE) continues to cultivate human and natural exploitation for the benefits of few at the expenses of far too many. It turns de-colonisation into a private business for self-enrichment. Henning Melber on the ensuing kleptocracy in Namibia and the possibility of another Zimbabwean style tragedy.

A Namibian parliamentary committee hearing was told in April 2007 by the executive secretary of the state-owned Namibia Development Corporation (NDC) in liquidation (during apartheid days the 'Bantu Investment Corporation'), that the tens of millions of Namibian dollars dished out earlier as credits to black empowerment initiatives will in most cases not be repaid – even though many of the lenders are among the nouveau riche.

Limits to liberation
Ever since independence in 1990, Namibia’s government has blamed the country’s exploitation under settler colonialism for the unabated social disparities. Indeed, the transfer of political power left, as part of a negotiated settlement, the existing socio-economic structures largely untouched. The inequalities were endorsed as status quo in terms of constitutionally protected ownership and property rights. Limited social changes had to be induced inside this legally binding framework guided by a policy of 'national reconciliation' and 'affirmative action'. As a result, the privileged segment of society became racially less exclusive.

But according to the empirical evidence presented by the annual Human Development Reports of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Namibia remains among the most unequal societies in the world – despite an average per capita income ranking it as lower middle-income country. A World Bank commissioned report alerted in 2005 that these inequalities 'represent a threat to national cohesion, peace, and political stability'. A UN country assessment warned of an unfolding humanitarian crisis due to the combination of HIV/Aids, food insecurity and the ineffective delivery of critical social services to the most vulnerable groups.

Despite such concerns, the government has refused to introduce a Basic Income Grant (BIG) - demanded for years by a broad church-based alliance - as not feasible in terms of its fiscal constraints. But more than a billion Namibian dollars was spent on a luxurious new high security state house complex. Nonetheless in April 2007 it was justified as a 'pro-poor' measure during the budgetary debate in parliament. A SWAPO MP demanded in all seriousness that posh cars should be exempted from the speed limit on Namibia’s roads.

Power, privilege and poverty
Black economic empowerment (BEE) has so far served the interests of a new political-bureaucratic elite from the ranks of the erstwhile liberation movement. Those who liberated mainly themselves profitably cashed their access to the country’s resources through their political and public service offices.

Corruption and misappropriation of funds nourished a parasitic minority. This had been spectacularly confirmed by several high calibre cases of fraud and self-enrichment schemes looting pension funds and other public finances. Shady business practices illustrated in a textbook way the infamous 'fat-cat syndrome' prevailing. Prime Minister Nahas Angula called the abuse of several hundred million Namibian dollars from the state administered pension funds on get-rich-quick schemes masquerading as BEE 'just asset-stripping'.

In a revelation of self-enrichment schemes, described by the locally published Insight magazine in March 2006 as 'the mother of all empowerment deals'. Since mid-2006 another 'horde of black economic empowerment groups' have come under increased scrutiny. The deal set up between the South African oil giant Sasol and a conglomerate of locally created pseudo-firms without any proper offices, named a former trade union leader and several high-ranking government officials operating within an intricate web of pseudo-enterprises, as its main Namibian beneficiaries. As the former trade unionist declared in defence of the deal, the shareholders were 'just black entrepreneurs who needed the money and took advantage of a given situation'.

A popular school of thought within critical poverty research holds the view that it is the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of narrow privileged groups that creates and perpetuates inequalities. According to such an understanding, the analysis of power is fundamental to any examination of poverty. Privatisation of public resources results in political-administrative power as personalised power; in politics as a kind of business enterprise; and in vertical clientele relationships of a neo-patrimonial nature. The result is an increasingly authoritarian and incompetent state that rarely responds to public pressure.

The (class) struggle continues
Since independence, Namibia has produced a crypto-capitalist, petty-minded self-enriching new black elite, which spends its energy exploiting the public purse. There is an absence of a meaningful, profit-generating industrial sector, where capital would be additionally accumulated through surplus production based on the exploitation of value adding labour - which implies at least employment for a majority of people. The creation of individual wealth relies on the privatisation of natural resources (mainly in the sectors of fishing, mining, agriculture and tourism) or benefits linked to privileges in the public sector and state owned enterprises. Public procurement and other outsourcing activities by those occupying the commanding heights of the state agencies turn 'affirmative action' and BEE into self-rewarding schemes among loyal members of the erstwhile liberation movement.

Such co-optation into the ruling segments within an already existing socio-economic system is far from social transformation. BEE continues to cultivate human and natural exploitation for the benefits of few at the expenses of far too many. It turns de-colonisation largely into a private business for self-enrichment. A result of such kleptocracy is the gradual loss of legitimacy. Zimbabwe-type decay is the writing at the wall. De-colonisation of such kind is not about redistribution of (relative) wealth for the ordinary people. It is self-enrichment for a new elite and business as usual.

* Dr Henning Melber is executive director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala, Sweden where he was research director at The Nordic Africa Institute, 2000-2006. A son of German immigrants, he joined SWAPO in 1974. Hw was director of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek, Namibia between 1992 and 2000.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/41299.jpgAfrican people continue to remain as the have-nots at the bottom of the world’s pyramid. Even if ‘their’ leaders bath in abundant wealth and privileges. It is fair to conclude that so far neither Nepad, nor its support from the G8 and others who claim to be concerned, have managed to contribute substantive change.

From the beginning of this century, the G8 started cultivating a special intimate relationship with representatives of a ‘new Africa’, in response to their courting.

It is not by accident that the German chancellor Angela Merkel has announced that the further expansion of this link into ‘reform partnerships’ would officially rank among the priorities on the agenda at the forthcoming summit in Heiligendamm on the Baltic Sea.

This however does not necessarily mean that it will actually happen. We have already seen the originally announced focus on Africa be overshadowed by other matters in Kananaskis, where the events in the Middle East replaced Africa as the priority, and in Gleneagles, after the bomb attacks in London; and the African representatives having once again to play second fiddle.

This time, it seems that climate change will once again push Africa out of the limelight- though its people might be among the biggest victims of the effects of unabated environmental pollution; relegating its leaders to the back benches.

But even so, the favoured African heads of state seem to feel somehow comfortable with enjoying the marginal trade-offs from sitting around the dining table with the powerful. After all, since Genoa, lunch was the minimum they got from each G8 summit. Even when that, together with a group photo, was at times the only recognition granted.

Merkel used her speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos to declare that during the German presidencies of the G8 and the EU, emphasis would be on how Africa could be better integrated into the global economy.

Her personal representative at the G8, Bernd Pfaffenbach, confirmed, during a panel debate on Africa at the same Swiss Alpine ski resort, that the summer camp at the Baltic Sea in Heiligendamm would seek to enhance a partnership between the G8 and African leaders.

These declared intentions for the agenda by this year’s hosts should not appear comforting. Rather they should sound warning bells. The two priorities of further integration into the global economy and closer partnership with African leaders in the planned interaction merit the question being raised: where do the interests of the people of the continent lie?

After all, neither globalisation since the days of the slave trade, nor African leaders’ collaboration with the powerful elsewhere, whatever their political or ideological persuasion, have provided meaningful and lasting benefits for the majorities on the continent who struggle daily for survival.

Further integration of African societies and economies into the world market, a process which since colonialism was in any case much more advanced than in most other regions of the world, suggests, in contrast, even more systematic exploitation of the continent’s natural resources, and intensified expansion into local markets.

Under the current ‘liberalisation’ schemes promoted and regulated by the WTO, access for external capital to provide privatised public goods and services, as well as control over so-called intellectual property, add further to the reduction of state autonomy and local capacities to act in the interest of the people.

Privatisation does not bode well for some of the core tasks of a functioning state: namely to provide basic services in the public interest, including that of the poor; and to protect the weakest - not that the people in Africa have ever seen or experienced much of this.

Since 2001, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) became the African trademark for the kind of collaboration that the G8 and other OECD countries favour and support.

In the pipeline as a blueprint since the late 1990s, Nepad emerged as a result of a fundamentally new constellation on the continent. After South Africa – from the mid-1990s, and Nigeria -since the end of the 1990s, the two regional economic powerhouses, had left behind their pariah status. While apartheid, in the one case, and the military dictatorships, in the other case, limited the operational spheres of African regimes earlier on, the new governments represented politically acceptable - if not always praised - success stories that democratisation works.

Considered strategic regional ‘anchor countries’ for the West, these two economies make up some two thirds of the total GDP of all countries of so-called sub-Saharan Africa. Leaving aside the resource-based economies, which through oil, strategically relevant minerals and other natural assets, such as diamonds, stimulate desire for entering deals with local culprits and oligarchies, they are the most attractive potential partners to the outside world.

The South African and Nigerian heads of state Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo were the two main architects of Nepad, together with the Senegalese autocrat Abdoulaye Wade, and the support of Egypt and Algeria. As a matter of fact, all three African leaders in the triumvirate have missed only one of the six G8 summits since Genoa 2001.

But for many critical observers, including within Africa, Nepad mainly symbolises the emperor’s new clothes. It boils down to a recycling of the old conditionality-story, only now under African ownership.

Perceived as a policy of neo-liberal orientation imposed from above, it is questioned and challenged from below as a technocratic approach by elites. Or else as a local version of the Washington consensus.

According to this view, structural deficiencies and imbalances are legitimised, but not questioned. It reflects a coalition between those on the continent and abroad who benefit most from export-oriented market economies, under a trade regime, which is foremost outwardly oriented.

This might add to the relative advantages of a small local elite and the biggest among the junior players on the continent. In particular expanding South African capital, which is successfully penetrating many other African economies. But it offers little to nothing to ordinary people. They remain once again excluded from business. They are unemployed and continue to live in abject poverty.

While some of the rather more harsh critics mutter about dubious conspiracy theories, which may be unfair, or, at least, not the true intentions of some of the new African leaders, it is difficult to dismiss such analysis lock, stock and barrel.

The lack of meaningful material offers little comfort of G8 support for Nepad, which would need to match the almost euphoric welcoming statements ever since the African leaders knocked at their doors in Genoa.

In the midst of the Italian havoc, the G8 heads of state appointed individual ‘sherpas’ to team up and prepare an Africa Action Plan. Its adoption a year later, mid-2002, in the Canadian mountains at Kananaskis, was celebrated as a major break through. Although it was (dis-)qualified by moderate critics such as the then director for justice and peace at the South African Catholic Bishops’ Conference as ‘hot air’ or ‘recycled peanuts’.

In contrast to such sobering conclusions, the South African president returned triumphantly with the message that Kananaskis marked a decisive moment in the birth of a fairer and more balanced system of international relations. In historical context, Kananaskis represented for him the end of the colonial and neo-colonial era. To classify this kind of daring interpretation as ‘wishful thinking’ would seem a mild understatement.

Based on such self-proclaimed ‘success stories’, African leaders used the transformation of the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) into the African Union (AU) directly after Kananaskis at their summit in Durban to integrate Nepad as the new economic programme of the continental body.

They thereby elevated it to an official status for all. Subsequently, in September 2002, the UN General Assembly awarded Nepad the label of being the general framework for international cooperation with Africa, thus allowing Thabo Mbeki to state, unchallenged, that Nepad had emerged as the de facto political-economic point of reference in Africa’s interaction with the outside world.

Even the sobering results of the summit in the French Evian in 2003 and the humble lunch offered at the US-summit in Georgia in 2004 served as further legitimacy for the African Nepad-troika. Although Wade was becoming increasingly less enthusiastic, and in the meantime openly critical.

Their patience was at least rewarded by the personal effort of Tony Blair, who used the UK presidency to initiate his Commission for Africa. Its report, tabled to the summit in Gleneagles in 2005, claimed to present, through increased financial support and debt cancellation, a decisive input into African development. Indeed, a substantive portion of the - already long since paid - debts have since then been cancelled for the poorest among the African countries.

The moral impetus, which is due, in part, not only Tony Blair’s personal flair, but also to the document of the Africa Commission, subtitled ‘Our Common Interest’, should however not be misleading.

As a matter of fact, the fundamental premises of the recommendations rest on the assumption that it is Africans themselves, who must be held responsible for being so poor, and who need - with external assistance - to get their act together.

The suggested reforms neither name and blame the structural inequalities ensuing as a result of historical processes, during which mainly European colonialism and imperialism expanded into Africa's backyard with devastating and long lasting consequences for the societies there. Nor do they challenge the fundamental basis of the currently existing global system and its damaging effects on African economies and people.

But even if the commission – with all due reservations – was considered a major advancement for at least temporarily promoting interest in African affairs in a wider public sphere, and also by means of the celebrity culture resulting in spectacular ‘do good’ performances (which generally excluded African artists from a fair share in the publicity); the subsequent summit of the G8 in St Petersburg in 2006 did not even pretend to follow this up in a serious way.

For the first time since Okinawa in 2000, only three African heads of state were granted the privilege to play a supporting role. Except for being some kind of exotic-cosmetic feature, the summit had absolutely nothing to offer.

According to the German government, things should be different in early June at Heiligendamm. As the stocktaking exercises on progress to achieve the Millennium Development Goals suggest, much is left to be desired when it comes to the implementation of the defined targets.

African people continue to remain as the have-nots at the bottom of the world’s pyramid. Even if ‘their’ leaders – notably in cases such as the Angolan oil oligarchy or individual despots such as Mugabe – bath in abundant wealth and privileges. It is fair to conclude that so far neither Nepad, nor its support from the G8 and others who claim to be concerned, have managed to contribute substantive change.

It should however, at the same time, and despite such reservations, be acknowledged that a fair amount of collective responsibility and willingness to intervene in the matters of member states has fundamentally changed the political agenda of the African Union and its guiding principles.

Whilst, so far, this has had little impact in terms of necessary changes in the socio-economic structural impasses, and has failed to produce any decisive results in several cases – not least in Zimbabwe, also politically, it does affect socio-economic related factors such as security, political participation, transparency and accountability.

While a lot remains to be desired, one should not ignore the fundamental changes, which in terms of the abandonment of the hitherto holy principle of non-intervention was a direct result of the transformation of the OAU into the AU.

The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) as an integral, though voluntary, part of Nepad might be more tokenism than anything else. But being on the agenda marks a new chapter in African politics. In times where revolutions are not even on the distant horizon, this still seems to be too pragmatic a view, though probably realistic.

Ironically, with the new multi-polar tendencies, and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and in particular China) through their bilateral partners aggressively seeking to explore and exploit the African continent with little or no concerns about ‘good governance’ - whatever this means, the gains for African economies, as measured in terms of trade balances and GDP growth, are remarkable.

Of course, this does not mean that the African economies and the local people will benefit automatically. Whether and how they might get a modest share out of the new scramble for African resources remains at this stage an open question. But it is unlikely that the G8 summit in Heiligendamm will bring this challenge any closer to a solution.

* Henning Melber was director of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek, Namibia from 1992-2000. He was research director at The Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden, 2000-2006. He is currently executive director of The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

It seems like yesterday, that I discovered Pambazuka News. Since then, I've joined the family actively, met Patrick Burnett on several occasions in Cape Town (- actually: not only at Greenmarket Square but also in the coastal 'dorpies' Muizenberg and Fish Hoek, to be exact, since this makes a hell of a difference for a Kapie!), watched his family growing and himself developing further. Now he has matured to the extent that he is leaving the electronic periodical, to which he contributed so much, to pursue his own way further. - Have a good and safe journey, Patrick, and stay on track (I'm sure you will)… At the same time Pambazuka News presents its 300th issue, and again it seems like yesterday, that this weekly turned into a regular source of information, in the meantime even in an expanded version of two separate parts. Politically spot on analyses (though luckily not always 'politically correct'), stimulating and thought provoking debate articles and viewpoints and a wealth of further links to factual information and additional opinions - what asks one more, who has the African people and their struggle for dignity and survival against all odds at his/her heart? Pambazuka News has established itself as an authoritative source of information and remains at the same time an active and central part of a social movement, which mobilizes, reinforces and promotes commitments. It is an inspiration. To Firoze and his Fahamu team my best wishes for many more rewarding years with this project, which hopefully keep them as young and enthusiastic in their hearts and minds as they are!

Henning Melber, Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Uppsala

Henning Melber presents a “state of the continent” report and comments on the “new African order” as designed by the global power structures of the World Economic Forum.

Almost 50,000 people from social movements all over this world gathered in Nairobi during the second half of January at the World Social Forum (WSF). Originally initiated in the Brazilian city of Porto Allegre a few years ago, it is organised as a counter meeting to the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) during this time of the year in the Swiss town Davos. The WEF brings together those in command of politics and economy in this world and those “celebrities” who like to be close to them. They represent a world in which Africa remains at the receiving end of the global power structures and increasingly again the object of external interests. This article summarises and comments upon recent developments on the continent.

Old wine in new bottles

It is anything but new that the African continent’s human and other natural resources are the object of more or less systematic looting from the outside world. Who still believes that “globalisation” is a very recent phenomenon simply needs to look in an African perspective on the devastating impact of the slave trade to understand, “how Europe underdeveloped Africa” (so the title of a seminal book published by the late Walter Rodney during the early 1970s). Already Karl Marx had observed (though in a rather insensitive language) in his Critique of the Political Economy that the hunt for black skins signalled the dawn of capitalism.

Since the days of the Trans Atlantic human resource transfer various subsequent forms of brutal exploitation through colonialism and imperialism were ultimately by means of formal decolonisation processes at least modified. But the “winds of change” created sovereign African states, whose societies remain to a large extent characterised by the structural legacy of an externally oriented dependency. Beneficiaries of such limited socio-economic development are still mainly externally based, with the limited participation of – all too often parasitic – small local elites, who exploit their political control over national wealth for their own gains.

They collaborate with those operating from the outside offering them the most convenient (and unashamed) access to the small slice of the cake they are able to keep for themselves in such sell out deals. Seen in this light, some (if not most) of the recent critical accounts of the aggressive expansion of Chinese interests into African countries and societies and their collaboration with local autocratic elites and despots has a hypocritical taste or at least bears traces of amnesia. After all, the Chinese penetration only rears the ugly face of predatory capitalism, which for far too long has already abused the dependency of the majority on the continent. One therefore is tempted to wonder, if the concern expressed is actually not more about the Western interests than about the welfare of the African people, given that what we witness today is anything but new with regard to its forms and effects. While this critical observation does not exonerate the at times appallingly imperialist nature of the Chinese expansion into Africa, it does undermine the credibility of those critics, who find no similar words for the other forms of imperialism, which for far too long had (and continue to have) crucial responsibilities for contributing to the state of misery many of the African people are in.

Africa since the end of the bipolar world order

The collapse of the Soviet empire and the end of a more than forty year period of bloc confrontation was by no means “the end of history” (as suggested by Francis Fukuyama). It was the beginning of a new global order for hegemonic rule with far reaching consequences also for African governments. Gone were the days, where in midst of a Cold War some manoeuvring space for limited opportunistic bargaining existed, which allowed for a bit of strategic positioning. Not that this was necessarily to the best of the African people: all too often, this constellation encouraged and protected self-enrichment schemes for dictators and/or small local elites through forms of rent seeking or sinecure capitalism, as examples from A (like Angola) to Z (like Zaire) document. The bi-polar world order was in no ways a suitable breeding ground for development “from below”, but offered parasitic agents the opportunity to position themselves as satellites in return for their own gains within the East-West polarisation.

The consolidation of the US-American dominance during the 1990s and its impact on the global order resulted in several changes also for the African continent. A regionally inter-linked “appeasement” strategy (with the Russian retreat from Afghanistan and the Cuban withdrawal from Angola) secured in Southern Africa the final decolonisation of Namibia (1990) and paved the way for an end to Apartheid and democratic elections in South Africa (1994). During this period the economic paradigms represented by the international financial institutions (World Bank and IMF) resumed the only power of definition. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) emerged as the broker to regulate comprehensively binding the global exchange relations of goods. The most to say in these regulating processes with far reaching implications for not only “classical” trade relations but wider defined exchanges has the club of the G8 members, which defines the rather one-sided rules of “global governance”.

Towards a new African order: NEPAD and AU

Significant inner-African dynamics complemented at the beginning of this century the global re-arrangements. With the democratically elected and legitimised new governments in South Africa and Nigeria the two economic powerhouses on the continent South of the Sahara left behind their pariah status. Based on internal and international acceptance, they resumed leadership roles in international policy arenas. At the turn of the millennium presidents Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo emerged (with active support by Senegal, Algeria and Egypt) as new figureheads representing the collective interests of the South and in particular Africa vis-à-vis the industrialised Western countries. Originally tasked to negotiate debt cancellation arrangements in direct communication with them they moved on to seek new forms of interaction under the premises of the acknowledged socio-economic premises as defined by the WTO. As kind of junior partners in the global market they became the architects of what was finally termed the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

After some incubation period and assumingly intensive political negotiations behind closed doors this blue print was upgraded to the status of an official economic programme and institution of the African Union (AU). The AU itself was a parallel transformation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). In the course of its change it undertook some significant corrections to the hitherto established continental policy pillars. Most importantly it moved away from the erstwhile almost holy principle of non-intervention into internal affairs of member states.

With a lot of confidence and trust and substantive political support offered by the G8 since its 2001 summit in Genoa the NEPAD-architects could bring back home the reassuring message that the industrial West is on board and willing to support the initiative. This contributed to the acceptance both in Africa as well as by the United Nations system, which in a General Assembly resolution officially recognised NEPAD as the economic programme for Africa. While this looks like a success story, the critical policy issues were to some extent at the same time aborted or at best watered down. The good governance discourse in line with the new uni-polar world system and to some extent imposed by the Western-capitalist hegemony was after all not only cosmetic rhetoric, but in some parts indeed a meaningful deviation from past practices of unquestioned autocratic rule by African despots and oligarchies.

The AU Constitution was adopted at the same summit in Durban when NEPAD was incorporated. It introduced a collective responsibility so far absent, justifying joint intervention for specified reasons. This has in the meantime provided several results, as cases like Darfur, the DRC, the Ivory Coast, Liberia and Togo have among others shown in different ways (and varying degrees of success), all seeking to contribute to conflict reduction or enhanced legitimacy of the political systems. In contrast to this new responsibility, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), conceptualised by NEPAD as a cornerstone for enhancing the notion of good governance, did not meet the expectations. The disappointment over non-delivery was maybe biggest when it came to the absence of any determined policy action by the NEPAD initiators in the case of Zimbabwe (where the South African president preferred his so-called silent diplomacy to any meaningful political intervention). Nonetheless, the demand for democracy, human rights and respect for constitutional principles articulated by the NEPAD blue print as a prerequisite for sustainable socio-economic development might have been a contributing factor to the new phenomenon of an increasing number of African heads of state more or less voluntarily (and peacefully) vacating their offices (which does not mean that the rotten apples have been eliminated, as Museveni, and even – though less successfully - Obasanjo as well as some others have shown in their recent efforts to extend their stay in office beyond the originally stipulated period of time).

New multi-polar tendencies and the competition for securing African resources

Systematic new efforts to access African markets and tap into the local resources became visible with the adoption of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) by the out-going Clinton administration. Through this initiative the USA openly underlined the relevance of the African dimension for its external trade relations (Africa ranks higher than Eastern Europe in the US trade balance). The break down of the AGOA trade volume, however, also discloses that with the exception of a few smaller niches (e.g. the temporary opportunities created for a locally based – though not owned – African textile industry with preferential access to the US market) the trade volume is mainly composed by exporting US-manufactured high tech goods and machinery and importing oil, strategic minerals and other natural resources for meeting demands of US-based industries.

Soon after AGOA was enacted, the trade department of the EU headquarters in Brussels initiated negotiations for a re-arrangement of its relations with the ACP countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific through so-called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The declared aim was to enter a post-Cotonou agreement phase meeting the demands for WTO compatibility. The EPA negotiations have since then entered critical stages meeting the resistance of many among the ACP countries. They are afraid of losing out on trade preferences and feel that Brussels seeks to impose a one-sided trade regime in its own interests, which also denies the declared partners the right to autonomous negotiations by re-drawing the map of regional configurations in Africa to comply with EU expectations.

Both initiatives, AGOA and the EPA negotiations, seem to reflect less so the genuine desire in fairer trade than securing access to relevant markets not least in the own interest of the USA and the EU. The competition for preferential trade agreements with South Africa (successfully negotiated by the EU during the late 1990s and currently facing an impasse with regard to the USA) are illustrating at the same time the point, that the industrialised states are anything but sharing the same interest when it comes to securing their individual links with other countries.

The new offensive pursued by China, which expands aggressively into African markets and seeks access to the fossil energy resources and other minerals and metals it urgently needs to fuel its own further rapid industrialisation process, adds to the rivalry and conflicting interests. In a matter of time, India, Brazil and Russia (as well as a number of other actors such as Malaysia and Mexico) are likely to add further pressure on the scramble for limited markets and resources. This new stage of competing forces on the continent has resulted in a plethora of recent analyses dealing mainly if not exclusively with the Chinese impact and practices. Interestingly enough, the EU and US-policies and practices seem to almost fade away from the picture. The current type of Cassandra-prophecies presents at times a rather one-sided story. Such selected narrative tends to downplay if not ignore the damaging external effects, which the existing socio-economic imbalances and power structures have created and consolidated. It appears at times, that the criticism raised towards China is more so an indicator of an increasing fear for losing own interests than for being motivated by a genuine concern for the African people.

Into more dependency or towards enhanced manoeuvring space?

The global initiatives for liberalisation under the WTO regime pose the question, if the markets and producers in the so-called developing countries are able to meet the challenges of a relatively free competition with the industrialised world or instead would require continued protection. At a closer look, it becomes obvious that this is a question wrongly posed. It had been indeed the markets and producers of the industrialised OECD countries, which were one-sided beneficiaries of state protection and distorting subsidisation policies. This turned any form of proclaimed fairness in trade and market relations into an illusion and ideological humbug.

Those advocating a liberalisation of trade relations contribute to the misperception that such steps would be identical or at least similar to a de-regulation of exchange relations with goods. As a matter of fact, the trend is quite the opposite. The so-called liberal global trade structures and networks have never before been to such an extent contractually defined and put into clauses. Numerous additional rules, such as hygienic and sanitary specifications, regulate access to markets even more so at times than tariffs. They are open to abusive control resulting in undue pressure and could turn into a tool for sanctions in cases of disagreement.

The historically-structurally disadvantaged societies should however at least be enabled to gain socio-economic strength based on own initiatives. This requires a framework, which would as a matter of principle allow for a kind of protectionist policy as legitimate survival strategy to empower local producers and foster own markets. This could create preconditions, from which in subsequent exchange relations the people in both the industrial as well as the African societies could benefit (but maybe at the expenses of unhindered profit maximisation for those who earn most).

With new rivals such as China, India, Brazil, Russia and a series of further countries at the threshold to meaningful own industrial production the competition for entering favourable relations with African countries might increase. This is in itself not negative to the interests of the African people. But it requires that the tiny elites benefiting from the currently existing unequal structures put their own interest in trans-nationally linked self-enrichment schemes behind the public interest to create investment and exchange patterns, which provide in the first place benefits for the majority of the people.

Selected Further Reading

Alden Christopher/Daniel Large/Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (eds) (2007), China Returns to Africa: The Politics of Contemporary Relations. London: Hurst
Broadman, Harry G. et. al. (2007), Africa’s Silk Road. China and India’s New Economic Frontier. Washington: World Bank
Brüntrup, Michael/Henning Melber/Ian Taylor (2006), Africa, Regional Cooperation and the World Market. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute (NAI Discussion Paper; 31) (accessible for download at
China in Africa. South African Journal of International Affairs, vol. 13, no. 1, 2006
Fombad, Charles Manga/Zein Kebonang (2006), AU, NEPAD and the APRM. Democratisation Efforts Explored. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute (Current African Issues; 32) (accessible for download at
Manji, Firoze/Stephen Marks (eds) (2007), African Perspectives on China in Africa. Nairobi & Oxford: Fahamu
Melber, Henning (2002), The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) – Old Wine in New Bottles? In: Forum for Development Studies, 29(1), S. 186-209
Melber, Henning (2004), The G8 and NePAD – more than an elite pact? University of Leipzig Papers on African Politics and Economics (ULPA), no. 74
Melber, Henning (ed.) (2005), Trade, Development, Cooperation. What Future for Africa? Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute (Current African Issues; 29) (accessible for download at
Melber, Henning (ed.) (2007), China in Africa. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute (forthcoming)
Southall, Roger/Henning Melber (eds) (2006), The Legacies of Power. Leadership Transition and the Role of Former Presidents in African Politics. Cape Town: HSRC Press & Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute
Taylor, Ian (2005), NEPAD. Towards Africa’s Development or Another False Start? Boulder & London: Lynne Rienner
Taylor, Ian (2006), China and Africa. Engagement and compromise. London & New York: Routledge
Tull, Denis M. (2006), China’s engagement in Africa: scope, significance and consequences. In: Journal of Modern African Studies, 44(3), pp. 459-479

* Dr. Henning Melber is Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala/Sweden. He has been Research Director of The Nordic Africa Institute (2000-2006) and Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek (1992-2000).

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Activists from social movements all over the world flocked to the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre six years ago for the first World Social Forum (WSF). It was organized under the slogan “another world is possible” to demonstrate impressively the counter position to the neo-liberal globalization project as represented and pursued by those in political and economic power. These meet every January for the World Economic Forum at the posh Swiss skiing resort of Davos.

Often erroneously referred to as anti-global movement, the activists mobilizing for the WSF represent simply another global movement, challenging the current forms of capitalist hegemony (and, as many would claim, capitalism as such). The “another world” they believe is possible represents the desire for “a better world” – a world without exploitation, discrimination, marginalization. They treasure global social conditions, which would allow for human security and a dignified life for all (well, at least most, given that there are those class interests represented by human beings, who would object to the implementation of such alternatives). Six years down the line, the latest WSF in Nairobi showed that while it’s rather easy to have such visions, it’s more difficult to implement them.

Some wear and tear resulted in a gradually increasing WSF fatigue among some of those who originally with enthusiasm mobilized and participated. The initial euphoria over the global bonds between “the wretched of the earth” (Frantz Fanon) remained not without mixed feelings over growing internal differences on the future course. Already at the first WSF a manifest of anti-capitalist youth was signed, criticizing the event for what they perceived as a reactionary policy of “humanizing capitalism” instead of trying to defeat it. An alternative “celebrity culture” with its inherent hierarchical structure was also emerging and suspiciously observed. It cultivated an aura of authority - if not personality cult - around some of the perceived, styled (or even self-proclaimed) alternative development gurus.

While the local grass roots crowds gathering during the earlier WSFs contributed to far above a hundred thousand participants in each case, the Nairobi WSF as the first of its kind on African soil provided a markedly lower turn out with less than 50,000 estimated participants. Many locals were simply denied access originally, because they were too poor to pay the registration fee. Others from further away were unable to fork out the travel costs and local expenses. Instead, the dominance of world wide operating NGOs (including foundations of political parties, the trade unions and the churches) as well as representatives of other institutions more or less directly linked to state agencies played a visibly dominant role and illustrated the obvious dividing lines between grass root activists, scholars and other professionally concerned “do gooders” from different spheres and social backgrounds.

As divided was the scenery at the Moi Stadium at the outskirts of Nairobi, where the sessions took place from January 21 to 24. Among those mingling with parts of the crowd were at least three Namibians: Alfred Angula represented the organized workers, Rosa Namises the women’s movement, and Ian Swartz from the Rainbow coalition strengthened the coming out of gays and lesbians, who used the opportunity to courageously fight the notorious local and continental xenophobia.

The opening and closing ceremonies were at the centrally located Uhuru (Freedom) Park. Among the speakers to open was Kenneth Kaunda, and I was certainly not the only one wondering about the basis of his merits. The mere fact that he finally behaved somehow decent as an “elder statesman”, after messing up the country and people with his earlier politics, was certainly not good enough a recommendation to address those committed to “another world”. The junior minister from Italy speaking at the closing ceremony and a number of other political office bearers and aid bureaucrats documenting their commitments to the common (?) cause left as dubious a taste and showed that the dividing lines are a contested issue. – Certainly not everyone among the WSF organizers and activists is immune against the flirting with power.

There were numerous other visible contradictions during the days in and around the Moi sports stadium adding to the mixed feelings. Ironically, this was built in the 1980s by the Chinese, had its peak moment when hosting the All Africa Games and is these days mainly reserved for paid leisure activities by the urban middle class. Those hundreds of thousands of shack dwellers in the slums nearby look at it at best as an alien object, which does not relate to their daily struggle for survival.

The professional North-South and global concern entrepreneurs occupied the best spaces in the venue. A local telecommunication company under foreign ownership provided a so-called special offer to participants, which maximized the company profits by means of a monopoly over services secured. The ordinary people running their humble food vendor businesses at affordable costs for the bulk of participants were forced to operate at the margins. The best-placed catering outlets were overpriced. The minister of inner security owed one of them. During an earlier stage of his career he was among those who tortured the same victims of the Mau-Mau movement, who testified at the WSF to their ordeal in the anti-colonial struggle some fifty years ago.

“Another world is possible”, yes, maybe. But the road to get there is long. And not all among those attending the WSF in Nairobi are (or should be) on board. That might, by the way, include myself too.

* Henning Melber had joined Swapo in 1994. He was the director of NEPRU in Windhoek (1992-2000) and the research director at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala (2000-2006), where he is now director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation.

This article was first written for the Namibian Big Issue and is reproduced with the permission of the author.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Scholars and intellectuals are faced with stark socio-political choices, writes Henning Melber. Do they side with those maintaining the status quo in unequal societies or do they demand the right to engage in social struggles?

This essay argues for the need for a permissive postcolonial socio-political system allowing for dissenting views, including manifestations of critical loyalty through the articulation of dissenting views, and concludes with an appeal to opt for such a socio-political commitment.

The virtues advocated are considered as ingredients in the promotion of a human-rights-focused and development-centred culture conducive to socio-political as well as economic progress of the people. This view follows the notion advocated by the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. In the introduction to his collection of lectures on Development as Freedom he maintains: “Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means”. He points out that freedoms of different kinds are linked with one another. They include political freedoms, social opportunities, and access to economic resources.

Political regimes in many of the African societies lack recognition of such contributing factors or even deny them. Instead, all too often, the political environment has militated against freedom of thought and expression.

Honesty and Betrayal

“Where there’s no fight for it there’s no freedom. What is it Spinoza says? If the state acts in ways that are abhorrent to human nature it’s the lesser evil to destroy it.”

These were the thoughts of Yakov Bok, the protagonist of Bernard Malamud’s novel The Fixer, while being carried to his bitterly-fought-for trial to prove his innocence after a long and excessive ordeal under torture and dehumanisation in the prisons of Czarist Russia.

As a victim of anti-Semitic hatred, he refuses to compromise with a regime that violates his human dignity and self-respect, but even more so his profound sense of justice. Malamud created his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel as a monument to civil disobedience, guided and motivated by a strong belief in humanism.

Those in control over social power have often considered the Yakov Boks of this world as a threat to their hegemonic rule, not in their individual capacity but mainly reduced to the anonymity of faceless ‘masses’ representing social movements. In contrast to this tendency towards an impersonal reduction, those considered as scholars and intellectuals are often perceived as a danger on the mere grounds of their individual capacities. They are viewed as individual ‘risks’ in the sense of being potential opinion-leaders able to contribute to, if not actively shape, public opinion and debate.

It would be a gross misunderstanding, however, to conclude that scholars and intellectuals are by nature or preference a critical counterweight to authoritarian or totalitarian rule or any other forms of abuse of power. Instead, the ‘intelligentsia’ has all too often been of strategic relevance in supporting such power structures for the sake of their own benefits.

Members of an educated elite have frequently been advocates and protagonists, if not architects and masterminds, of oppressive structures, and many more have even been among the silent supporters of such systems and their devastating results. To be educated does by no means protect one from turning into an ideologue or a perpetrator of crimes against humanity of the worst kind.

Far from being noble creatures, scholars and intellectuals are often tempted to serve political aims for their own gains. Honesty and integrity, supposed to be among the core values of intellectually ethical behaviour, are abandoned or neglected for more profane rewards than respect. Those who uphold their principles despite lack of material recognition are a rare species. Opportunism reigns. This is also true for the postcolonial era of southern African societies, some of which had to fight long and bitter wars of liberation at high costs to achieve sovereignty – only to deny their citizens the right to practise freedom in a democratically comprehensive way.

Decolonisation processes all too often displayed cases of a striking metamorphosis by individuals. Being social revolutionaries initially, claiming to represent the ‘povo’ or masses, they ended up as relatively high-profile representatives of a postcolonial establishment placing their own gains above earlier principles.

These members of a new elite have become part and parcel of a set of deep-rooted anachronistic values within a system of former liberation movements now in power. After seizing legitimate political control over the state, they turned their liberating politics of anti-colonial resistance into oppressive tools under the guise of pseudo-revolutionary slogans. Their “talk left, act right” seeks to cover the true motive of aiming to occupy the political commanding heights of society against all odds – preferably forever – at the expense of the public interest they claim to represent in the light of deteriorating socio-economic living conditions for the once colonised, now hardly liberated (and anything but emancipated) majority.

The Struggle Within the Struggle

Scholars in politics include all too often the prototype of the sell-out intellectuals already lambasted by Frantz Fanon for their role in the decolonisation processes of the late 1950s, whom he accused of joining the liberation movement only to secure a slice of the cake shared after independence among those in control of the party in power.

Almost half a century ago, the Martinique-born psychiatrist and political revolutionary, who had joined the Algerian liberation struggle, presciently described in his manifesto The Wretched of the Earth the internal contradictions and limits to emancipation in anticolonial resistance and organised liberation movements. Writing at a time when the Algerian war of liberation had not even ended, Fanon prophesied the abuse of government power after attainment of independence and in the wake of establishing a one-party state. In a chapter entitled “The Pitfalls of National Consciousness” he predicted that the state, which by its robustness and at the same time its restraint should convey trust and calm, foists itself on people in a spectacular way, makes a big show of itself, harasses and mistreats the citizens and by this means shows that they are in permanent danger.

He continues by criticising the abuse of power exercised by the party, which:

"…controls the masses, not in order to make sure that they really participate in the business of governing the nation, but in order to remind them constantly that the government expects from them obedience and discipline. The political party, instead of welcoming the expression of popular discontentment, instead of taking for its fundamental purpose the free flow of ideas from the people up to the government, forms a screen and forbids such ideas."

The growing blending of party, government and state among the liberation movements in power indicates a very similar development in the post-apartheid era. The specific constellation based on the use of force to gain liberation from undemocratic and repressive conditions like those that prevailed in the colonial societies of southern Africa was hardly favourable to the durable strengthening of humanitarian values and norms. As part of abolishing anachronistic, degrading systems of rule it created new challenges on the difficult path to establishing sound and robust egalitarian structures and institutions, and in particular to promoting democratically-minded people. But independence without true democracy is still far from being liberation.

Criticism as Loyalty

The governments of postcolonial states in former settler societies such as Namibia and South Africa are, in contrast to the previous minority regimes broadly legitimate. Hence there is no justification for a right to generalised resistance to the state authorities as implied in the arguments concerning the colonial order. Notwithstanding this necessary clarification, a similar guiding principle of legitimate dissent from the state authorities’ controlled and enforced views should be advocated for an ethically motivated civic behaviour in the postcolonial societies of today.

In the context of a political culture committed to the values and virtues of pluralism in a liberal democracy, critical voices should not automatically be associated with disloyalty to the existing system. After all, this has been one of the aims of a struggle against the totalitarian regimes previously in place – to abandon the intolerant authoritarianism shaping the colonial societies under minority rule and to allow for a variety of views. Unfortunately, this seems not to be the common and accepted understanding of many of those in control of political power in post-apartheid societies, who seem to feel mainly “accountable to themselves”, as the scholar Ken Good phrased it. He had spent most of his academic life in Southern Africa until he was - 72 years of age and after lecturing 15 years on the campus of the University of Botswana - declared a prohibited immigrant by the Head of State Festus Mogae, allegedly for his criticism of the government’s policy of forced removal imposed on the Bushmen.

While most of the existing political orders are able to claim – in contrast to the preceding minority regimes – a more or less democratic legitimacy, they often fail to recognise the difference between its formal and moral dimensions. In other words: the mere fact that one is formally entitled to take certain decisions and actions on behalf of others without further consultation on the basis of (at times dubious) election results, does not necessarily and always justify such decisions or actions from a moral or ethical point of view.

Rapid social transitions have an impact on those involved in the transformation, which affects them in a direct way. Once moving into the seats of power, the effects of being alienated from people at the grassroots whom political office bearers claim to have represented since the ‘struggle days’, should not be underestimated. It requires a high degree of (self-)critical reflection and assessment to protect oneself from not being moved further and further away from ‘the masses’.

With reference to democratic South Africa, this process has been described by a local observer quoted in an article in the Guardian (16 May 2001) thus:

“The pace of change is such that individuals cease to live in real time. Human journeys that under normal circumstances take decades, if not generations, are completed in a few years, if not months. So the prisoner becomes president; law-breakers become law-makers; armed guerillas become arms dealers. The person who slept on your floor only 10 years ago, after a wild party, is now a government minister with an entourage.”

With the change a growing degree of intolerance often emerges, which considers dissenting views as unacceptable. As a recent South African study by Gibson and Gouws on the degree of (in-)tolerance diagnosed:

“For most South Africans, the idea of putting up with their political enemies is distasteful and/or foreign. And indeed, most South Africans have political enemies they dislike a great deal, and these enemies are perceived as quite threatening. The combination of disliking a group and feeling threatened by it is a powerful source of political intolerance.”

With reference to earlier processes of transition from colonial minority rule to formal political sovereignty under African governments in other parts of the continent, the backlash which often occurred, had been described as a return to repression by Hydén and Okigbo in a chapter to a volume on Media and Democracy in Africa:

“It became clear quite early on after independence that the new nationalist governments were not comfortable with the idea of challenges to their policies. Arguing that the new nation-states could not afford bickering over what is right or wrong, these leaders did their best to suppress opinions other than those favorable to their own stance. The political leadership was ready to bar others from using the public realm, exceeding the efforts of the colonial state in this regard. Political space in this public realm could only be used at its pleasure and permission to do so could be revoked at its sole judgment. The most significant change was the transformation of the discursive realm from being civic and cosmopolitan to becoming parochial and local.”

As part of the historical legacy, those who were fighting against institutionalized discrimination and oppression under totalitarian structured societies tend to resort to similar mechanisms of control once in power themselves. They are tempted to marginalise those who beg to differ or are perceived as different from the accepted norms under the newly imposed discourse of nation building.

Choices for Commitment

African societies and the social forces operating under the given constraints imposed by state control – similar to forces within other societies the world over – face the challenge to achieve and maintain a maximum of independence of thought as a precondition for the realisation of citizenship. It is important to note that such criticism of repressive policy is shared by some of those in established and responsible positions within the currently emerging continental African bodies of relevance. In his keynote address to a conference organized mid-2004 in collaboration with the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda did not mince his words. Having worked as a legal expert on the drafting and conclusion of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (adopted in 1981), Jallow stated:

“Good governance is not only about majorities; it involves the protection of all, including minorities such as those in the opposition. The right to free speech and dissent rests on the existence of an independent private media – both in print and on radio, given literacy levels in Africa. The establishment of independent civil society organisations and the creation of the democratic space for them to operate effectively must be nurtured to diffuse the over-centralisation of power and authority, empower the ordinary citizen and thereby reduce the risks of abuse of centralised authority. Governments should relentlessly strive to ensure the realisation of all categories of rights and freedoms for all without distinction.”

As scholars and intellectuals we have socio-political choices to make. We have to decide if we are merely guided by our petty bourgeois class interests to enhance our relative privileges in a given power structure and social hierarchy by siding with those executing social control and maintaining economic and/or political power within the grossly unequal societies of southern Africa. Alternatively, we can opt for committing class suicide as Amilcar Cabral had suggested (and practised), although this sounds rather crude (and highly idealistic) in the era of postcolonial re-established social hierarchies.

Instead, demanding the right to engage in social struggles as academics might be a more realistic point of departure – and difficult enough to practise. Like any other members of society, scholars and intellectuals are faced with bigger choices. These are about more than how best to ensure their narrowly defined self-interest of academic freedom in cosy niches of institutions of higher learning. Academic freedom in its true, wider sense is related to and is about fundamental aspects of human rights and development. And it’s up to us, if we accept the challenge and decide to fight for such interlinked goals. The question remains: Which side are we on?

* Acknowledgement: This is a shorter version of an article based on a plenary paper presented to the 24th Biennial Conference of the Southern African Universities’ Social Sciences Conference (SAUSSC) on “Human Rights and Development” (University of Botswana, Gaborone, December 5–7, 2005) and published in the Journal of Contemporary African Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, May 2006, pp. 261-278. Please consult the original publication for the full text with detailed bibliographic references.

* Dr. Henning Melber was Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek (1992-2000) and Research Director of The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden (2000-2006), where he is now the Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation (www.dhf.uu.se).

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Henning Melber assesses the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and its associated African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) in relation to African leadership. While warning against praising premature trends and noting some setbacks, he maintains that there has been a greater willingness of leaders to step aside – an improvement from the “generation of despots heading cleptocratic regimes that used to be the order of the day in many more countries”.

Until recently the principle of national sovereignty and non-intervention into the affairs of other African states guided the official norm of the Organisation of African Union (OAU). In contrast, the African Union (AU) in its Constitutive Act signalled a shift in the paradigm towards increased collective responsibility in crucial matters of human (and state) security. Heads of governments are since empowered to agree collectively on intervention into internal affairs of member countries under particularly grave circumstances. This newly introduced and practically enforced principle of collective responsibility has in the last years already borne fruits in several cases, where African leaders in bi- and multilateral efforts resumed mediating roles in controlling and reducing conflicts or even bringing them to an end.

The new political will has also manifested itself in the development of The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) with a hitherto unprecedented emphasis within formulated programmatic African strategies on democracy, human rights and good governance as substantive elements for socio-economic development. While NEPAD has in the meantime been adopted as the economic programme of the AU, it should not be lost sight of the fact that it was (and should remain) far more than that.

The perspective offered by NEPAD was already in its infant stages welcomed by external partners - notably the G 7/8 and the EU - in support of African efforts towards development, including concerted arrangements to enhance peace and security. The NEPAD architects were, so to say, able to cash in on a confidence and trust bonus based on the declared aims of the blue print they were selling – interestingly first abroad before doing so on the ‘home front’. Once embraced and approved by the AU, NEPAD’s role was internationally endorsed as Africa’s official development strategy through a resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2004.

Ever since its successful promotion and consolidation, however, NEPAD had to face the challenge that its rhetoric was measured against its real achievements so far – as well as its lack thereof. Those generally in support of NEPAD, who are prepared not to close both eyes in blind loyalty to romanticising Afro-optimism, will have to admit that the road is long and winding and that the realisation of the declared goals has not always produced convincing results - if any. The NEPAD architects are not composed of an alliance free of own interests and agendas. The failed litmus test of Zimbabwe is just one among the more prominent examples to illustrate the point. There is sufficient reason to limit the expectations to at best a cautious optimism.

The APRM
A marked new dimension introduced by NEPAD has more recently been the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). It took several stages with at times sensible and delicate negotiations (and a lot of compromises) from its original concept to its concretisation and ultimate first implementation. After all, the idea and its applicability signalled a final turning point in the common grounds of African continental cooperation. Although a voluntarily entered process, the APRM has a high degree of legitimacy for those countries prepared to undergo the assessment. It is hence an attractive opportunity to increase international reputation and to thereby secure additional external support for national policies.

The peer review process was widely welcomed and accompanied by rather high expectations. The APRM translation into a practical instrument, however, also showed the limits of designing, producing, and applying the tool. Many of the African governments preferred to keep a close control on the mandate and applicability of the APRM as well as the defined and agreed priorities of the assessments to be undertaken. Given their concern that the APRM might support undue interference and impose unwanted explorations upon those willing to undergo the review procedures, ownership of the process was transferred from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to the AU itself and hence incorporated into those structures composed by those now responsible for reviewing each other.

Furthermore, the APRM was not firmly rooted in a legally binding document such as a protocol.
The power of decision making and taking remains vested in the countries prepared to be reviewed, which casts doubts over the true degree of autonomous and independent reviewing. The review results will only be accessible with the consent and authorisation of the country reviewed. This means a high degree of control remains executed by those who try to prove their accountability to others. The legitimacy of such a limited and constrained fact-finding mission in cases of differences of opinion among the parties involved might be dubious.

The few experiences so far suggest that there are major variations in the permissiveness of the approach shown by those states and governments willing to enter the APRM procedures. At the beginning of 2006 close to 30 countries have registered for the APRM. This is a large number. But many haven’t done so yet, and some among them would be considered as problem cases. The APRM process has initiated during 2004 the first country missions (Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Rwanda) and prepared since then six further missions (Algeria, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa). But little is so far known in terms of visible results, against which the countries subject to the review process could be measured.

Challenges
The APRM is supposed to be in the first place a tool designed for enhanced collective responsibility within the family of African countries. However, it will for obvious reasons become a criterion for measurement of the African governments’ performances in terms of good governance issues. There is no way to escape this perception and effect. The APRM therefore needs to consolidate further a highest possible degree of international credibility. This in turn requires clear guidelines securing transparency and accountability towards a wider community of interest groups and stakeholders – both at home and abroad.

The following pertinent issues remain to be addressed:

- The direct and open involvement of non-state actors in the process (churches, trade unions, universities, the private sector, independent media and many other civil society organisations and advocacy groups representing both mainstream and minority interests in the political, cultural and economic spheres) would add to the credibility and legitimacy and would especially enlarge the ownership over the process.

- The unsolved challenge remains of how governments in non-compliance with fundamental principles of good governance are treated within the AU and by its member states. After all, the APRM is a voluntary exercise, controlled mainly by those under review, and with results shared only on a consensual basis. This in itself reduces differences in opinion over good governance matters to undisclosed draft statements. But those not willing to undergo the APRM will avoid even the process of seeking an acceptable formula with those supposed to make the assessment.

Some of the questions resulting from this current state of affairs include:

- What then is the real progress (as measured against the rhetoric or lip-service) in terms of collective responsibility and common denominators for joint positions and actions resulting thereof?

- To what extent constitutes the APRM more than a club of mutually adoring, enlightened actors who are able to read the signs of the time without abandoning their policies in non-compliance with the principles suggested to guide good governance notions?

- How can the APRM help to separate pseudo-legality (aiming to create the misleading impression that everything is sanctioned by law – even the unethical and immoral – and hence formally in order) from serious efforts to improve good governance, which deserve the full support from all interested in political and socio-economic progress?

- What role should donor countries play vis-à-vis the continentally driven APRM initiative and its variety of results in terms of transparency and accountability (or the limits thereof)?

Conclusion
The following perspectives by African scholars based on the continent provide no answers but reinforce the questions. They are necessary to be posed. Premature praises of current trends would be as premature and destructive. As so often in transitional socio-political processes, the existing realities are most likely located somewhere in between those extremes.

The recent concerted efforts to provide the increasing number of retired African presidents with meaningful tasks to at least neutralise them if not to turn them into a constructive additional ingredient to enhance the notion of so-called good governance is just one case in point. This relatively new phenomenon on the continent is illustrated not only by the drastically growing cases of a peaceful and constitutionally anchored transfer of political power in African countries. It is also documented among others by the ‘Bamako Declaration of the African Statesmen Initiative’ adopted on 8 June 2005 as well as the ‘Africa Forum’ of former heads of state established upon initiative of former president Joaquim Chissano in mid-January 2006 in Maputu.

On the other hand, various dubious moves by political leaders in power (notably Museveni in Uganda, Kérékou in Benin, but also Obasanjo in Nigeria) seem to suggest that the willingness to vacate office in due course and according to the rule of the law existing is still not a generally accepted and internalised notion among all those occupying the positions.

Notwithstanding such visible evidence of setbacks and contrasting manoeuvres remains the fact that leaders in much bigger numbers opt out today than they did in the past. This might not be good enough yet to secure meaningful and lasting advancements for countries and their people – but it’s certainly better than the generation of despots heading cleptocratic regimes that used to be the order of the day in many more countries. If therefore the AU, NEPAD and its APRM at the end turn out to contribute to an increased shared awareness among the elites in African countries to adhere to certain principles of democracy and human rights in governing practices, one should not simply shrug shoulders and disregard this as a meaningless symbolic act. After all, processes of social transformation seem to be a long and time-consuming affair in our days, where revolutions are anything but the order of the day.

* Dr. Henning Melber is Research Director of the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden and had been director of NEPRU between 1992 and 2000. Parts of this article had been presented as an input paper for a meeting between Nordic and African Foreign Ministers in January 2006.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Henning Melber, Research Director of The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden, raises questions about the area of “African Studies”, reviewing some of the key debates currently taking place over its motivation, form and content. What motivates scholars to embark on African Studies? Is there a more or less direct political agenda attached to African Studies? To what extent do African scholars have options to define, pursue, and realise their own socio-political ideals and convictions?

A debate on what is supposedly understood as African Studies tends to be dependant on the individual positioning of the respective author(s). There is an obvious historical (in the sense of imperialist) dimension to the matter: African Studies emerged mainly due to a colonial legacy or direct involvement of states and their agents (missionaries, ‘explorers’, traders, officials) in either the colonisation or decolonisation of African regions or people – with the latter as the passive objects rather than the architects of the study areas and subject matters defined as being of interest (of interest to others, of course).

There were strong geopolitical and strategic dimensions, which have motivated to some extent the focus on area studies (including African Studies). Hence one of the questions we are confronted with is that of the social and political interest: what motivates scholars not only to embark on African Studies, but beyond this what allows for employment and support by state institutions in this academic field? Is there a more or less direct political agenda attached to African Studies by those who support its institutionalised pursuance? And if so, which agenda and to what extent do we as individual scholars agree or differ on the underlying motives? Last but not least: how do we contribute by what we are doing and how we are doing it (as institutions and as individual researchers) to such an agenda and its execution? To what extent do we have options to define, pursue, and realise our own socio-political ideals and convictions through and by means of the academic role we play within such institutionalised framework of interaction?

The challenge to position oneself starts with the efforts to define the subject and reach a common understanding. According to a survey among scholars in the United States of America, “mainstream Africanists across the spectrum of US higher education appear to be divided with respect to what constitutes ‘African Studies’” (Alpers/Roberts 2002: 13; see also Kassimir 1997: 161). The differing choices include:

- Study of sub-Saharan Africa (22%);
- Study of the entire continent of Africa (33%); and
- study of the people of Africa, both in Africa and the diaspora (41%).

Alpers and Roberts suggest that African Studies “should also include … the place of Africa in its global context, both historically and contemporaneously”. But they themselves seem not to honour this explicit understanding in its full consequence when summarising that African Studies “is about peoples, both on the continent of Africa and abroad, rather than about a continent called Africa.” Instead, African Studies should be even more than this: it should include foreign interests, policies and influences, as well as perceptions outside of Africa on Africa (whatever the definition of “Africa” then is). To that extent, “Africa” is also seen as a mirror image of international relations, images, projections and their results.

A decade ago Martin and West (1995: 24) warned in the US-context of the profession that the “spectre of irrelevance” is hanging over “African Studies”. What they possibly wanted to alert to is that the future of African Studies rests on shaky grounds in countries like the USA (but also the UK or Germany, for that matter), as long as those in social (political and economic) power have no direct interest in the matters analysed (like in, let’s say, Near or Middle East, East European or Chinese and East Asian Studies, which for obvious reasons serve a direct purpose within dominant interests).

That does of course not mean that African Studies are irrelevant, neither within nor outside academic discourses - even though if that might well have been the perception of those having to some extent the power of definition (if only through executing control over allocating the financial means to make things happen). There were, however, interests emerging once again within the new scramble for control over African resources, in particular oil, which after 11th September 2001 in the US-declared global war against terror contributed to a revitalisation of African Studies as strategic area studies (cf. Barnes 2004).

This is beyond doubt a double-edged sword, as it reduces the continent again to an object of super power rivalry. It is therefore essential to argue with Kassimir (1997:156) for the relevance of African Studies beyond the “utilitarianism” of economic, geopolitical and strategic interests: “Local knowledge and global knowledge are inseparable and mutually constitutive”. One might even go a step further and – for the sake of the argument – maintain that local knowledge is at the same time global knowledge. As Kassimir (ibid.) concludes: “Both global knowledge and local knowledge are necessary for contemporary scholarship; only together are they sufficient.”

For Achille Mbembe, as one of the more prominent (and controversial) African scholars - who by the way has so far not abandoned his roots in the sense of remaining attached to a working environment within the continent instead of moving to an African Studies centre in one of the metropolitan universities - in support of such an approach African societies (like all other societies) can be located “between generality and singularity”, with a “peculiar ‘historicity’ … rooted in a multiplicity of times, trajectories and rationalities that, although particular and sometimes local, cannot be conceptualised outside a world that is, so to speak, globalized.” (Mbembe 2001: 9)

The unanswered question remains, however: who creates which type of knowledge and for what purpose?

Strong arguments for a legitimate and necessary place of African Studies in the accumulation of knowledge offered Iris Berger (1997: 5): “to transcend parochial Western theories and data, participants with in-depth area-based knowledge will be as essential as ever to true global and comparative dialogue”. She also deconstructs and demystifies the highly sensitive inner-African discussions over what deserves to receive the blessing as “African Studies” in a politically correct Afro-centric view by pointing out: “’Orientalist’ criticisms inevitably lump together a rich and diverse tradition encompassing writings from many perspectives … written by scholars from all over Africa, Europe and North America as well as other parts of the world. By treating some of these areas of interest as critiques of a pristine, homogenous ‘African studies’ rather than integral parts of a diverse and continually changing field, some critics have manufactured a mythical construct that they have then proceeded to dismantle. Furthermore, alleging that there is an “African” interest that scholars have neglected also assumes an essentialist uniformity of perspective among Africans, rather than acknowledging that complex individual and collective identities based on gender, nationality, language, ideology and scholarly orientation mitigate against any single specifically ‘African’ perspective on African studies.” (Berger 1997: 9) As relevant as the identified substantive elements are, she unfortunately ignores the fundamental dimension of social class and corresponding interests.

Berger (1997: 11) also maintains that “more important than the topics of African studies research during the coming years … will be the revitalization of academic life and academic freedom in Africa”. It is particularly interesting to take note of the related concerns and views articulated by Thandika Mkandawire (2002) and Ebrima Sall (2002). At the same time, a raging controversy among African scholars highlighted in recent years the marked differences over what should be considered as “legitimate African Studies”. As one of the protagonists points out: “legitimate criticism of the damaging effects of occidental Africanism has been transformed into an extreme fetishizing of geographical identities” (Mbembe 1999). He identifies the following main obstacles to rigorous academic debate within the inter-disciplinary field of African Studies: nativism (“as if black Africa were all of Africa and all Africans were negroes”), a territorialization of the production of knowledge (“the false belief that only autochthonous people who are physically living in Africa can produce, within a closed circle limited to themselves alone, a legitimate scientific discourse on the realities of the Continent”) and a “lazy interpretation of globalisation” (Mbembe 1999; see also Mbembe 2000).

To discuss beyond the convenient pseudo-radical polemic the (real) danger of (continued) domination of African Studies by “non-African” scholars meeting other than “African” interests (whatever this means) requires firstly a strict definition with the aim to operationalise and translate the terms in practical and political ways. Any premature generalisation confirms the structural side of the (indeed existing) substance of the matter. At the same time, however, it runs the risk of brushing aside the existing individual choices and options of collaboration and interaction. As the “Mbembe-Zeleza” controversy (if not feud) documents (cf. Zeleza 2003, Robins 2004), there is also the danger of a similarly ignorant counter-position, which ultimately results in claiming genuine control over knowledge on the basis of particular dimensions rooted in claims of origin and subsequent entitlement. While aspects of socialisation and individual experiences (with the emphasis on individual) complement collective identities at all times and result in the uniqueness of the human experience in each and every person, we should be careful to use the argument of being “the same” or “the other” for academic controversies as a mono-causal reasoning.

African Studies and the relevant disciplines contributing to the scholarly debate should be considered from a point of view of assumed strength concerning the value of truly inter-disciplinary oriented methods and schools of thought. It demands a dialectical understanding of scholarly work: African Studies benefit from the strength of the various disciplines applied and in return strengthen the various disciplines beyond the immediate space of what is considered to be “African Studies”.

Interesting in this constellation is the positioning of oneself and of others as scholars, activists, and intellectuals. To what extent does it allow “global Africa” to establish common denominators irrespective of origins and identities of the actors involved in the processes (politically, analytically)? Is there a common ground to act, which is able to eliminate (or at least put aside) potentially divisive aspects of one’s personal making (in terms of socialisation impacts through shaping the individual perspectives by means of gender, social class and cultural roots - to mention just a few most significant factors)? Who plays which role in “Africanizing Knowledge” (Falola/Jennings 2002), and to what extent is this at the same time again an expression of “global Africa” – simply because Africa can only be global under the factual circumstances created and confronting us all as human beings at the beginning of this 21st century? Could it be that the challenges “global Africa” is confronted with are the challenges all human beings the world over are tasked to meet?

* Henning Melber has a PhD in Political Science and a venia legendi in Development Studies. He was Director of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek between 1992 and 2000 and is Research Director of The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden since then. This article is a revised and shortened version of an editorial to a special issue on African Studies he guest edited for “Afrika Spectrum” (vol. 40, no. 3, 2005).

* Please send comments to

Literature

Alpers, Edward A.; Roberts, Allen F. (2002): “What Is African Studies? Some Reflections.” In: African Issues, (30)2, pp. 11-18
Barnes, Sandra (2004): Global Flows: Terror, Oil and Strategic Philantropy. Presidential Address to the African Studies Association, New Orleans, November 12.
Berger, Iris (1997): “Contested Boundaries: African Studies Approaching the Millennium. Presidential Address to the 1996 African Studies Association Annual Meeting.” In: African Studies Review, (40)2, pp. 1-14
Falola, Toyin/Christian Jennings (eds) (2002): Africanizing Knowledge: African Studies Across the Disciplines. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers
Kassimir, Ron (1997): “The Internationalization of African Studies: A View from the SSRC.” In: Africa Today, (44)2, pp. 155-162
Martin, William; West, Michael (1995): “The Decline of the Africanists’ Africa and the Rise of New Africas.” In: Issue: A Journal of Opinion, (23)1, pp. 24-26
Mbembe, Achille (1999): “Getting Out of the Ghetto. The Challenge of Internationalization.” In. CODESRIA Bulletin, nos. 3&4, p. 3
Mbembe, Achille (2000): “African modes of self-writing.” In: CODESRIA Bulletin, no. 1, pp. 4-19
Mbembe, Achille (2001): On the Postcolony. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of Califormia Press
Mkandawire, Thandika (2002): “African Intellectuals, Political Culture and Development.” In: Journal für Entwicklungspolitik, (18)1, pp. 31-47
Robins, Steven (2004): “’The (Third) World is a Ghetto’? Looking for a Third Space between ‘Postmodern’ Cosmopolitanism and Cultural Nationalism”. In: CODESRIA Bulletin, no. 1&2, pp. 18-26
Sall, Ebrima (2002): “The Social Sciences in Africa.” In: Journal für Entwicklungspolitik, (18)1, pp. 49-67
Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe (2003): Rethinking Africa’s Globalisation. Volume 1: The Intellectual Challenges. Trenton, NJ and Asmara: Africa World Press

During early September an appeal to Botswana's President Mogae had been circulated. It requested support for the initiative to approach the President with the intention that he revokes his declaration of Prof. Kenneth Good as a Prohibited Immigrant (PI). Within seven days more than 150 members of the academic community in 20 countries (incl. Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa) from four continents signed up. The list included prominent scholars of international standing and on good terms with Botswana's authorities. It hence reflected and testified to the honest concern the appeal tried to articulate. The appeal was submitted with all names attached on 15 September. In the absence of any response it was re-submitted on 3 October. Since President Mogae was the guest speaker at this year's Oxford Union, a third effort was made on 10 October with the intention to receive a favourable response to the suggestion that this might be an excellent opportunity to announce in midst a gathering of renowned scholars committed to the virtues of academic freedom that the PI status declared on Prof. Good would be revoked.

The local daily "Mmegi" published on 14 October a big story offering a fair account of the efforts - but interestingly enough under the heading "European (sic!) academics plead with Mogae on Good" (http://www.mmegi.bw/2005/October/Friday14/1027315029819.html). It quoted Jeff Ramsay, the Press Secretary to the President, who confirmed to the paper receipt of the letters but commented that "the state has no plans to allow Good back into the country" and "that as far as the government is concerned, the case is over".

The same evening of October 14, President Mogae delivered his address at the Oxford Union on "Globalisation and Good Governance", which he opened as follows: "It is a pleasure to return to these hallowed halls. Every time I come back I am again reminded of when, I first came here as a student straight out of the then Bechuanaland Protectorate. In the four decades since, my homeland has changed in many ways besides its name. I suspect I may have as well." And in the course of his speech, which made not a single direct reference to either the ongoing controversies around the Bushmen, nor to the case of Prof. Good, President Mogae stated: "Let me firmly state my own conviction that good governance based on what are now commonly accepted as international standards is an absolute prerequisite for sustainable development in today's world. I further believe that governance must in the end be about maintaining an evolving institutional framework by which people at the local and national levels continue to have a meaningful say about the domestic policies that shape their lives."

Many thanks to all, who by reacting affirmatively to the appeal supported the case not only of Prof. Good but of demanding academic freedom in general. Independent of the outcome, it is a testimony to our desire to uphold and protect minimum values and norms in respect of our scholarly endeavours. Any further individual views concerning President Mogae's position could be directly articulated to the Office of the President ([email protected]) and in copy to the President's Press Secretary Dr. Jeff Ramsay ([email protected]).

Concerns over the impact of current Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations between African countries and the European Union are mounting. Henning Melber warns the EU trade bureaucracy not to dismiss these concerns lightly, lest they be conceived as “an integral and active part of a new scramble for Africa, in which the EU competes with the US and China to gain access to and/or secure control over markets and resources primarily for their own interests.”

This commentary summarises some recent concerns that current trends in the EU trade policy towards African countries with special reference to the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) could do more harm than good and undermine future efforts towards regional collaboration. An earlier intervention of a similar nature (published in “Development & Cooperation”/D+C, no. 3/2005; see also for a related argument the commentary in “Pambazuka News” no. 197) had provoked the public disapproval of the former Director-General for Development at the EU Commission. In a reader’s letter to the journal, Dieter Frisch “had a bone to pick” with the author and did “not at all like the way that Melber calls the EU’s development-friendly and contractually negotiated EPA policy ‘anything but helpful’” (D+C, no. 7/2005). It is indeed necessary to discuss the substance and relevance of such arguments and concerns further.

Hence follows another effort to present a critical overview, which simply compiles and articulates in a hopefully concise way the reservations expressed by agencies and stakeholders in the current process, who tend to disagree with the view and approach of the trade department in Brussels. They reflect that despite the former EU official’s expressed trust in the “development-friendly and contractually negotiated EPA policy” others involved in the process draw markedly different conclusions. These deserve to be taken as seriously as the affirmative views - also and in particular by those who consider and advocate (if not even propagate) the current EU initiative as a step in the right direction.

Under the paradigm of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) a newly structured economic reality gains momentum. It organises trade relations in a way which requires questioning. This is the simple purpose of this overview, which continues to challenge the likely effects of the currently designed and pursued EPAs as anything but supportive (or helpful, for that matter) to the interests of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) member states.
EUs New Role: WTO, EPAs and regional integration
The EPAs negotiated between the ACP states and the EU not only seek to modify the Cotonou Agreement entered into with all ACP countries as a collective entity by means of separate sub-regional negotiations (which would even allow for bilateral agreements with individual countries instead) but also aim towards compatibility between EU–ACP trade relations and the WTO. But while the Cotonou Agreement, which was ratified in April 2003 and replaced the Lomé Convention, allows for negotiating alternatives to the EPAs, the EU Commission continues to pursue the one-track avenue EPAs stand for.

It might be worthwhile to recall the original objectives for EPAs from article 1 of the Cotonou Agreement, namely to honour that cooperation should “be centred on the objective of reducing and eventually eradicating poverty consistent with the objectives of sustainable development and the gradual integration of the ACP countries into the world economy”. But as a team of the German Development Institute (GDI) in a report on the prospects of the EPA negotiations for Tanzania at an early stage of the negotiations pointed out: “Trade liberalisation does not translate automatically into benefits -especially not in least developed countries, let alone for the poor - if this is not actively supported by and embedded in a whole range of other policy matters. How trade liberalisation can be made pro-poor is not outlined in the ‘EPA concept’.”

The EU uses the EPA negotiations to push through agreements on a number of sensitive matters (such as investment, procurement and competition policy) that were rejected by developing countries at the WTO negotiations during 2003. EPAs are about much more than only the suggested reciprocity within a narrowly defined WTO compliance: non-tariff barriers, such as environmental standards or sanitary and other provisions related to an EU consumer protection policy are crucial issues in the negotiations. This is enough reason to provoke fear that such agreements would reduce the policy space for African governments. It does not help to counteract such suspicions as long as even a high-ranking EU official such as Karl Friedrich Falkenberg (European Commission Director/Trade Directory General, Directorate C – Free trade agreements, Agricultural trade questions, ACP, Bilateral trade relations II) recognises in a briefing paper (“Trade Negotiations Insights”, vol. 3, no. 4/2004) “the right of countries, or rather regions, to regulate economic activity in their territory” and accepts the “idea of a preference in favour of local competition”, when he adds at the same time “provided it is not to be a discretionary one”.

The negotiations on future EPAs introduce serious implementation problems and a negative impact on regionalism within the ACP group and its African member states. Regional organizations within Africa are likely to have capacity problems when entering the negotiations. The matter is complicated further by the fact that all these regions present a mix of LDCs and non-LDCs. A likely result is the further fragmentation of the process of regional integration and a further side-lining of LDCs. Even at a high level Conference on European Development Cooperation at The Hague in September 2004, which discussed extensively the EU links to the South, concern surfaced about the EU position on trade liberalisation. As the summary report stated: “Everybody supported the call for a high level of flexibility in the EPA negotiations. Room should be created for asymmetrical trade relations, meaning that developing countries should be allowed to protect their markets against foreign competition on a temporary basis.” But as experience so far suggest, the EU trade commission seems determined to pursue its much stricter and less compromising course further.

EU Policy, EPAs and SADC

The negotiations by the EU aim at separate accords with each region, and no country may negotiate in more than one bloc. As such, SADC is reduced to seven countries (half of the member states) under the EPA negotiations. It is not far-fetched to see that there is an inbuilt conflict between regionalism as it exists and the negotiations of new multilateral processes. Countries might differ over the advantages between benefits from the continued protection of regional arrangements or the creation of individual preferential access within other trade agreements, but if regionalism is considered as a problem or obstacle towards further global harmonisation under the WTO, it stands little chance of being a viable point of departure for strengthening the South within the global trade arrangements.

The EU-SA free trade agreement, negotiated during the second half of the 1990s, has already had a highly divisive effect on the Southern African region. It entered into a preferential trade relationship with one country and thereby enhanced differences resulting from existing conflicts of interest among the national economies within the region. The fact that this affected directly the “satellite states” in the customs union (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland) was initially overlooked and understandably so the initial non-consultation of these countries was anything but a confidence building measure. South Africa herself, the monetary zone, the South African Customs Union (SACU) and SADC are already not in harmony at any time and less so given the effects of the free trade agreement on regional economic matters.

Hence the EU intervention adds more friction and the beneficiary effects of the FTA for South Africa cannot be used as a convincing argument in favour of more free trade policy with other – less industrialised – countries. South African interests and benefits are not identical with regional ones. Regional integration would have to include the interests of the junior partners in the neighbourhood. The political economy of such regionalism is a constantly negotiated arrangement, with shifting boundaries and changing coalitions of interests. But it clearly has to aim beyond the immediate gains of the sub-imperialist centre, as which South Africa is not only perceived but as which it is at least economically indeed acting under an aggressive expansion into African markets.

The EPA process does not seem to strengthen an alternative route, re-focussing on regional consolidation as a first step. SADC members had to make a choice to negotiate either within the East and Southern African (ESA) bloc or as a SADC Group. Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Tanzania opted to negotiate with the EC under the SADC configuration. It is revealing that the recommendations by the GDI study referred to above were then based on the assumption that Tanzania would negotiate in the East African bloc along side Kenya and Uganda. Meanwhile, Tanzania ultimately decided to join the SADC configuration.

SADC – EC EPA negotiations were officially launched on 8 July 2004 in Windhoek in the presence of EC Commissioners Danuta Hübner and Poul Nielson. Botswana’s Trade Minister acted as SADC coordinator. South Africa - which as mentioned had entered the FTA with the EU in 1999 as Trade, Development and Cooperation Agreement, since it was not considered as an ACP member country due to its more advanced economic status - participated in an observatory and supportive capacity. A Joint Roadmap was adopted, but criticism of the divisive EC approach (subdividing the countries of the sub-region into different SADC and ESA blocs) and the efforts to eliminate preferential trade clauses, which exist under the Cotonou Agreement for the LDCs, was increasingly articulated since then.

A Working Paper by The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek warned in mid-2004 that implementing EPAs as currently designed “violates the originally formulated requirements of the EU according to which ACP countries should have been treated depending on their different development status. This principle was already disregarded when negotiating the EU-South Africa FTA, where the EU locked-in BLNS countries in the same tariff structure as South Africa, without granting them improved market access.” The author sees the risk that EPAs imply a loss for LDCs “when opening their markets without receiving anything substantial in return”. Interesting enough, even South Africa’s Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel - known as a strong key player within the current trade liberalisation schemes - summarised the scepticism among Southern African countries in a lecture at the University of Sussex on 2 December 2004, when he stated: “Greater transparency of intentions would also be helpful – the EU’s request for Africa to divide into groups to negotiate … does little to help Africa coordinate its trade policies - thereby reinforcing the legacy of our colonial economic relationships.”

EPAs and Policy Coherence

Paul Goodison and Colin Stoneman have in an article in the “Review of African Political Economy” (vol. 31, no. 102) maintained “it would be an act of foolish optimism to expect integrity or honesty in the EU’s trade policy towards southern Africa and the wider ACP group”. Instead, as Cosmas Ochieng and Tom Sharman summarise in their report “Trade traps”, published with the London based advocacy group Actionaid International, the EPA initiative during its initial negotiations “has created new regional groupings that are inconsistent with, and undermine, existing African economic and political blocs. Reducing regional integration to trade liberalisation undermines the broader socio-economic and political objectives of existing bodies.”

For many, the outcome of the wider trade offensive, as represented in a combination of NEPAD, the EPAs and the US-American Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is not encouraging. Referring to the likely effects for African economies, Margaret Lee warns in an article to the “News from the Nordic Africa Institute” (no. 3, 2004): “Anticipated costs include revenue losses, possibly resulting in the worsening of the regional debt situation; de-industrialization; increased unemployment; increased poverty; fragmentation of export and tariff regimes; loss of export competitiveness; undermining of local agriculture and industrial production arising from US and EU dumping; more trade diversion than trade creation; and undermining existing regional economic integration strategies.” And an IDS briefing paper by Christopher Stevens and Jane Kennan in mid-2005 comments upon the argument that EPAs will foster regional integration: “that there will be a significant effect – but a negative one”.

The report tabled by Actionaid International diagnoses that: “EPAs threaten African fiscal stability and public spending. They introduce investment agreements … that would undermine African policy choices. EPAs threaten African regional integration and lack an independent dispute settlement mechanism.”

Ochieng/Sharman therefore appeal that “European Union member states must revise the European Commission’s EPA negotiating mandate to withdraw the demand for reciprocal trade liberalisation” and stop “negotiations on investment, competition policy and public procurement”. They furthermore urge the European Parliament to “launch an investigation into the European Commission’s approach to the EPA negotiations and to exercise effective oversight over the Commission’s negotiating mandate, tactics and processes” while beginning “to immediately examine all possible alternatives to EPAs”.

Conclusion

It might be considered as “anything but helpful” to question “the EU’s development-friendly and contractually negotiated EPA policy”, as Dieter Frisch had put it in his letter. But it reflects the view of a variety of stakeholders in and observers to the current process, who would not agree with the label “development friendly” without further convincing evidence and results pointing in that direction. Instead, they wonder like Paul Goodison (in the “Review of African Political Economy”, vol. 32, no. 103) if the EU trade commission under Peter Mandelson offers a “new start or old spin” - and tend for the moment to conclude the latter.

The leaked documents from the Brussels headquarters of the EU trade department (and disclosed among others by an article in “The Guardian” on 19th May 2005), which showed that Peter Mandelson had initiated a public relations campaign in response to the British government’s critical position on the current format of the EPAs with the aim to counteract the “major and unwelcome shift” in the UK approach, did anything but eliminate such reservations.

As a recent assessment by the British advocacy group Christian Aid summarised: “for more than 20 years, ACP countries have been forced to liberalise their markets to such an extent that many now have economies that are more open than Europe’s. They are already integrated - often harmfully - into the world market. So any new trade agreement between ACP countries and Europe must both help them to improve and diversify what they produce and export, and allow them to protect themselves from imports. In the meantime, EPAs in their current form will do neither.”

The EU trade bureaucracy and its representatives would be well advised not to dismiss such concerns lightly. After all, they would not like to be conceived as an integral and active part of a new scramble for Africa, in which the EU competes with the US and China to gain access to and/or secure control over markets and resources primarily for their own interests, while the partnership talk serves as the necessary cosmetics and lip service. The EU-ACP process unfolding with the EPA negotiations is in its current format unable to meet the criteria for coherence with other fundamental principles of development paradigms and policies of the EU and its member countries, such as support to regional integration as a priority. In times of an intensified rivalry between the haves among the countries in this world to consolidate their particular interests within the regions of the have-nots, EU policy risks a loss of the positive image established and consolidated during various rounds of Lomé treaties earlier on.

To illustrate the case, one only needs to take note of the speech the Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa delivered on 31st August 2005 at the headquarters of the African Union, in which he explicitly took EU policies to task and warned of the devastating consequences of further globalisation. As he added: “I urge African leaders to think afresh about the place of our continent in a rapidly globalising world”. Governments and officials of EU member countries sharing responsibility for “the economics of failure” (Christian Aid) as it currently unfolds under the label of EPAs pursued by the trade directorate in Brussels ought to do the same.

* Dr. Henning Melber is Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden. This text is a short version of an input paper presented to the Second Expert Workshop “From Individual Action to a Common Strategy? EU policy on sub-Saharan Africa”, organised by the Development and Peace Foundation, 20/21 September 2005 in Bonn.

* Please send comments to

Do African presidents have a life after they leave office? asks Henning Melber. For many years in post-independence Africa, the image of African leaders was of ‘Big Men’ who could only be removed from office by their own death. But a recent shift shows an increasing number of leaders who hand over presidential powers voluntarily. In June this year the African Statesmen Initiative was launched in Mali’s capital Bamako with several elder statesmen committing to democratic ideals. The positive trend does not necessarily mean that anti-democratic tendencies have been banished, writes Melber.

Retired African Heads of State seem to emerge in ever-bigger numbers as a new species on the continent. Opting out of office more or less voluntarily, they are seeking an active role and requiring a defined task for their remaining years. “Is there life after presidency?” asked BBC Africa Live of its web site visitors in mid-2005. The numerous responses showed not only a strong interest in the issue but also offered the whole panorama of possible views, including the few selected ones below:

- “Presidents are people too. The life after presidency should be retirement.” (Ghana)
- “Former presidents should be respected because of what they did for a country. However at the same time, when Mugabe becomes a former president, my views will change.” (Zimbabwe)
- “There is always life and prosperity for presidents in Africa because most of them are thieves.” (UK)
- “Oh yes, there is life after the presidency. In fact a far better life … compared to the presidency. For example, you get to sleep peacefully at night (don’t have to worry about whether your army is plotting to oust you the next morning); you become a well respected statesman (provided you left office voluntarily … poor Charles Taylor), and the lot. Life after the presidency in Africa is like life after death – although no one has ever died (please, don’t count Jesus) and come back to give account of what it is like at the other end. However, the good news is that Africa is on the right path. At least we are beginning to count Africa’s former presidents who left office constitutionally. And it should send a very strong positive message to sitting-presidents that … yes, there is in fact very good life after the presidency, given you kept your promises to the best of your ability.” (Liberia)

By the end of the 20th century the notion of the ‘Big Men’ was still considered to be part of a neo-patrimonial system, in which ‘disorder’ was qualified as ‘political instrument’. Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz maintain in their provoking book ‘Africa Works’ that the “ultimate ambition of those who have power is most often to establish their standing as Big Men. Such standing is, by its very nature, subjective and can only be achieved within a context of personalized relations where clients, or dependants, will ensure its recognition. It is not, therefore, sufficient to be acknowledged as the supreme political ruler. It is also necessary to be recognized as the primus inter pares among all Big Men.”

African rulers, according to the dominant perception up until the early 1990s, do not vacate their office alive. The 1990 presidential address to the African Studies Association of the U.K., delivered by A.H. Kirk-Greene and published in ‘African Affairs’ (no. 359, 1991) presented some striking arithmetic to illustrate the point. By then, the mean duration in power of leadership in 17 African states (a third of the continent) was 25 years. The ‘for life’ image associated with African rulers contrasted however with the brevity of the rule of others, with no fewer than twenty in office for less than a year. At the end of 1988 the continental average duration of office for the 158 African leaders recorded as head of government in 50 states since 1960 was calculated at 3.1 years. But the assumption pertained that the shorter periods in office were attributed almost exclusively to the incumbents’ departure from this world. A.H. Kirk-Greene therefore concluded: “If my question of ‘What Happened to the President Afterwards’? has been overlooked in the literature, this may largely be due to the indisputable fact that, unless one is talking of a meta-physical after-life, in nine cases out of ten it is a rhetorical question; there was no Afterwards.”

But soon thereafter, this notion was challenged on the basis of the empirical reality. Instead, it was suggested that the question requires rephrasing, since the (former) heads of state were not as passive as the ‘what happened to’ formulation implied. The more apposite question for many may be ‘What did the President do Afterwards?’ rather than what happened to him. Indeed quite a number of them – in contrast to the widely held perception – did have a life after their term(s) in office. As a presentation by J.H. Polhemus to the 15th annual conference of the African Studies Association of Australia and the Pacific in 1992 concluded: “…a substantial number of individuals, … notwithstanding a wide variation in style, personality and psychology, had the unusual qualities required to become a head of state or government and … on leaving office, faced the questions of what to do with what remained of a life which had to that point been characterized by power, purpose, and not to put too fine a point on it, position and privilege.”

The recent shift in trends in presidential transitions on the continent is highlighted by the increasing number of those who more or less voluntarily hand over presidential powers while still being in rather good physical shape and mental health. A recently compiled overview for the book volume on ‘Presidential Transitions and the Role of Ex-Presidents’ (to be published by the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa before the end of 2005), registered a total of 204 African presidents in office between 1960 and 2004. More than half of them were overthrown, which confirms the earlier assumptions. Only 25 cases (or 12%) were classified as voluntary retirements. But significantly so, 17 (or three quarters) of these took place since 1990 alone, and since 2000 there were eight such cases, amounting in the last five years to one third of all voluntary departures from office in the 45-year period recorded.

In the light of such an emerging new trend, the question posed by Polhemus in his 1992 paper remains more valid than ever. He asked whether an increasing number of “African heads of state will follow the eminent person path upon their retirement from political office, rising above narrow national politics.” As he suggested: “For some it would seem to be an attractive way of putting their talents to good use and minimizing the pangs of withdrawal from a life of prominence and importance.”

The birth of an African Statesmen Initiative, launched in Mali’s capital Bamako in the presence of 15 former heads of state in June 2005, is an almost logical result of the needs to (re-)define the role of ex-presidents. With the support of several international institutions the elder statesmen (indeed still all men) agreed on a remarkable document with far reaching statements in terms of their political ideals. The ‘Bamako Declaration of the African Statesmen Initiative’ adopted on 8 June stated among others:

“We believe that democracy is the sole form of government that permits the development of the range of national institutions needed to ensure sustainable peace, security, economic growth and social well-being. We applaud the spread of democratic values and respect for the rights of citizens in a growing number of African countries. We commit ourselves to continuing to use our good offices to foster dialogue and the peaceful resolution of the continent's conflicts, and to promote human security and democratic models of government that offer citizens the opportunity to choose their leaders freely and participate fully in the political life of their countries.”

The document went further to say:

- “We welcome the future participation of outgoing heads of state and government in efforts to promote democratic principles, good governance, and human security and development through individual and collective action.”

- “We affirm that changes of power and political succession should always be based on constitutional rule and democratic principles.”

- “We affirm the special responsibility of former heads of state and government to support the development of strong, well functioning legislative and judicial bodies, as well as other public institutions to ensure public accountability.”

These are clearly new tones, though one is curious to see how big or small the discrepancy between rhetoric and reality this time turns out to be. The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was often referred to as little more than a self-serving club for African presidents. Its existence was premised upon the mutual convenience of ‘non-interference in the affairs of sovereign states’, a doctrine that provided cover for authoritarian and despotic regimes throughout the continent.

In contrast, the launch of the African Union (AU) in 2002/2003 resulted in the subsequent institutionalisation of a visible (though not yet always consequently applied) political will to exercise more collective responsibility over the policy of member states, whose systems and their (lack of) delivery fail to respect the minimum standards as defined in the new AU Constitution. This includes sanctions against those who claim to represent their countries without a minimum of legitimacy. It is an indication that the present generation of African leaders – one which is more subject to pressures for democracy at home and for ‘good governance’ internationally – will be more prepared to police regimes which offend against international norms, rights and laws.

This also offers, as the African Statesmen Initiative signals, a more constructive role for retired presidents to make a continued positive contribution on the continent, including an active participation in conflict mediation and other forms of political negotiations and diplomatic brokerage. They might also pursue a variety of advocacy roles on other burning issues, such as further awareness creation concerning HIV/AIDS or lobby work to mobilize for meeting other challenges on the continent to achieve a more decent living and secure a better future for its people.

But notwithstanding the odd light at the end of the tunnel, progress is uneven. While recent interventions concerning political leadership issues in Togo and the Ivory Coast show the political will to collectively pursue the notion of ‘good governance’ in certain cases, the continued passivity with regard to Zimbabwe and the rampaging dictator Mugabe remains a scandal.

In Botswana, Ken Good, a Professor of Political Studies at the local university for 15 years, presented in March 2005 to a departmental seminar a critical analysis of the presidential succession in the country (drafted as a chapter to the book currently in print). He was served with an arbitrary notice from the authorities declaring him a prohibited immigrant on the grounds of being considered a risk to national security. Upon intervention and appeal, the Constitutional Court ruled that the President has the power vested in his office to do so without offering any further reasons. After this verdict, the 72-year old was handcuffed in court, prevented from talking to his lawyer and deported the very same day. He was denied the chance to say good-bye to his teenage daughter.

Only two weeks later, on 13 June 2005, five African Presidents met their fellow Head of State George W. Bush in Washington, DC. The US President welcomed the same Festus Mogae of Botswana, who had just abused his presidential authority to get rid of an unwanted academic, together with John Kufuor (Ghana), Armando Guebuza (Mozambique), Namibia’s President Hifikepunye Pohamba and Mamadou Tandja of Niger to the White House. According to the official announcement, this initiative was to “highlight the value that the United States places on supporting democracy across Africa. President Bush looks forward to recognize these countries’ successes at holding free and fair elections last year”.

The question still begs to be answered of whether this illustrates progress in democratic transition on the one side (of the invited guests), or a lack of democratic sensitivity on the side of the host. As so often, the answer might lie somewhere in between, if one considers the way elections were conducted not too long ago in the North American federal states of Florida and Ohio, which were to a large extent decisive in the ‘democratic’ process to a) bring the current president into office, and b) to keep him there. After all, political office bearers all over the world tend to be not as different or remote from each other as the geographical distance might suggest.

* Dr. Henning Melber is Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden. This essay is a revised part of an introduction to a book volume on Presidential Transitions and the Role of Ex-Presidents in Africa, co-edited with Roger Southall and to be published by the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa.

* Please send comments to

The 20th century had been termed the “century of genocides”. In 2004 the first of a series of these turned a hundred years. It reminded us of a history of mass violence directed against specifically defined population groups, which had to a certain extent its origins and roots in the violent expansion of European colonialism. The German empire played a particularly prominent (though by no means exclusive) role during this era of violently imposed foreign domination. 2005 reminds of another such event, when the mass killing in then “German East Africa” (the oppression of the so-called “Maji-Maji rebellion”) turns a century. It can be assumed that this dark chapter in the history of what is euphemistically called “North-South relations” is even less noticed in public debate than the first of its kind a year earlier.

One might assume that it would be part of an established common understanding that what started in early 1904 in the German colonial territory called South West Africa was by standards applicable today a genocide. This, at least, is the conclusion presented by the “Whitaker Report”, adopted as an official document by a United Nations body. It lists the German colonial war of 1904 to 1907 as the first genocide of the 20th century. The most striking phenomenon in dealing with the events a hundred years later is therefore, that in public perception as well as scholarly and political discourse the views still differ fundamentally.

For large parts of collective memory in Germany this chapter is either closed or even forgotten. In contrast to this widespread amnesia or indifference the trauma lives on among parts of the Namibian population. It keeps the generations of descendants to the victims in demand for recognition of and compensation for the crimes committed. As the selectivity of the (non) commemorations during 2004 showed, the legacy and its treatment remain a battlefield. It provided a forum for often uncompromising exchanges on how to come to terms with the past in the present.

In August 2002, the Herero Paramount Chief commented upon the private claims for reparations from the German government and a few German companies, which upon his instructionswere initiated at a US-American Court during late 2001. While doing so, he declared the land question in Namibia to be solely a Herero issue. A spokesperson for the Coordinating Committee for the First Official Commemoration of the Ovaherero Genocide stated two years later that genocide was in Namibia only committed towards the Herero.

Such monopolising claims are tantamount to blatant denial of the sacrifices made by other communities like the Nama. It also makes a mockery of the suffering of the Damara and San. To all these – today even more marginalized – groups this exclusion adds insult to injury and is certainly not conducive to concerted efforts of those to whom justice had been denied for generations. At the same time, it implicitly and ironically also undermines the legitimacy of the Herero case, which otherwise ought to be undisputed and beyond any doubt relevant for coming to terms with the past.

Members of the group tend to brush aside the concern expressed over such monopolisation of the victim status. Instead, accusations of racism and Eurocentrism come in handy to dismiss any discourse on how best an advocacy might be pursued in the interest of more than just one among those groups. The claims to genuine identity and corresponding victim status create an aura of exclusivity and consequently a we-they divide with the rest of the world. This competitive way of pursuing the case prevents any meaningful dialogue. The motives of those, who in such reductionist way seek the recognition so far denied to them, might be perfectly understandable. They want to pursue and achieve in their own view only historical justice. But this prevents wider coalitions and seems to happen at the expense of others, who remain outside of any public interest and are therefore denied recognition as victims.

The Namibian government did address the matter in a different but even less constructive perspective. It kept a demonstratively low profile on the general issue. No government-sponsored initiative took upon itself to prepare any coordinated event to commemorate the dark chapter (and by doing so flag the recognition of the primary resistance during these days as an early part of nation building).

The only official act honoured the centenary with the issuing of a special stamp on Independence Day on 21st March 2004. In the declared spirit of national reconciliation it did not single out any particular group. Instead, the motive chosen was a white dove. This symbolic vagueness denied victims any degree of visibility and confined them to absolute anonymity. At the same time, such evasive symbolism saved the descendants of the perpetrators from any confrontational challenge to deal with the legacy. Namibia’s government also explicitly distanced itself from the initiative by a group of Herero to seek reparations from Germany.

The President and other senior government officials did not follow an invitation to attend the ceremonies in Okahandja, which marked the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Herero war against German colonial occupation in January 2004. Hifikepunye Pohamba, successor to Sam Nujoma as Head of State, however, did attend the ceremony commemorating the battles in the Waterberg plateau area in mid-August 2004. It remains speculation to what extent this might have been necessitated by the fact that the German Minister for Economic Cooperation, representing the biggest single donor country was one of the main speakers. When the Herero gathered for their annual meeting end of August at the graves of their ancestors, government officials attended the commemoration of the beginning of the armed struggle by Swapo elsewhere. The parallel activities illustrated the contrasting traditions of resistance in a case, where – differently from neighbouring Zimbabwe – the first chimurenga related mainly to other local groups than the second one.

The Namibian government seemed to be almost in silent agreement with those among the German-speaking minority in Namibia and those representing the official position of the German government by treating the centenary almost as a non-issue. The German ambassador to Namibia on occasion of the commemoration ceremony in January 2004 (which in contrast to Namibian government officials he actually did attend) reiterated his government’s position by explaining: “It would not be justified to compensate one specific ethnic group for their suffering during the colonial times, as this could reinforce ethnic tensions and thus undermine the policy of national reconciliation which we fully support.” This sounds sensible but serves as a convenient excuse for no compensation of the descendants who suffered most from direct oppression, defeat and subsequent exploitation and subjugation through the German colonial authorities.

There would be an obvious justification for affirmative action related preferential treatment with regard to a redistribution of the land taken under German colonialism. It should benefit as a priority these communities, who were robbed of their land as a prelude and aftermath to the genocide. But the land issue is treated as if the historical connotations would not offer a direct frame of reference as to who should be entitled to claims and compensated accordingly. This benefits the government’s main clientele living in or coming from the densely populated former Owamboland (north of the zone of direct German occupation), but neither Herero nor Nama, Damara and least of all the San.

In what might be termed a pact among elites, the German government has chosen to opt for the more convenient avenue of playing along with such biased official Namibian policy. Germany’s Foreign Minister had stated as late as 2003 that no apology will be offered, which might be considered of relevance for compensation. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder during his first official visits to African countries in January 2004 – at a time when the genocide turned a century – skipped the former colony and thereby simply ignored the historical part of German-Namibian relations at the centre of the debate in 2004.

The German position took a surprising turn from the previous official denial during a year in which as a positive experience an unexpected number of local, regional and national NGO initiatives raised the issue in Germany by means of lectures, seminars, exhibitions and related public events and hence created some unofficial but visible discourse over the unfinished business.

The Minister for Economic Cooperation attended the ceremonies in August 2004 remembering the biggest military clashes between Herero and Germans taking place a hundred years earlier. In an emotional speech she admitted on behalf of her government guilt and remorse. She stated that the German colonial war a hundred years earlier would qualify from today’s perspective as genocide. Asked for an apology (the word did not appear in the text she read out), she expressed the understanding that her whole speech was an apology. This provoked harsh criticism back in Germany mainly by members of the opposition parties, who accused the Minister for risking an expensive bill for being carried away. There remains, however, so far a lack of visible subsequent consequences, which would indicate that this has resulted indeed in a direct change of policy towards the issues of compensation with any budgetary implications.

Interesting is the fact that the treatment of the historical issue (intentionally or not) remains confined to the colonial chapter. It avoids any references to the subsequent developments in Germany. After all, to reflect upon genocidal atrocities is more than dealing with guilt and remorse (though this in itself would be a perfectly legitimate and sufficient motive to do so). In the Namibian case, this links up with the more specifically German trajectory. The question is, if and to what extent the colonial genocide paved the way for the particular concept of final solution and extinction of the enemy, culminating in the war crimes and the holocaust in the 1940s.

In a colonial situation as it prevailed in Namibia in the early 20th century, the denial of human value to the “uncivilised natives” is predicated in the structurally racist set-up of colonialism. This is even more the case when the aim of colonial rule is not simply control and exploitation of the country, its resources and inhabitants, but rather, settlement by members of the colonising society. The inherent racism of settler colonialism has worked to lower the threshold of mass killings in appalling ways in many cases. The parole “exterminate the brutes” is a simple illustration of this. In Namibia, the ideology and strategy of the genocidal practices applied require us to explore the degree of a specifically German case within the wide range of colonial atrocities and mass violence elsewhere. As evidence shows, there existed continuities in accounts and novels read by a mass readership, in military practice as well as in the activities of specific persons, and in doctrines and routines of warfare that link strategic ideas of decisive battles to the concept of final solution and extinction of the enemy, which came into full effect under the Nazi regime.

Such an approach within a wider context implies the journey into the belly of the beast - “the horror”, as visualised by Mister Kurtz with his last words on his deathbed in Joseph Conrad’s novel “Heart of Darkness”. It was inspired at the end of the 19th century by the excessive atrocities of colonial oppression in the Congo. Such interrogation requires accepting in principle the possibility of a connecting line that might exist in the history of violent expansionism. It demands an exploration, if and to what extent there are more than simply accidental coincidences between the colonial genocide in then “German South West Africa” and the holocaust unfolding “back home” in Germany over thirty years later. Depending on the outcome of such explorations, we need to readjust not only our minds, but also our historical understanding. Maybe the potentially scary implications of such insights are a contributing factor to the fierce resistance among large parts of the German public, to (re) open the chapter and have another look.

More than this: If the Germans would have the courage and honesty to embark upon such an exploratory mission - what should then prevent other former colonial powers to deal with their past in a similar self-critical way? Maybe this dimension is another forceful factor which explains even more so than the possible monetary implications (in terms of reparations) at stake for the German public purse to accept such responsibilities.

There might well exist complicity among the powerful, supported by a fraternity of a core group of European states with a similarly dubious imperialist historical track record. Such complicity, unfortunately, is not met by determined solidarity among the wretched of the earth. As victims they ought to challenge the continued injustices by their concerted and unified efforts to counteract the ignorance and arrogance of those in power on such issues collectively, instead of falling prey (once again) to the old system of divide and rule.

* Dr. Henning Melber is Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden and Vice-President of the European Network of Genocide Scholars (ENoGS) established at this Conference. This is a shorter and modified version of a presentation to the panel on “Genocide, Memory and Identity” at the Conference “Genocides: Forms, Causes and Consequences. The Namibian War (1904-08) in historical perspective” organised at the Haus der Kulturen in Berlin/Germany from 13 to 15 January 2005.

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Conventional approaches might at first sight not link trade issues with debt cancellation. But trade relations happen to have a marked and direct impact on economies, their productivity, balance of payments, revenue income from duties and other related issues. Hence trade affects national budgets - and therefore the (dis) ability to honour debt services, to provide investment or to be credible. This is even more so if trade relations in the global setting of today are regulated to the smallest details by bi- and multilateral agreements and domestic as well as international laws, which have a direct impact on the volume and flow of trade.

Rules and regulations negotiated and finally fixed between states are aimed to secure interests first and foremost in terms of the economic interests represented by the negotiating parties, normally on behalf of their respective governments. They often result in price regulations, definition of qualities and quantities of specified commodities, preferential treatment or exclusion of goods. At stake is the financial volume not only for the producers but also the economies. As long as global trade is skewed and to the advantage of some (normally those who have the power of definition to set the rules), it remains at the disadvantage of (most) others. Concerning debt, trade matters.

Debt cancellation, as one of the demands put on the table, is one obvious way to solve the current unacceptable situation. But at the same time it bears the risk of being misleading. It would be wrong to assume that the problem inherent in the in-egalitarian structures of the world economy are solved by such a one-time relief offered. Fairer trade would in contrast offer opportunities for moving into the direction of a more lasting sustainable alternative. Current initiatives towards further uniformity in global trade tend to suggest that they might contribute to such a development. Let’s have a closer look.

Globalisation and regional integration

It is sometimes suggested that African countries should chose between regional integration and globalisation. This dichotomy is misleading. Apologists of a liberalisation of trade argue that both trends complement each other in a positive way. But the real question is whether, under the pressure of global market forces, regional strategies remain viable at all. Regional and bilateral Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) are booming. Within the last 15 years the number of PTAs proliferated and has more than quadrupled to about 230. It is estimated that some 60 further arrangements are currently negotiated. This means there are almost twice as many PTAs existing and negotiated than countries officially participating in the regulated world trade.

Under the regime of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), local and regional policies are increasingly determined by global factors. One example is the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which serves as the socio-economic development blueprint for the African Union (AU). Similarly, bi- and multilateral trade relations between external actors and individual African states or regional blocs are becoming ever more decisive. This is true of the USA’s African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with South Africa and more recently the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) negotiated by the European Union. All these initiatives have a potentially detrimental impact on regional integration.

In the light of current evidence it is suggested that the trade policies of both the US and the EU are anything but helpful to consolidate regional integration – in contrast to the proclaimed priorities this should have within the developmental paradigm. The notion of coherence, meaning similar policies pursued and implemented in differing but complementing areas such as foreign and trade policy and development cooperation, is a relevant tool in this context to argue for a critical re-appraisal of currently established international regimes by initiatives of the OECD countries and in particular the G 7/8.

NEPAD

NEPAD claims that its agenda is “based on national and regional priorities and development plans”, which ought to be prepared “through participatory processes involving the people” (para. 49). So far, however, no visible signs indicate that the collective (multilateral) efforts aim at a united approach of the various regions in their relations with the outside world. Nor does NEPAD, so far, translate its noble aims into practical steps. The blueprint emphasises sub-regional and regional approaches under a separate sub-heading. It stresses “the need for African countries to pool their resources and enhance regional development and economic integration … to improve international competitiveness” (para. 94). The dilemma is that the emphasis on international competitiveness comes at the expense of strengthening local economies and people.

NEPAD also claims to enhance the provision of essential regional goods as well as to promote intra-African trade and investments, with a focus on “rationalising the institutional framework for economic integration” (para. 95). But again, such an approach neglects the local/internal in favour of the global/external orientation. In the meantime, NEPAD emerges as a type of mega-NGO channelling aid-funds to developmental projects. The claim that these are driven by a desire for closer regional collaboration is hardly more than lip service. Countries, not regional bodies, implement the programmes and policies. As Patrick Bond had already suggested in his annotated critique in 2002 (“Fanon’s Warning”), NEPAD seems more to undermine than to strengthen regional institutions.

Indeed, NEPAD defines the strengthening of African regional markets as a steppingstone towards greater integration into the global economy rather than as a goal in itself. Accordingly, its market access initiative advocates an external orientation. NEPAD identifies a need to negotiate for “more equitable terms of trade for African countries within the WTO multilateral framework” (article 188). This is deemed “an historic opportunity for the developed countries of the world to enter into a genuine partnership with Africa, based on mutual interest, shared commitments and binding agreements” (article 205). One wonders to what extent the NEPAD architects had lost their sense of reality when they drafted such obviously “wishful thinking”.

AGOA

Originally adopted as Title I of the Trade and Development Act of 2000 under the outgoing Clinton administration, AGOA was meant to apply the “trade not aid” paradigm. President Bush has extended its duration twice. As a US-law, AGOA was neither negotiated with its African beneficiaries nor based on any agreement with them. Its applicability is at the exclusive discretion of the US-administration. The current “AGOA Acceleration Act of 2004” had been enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress on 21 January 2004.

It should come as no surprise that US trade policy is not really geared to support Sub-Saharan economic development, but rather to provide access to potential markets. This would be fine if it only resulted in mutual benefits in the interest of all partners. But the bulk of African countries will not reap any such harvest. To a large extent, AGOA centres on oil and related commodities. African oil exports already amount to more than one fifth of the annual supply in the USA.

AGOA delivers benefits to countries according to their resources. Ironically, external capital (from mainly East Asian countries) has managed to exploit the opportunities created for supplying the US market with textiles from those African countries that rank as “Lesser Developed Beneficiary Sub-Saharan African Countries” in the AGOA context. These countries include those with a gross national product of less than US$ 1,500 in 1998 (as measured by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) plus Botswana and Namibia (which in itself represents an interesting indication of politically selective preferences dished out).

These AGOA recipients are granted preferential treatment (such as reduced import taxes). However, the mostly unqualified and underpaid workforce in African sweatshops is hardly reaping any benefits. Rather, people are being super-exploited. Nor do the governments of the countries affected register much additional revenue. After all, initial investments and even running costs tend to be heavily subsidised with public funds whereas profitable operations normally enjoy tax exemption.

This setting makes neighbouring countries compete for foreign investors rather than foster common growth strategies. Asian companies exert pressure on African governments in the pursuit of the most attractive investment opportunities under AGOA. Officials strive to offer foreign investors the best incentives for projects of an ultimately dubious nature. Often enough, existing legislation to offer minimum protection of the labour force and the natural environment is simply ignored or declared non-applicable to meet the interests of such investment. At the end, the praised enhanced local production and trade boils down to nothing more than mere elite pacts, in which local African administrations and Asian capital gain from providing US markets with cheap goods at the expense of workers who hardly earn enough to survive.

Empirically, AGOA has slim positive impacts in only a few of 37 eligible countries, among them Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Swaziland and South Africa. This is mostly attributed to the textile and apparel sectors: Only in Kenya and South Africa, did exports from other sectors (primarily agriculture) rise substantially. After the Multi-Fibre Agreement (MFA) ran out early this year, the textile and apparel industries in China, India and other Asian countries will be able to compete much more freely with African products favoured by AGOA. The predictable result will be a decline – if not collapse – of the short-term industry seeking temporary gains.

Once the AGOA bonanza is over, internationally operating capital and a handful of local compradors will turn out to have been the only winners. The much hailed investment opportunities then turn out to have been those for the haves, with no lasting assets created for the national economies and the benefits of the majority of the people participating in them. What is left behind is more likely to be a more damaged environment, while the detrimental effects had even been subsidised from the local public purse, which on top will have to deal with limiting further damage.

EPAs and FTAs

The EU is currently negotiating EPAs with African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP). The goal is to replace the Cotonou Agreement with separate sub-regional accords and to, thereby, make existing EU-ACP relations compatible with WTO rules. Observers accuse the EU of using EPAs to push through agreements on a number of sensitive matters (such as investment, procurement and competition policy) that were rejected by developing countries at the WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun in 2003. In any case, such agreements will reduce the policy space for African governments.

The EU is striving for separate deals with each region, and no country may negotiate in more than one block. For EPA purposes, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is accordingly reduced to half of its actual member countries. What could make the inbuilt conflict between regionalism and global perspectives more obvious? As an outcome of current negotiations, developmental space is likely to shrink. Official discourse does not even deal with issues of internal and regional integration anymore. Even experts at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) seem reluctant to generally consider EPAs as beneficial. Their blessing is currently depending on a number of positive assumptions made, which are not implemented so far within the ongoing negotiations.

These negotiations on future EPAs cause serious implementation problems and a negative impact on regionalism within the ACP group in general and its African members in particular. Regional organisations will suffer from capacity problems in the process. The matter is further complicated by the fact that all regions involved are made up of LDCs and non-LDCs, to which, so far, different rules have applied. The preferential clauses existing to the benefit of LDCs are not honoured so far in a similar extent under the EPA negotiations.

The EU’s FTA negotiated with South Africa during the second half of the 1990s has already had a divisive effect on the Southern African region. The fact that a single country entered a preferential trade relationship exacerbated regional tensions that result from divergent economic interests. In many respects, South Africa, the monetary zone, the South African Customs Union (SACU) and SADC are already not in harmony.

The EU intervention adds to the friction. While the FTA might indeed have some beneficial effects for South Africa, that is no convincing argument in favour of more FTAs with other – less industrialised – countries. The current negotiations by the USA for a US-SACU-FTA seemingly try to win back what is perceived as a lost territory in comparison with the EU-SA-FTA. But it is as questionable to what extent this would strengthen the regional interests in contrast to the South African and US American ones.

South African interests are by no means identical with those of the region. While regional integration would (and should) certainly not be at the expense of the hegemonic power, it would include the interests of the junior partners in the neighbourhood. The political economy of such regionalism depends on constantly (re-)negotiated arrangements, with shifting boundaries and changing coalition of interests. The EPA configuration process, as much as the FTAs with the central role of the South African economy as the point of departure does not seem to strengthen such alternative routes.

Conclusion

Recent trends indicate a less rather than a more conducive international environment for regional cooperation and integration. This is so, at least in macro-economic terms, among the members of bodies as SADC. Ironically, as a recent Swedish study submitted by developmental economists to the government had pointed out: While the EU, through its enlargement, is collecting the European states into an increasingly strong unit, EU’s African policies may have the opposite effect.

This brings the demand for policy coherence on the top of the agenda as a priority for further discussions also among those EU member states, which try to offer more than mere lip service to improved relations with the South aiming at offering a fairer share. If regional integration and collaboration remains a cornerstone in the developmental paradigm, with the declared aim of supporting the efforts to reduce detrimental dependencies in the South from the global market and its structural discrimination, trade as aid would have to be more than a mere euphemism for continued exploitation and discriminatory practices. It would require embarking on a different set of strategies as those currently imposed.

As long as this is not the case, such trade reforms will also have no lasting positive impact on the chances for smaller or weaker economies to overcome the structural dependency. Instead, by seeking a pseudo-way out, they continue the avenue, which turns out to be a cul-de-sac. All too often, this results in fatal survival strategies based on credits instead of genuine gains from trade.

* This is a revised version of an article in “Development and Cooperation”, vol. 32/no. 2, March 2005. More analyses offers: Henning Melber (ed.), Trade, Development, Cooperation: What Future for Africa? Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute (Current African Issues, no. 29). The volume is accessible at the Institute’s web site (www.nai.uu.se) and can be downloaded free of charge. Dr. Henning Melber is Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden. From 1992 to 2000, he was Director of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek. He is currently a Vice-President of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI).

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It does not require any prophetic magic to predict the obvious results of Namibia’s Parliamentary and Presidential Elections held on Monday and Tuesday: SWAPO of Namibia, the national liberation movement in power since Independence 1990, will retain its two-third majority and will continue to govern in an absolutist and authoritarian fashion within a de facto one party state. The question is only, with which qualitative margin and on which quantitative support base in terms of voters’ participation SWAPO has the continued mandate to cultivate its equation that the party is the government and the government is the state.

The opposition parties, both internally and among each other more divided than ever before, will compete for the remaining bits and pieces. With a new ethnically based Herero party (NUDO), which separated from the ranks of the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA) a new stakeholder might appear in the political arena. The number of votes it achieves might change the composition of the National Assembly, which had parliamentarians from five different parties before the elections. The same is true for the newly competing Republican Party (RP), which seeks to gather votes also from the original DTA clientele. We will have to wait and see what at the end of the counting is still left for the “old” DTA opposition, which was the first opposition party at Independence and since then has been in steady decline, and to what extent in particular the Herero faction in NUDO will seek new power sharing arrangements with SWAPO. There might still be some surprises in the kitty.

The so far relatively successful new kid on the block, the Congress of Democrats (CoD), will have to see if it maintains the second rank within the party landscape. It had emerged partly from the ranks of dissenting SWAPO activists, who were joined by other relatively intellectual, critically minded non-conformists. They established a political counter force, not cursed by the Apartheid legacy (as the DTA), but only managed to catch half of the DTA’s support base within the anti-SWAPO camp during the elections in December 1999.

CoD and DTA were subsequently represented both with just below ten per cent of the votes in the current National Assembly, whose term ends in March 2005, when the new Parliament, President and Cabinet will be sworn in. But CoD has also been battling with internal rivalries and differences – just the opposite of what one would like to show to potential voters prior to elections and not a confidence building measure by any standard.

There are two other questions, which will remain until the counting of votes comes to an end. If the United Democratic Front (UDF) - another ethnically oriented interest group mainly rooted in the Damara communities - will maintain its position as fourth strongest party, and if the one-person-party MAG (Monitor Action Group), representing the most conservative white element in post-colonial Namibia, manages to keep its seat and continue to contribute with at times even refreshing interventions to the otherwise often pretty boring debates where decisions are a foregone conclusion on the basis of SWAPO’s two-third majority.

In any case and whatever the proportional distribution of seats will ultimately be: the different party programmes showed little to no substantive differences. SWAPO was as much “mainstream” as most of the pseudo-alternatives.

The overwhelming dominance by SWAPO, which is in firm control of most institutions and agencies (with the exception of the economy, still dominated to a large extent by those class interests and agencies which benefited from settler colonialism) will remain unchallenged. Notwithstanding the fact, that the former liberation movement has been internally divided more obviously than ever before, it has not to be afraid (yet) that any meaningful alternative might pose a threat. Such an alternative simply does not exist at present.

Hence the most exciting shifts in the current power structure already took place prior to the elections when SWAPO’s President Sam Nujoma was denied another (fourth) term despite his obvious appetite to stay in office. Instead, the “leader maximo” was made to understand that he will not get away with another constitutional change in his favour, but received a golden handshake, which leaves him without any need to worry about the material well-being for his retirement period, during which time close to thirty civil servants will satisfy his needs.

Reluctant to abandon power, Nujoma had finally made his choice for a successor by selecting his closest confidante from the struggle days, considered to be a loyal servant to his master’s voice. But his crown prince Hifikepunye Pohamba denied appointment as the sole candidate by the party. Instead the SWAPO Central Committee nominated three candidates as potential successors. Delegates to an Extraordinary SWAPO Congress end of May were then tasked to make a choice, and in the internal campaign period the factional fight turned ugly.

What was praised widely as a sign of practised democracy was ultimately an in-fight over power and control. To minimise the risks, Nujoma did not shy away from tough measures, disclosing his authoritarian mindset and character, to push through his candidate at any costs. Hidipo Hamutenya, the strongest contender and rival, already frustrated from the President’s third term in office (which was made possible at the end of the 1990s by changing Namibia’s Constitution for the first time with the two-third SWAPO-majority in Parliament), was ousted from his post as Foreign Minister. This was a clear sign that those in support of his candidacy would meet the old man’s disapproval and have to face the consequences. Nonetheless, almost a third of the Extraordinary Congress was prepared to vote for Hamutenya and thereby pointed to the deep rift within the party.

To add insult to injury, in the subsequent selection process over the ranking of candidates on the party list, Hamutenya ended at a rank that makes his political survival as a Member of Parliament critically dependent upon the actual amount of votes gained. If SWAPO does not maintain the same degree of dominance, Hamutenya will be out by a narrow margin. This is quite a humiliating experience for someone considered for years to be the most likely candidate to succeed the old man. The same fate which looms over Hamutenya will happen to many among those who were (rightly or wrongly so) considered active within his camp. They were punished by being ranked even lower on the party list and will almost certainly loose their status as Honourables.

To what extent that might trigger another split within and ultimately from the party (as was partly the case with the creation of the CoD), is too early to speculate. It will also depend upon the strategy followed by the new Head of State, when appointing his Cabinet in March 2005. Until then, Namibia’s political office bearers will be almost paralysed and anxiously wait to see if they survive in lucrative ministerial ranks.

The return of the former Prime Minister Hage Geingob into Namibian politics has also provoked curiosity. Ousted from office by means of a humiliating demotion offered to him by President Nujoma half way through the third legislature, Geingob resigned from offices and accepted a good salary with a World Bank affiliated lobby agency for Africa in Washington. Obviously with the blessing of Nujoma, he has now made a successful return into Namibian politics. He has resigned from the employment of the international financial institution and returns to anti-imperialist rhetoric (which also characterises his PhD thesis just accepted, in which he discloses the neo-colonial conspiracy in the decolonisation process of Namibia - a deal to which actually and strictly speaking SWAPO and Geingob as team leader of the election campaign for his movement were part and parcel of).

While the majority of Namibians seem to be rather satisfied with the new President to come, the question will remain as to how many votes he is able to draw in approval. Sam Nujoma, SWAPO’s so far only President since its establishment in 1960, has managed as “father of the nation” to receive so far always more votes than the party (a record three quarters in 1999). Pohamba will find this difficult to achieve, though he has asked for a similar degree of support.

Instead, it is likely that some voters within the SWAPO rank and file might wish to indicate their disagreement with the choice by not supporting the new President with their vote. He will then have to see if and to what extent he tries to mend the torn sheets with those factions, who were viciously fighting each other during 2004 over access to political power in the party. It will also remain an interesting question as to what extent Pohamba will in the process indeed turn out to be “Nujoma no. 2”.

Observers do not deny the possibility that once in office the new President might find increasingly less time to listen to the old man while taking care of the daily tasks of running the government. That Nujoma remains the party boss, however, ensures a certain degree of continued close collaboration between the two comrades of almost fifty years. It also suggests, in biological terms, that Pohamba might turn out to be a transitional, one-term President for the Republic of Namibia. The competition for his succession might start the day the new Cabinet has resumed office, on Namibia’s Independence Day on 21st March 2005.

Most, though not all of the questions raised above, will be answered on the basis of the empirical results. Results, which beyond any serious doubt - at least by standards of Florida and Ohio respectively - will meet the label of being by and large free and fair (as questionable as some of the smaller tricks might be).

The more important questions will however remain to be answered. They relate to the fragile fundament of the post-colonial project of a political elite, which has not achieved to deliver the fruits of independence promised to the majority of the previously colonised.

The populist radical rhetoric of those in power might increasingly follow the temptation to cover up for the lack of commitment towards meaningful fundamental transformation of society in terms of the re-distribution of material wealth. Under the slogan of “national reconciliation” and “black economic empowerment” and/or “affirmative action”, this transformation had been applied only selectively to the benefit of a privileged post-colonial political elite. The majority remained poor. It might be a matter of time that their patience runs out. And to cover up the failures of the last 15 years by means of a policy on land would only bring temporary relief for those in power, as Zimbabwe demonstrates, and be at the expense of even higher costs for the population in whose interest the previous liberation movement claims to act.

* Dr. Henning Melber is the Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden.

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ABOUT NAMIBIA:

Namibia has one of the most unequal societies in the world. The Human Development Report (1998) shows that the richest 10 percent of the population receives 65 percent of the income, while about half of the population survives on about 10 percent of the average income. The 2000 Namibia Labour Force survey estimated the unemployment rate at 34 percent.
The economy of the country relies heavily on extraction and processing of minerals as well as on processed fish for export. Between 1990 and 1993 real GDP growth averaged 5 percent, but since then has slowed to an average of about 3.2 percent, according to the World Bank website.
Namibia became a German protectorate in 1884. The country was occupied by South Africa in World War One. It was declared a mandated territory by the League of Nations and administered by South Africa. South Africa later refused to withdraw under United Nations instructions. In the 1950s the Ovamboland People's Congress, which later became the South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) emerged and led the struggle against South African occupation. The territory won independence in 1990. SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma became president following victory in UN-supervised polls.

NAMIBIA LINKS:

Norwegian Council for Africa Namibia Page
http://afrika.no/index/Countries/Namibia/index.html
Africa South of the Sahara: Namibia Page
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/namibia.html
Republic of Namibia official web site
http://www.grnnet.gov.na/
Namibia Economist
http://www.economist.com.na/
University of Namibia
http://www.unam.na/
The Namibian Daily Newspaper
http://www.namibian.com.na/
Namibian Parliament
http://www.parliament.gov.na/

Recent trends seem to suggest a shift away from strengthening of regional cooperation in Southern Africa. But such regionalism has been hitherto a declared priority on development agendas. Hampering factors presently include political differences such as the controversy over Zimbabwe. This escalated into a sharp division of views among the member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It is hardly an exaggeration to state that the inability to agree on a common approach has an almost paralysing effect. The following analysis is however concentrated on socio-economic factors of concern, which divide the region further instead of bringing it closer together.

Strategic shift towards NEPAD

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) seems to emerge increasingly as a type of mega-NGO to channel aid-funds into developmental projects, which at best claim but in reality fail to be driven by a desire towards enhanced regional collaboration. The programmes and policies funded under NEPAD are implemented mainly by countries and not by regional bodies. Hence NEPAD in effect more undermines than strengthens an agency such as SADC (or any other regional institution).

This is a trend notwithstanding the fact that NEPAD attributes substantial relevance to regional bodies when identifying ways and means to achieve the defined socio-economic goals. NEPAD claims that its agenda is “based on national and regional priorities and development plans”, which ought to be prepared “through participatory processes involving the people”. So far, however, no visible signs in the SADC would indicate that the collective (multilateral) efforts aim at a united approach of the region in its relations with the outside world.

Nor does NEPAD so far translate its noble aims into practical steps for implementation. The blue print emphasises sub-regional and regional approaches even under a separate sub heading. It stresses “the need for African countries to pool their resources and enhance regional development and economic integration … to improve international competitiveness”. But the crux of the matter lies there: the emphasis on international competitiveness comes at the expenses of strengthening the local economy and the local people. Instead, integration in Africa should as a priority meet the socio-economic and environmental needs of its citizenries and not seek to turn even more into an export platform.

NEPAD claims further to enhance the provision of essential regional goods as well as the promotion of intra-African trade and investments, with another focus on “rationalising the institutional framework for economic integration”. But again, such an approach neglects the local/internal in favour of the global/external orientation. The implementation of NEPAD will hence most likely have the adverse effect and assist in an increased outward orientation of a regional bloc at the expenses of internal consolidation. It is interesting to note in this context, that notwithstanding the decisive role of South Africa within NEPAD, SADC has so far hardly acknowledged and certainly not embraced the initiative.

Divisive Free Trade Agreements

The Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and South Africa (EU-SA FTA) negotiated since the mid-1990s, had a similarly divisive effect on the Southern African region by entering into a preferential trade relation with one country and thereby enhancing differences within the region resulting from existing conflicts of interest among the national economies.

South Africa herself, the monetary zone, the South African Customs Union (SACU) and SADC are already not in harmony at any time and less so given the effects of the FTA on regional economic matters. Hence the EU intervention adds more friction. The new Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) negotiated between the countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands (ACP states) on the one hand and the EU on the other hand not only seek to replace the previous Cotonou Agreement by means of sub-regional separate negotiations but also aim towards compatibility between EU-ACP trade relations and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). They are hence dependent upon the settlement of the Doha Development Agenda's controversial and yet unresolved issues.

Interesting enough, the draft European Constitution makes no reference to cooperation with ACP states. It is only fair to assume that the EU enlargement shifts interest even further away from the neighbouring continent towards more collaboration closer to Brussels. In addition, the negotiations by the EU aim at separate accords with each region, and no country may negotiate in more than one bloc. As such, SADC is reduced to seven member countries (half of the 14 SADC states) under the EPA negotiations.

It is not far fetched to see that there is an inbuilt conflict between regionalism as it exists and the negotiations of new multilateral processes. Countries might differ over the advantages between benefits from the continued protection of regional arrangements or the creation of individual preferential access within other trade agreements. But if regionalism is considered as a problem or obstacle towards further global harmonisation under the WTO, it stands little chances of being a viable point of departure for strengthening in particular the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the South within the global trade arrangements.

Instead, the predictable outcome of the current negotiations under the WTO related agreements will be a shrinking of “development space”. To avoid such in-egalitarian pseudo-partnerships, a shift in balance from the drive to homogenize trading commitments to other states towards granting states reasonable scope to choose appropriate levels of national protection is required. A development strategy would therefore have to operate in a zone where both internal as well as external integration reinforce rather than undermine each other. Instead, issues of internal integration (including issues of regional integration) have largely dropped out of the development agenda as the gospel of the free trade paradigm dominates the discourse.

EU and US as partners?

The same limiting effects can be expected from the Free Trade Agreement between SACU and the USA. The SACU-US FTA seems to promise nothing different from the US-American African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which tends to separate and divide instead of bringing African economies and interests closer. The benefits from AGOA differ among African countries according to their resources.

Ironically, within those countries having been allocated a LDC status under AGOA (receiving additional preferential treatment), external capital (from mainly East Asian countries) has managed to exploit the opportunities created for supplying the US market under preferential tax regimes with cheap textiles from these countries. The by and large unqualified and underpaid workforce in the local sweatshops is hardly reaping any benefits from the super exploitation. Nor does the fiscus in these states, as initial investments and running costs for operations are substantially subsidised with public revenue instead of providing any tax income from the profits generated.

Such recent trends indicate towards less rather than more regional cooperation and integration. The political and security interests might provide with increased support by the G8 (the group of 8 most industrialised countries of the Northern hemisphere) and the strengthening of initiatives towards closer regional collaboration in reducing armed conflicts and securing more stability. Such stability continues however to be perceived as regime security, in contrast to a concept of human security. The latter would give primacy to human rights in favour of the citizens and not preference to the governments in power.

Even if there would be achievements in this direction, the multidimensionality and heterogeneity of a region like Southern Africa is likely to persist and may eventually increase. This does not prevent external support towards further positive regional interdependence. But this requires more than merely the opening up to the global economy. More so, it would have to re-visit matters of regional economic collaboration and seek involvement of the majority of the African population in these countries. The current initiatives by the EU and the US under the WTO offer little to no promise to contribute to such a desirable tendency, neither in SADC nor elsewhere.

* Henning Melber is Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden and has been Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek between 1992 and 2000.

* Please send comments to

Recent trends seem to suggest a shift away from strengthening of regional cooperation not only but also in Southern Africa. But such regionalism has been hitherto a declared priority on development agendas. Hampering factors presently include political differences such as the controversy over Zimbabwe. It escalated into a sharp division of views also among the member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It is hardly an exaggeration to state that the inability to agree on a common approach has an almost paralysing effect. The following analysis is however concentrating on socio-economic factors of concern, which divide the region further instead of bringing it closer together.

Strategic shift towards NEPAD The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) seems to emerge increasingly as a type of mega-NGO to channel aid-funds into developmental projects, which at best claim but in reality fail to be driven by a desire towards enhanced regional collaboration. The programmes and policies funded under NEPAD are implemented mainly by countries and not by regional bodies. Hence NEPAD in effect more undermines than strengthens an agency such as SADC (or any other regional institution). This is a trend notwithstanding the fact that NEPAD attributes substantial relevance to regional bodies when identifying ways and means to achieve the defined socio-economic goals. NEPAD claims that its agenda is "based on national and regional priorities and development plans", which ought to be prepared "through participatory processes involving the people". So far, however, no visible signs in the SADC would indicate that the collective (multilateral) efforts aim at a united approach of the region in its relations with the outside world. Nor does NEPAD so far translate its noble aims into practical steps for implementation. The blue print emphasises sub-regional and regional approaches even under a separate sub heading. It stresses "the need for African countries to pool their resources and enhance regional development and economic integration … to improve international competitiveness". But the crux of the matter lies there: the emphasis on international competitiveness comes at the expenses of strengthening the local economy and the local people. Instead, integration in Africa should as a priority meet the socio-economic and environmental needs of its citizenries and not seek to turn even more into an export platform. NEPAD claims further to enhance the provision of essential regional goods as well as the promotion of intra-African trade and investments, with another focus on "rationalising the institutional framework for economic integration". But again, such an approach neglects the local/internal in favour of the global/external orientation. The implementation of NEPAD will hence most likely have the adverse effect and assist in an increased outward orientation of a regional bloc at the expenses of internal consolidation. It is interesting to note in this context, that notwithstanding the decisive role of South Africa within NEPAD, SADC has so far hardly acknowledged and certainly not embraced the initiative.

Divisive Free Trade Agreements The Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and South Africa (EU-SA FTA) negotiated since the mid-1990s, had a similarly divisive effect on the Southern African region by entering into a preferential trade relation with one country and thereby enhancing differences within the region resulting from existing conflicts of interest among the national economies. South Africa herself, the monetary zone, the South African Customs Union (SACU) and SADC are already not in harmony at any time and less so given the effects of the FTA on regional economic matters. Hence the EU intervention adds more friction. The new Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) negotiated between the countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands (ACP states) on the one hand and the EU on the other hand not only seek to replace the previous Cotonou Agreement by means of sub-regional separate negotiations but also aim towards compatibility between EU-ACP trade relations and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). They are hence dependent upon the settlement of the Doha Development Agenda's controversial and yet unresolved issues. Interesting enough, the draft European Constitution makes no reference to cooperation with ACP states. It is only fair to assume that the EU enlargement shifts interest even further away from the neighbouring continent towards more collaboration closer to Brussels. In addition, the negotiations by the EU aim at separate accords with each region, and no country may negotiate in more than one bloc. As such, SADC is reduced to seven member countries (half of the 14 SADC states) under the EPA negotiations. It is not far fetched to see that there is an in build conflict between regionalism as it exists and the negotiations of new multilateral processes. Countries might differ over the advantages between benefits from the continued protection of regional arrangements or the creation of individual preferential access within other trade agreements. But if regionalism is considered as a problem or obstacle towards further global harmonisation under the WTO, it stands little chances of being a viable point of departure for strengthening in particular the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the South within the global trade arrangements. Instead, the predictable outcome of the current negotiations under the WTO related agreements will be a shrinking of "development space". To avoid such in-egalitarian pseudo-partnerships, a shift in balance from the drive to homogenize trading commitments to other states towards granting states reasonable scope to choose appropriate levels of national protection is required. A development strategy would therefore have to operate in a zone where both internal as well as external integration reinforce than rather undermine each other. Instead, issues of internal integration (including issues of regional integration) have largely dropped out of the development agenda as the gospel of the free trade paradigm dominates the discourse.

EU and US as partners? The same limiting effects can be expected from the Free Trade Agreement between SACU and the USA. The SACU-US FTA seems to promise nothing different from the US-American African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which tends to separate and divide instead of bringing African economies and interests closer. The benefits from AGOA differ among African countries according to their resources. Ironically, within those countries having been allocated a LDC status under AGOA (receiving additional preferential treatment), external capital (from mainly East Asian countries) has managed to exploit the opportunities created for supplying the US market under preferential tax regimes with cheap textiles from these countries. The by and large unqualified and underpaid workforce in the local sweatshops is hardly reaping any benefits from the super exploitation. Nor does the fiscus in these states, as initial investments and running costs for operations are substantially subsidised with public revenue instead of providing any tax income from the profits generated. Such recent trends indicate towards less than more regional cooperation and integration, at least in macro-economic terms along the official membership in such bodies like SADC. The political and security interests might provide with increased support by the G8 (the group of 8 most industrialised countries of the Northern hemisphere) the strengthening of initiatives towards closer regional collaboration in reducing armed conflicts and securing more stability. Such stability continues however to be perceived as regime security, in contrast to a concept of human security. The latter would give primacy to human rights in favour of the citizens and not preference to the governments in power Even if there would be achievements in this direction, the multidimensionality and heterogeneity of a region like Southern Africa is likely to persist and may eventually increase. This does not prevent external support towards further positive regional interdependence. But this requires more than merely the opening up to the global economy. More so, it would have to re-visit matters of regional economic collaboration and seek involvement of the majority of the African population in these countries. - The current initiatives by the EU and the US under the WTO offer little to no promise to contribute to such a desirable tendency, neither in SADC nor elsewhere.

* Henning Melber is Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden and has been Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek between 1992 and 2000.

* Please send comments to