Freedom at Issue

The Perilous State of Freedom in Sub-Saharan Africa

by Vukasin Petrovic
Director for Africa Programs

Photo Credit: Nicolas Pinault/VOA News

The progress that sub-Saharan Africa has achieved in building democracy over the past generation is coming undone. After two decades of significant gains, the continent has experienced a steady decline in democracy over the last several years.

The Arab Spring and Freedom’s Future

by David J. Kramer and Arch Puddington*
 
As we mark the first anniversary of the events that led to the Arab Spring, it is worth highlighting the uprisings’ far-reaching repercussions for freedom, both in the region and beyond. Freedom in the World, the report on global freedom issued annually by Freedom House, found more declines than gains worldwide for 2011, but we believe that the overarching message for the year is one of hope and not reversal. At a minimum, we can say that developments in the Middle East touched off the most serious challenge to authoritarian rule since the collapse of Soviet communism. While the challenges today are far more complex than in 1989, the basic theme of captive peoples seeking freedom after decades of oppression is very much the same.

Congo: Another Atrocity in the Making?

by Vukasin Petrovic 
Director for Africa Programs


During her 2009 visit to Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for the arrest and punishment of militiamen responsible for the widespread sexual violence and broader human rights violations that have devastated the eastern Congo for more than a decade. She described the situation as “one of mankind’s greatest atrocities.” But since flawed November 2011 elections led to renewed violence in other parts of the country, she has failed to defend human rights—and political rights—in the DRC with the same conviction.

Kenya’s Courts Throw Down the Gauntlet

by Thomas R. Lansner*

Sudan President Omar al-Bashir 

At the end of November, a Kenyan High Court judge ruled that Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir should be arrested “should he ever set foot in Kenya.” The decision is a welcome sign that Kenya’s judiciary is emerging from its long subservience to the country’s powerful and often unaccountable executive branch, and that international law might soon be catching up with more alleged war criminals.

The Best and Worst Human Rights Developments of 2011

by Mary McGuire and Sarah Trister* 

The year 2011 will be remembered as one of immense political and social change around the world, particularly the Middle East. On this International Human Rights Day, Freedom House looks back at a few of the best and worst developments of the year with respect to their long-term implications for the global state of human rights.

A War Worth Winning

by Kellen McClure
Special Assistant to the President of Freedom House

In October, President Obama announced that he would be involving U.S. forces in yet another conflict on African soil. Just a month and a half after the fall of Tripoli, the president stated that 100 combat-equipped military advisers would be deployed to Central Africa to provide “information, advice, and assistance to select partner nation forces.” The ultimate goal of the mission is the “removal from the battlefield” of  Ugandan rebel Joseph Kony and other senior leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

The International Day to End Impunity: A global call for justice

by Melanie Dominski
Sr. Program Associate, Freedom of Expression Campaign

Two years ago today, in the southern Philippines province of Maguindanao, 100 armed guards overtook a civilian convoy and executed the passengers in what has become known as the Maguindanao massacre. Of the 57 victims, 32 were journalists, making the incident the deadliest single attack against journalists on record and earning the Philippines the second-place slot on the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) list of the most dangerous countries for members of the media. In the course of this brutal attack, at least four female journalists were allegedly raped prior to being executed; virtually all of the female victims reportedly suffered genital mutilation, and many of the victims were beheaded.

Freedom House Questions for Republican Presidential Candidates

It is a core belief of Freedom House that American foreign policy should be grounded on support for democratic values and the global expansion of freedom. Practically every aspirant to the American presidency would agree that the United States should remain the world’s beacon of democracy. But especially in an era of rival claims for global leadership and calls for fiscal austerity, the development of a U.S. strategy to propel freedom forward poses a serious challenge. Thus far, the presidential candidates have failed to grapple with the complexities of this challenge, and the discussion has been far from illuminating, to put it mildly.

After a democratic power transfer, Zambia must tackle Chinese investment issues and human rights reforms

by Thomas R. Lansner*
Guest Writer

The victory of opposition Patriotic Front leader Michael Sata in Zambia’s September presidential election was a welcome example of an almost entirely peaceful rotation of power in a maturing African electoral democracy. President Sata can now carry Zambia further into a position of continental leadership by quickly making good on three campaign promises: revising Zambia’s draft constitution to better protect basic freedoms, fighting corruption, and properly protecting the rights of all Zambian workers, especially those employed in the growing number of Chinese-owned mines and related industries.

The election stands as a credit to the vast majority of Zambians who desired and worked for a fair campaign and a free vote. Civil society groups fielded domestic election observers and deployed new technological platforms for reporting potential irregularities. The Electoral Commission of Zambia conducted a massive voter registration campaign and supervised a largely transparent and efficient electoral process, one that was endorsed by international observers despite shortcomings such as the use of state resources and state media to support incumbent president Rupiah Banda and his Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD). Yet Banda conceded Sata’s convincing victory in a timely and graceful manner after initial delays in reporting results sparked scattered rioting in Patriotic Front strongholds in northern Zambia.

South Africa’s press freedom tug-of-war

by Karin Deutsch Karlekar
Project Director, Freedom of the Press

Threats to media freedom in South Africa—which has had one of the most open press environments on the continent since the end of apartheid more than 15 years ago—have increased in recent years, raising fears of backsliding in a country seen as a model in the region. These threats have occurred in the context of multiple challenges to democratic consolidation, including recent encroachments on judicial independence and other institutions that provide checks and balances on executive power. In addition, an upsurge of inflammatory rhetoric directed at the white minority, particularly by the faction headed by Julius Malema, president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) Youth League, has led to the overt injection of race into various debates on political and socioeconomic issues and resulted in increased self-censorship by non-blacks on a range of issues.

Press Freedom under Continued Threat in Emerging Democracies

 

Freedom House’s annual Freedom of the Press survey was released this week in honor of World Press Freedom Day on May 3. The results reveal a continued and troubling decline in freedom of expression across the world. While inspiring in many ways, the events of the so-called “Arab Spring” have demonstrated both longstanding and emerging threats to freedom of expression and access to information in emerging democracies—the unprecedented and complete closure of the internet in Egypt, crackdowns on social media across the Arab world, and bizarre state media responses to popular protests. As a global survey, Freedom of the Press 2011: A Global Survey of Media Independence offers a broad look at the wide range of threats to freedom of expression across the world. As the summer release of Countries at the Crossroads 2011 grows nearer, Freedom of the Press findings illustrate some troubling trends in the countries featured in the 2011 publication. While Countries at the Crossroads 2011 will cover wide range of democratic governance issues in a set of countries that ranges in governance quality from Greece to Libya, the press results highlighted in Freedom of the Press are telling. Unfortunately, a regional overview shows striking uniformity in the direction of press freedom across the globe.

Given the benefit of hindsight, it is not surprising that freedom of expression came under fire in the Middle East and North Africa in 2010. With the extent of popular discontent becoming obvious, it is clear that governments sought to suppress dissent in all forms, in part by constricting the space within which media outlets could operate. Libya and Syria, both of which have a long history of media repression, experienced score declines, in part because of crackdowns on independent media and arrests of bloggers.  Egypt’s now-vanished Mubarak regime, however, was the source of the most dramatic regional change. Mubarak and the National Democratic Party’s decisive crackdown on virtually all forms of media prior to the November 2010 parliamentary elections resulted in a downgrade of the country’s status from Partly Free to Not Free. As explored in this blog post, and elsewhere, the Mubarak regime shut down talk shows and newspaper columns, physically and legally harassed journalists and bloggers, and even suspended live television broadcasts prior to the elections to try to ensure that the widespread fraud and other violations that took place during the electoral season were not discussed publically. Of course, as subsequent events demonstrated, such increased pressure served only to tighten the lid on a pressure cooker that was primed to explode.

Freedom of the press was similarly restricted in Asia. Thailand’s government used the 2007 Computer Crimes Act to discourage critical discussion online, for example by demanding the removal of comments critical of the government, and continued to use its lèse-majesté laws to silence opposition voices by declaring any criticism an insult to the king. This resulted in a downgrade of the country’s press freedom status from Partly Free to Not Free. China, in addition to its regular practice of limiting coverage of a wide range of issues of public interest, clamped down yet further on its media after imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Both countries, along with a set of states such as Pakistan and the Philippines, where tension exists between a vibrant press and a sometimes lawless environment, will be featured in the upcoming edition of Crossroads.

The only region with modest improvements was Sub-Saharan Africa, where at least three Countries at the Crossroads countries improved their scores over the course of the year. Senegal’s score improved after a decrease in advertising boycotts designed to silence opposition sources, and Mauritania’s score got better following a law enabling private investment in broadcasting. These gains, however, are marred by deteriorating press freedoms elsewhere in the region.  Madagascar’s ongoing political instability provided an environment for the government to constrict independent media by harassing and expelling journalists and pursuing spurious criminal defamation charges. Eritrea, a perennial opponent of freedom of expression continued to jail independent journalists imprisoned without reason after the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States.

The Latin American countries that experienced the most dramatic changes in press freedom – particularly Mexico and Honduras, which moved from Partly Free to Not Free – were featured in Countries at the Crossroads 2010. Of the countries in the upcoming edition, Bolivia and Ecuador continued a trend of decline in recent years. In Ecuador in particular, President Rafael Correa’s acute sensitivity and eagerness to vilify the press exacerbated an already polarized environment. On the other hand, Colombia and Peru, each of which had declined in 2009, managed to halt their slide (Peru) or experience a mild increase (Colombia). Venezuela, which will complete the set of Andean countries included in the 2011 edition of Crossroads, remained, after Cuba, the most restrictive country in the hemisphere with respect to press freedom.

This view of the state of freedom of expression in a set of countries that will be explored in greater breadth in Countries at the Crossroads 2011 suggests that press freedom continues to be under threat in emerging and consolidating democracies. Press freedom has occasionally been dubbed the “canary in the coal mine” as it relates to the democracy’s trajectory. Nonetheless, the broader context of threats against the media is critical, and it is precisely this context that will be explored in Countries at the Crossroads 2011. For example, the limitations in the rule of law and judicial systems that allow such attacks on journalists to go unanswered, as well as the political pathologies – personalized rule, corruption, etc – that create incentives to silence the press will be assessed. Conversely, for countries undergoing where the governance evolution has been positive, it will also demonstrate the centrality of a vibrant press to the democratic process. But as the results of Freedom of the Press 2011 make clear, far too many states remain subject to the unfortunate irony that those countries most unable or unwilling to ensure an open media environment are often the ones that most desperately need vibrant and diverse media coverage.

Are CP and ESC rights mutually exclusive?

Photo credit: Flickr user Forum PA

 

This blog’s previous post explored ways in which authoritarian leaders emphasize economic, social, and cultural (ESC) rights to divert attention away from civil and political (CP) rights, often implying that they must limit or postpone the latter in order to protect and promote the former.  Self-serving authoritarian distortions aside, the persistence of the idea that CP rights are only feasible or useful after ESC rights have been established suggests that a look at the broader relationship between economic development and CP rights is warranted. In fact, not only is the idea that authoritarian political systems are better equipped to promote development unproven, but increasing evidence shows that democratic rights and development can actually reinforce each other.

From a theoretical perspective, Amartya Sen is perhaps the best-known thinker to weigh in on the role of CP rights in economic development, most famously in his book Development as Freedom, where he stresses that the value of political freedoms does not have to be strictly tied to their effect on economic growth—CP rights contribute to economic development, he says, but that value is over and above their direct (“constitutive,” in Sen’s parlance) role.  Indeed, Sen centers his definition of development on CP rights, arguing that development requires the removal of major sources of “unfreedom,” including tyranny, systematic social deprivation, and intolerance or overactivity of repressive states.  In his view, development is not just about changes in economic status, but about the expansion of human capabilities.  Most basically, then, the goal of development is to enrich people’s ability to choose how they want to live.

Sen’s holistic view of development demonstrates that it is not just economic growth that governments should pay attention to, but the ways in which development can enrich human lives more generally. By enabling people to have a say in the way that economic development happens, including the extent to which economic policy establishes safeguards for ESC rights, CP rights are an integral part of this enrichment.  Political rights enable the expression of people’s preferences and priorities, which are important informational inputs to the policy process.  The integration of more people into a political system channels more viewpoints into that process and increases ownership in political decisions, which can be important in ameliorating public discontent in lean times.  CP rights do not guarantee, of course, that policy changes will be effective or easy, but they can be an important pressure valve to mediate grievances.

Similarly, in an early evaluation of the case for the prioritization of ESC rights at the expense of CP rights, Rhoda Howard argued that the costs of not allowing CP rights far exceed the costs of allowing them.  Closed political systems prevent full input to the development process and, because there is little input from the majority of the country, it is likely that new policies will promote elite interests. (Note that the overlap between economic development and ESC rights is less-than-complete. Authoritarian governments tend to conflate specific metrics—particularly GDP growth—with expanding ESC rights.  While it is true that economic growth is often the means through which broad improvements in living standards are obtained, the uneven and often inequitable nature of economic development means that GDP growth is not a synonym for increased ESC rights.)  Distribution issues aside, popular input is also essential to the dignity of the people that economic reforms are intended to benefit.  Howard quotes an anonymous participant in a 1966 human rights seminar in Dakar, in a statement that remains compelling almost 50 years later: “To sacrifice the liberties inherent in the human personality in the name of economic development…[is] to reduce the individual to the role of producer and consumer of goods, which…[is] far too high a price to pay for improving the material conditions of existence.” (490) 

Moreover, more recent empirical research suggests that there is nothing mutually exclusive between the promotion of CP rights and attaining improvements in ESC rights.  For one thing, there is no clear indication that authoritarian power and the political restrictions it entails make it easier to create economic growth.  As economist William Easterly points out, for every case of impressive growth under authoritarian leadership (e.g., Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew), there are numerous equally distressing cases of stagnation and poverty (e.g., Cameroon, where—despite high revenues in oil wealth and foreign development assistance—the average citizen is poorer today than when President Paul Biya took power in 1982). 

In a recent book, Emerging Africa: How 17 Countries are Leading the Way, economist Steve Radelet offers additional demonstration that economic development can go hand-in-hand with democratic political development. Radelet looks at a set of 17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have achieved dramatic gains in economic growth, poverty reduction, and political accountability since the mid-1990s, including Ghana, Mali, Tanzania, and Cape Verde.  To be sure, economic progress has not always been rapid or predictable, and the protection of CP rights in these states is not always ideal, but this group of countries, home to more than 300 million people, shows that one need not restrict or curtail CP rights in the name of economic growth.

CP rights can actually be an important part of the economic development process.  Economist Dani Rodrik compares economic growth in democratic and authoritarian countries:

“[Democracies] provide much greater economic stability, measured by the ups and downs of the business cycle. They are better at adjusting to external economic shocks (such as terms-of-trade declines or sudden stops in capital inflows). They generate more investment in human capital – health and education. And they produce more equitable societies.

Authoritarian regimes, by contrast, ultimately produce economies that are as fragile as their political systems. Their economic potency, when it exists, rests on the strength of individual leaders, or on favorable but temporary circumstances. They cannot aspire to continued economic innovation or to global economic leadership.”

Adding to the empirical evidence, the recent book The Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace takes aim what the authors call the "authoritarian advantage doctrine," deconstructing the myth that authoritarian states are better able to establish conditions for economic growth.  The authors found that the typical authoritarian government's economic performance is terrible--in fact, they say, 95 percent of the worst economic performances over the last 40 years occurred in non-democracies. The Democracy Advantage identifies a set of 70 low-income countries that have clearly advanced toward democracy over the past two decades and finds that these poor, nascent democracies performed better than authoritarian governments in a range of indicators directly related to ESC rights, including literacy, access to clean water, life expectancy, infant mortality, and agricultural productivity.  Echoing the analyses mentioned above, the authors argue that democracies’ traits of shared power, openness, and adaptability better position them to formulate nuanced policies.  Though democracies and democratizing countries do not always achieve the dramatic gains that some authoritarian governments do, they tend to be more resilient in weathering the economic crises that often cause ESC rights to regress.  The authors quote democracy scholar Adam Przeworski to sum up their findings: "There was never any solid evidence that democracies were somehow inferior in generating growth-certainly not enough to justify supporting or even condoning dictatorships."  

Thus, given that authoritarian restrictions on civil and political rights are not necessary to build economic growth or to promote ESC rights, the touting of material gains by authoritarian and semi-authoritarian governments should be viewed skeptically. In a world of scarce resources there are, of course, trade-offs in any government policy. And the debate over the relative importance of ESC and CP rights is a valuable one, as is the argument over the developed world’s responsibility in helping achieve improve ESC rights around the globe. But participants in that debate are well served by bearing in mind its real world manifestations – in particular, the abuse of the ESC-first argument by undemocratic states that impose unjustifiable limitations on core human freedoms. Even as these cynical leaders amplify the debate, they also cheapen it. In a context in which the advance of core CP rights has been on extremely shaky ground in recent years, it is critical that the engagement of analysts, activists, and policymakers around the world are appropriately grounded in both facts and principles about the basic rights that every human should enjoy.

 

 

 

 

ESC rights and authoritarian distortions

More than sixty years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the importance of human rights is well established in the international community.  Despite this general acceptance, however, debate persists on the ways in which human rights should be protected and prioritized in different communities and cultures, particularly in the context of political and economic development. The division between civil and political rights, on the one side, and economic, social, and cultural rights, on the other, was first outlined in 1966 and continues to shape the way human rights activists, governments, and citizens approach these questions. This post is the second in a series about the interaction between these two categories of rights and the ways in which that delineation influences the global debate regarding political and economic development. 

Continuing with the discussion from the previous post, while there is widespread agreement that ESC and CP rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated (see Article 5 of the Vienna Declaration from the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, disagreement continues over the interaction and prioritization of the two groups of rights. The debate over sequencing, responsibility for implementation, and urgency is both interesting and necessary, and given the diversity of cultures and polities, there is no definitive answer. However, there is one group of governments for whom the decision to vocally advocate for ESC prioritization is an easy one: authoritarian regimes.

The fundamental idea behind emphasizing ESC rights is that given the tradeoffs imposed by scarce resources, governments in underdeveloped countries must prioritize certain aspects of development; given the need to relieve poverty, ESC rights are defined as the most pressing.   This claim essentially stems from the adage that “you can’t eat democracy,” i.e., that economic growth is urgent to combat deprivation of basic needs, and that CP rights are largely irrelevant in the context of dire poverty.

This perspective has been popular for decades and was prevalent in postcolonial governments struggling to build institutions and promote economic development.  Tanzania’s first president, democratically-elected Julius Nyerere, eloquently captured the idea: “What freedom has our subsistence farmer?  He scratches a bare living from the soil provided the rains do not fail; his children work at his side without schooling, medical care, or even good feeding.  Certainly he has freedom to vote and to speak as he wishes.  But these freedoms are much less real to him than his freedom to be exploited.  Only as his poverty is reduced will his existing political freedom become properly meaningful and his right to human dignity become a fact of human dignity.”  Ghana’s Ignatius Acheampong, a military leader who came to power in a coup d’état in 1972, was more direct: “‘One man, one vote’ is meaningless unless accompanied by the principle of ‘one man, one bread.’”  (Both quoted in The Concept of Human Rights in Africa by Issa G. Shivji, p. 26.)

While Nyerere’s statement offers legitimate philosophical fodder, the potential for authoritarian and semi-authoritarian governments to exploit the idea is evident, and indeed this is what many have done. Undemocratic regimes regularly divert attention away from serious repression of CP rights by disingenuously appealing to the internationally accepted discourse of ESC rights.  This is not to say that governments in underdeveloped countries and elsewhere do not face difficult decisions in the implementation of human rights – though, as a subsequent post will show, economic research strongly suggests that there is no need to sacrifice one group of rights for another in the pursuit of economic growth – but it is important in evaluating the ESC-first argument to note that many of its most prominent proponents are authoritarian or hybrid regimes that are happy to talk about economic gains but less keen on discussing the CP rights they curtail.

China, for example, has aggressively emphasized ESC rights even as the ruling party’s repressive apparatus remains as robust as ever.  This is clear in the recently-released, government-produced report, “Progress in China’s Human Rights in 2009,” which highlights what it considers to be notable advances in domestic human rights conditions.  The report emphasizes economic indicators: increasing numbers of phone users and car owners, gains in tourism, booming construction, etc.  It does mention some fundamental ESC indicators, including improvements in access to clean water and healthcare and decreases in poverty, but the overall emphasis is heavy on consumption-related metrics and the ways in which the country has evaded the most negative effects of the global financial crisis.  In fact, the study links shortcomings in China’s human rights record directly to the country’s still-low level of economic development, as opposed to any political policies: “China is a developing country with a population of 1.3 billion.  Due to its inadequate and unbalanced development, there is still much room for improvement in its human rights conditions.”

What China’s report conspicuously lacks, among other things, is any discussion of the CP rights the government notoriously curtails. (For examples, see Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2010, and the government’s extensive censorship binge and police crackdown following the announcement of political dissident Liu Xiaobo as winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. 

Similarly, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez eagerly touts economic development under his administration, but responds to allegations that his administration has circumscribed political freedoms dismissively or with vitriolic denunciations of preceding administrations.  In a rare interview with the English-language press, Chavez pointed to a range of economic indicators related to ESC rights, including halved unemployment and decreases in extreme poverty.  Chavez angrily refused, however, to discuss charges that Venezuela has regressed on political rights, and resorted to personal attacks on the journalist who brought up the charges.  Similarly, when the Organization of American States (OAS) released a report citing Venezuela’s attacks on freedom of expression and its harassment of opposition parties, Chavez condemned the organization as a “mafia” and threatened to withdraw.  Ironically, the report praised the Venezuelan government for its progress in reducing poverty and illiteracy and increasing healthcare access.

Rwanda offers another example. President Paul Kagame has very publicly highlighted Rwanda’s post-genocide economic performance, and he based his recent reelection campaign in large part on Rwanda’s economic growth since 1994. Indeed, the Rwandan economy has made huge gains, more than doubling per capita income, increasing life expectancy by seven years, and improving access to education.  In contrast, the outlook for CP rights is dramatically less rosy: the recent election period included the killings of an opposition leader and the deputy editor of an opposition newspaper, the arrest of one of Kagame’s electoral opponents, and suppression of opposition parties, among many other issues. Though the government denies having any role in the violent incidents, most observers of Rwanda – and even many of Kagame’s defenders – agree that CP rights in Rwanda are only present insofar as the president perceives them as not threatening his administration’s stranglehold on power.

Like Kagame, other leaders often described as “donor darlings” frequently embrace these ideas. During the 1990s, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni resisted international pressure for a multiparty political system by arguing that Uganda and much of Africa was not ready for full democracy because, without a thriving economy and a stable middle class, political mobilization would inevitably occur around ethnicity and other divisive issues, as opposed to political ideals. More than a decade later, Uganda still shows few signs of greater pluralism, even as the Ugandan political class is viewed as insular and corrupt. Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen has been happy to discuss the country’s impressive economic progress, but is stubbornly unwilling to complement the gains with genuine democratic reform.  Indeed, whether the subject is economic vulnerability or corruption, the government prefers aggressive denunciation and indignant dismissal to engagement or reflection.   

Each of these leaders has their excuses. Rwanda’s Kagame, echoing Nyerere and others, resists discussion of political repression by arguing that Rwandans are not interested in political freedoms until they reach a sufficient level of economic prosperity.  As he said in one interview, "Democracy and human rights are niceties and are all important, but tell me, if somebody is wondering if they have anything to eat, they are not listening.  It's a fact that when somebody has food, when you bring another message, then they listen." Left undefined is precisely when basic political freedoms become a priority; it is hard to believe, given the repeated attempts to form an effective opposition in Rwanda despite the government’s abuses, that these are issues that Rwandan citizens do not care about. 

China’s economic success and its increasing visibility through investment in Africa and elsewhere have inspired ideas of alternative paths to development, many of them based on the premise that single-party rule and a strong state can avoid the instability associated with democratization while accelerating economic growth.  And it is true that China’s economic development has produced clear benefits for many of its citizens and has increased access to some core ESC rights, as has growth in Rwanda, Venezuela (where economic conditions look increasingly shaky), and elsewhere.  However, the inordinate emphasis on economic progress and the refusal to discuss political repression invites skepticism. For a leader who wishes to prolong his (seemingly never “her”) rule and establish his indispensability, it is certainly convenient for a country to need to reach some eternally-vague level of development and stability before CP rights can expand. Even assuming that many such leaders sincerely care about development (as opposed to true kleptocrats and sociopaths), the self-serving nature of these arguments is clear. The unwillingness to debate CP rights is also telling: if these leaders are truly so rights-oriented, what do they have to hide?  A subsequent post will look at the interrelationship between CP and ESC rights, including evidence that the two are actually mutually reinforcing rather than mutually exclusive.

 

 

Are gay rights backsliding in Africa?

 

Photo credit: Flickr user max_thinks_sees

The difficult struggle for gay rights is ongoing all over the world, but a few cases in Africa raise the troubling possibility that the effort may actually be backsliding. While some Countries at the Crossroads states, like Argentina, have made encouraging advances in civil rights for gay couples, a number of African states are falling behind. Growing antipathy for gay rights was exemplified this week at the African Anglican Church conference in Uganda, where over 400 bishops renewed their condemnation of homosexuality.  Speaking in reference to international pressure to promote gay rights, Archbishop of the Church of Uganda Henry Luke Orombi said, “Homosexuality is evil, abnormal, and unnatural as per the Bible. It is a culturally unacceptable practice. Although there is a lot of pressure, we cannot turn our hands to support it.”

Uganda attracted international attention in the fall of 2009 when a member of parliament, David Bahati, proposed a bill that would impose the death penalty for certain homosexual acts and would even criminalize (with the possibility of up to seven years in prison) the failure to report known homosexuals. As in most of Africa, homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda, but Bahati and his many supporters argued that stricter laws and enforcement were necessary to protect Ugandan children and stop the spread of homosexuality, a behavior he considers both “learnt” and “foreign.”

The bill garnered significant public support (and opposition) in highly religious Uganda, but it sparked so much international outrage (including threats to cut international development aid) that President Yoweri Museveni formed a committee to review the bill. The committee recommended that the bill be withdrawn and it has been tabled for now, but the public response throughout the episode revealed rampant homophobia in the country. Supporters of the bill called homosexual behavior “deviant” and “sick” and Bahati himself said that he wanted “to kill every last gay person.” Even some opposition to the bill was laced with antigay stereotypes. One opposition op-ed, for instance, complained, “I really resent the word Gay bring annexed and monopolized by homosexuals and lesbians,” cautioned against adoption rights for same-sex couples (so that the children in question do not adopt their parents’ sexual preferences), recommended that homosexuals display “decorousness” to avoid offense, and cautioned against same-sex marketing to children. Though the bill is currently tabled, there is a possibility that Museveni or any other politician will reinvigorate the issue to build quick public support. Gay rights are thus subject to the precarious whims of political life.

Unfortunately, virulent homophobia is not exclusive to Uganda. A recent Pew poll estimated that 97 percent of Nigerians disapprove of homosexuality. In Ghana, which like Nigeria criminalizes homosexuality, the rumor of a gay rights conference in Accra incited so much opposition that the government issued a public statement declaring its staunch opposition to homosexuality. By the time it was revealed that the conference was not in fact real, the government had already made clear that gay community and its supporters had no freedom to associate in Ghana. In Malawi, a gay couple wassentenced to 14 years in jail in 2010 for committing unnatural acts; only following pressure from outside donors did the president pardon the couple. Kenya has likewise experienced antigay protests in 2010, especially following allegations of a planned gay wedding in February.

All of the above cases are made more complex by the fact that it is not only the legal environment that is relevant—members of the gay community must also contend social opposition to homosexuality, including violence inflicted at home and in religious institutions. Reports of sexual assault by police and “corrective rape” to “cure” homosexuality are common. Even South Africa, which in many ways is a striking and hopeful exception to the antigay trend, social opposition to homosexuality persists. Same sex couples in South Africa have the right to marry and adopt, but social norms have prevented the full realization of gay rights. Antigay violence is not uncommon, and there are no hate crime laws to protect gay communities from such attacks.

The question of international influence is complex with respect to Africa’s struggle over gay rights. Antigay activists often boast close relationships with Western evangelical leaders, and members of the American evangelical community, including the popular Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church in California, have expressed support for campaigns to criminalize homosexuality in Africa. On the other hand, international advocacy groups have spent considerable time and money attempting to combat such attitudes. For their part, Bahati and others claim that homosexuality is a foreign behavior nonexistent in African culture. Foreigners try to infiltrate African culture, they say, by plying the young and poor with material benefits in exchange for exposure to the “gay lifestyle.” Gay rights advocates argue in response that undue foreign influence is demonstrated instead in the legal language that criminalizes homosexuality, as many of the phrases used to criminalize homosexual behavior in African law are in fact a remnant of colonial legal systems. It is unclear then how the international community can most effectively oppose the spread of antigay legislation when opposition to laws like Bahati’s is routinely chalked up to neocolonial meddling—an allegation that donor threats to cut development aid, however well intentioned, play into. Moreover, many Western nations, including the United States, have failed to adopt norms to place the rights of gays on equal footing with other citizens. Despite these complexities and the sensitivities inherent in addressing issues that touch on supposed cultural taboos, a universal approach to human rights demands that rights advocates continue to monitor and speak out against anti-homosexual discrimination and criminalization.

 

ANC Proposals Threaten Press Freedom

Photo credit: Flickr user kool_skatkat

As noted in a recent Freedom House press release and in increasing coverage in South Africa and abroad, South Africa’s parliament, dominated by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, is under fire for two contentious proposals to regulate the media. The Protection of Information Bill currently before parliament dramatically decreases the threshold for the classification of information and establishes heavy penalties, including jail, for the leak or publication of official or classified material. The bill, an earlier draft of which was rejected because of concerns that it would create excessive official secrecy, also establishes broad barriers to accessing classified information. Among these barriers is the stipulation that appeals of the classification process must be directed to the very bodies that originally classified the information in question. Up for party review in September is a second measure that would create a Media Appeals Tribunal (MAT), a statutory body accountable to the parliament that would adjudicate complaints against media outlets, including the application of punitive powers. The ANC has defended the measures as necessary steps to encourage media responsibility, but critics in South Africa and the international community have denounced the proposals as fundamental threats to press freedom and have questioned their constitutionality.

As Freedom House’s press release states, South Africa moved from Free to Partly Free in the Freedom of the Press 2010 survey. This decline was due to an increase in hostile rhetoric toward the media on the part of government officials and government encroachment on the independence of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). The 2010 Countries at the Crossroads South Africa report further documents the ANC’s increasing sensitivity to media criticism, including a 2008 defamation lawsuit launched by ANC president Jacob Zuma over a political cartoon that depicted Zuma unbuckling his belt in front of a woman who is being constrained by ANC colleagues. A banner across the woman’s body suggests she is a symbol of the judicial system, the implication being that Zuma and other ANC leaders were “raping” that system. Zuma, now president of South Africa, charged not only the cartoonist, but also the paper that printed the piece and the paper’s holding company, in the US$700,000 lawsuit. More recently, journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika was arrested without a warrant shortly after he coauthored an article on an illegal lease agreement in which the police national commissioner was involved.

The proposed measures raise a number of problems. Primarily, they represent a serious threat to the media’s traditional role as a watchdog of government and business. The provisions of the information bill and the MAT would prevent journalists from freely reporting on allegations of parliamentary corruption or exposing government incompetence. Predicting that the proposals will create a “society of secrets,” the African Democracy Institute argued that the threat of prosecution would encourage regular citizens to engage in self-censorship to avoid prosecution, an effect that would dramatically threaten freedom of speech. Apartheid-era laws and the 2009 Film and Publications act already discourage critical coverage of the government; the recent proposals might very well banish it.

The proposals also constrict access to commercial information.  Speaking in favor of economic freedom, Business Leadership South Africa chairman Bobby Godsell declared that “the economic freedom on which business depends flourishes best when citizens are able to rely on an unfettered flow of information that is free from excessive government control and regulation.” He also expressed concern that growing international concern over the matter tarnished South Africa’s image in important international markets. The fact that the organization, which represents companies that pay 80 percent of corporate taxes in South Africa, has expressed concern that the ANC’s proposals raise “the prospect of a media answerable to political bosses” suggests that the ANC will face entrenched opposition beyond its traditional adversaries in the media if it continues to pursue these measures.

The outcry against the proposals has come from both foreign and domestic sources. South African journalists have come out strongly against the proposals. In an August 8 declaration, 36 print editors expressed deep concern over the proposed legislation and tribunal and appealed to the ANC to “abide by the founding principles of our democracy” by abandoning the proposals. The Federation of African Journalists, the African Regional Organization of the International Federation of Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the International Press Institute have all condemned the proposals. Most recently, a group of South African writers, many of whom were silenced by apartheid censorship, declared publicly that the proposals threatened a return to the strict media controls of that era.

The ANC has launched a vehement defense of the proposals, claiming that they are necessary steps to increase accountability in the media. Under the current regulatory system, a press ombudsman fields media-related disputes. The ANC argues that this system is biased toward journalists, given that the current ombudsman is himself a former journalist, and that its lack of punitive powers renders its rulings inconsequential. The ombudsman has in fact issued strong rulings against the media, including ordering the publication of several prominent apologies, but the highly controversial ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema says that this is not enough. Claiming that the current system allows journalists to act as if they are above the law, he declared, “These people are dangerous. They write gossip and present it as facts.” 

Zuma himself defended the proposals on the party’s website, where he characterized the media as inadequately reflective of the South African population, particularly its poor communities, and argued that it is dominated by biased commercial interests that incentivize salacious reporting. It is unclear, however, how the tribunal or the information bill would rectify any of the shortcomings he outlines. Critics have called on the ANC to prove that parliamentary appointments to the tribunal would be fair, to demonstrate that the current system is failing, and to provide statistics on the number of citizen complaints about the current media appeals system. Zuma’s case fails to answer any of these questions.

The question of monopolistic media ownership and its effect on representative media in fact figures prominently in media battles everywhere. A parallel to South Africa’s current debate can be found in a recent entry on Latin America that documents ways in which media wars can reflect political power struggles and the long-term challenges of updating legal frameworks for media in post-authoritarian countries.  Cases in both Ecuador and Argentina show how ruling parties can use valid critiques of media ownership and bias to advance policies that considerably expand government control over the media. If the sizeable backlash against such policies in those cases is any guide, the ANC is likely to find its proposals mired in controversy for quite some time. If the ANC wishes to avoid the pitfalls that these and other regimes have suffered, it should identify ways to encourage media responsibility that do not involve extensive government (and party) control. A responsible and vibrant press is vital to democratic development. Occasionally offending the delicate sensibilities of politicians is a feature, not a bug.

Corruption Aggravates Flailing Ugandan AIDS Fight

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A recent New York Times article examined Uganda’s deteriorating war against AIDS. Major clinics have begun to deny treatment as funds from the U.S. and other international donors have dried up due to both the global economic recession’s impact on donors and frustration with the course of the war against the incurable disease, which now affects 33 million people worldwide. In the face of this fatiguing challenge, major donors such as the United States and Great Britain have shifted their attention to diseases that are more treatable and cheaper to combat, especially child-killers like diarrhea and measles. However, another reason for the freeze on U.S. funding for AIDS in Uganda is the lack of transparency in the distribution of funds. In fact, the U.S. considered increasing Uganda’s funding by $38 million, but decided against it after Ugandan ministers were found to be siphoning off funds received from other donors. Although the ministers were forced to pay back the money, they were not jailed for their crimes. The entire situation is a particularly tragic example of Uganda’s serious corruption problem and its deleterious effects.

Corruption in Uganda is endemic, especially within the public sector, where the line between the official and private interests of government officers is blurred. Several high profile abuse of office cases have surfaced in Uganda in the past few years, many of which involved the theft of public health funds. From 2006-2009, several Ugandan ministers were accused of diverting money donated by global health organizations, prompting an important lender, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, to end two grants. However, the problem is not unique to the public health sector. Ugandan officials have also been implicated in the diversion of funds from the army and the National Social Security Fund. Public corruption is also strongly linked to shoddy procurement practices, which are estimated to cost the government roughly $100 million a year and recently led important donors such as the U.S., the EU, and the World Bank to voice concerns that Uganda’s newly discovered oil reserves will not trickle down to Ugandan citizens but instead be lost to corruption. Furthermore, graft occurs not only at the high levels of government, but extends to local government institutions, where district councils are prone to misusing government money earmarked for rural development and demanding bribes in return for basic services. All of these facets of Uganda’s corruption problem serious harm the country’s development prospects. 

According to the Countries at the Crossroads report on Uganda, the government has made some preliminary attempts to address this problem, largely by reinforcing its institutional anticorruption framework through such measures as the creation of the Anti-Corruption Division of the High Court. The government of President Yoweri Museveni has also for the most part allowed the Inspectorate of Government, the main anticorruption body, to act independently in an energetic recent campaign against corruption, during which it arrested 37 officials and seized public assets that were diverted by officials for their personal use. However, laws governing corruption in Uganda are unevenly enforced, with justice dispensed according to political considerations and thereby failing to challenge a culture in which high-level corruption is generally tolerated. Hence the country’s abysmal performance in Transparency International’s 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index, which ranked Uganda 130 out of 180 countries.

As the current shortage of funding for AIDS demonstrates, the consequences of Uganda’s failure to promote a climate of transparency and accountability are severe. In this case and in others, Uganda’s corruption problem has had a concrete effect on citizens’ lives and well being. Ugandans with AIDS have been turned away from hospitals due to drug shortages, with the attendant ill effects on their personal health but also indirect effects: denied coverage leads to drug sharing among family members and accelerated development of drug-resistant AIDS strains. Given foreign aid’s perennial political unpopularity in many donor nations, recession-induced fiscal retrenchment might well have caused a reduction in funds regardless. However, tales of graft and misdirected funds provide a basis for arguments that such assistance is a “waste” of taxpayer money. Moreover, Uganda’s failure to increase its efforts to combat corruption may lead donors to reconsider a broader range of assistance efforts, including the fight against other diseases as well as other social or economic projects. 

Unfortunately, similar corruption issues were identified in most of the African countries examined in Crossroads’ 2010 edition. While the gravity of these countries’ graft problems varies, comprehensive steps towards uprooting corruption have generally been absent. Indeed, from 2006-2010, Uganda, Nigeria, Malawi, Kenya, and South Africa all registered declines in their Anticorruption and Transparency scores. Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe improved their scores slightly, but both remain at extremely low levels. Only Tanzania was singled out as having made notable progress, and even then, it remains highly vulnerable to ongoing graft. Other countries may thus soon find themselves in the same situation as Uganda as donors take pause before disbursing scarce funds to countries with poor transparency and corruption records. The course of the global economy is largely out of the hands of most developing countries, so economic downturns will always carry the risk of donor cutbacks. But states that fail to adequately assure clean government allow donors to more easily rationalize such decisions. Due to the particularly daunting challenge posed by AIDS, funds for treatment could be especially at risk. In the New York Times article cited above, Ambassador Eric Goosby, the U.S. global AIDS coordinator, stated, “I’m worried we’ll be in a ‘Kampala situation’ in other countries soon.” One can only hope that part of the Kampala lesson is that other countries’ domestic effort to encourage corruption-free governance is seen as an essential part of the fight.

Kenya's Simmering Governance Crisis Threatens to Boil Over

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By Thomas Lansner, Columbia School of International and Public Affairs

Professor Thomas Lansner, author of the Kenya report in Countries at the Crossroads 2010, observes that Kenya is currently confronting an outright crisis of governance. He argues that the country's political elite needs to end zero-sum politics in order to resolve the situation before it boils over into a nation-threatening catastrophe.

Kenya’s crisis of governance today threatens not only its peoples’ security and livelihoods, but potentially its continued existence as a state. Like other countries artificially and often arbitrarily created by external powers, its citizens share a constructed identity. Loyalty to such an identity is neither intrinsic nor unbreakable. It must be earned by the legitimacy of ruling institutions. And a notional national identity is even more tenuous if a country’s resources are perceived to be captured and distributed in ways that effectively exclude large portions of the population on the basis of race, religion, language, or ethnicity.

Since achieving independence from Britain in 1963, Kenya’s leaders have intensified ethno-linguistic rivalries over control of scarce resources, particularly land. As I reported in Freedom House’s 2010 Countries at the Crossroads, “The country’s ethnic divisions have been reinforced by successive generations of politicians who have used patronage to build personal and party loyalties based on ethno-regionalism.”

The effects of ethnic and clan-based patronage politics include endemic corruption and pervasive impunity that undermine the legitimacy of governmental institutions by weakening their efficacy and flouting their fairness. In Kenya today, checks and balances that in democratic systems are meant to control the more venal and brutal tendencies of the powerful are almost entirely absent. The judiciary is mostly emasculated. Governmental watchdogs remain toothless even if they raise alarm. The executive is virtually unaccountable for high crimes as well as misdemeanors.

Some hope for positive change in Kenya rises from an often vibrant — if still imperiled — mass media, and a growing network of civil society organizations that transcend ethnic lines and are building citizen pressure for better governance.  But these voices remain mostly ineffective at convincing powerholders to concede to their demands.

Is Kenya is en route to becoming a “failed state”? Lack of resources and capacities inhibit development even in countries with the best-intentioned administrations. If a country that does not or cannot provide security and justice and opportunities for its peoples is defined as failing, then Kenya would join a bevy of other nations, not all of them in the “developing” world, that should be so labeled. Honest efforts by accountable leaders can win citizen trust on which progress, even if gradual, and “nationhood” is built. Yet political infighting in Nairobi is so severe that the coalition cabinet has not even met since early February.

Kenya’s potentially catastrophic failure would be far broader than public dismay at poor performance: it would be active rejection by its citizens of the possibility that the state as constituted will ever serve all its peoples with a reasonable degree of fairness and competency. Absent this faith, other loyalties might prevail, and formally fracture the country among ethno-linguistic groupings that functioned as the precolonial loci of power.

This remains a worst-case scenario, but it is imaginable if Kenya’s leadership across political parties and ethnicities continue to place personal and group privilege ahead of justice. Deeply flawed December 2007 elections, contested largely along ethnic lines, evoked bloody confrontations—often promoted by various politicians—in which at least 1,100 people were killed. There are credible reports that ethnic militias that then nearly launched a civil war while battling mainly with spears, machetes, and bows and arrows are now stockpiling automatic weapons.

As the Countries at the Crossroads Kenya report urges, international pressure and mediation are desperately needed to help properly empower the country’s democratic institutions, and to ensure acceptable elections in 2012. Maintaining politics as a zero-sum competition for ethnic-based spoils, rather than an arena for national compromise, could drive Kenya to a conflagration it will be lucky as a nation to survive, and one that many of its citizens surely will not. Parliament's approval on April 1 of a draft constitution that will now go to a national referendum is an encouraging sign. But Kenya's recent history gives scant hope that the country's leaders will honor its highest laws, or their own most solemn promises.

Nigerian Power Vacuum Highlights Institutional Weakness

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On February 9, Nigeria’s presidential crisis reached its denouement, at least for now, when the National Assembly voted to install Vice President Goodluck Jonathan as acting president. Nigeria has effectively lacked a president since November, when President Umaru Yar’Adua left to seek medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. Yar’ Adua’s departure spurred a heated debate over the constitutional provisions regulating the matter, with some arguing that Yar’Adua violated the constitution by failing to hand his power over to the vice president, others (including the majority of the cabinet) countering that the president enjoyed a legal right to carry out his presidential duties abroad, and increasing numbers of Nigerians clamoring for his resignation. In the face of increasing unrest, with citizens taking to the streets with calls of “Umaru Where Are You” and rumors circulating of impending coup attempts, the National Assembly voted to empower Jonathan in the name of “peace, order and good government.” Unfortunately, it is unlikely that this ruling will achieve a lasting resolution of the matter, and the current turmoil is not an aberration, but rather a symptom of Nigeria’s unresolved institutional issues.

For one thing, informal understandings play a key role in the stability of the country’s democracy. In this case, contentious ethno-religious issues surrounding the presidency could be exacerbated as the ascendancy of Jonathan, a southern Christian, to the presidency in place of Yar’Adua, a northern Muslim, could throw a wrench in the tension-reducing system of alteration of power between members of the two faiths. In addition to the presidency, other institutions remain either frail or politically compromised, limiting the country’s ability to follow good governance practices. Political parties are feeble, with competitive politics rendered extremely difficult by the increasing dominance of the ruling People’s Democratic Party, which has been ensured through the manipulation of the state machinery, especially in the fraudulent 2007 elections. In a related vein, the country’s electoral institutions remain underdeveloped; the primary institution in charge of overseeing elections, the Independent Electoral Commission, has been accused of being a tool of the executive branch and implicated in several scandals. Promised electoral reforms geared toward addressing these issues have yet to arrive. In addition, the country’s new anticorruption institutions, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, have handed down few convictions, especially in cases implicating politicians with links to Yar’Adua. Finally, the government security apparatus continues to commit rampant abuses with impunity despite increased civilian control over the security sector.

The dilapidated nature of these institutions is inextricably linked to Nigeria’s political and social problems. Institutional ineffectiveness has paralyzed Nigeria’s response to serious internal challenges, most notably the presence of ethnic and religious tension between Muslims and Christians, which has claimed 13,500 lives since 1999, and the precarious peace in the Niger Delta, where the conflict over oil continues to simmer. Due to the institutional failure to address the root causes of these problems, they have persisted, with positive steps made towards resolution consistently impossible to maintain. Moreover, in some cases, the state’s incapacity to effectively provide basic services, an equitable distribution of resources, and the establishment of the rule of law directly contributed to the creation of the problems in the first place. It becomes a vicious circle: by fueling the most severe crises, institutional weaknesses has stymied efforts to address baseline governance concerns including electoral reform and corruption.

The eruption of violence in the months since Yar’Adua’s departure serves as an extreme example of the link between institutional failure-in this case the failure of the executive institution- and the country’s internal struggles. In the North, sectarian strife claimed more lives on January 19, when armed men, believed to be Christian, attacked the predominantly Muslim population of Kuru Karama, killing 150. The violence then spread to neighboring communities, where additional attacks brought the death toll up to at least 364.While this outbreak of violence was not the direct result of Yar'Adua's absence, the ethno-religious facet of presidential crisis, namely the alteration of power issue, has undoubtedly heightened tensions between the two groups during this time. The violence also illustrates that Muslim-Christian friction could stand to worsen if Yar'Adua cedes the rest of his term to a Christian. Following the attacks, Jonathan promised to immediately investigate the violence and bring the perpetrators to justice, although the halting pace of past investigations raises doubt over the probability of this taking place. This conflict was soon followed by an end to the truce in the Niger Delta. On January 30, Jomo Gbomo, declaring himself the spokesperson for a militant group known as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), announced the end of the ceasefire in the region, citing a belief that the government would never empower the region’s inhabitants with control over its hydrocarbon resources. The demise of the ceasefire was partly the result of the stalling of the amnesty program on account of Yar’ Adua’s absence.

Until Nigeria’s struggling institutions are empowered with increased capacity and find mechanisms to decrease the perceived zero-sum nature of politics, severe governance deficits will remain. Although no one would expect a country a country with such a short history of elected rule to feature pristine institutions, the lack of progress is disheartening, and a lack of political will has been a contributing factor. Regardless of the cause, the recent saga has crystallized the ongoing challenges, and hopefully will spur the country’s political class to do something about it.

Frelimo secures major victory in Mozambican elections

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Frelimo, the political party that has ruled Mozambique since the country became independent in 1975, scored a victory of unprecedented magnitude in the country’s October 28 presidential election. Frelimo has won every national election since the 1992 peace agreement, this time garnering 75 percent of the vote, in contrast to its main rival, Renamo, which took a mere 16.5 percent. While the victory was unambiguous, it enlarges already instilled fears about growing single party rule in Mozambique. 

With this result, Armando Guebuza, the incumbent president and one of the country’s wealthiest businessmen, surpassed his 2004 triumph over Renamo leader Afonso Dhaklama, when Guebuza gained 63.7 percent of the vote to Dhaklama’s 31.7 percent. According to the New York Times, Frelimo officials anticipated a dramatic victory, with the party spokesman claiming that the Frelimo was “really just competing with ourselves; our aim is to win by a margin greater than in the past.” The opposition party is challenging the election’s legitimacy. Warning of an impending “people’s revolt,” Dhaklama held a session on Thursday to discuss the party’s future and argued that the meeting must decide “whether Renamo will manage to survive as a political force in [Mozambique]; whether democracy will survive, or has ended with the October elections; or whether Renamo, as the force which brought about this democracy will have to launch a demonstration in protest against all that happened on 28 October.”

The history of rivalry between these competing political parties is decades long and marked by brutal violence. From 1975 to 1992, Frelimo and Renamo were the primary two warring armies in one of Africa’s most bloody civil wars (the country’s main north-south road is still adorned with ruined schools and burnt-out health clinics) and they became parties only after 1992. Today, however, what really raises eyebrows in not the competition between the two factions, but the lack thereof. With each additional Frelimo victory, Renamo sinks further; with no viable threat from a third party, only Frelimo is left to fill the vacuum. 

This year’s elections were marred long before Mozambicans went to the polls. In September, the country’s Frelimo-dominated National Election Commission (NEC) announced that because of inadequate paperwork, the newly formed Mozambique Democratic Movement could not compete in most of the country’s voting constituencies. Its creator, Daviz Simango, the mayor of Beira (and the only non-Frelimo mayor in Mozambique), was able to compete as one of three presidential candidates, but the NEC’s decision left MDM only able to win, at most, around a dozen of the 250 seats in parliament. 

While international observers reported no electoral irregularities that would have a significant effect on the results, some flaws were reported. The EU Election Observation Mission noted that officers refused to accept complaints from monitors of the political parties. Renamo is rejecting the results of the elections, accusing Frelimo of stuffing ballots and other acts of electoral fraud. The electoral commission acknowledged that workers at polling stations intentionally marked ballots with ink to invalidate them. And the Mozambican Public Integrity Center and the Association of European Parliamentarians for Africa revealed in their analysis that the commission also excluded more than 100,000 ballots. That said, considering the 58.5 percent margin, the irregularities were not nearly enough to change the outcome of the election. Similar observations were made in the country’s 2004 contest, with observers noting ballot-box stuffing, politicization of the NEC, and lack of transparency. Though highly critical of the country’s electoral conduct, the Mozambique Constitutional Council still accepted the election results.

Mozambique is not the only Countries at the Crossroads state in Africa where the prospect of single party rule seems to be looming ever closer. As discussed in an earlier post on this blog, the African National Congress’s overwhelming control of South Africa’s executive and legislative branches lends itself to the cultivation of corruption, as accountability mechanisms are rendered ineffective. Growing single party rule also affects Tanzania, where state officials favor the ruling party. While all political parties must gain permission from the police to hold rallies, for example, the ruling CCM party appears to hold rallies where and when it pleases, even as opposition parties have trouble securing permission. Moreover, Angola, perhaps the country with a history most similar to that of Mozambique, is a premier exemplar of the perils of single party dominance.

Growing single party rule is not just a threat to democracy on its own terms; rather, it has far reaching consequences for other governance spheres, often exacerbating both grand and petty corruption, unfair campaign finance practices, and inequitable rules on freedom of assembly. Although Frelimo’s victory at the polls is unlikely to be seriously challenged or reversed, the election flaws are not without consequence. Mozambique is the world’s ninth poorest country, with a per capita income of US$770 in 2008, and is highly dependent on foreign aid. The country has drawn in investment and donations as a result of its market-oriented policies and rich mineral resources, and has been seen as a “darling of foreign donors.” But those very donors have expressed disappointment in Frelimo’s electoral behavior.

With Parliament almost entirely under the control of Frelimo, and an entrenched culture of political influence in the judiciary, Guebuza’s actions are likely to be left unchecked by the country’s other political institutions. In the absence of such checks and without any viable challenge at the ballot box, democracy and the foreign aid upon which Mozambique is highly dependent are at risk.

Cultivation of Corruption Among South Africa's Elites

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Criminal proceeding against Jackie Selebi, the South African police commissioner, began in Johannesburg this month. Selebi, whose CV includes positions such as former ambassador to the United Nations and chief of the international crime group Interpol, is on trial for corruption and other serious crimes. In one of the more colorful moments of the trial thus far, Glenn Agliotti, one of the country’s more notorious drug smugglers, testified to picking up the tab for Selebi’s designer clothing. He also bought couture handbags for Mr. Selebi’s wife, and paid the commissioner about $135,000 in cash in exchange for sensitive information.

Agliotti, for his part, is accused of murdering a corrupt mining magnate in a separate trial, and made a deal with the state to testify in exchange for indemnity for his dealings with Selebi. 

South Africa is far from the most corrupt country in the world (it ranked 54th best out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index), yet neither is the anticorruption record of the country’s leaders impeccable. In 2004, Tony Yengeny, the anti-Apartheid activist and former African National Congress (ANC) speaker of parliament, was convicted for taking bribes from a weapons manufacturer. He served four months of a four-year prison sentence. And Jacob Zuma, the current president, was charged with corruption in 2005 and sacked from his position as deputy president, though after years of legal battles all charges were dropped in April 2009. The now-dormant charges against Zuma were related to a multi-billion dollar arms purchase in the 1990s an illustrative case as the awarding of government contracts has been an area of activity plagued by graft accusations.

The ANC’s overwhelming control of the executive and legislative branches lends itself to the cultivation of corruption, as accountability mechanisms are rendered ineffective. The Parliament has been criticized for failing to sufficiently investigate corruption scandals of members of the executive branch. In addition, political interference hampers the ability of the judiciary to fully combat corruption. The politicization of the judiciary was especially apparent in the corruption prosecution of Zuma and the suspension of Vusi Pikoli as National Director of Public Prosecutions by justice minister Brigitte Mabandla. In the latter case, it became apparent that the suspension was related at least partially to the fact that Pikoli approved an arrest warrant for Selebi.

South Africa’s constitution outlines three institutions meant to combat corruption, but for various reasons, none of them are fully effective. The Office of the Auditor General is responsible for reporting to the National Assembly on the finances of any agency that receives public funding, but suffers countless deficiencies such as a lack of resources and incomplete reporting by agencies. The Public Prosecutor investigates complaints on the part of the public against governmental officials, but its independence has been called into question, especially since the current PP, Leonard Mushwana, is a former ANC MP and has been accused of inhibiting investigations of senior ANC members and the party itself. Finally, while the Independent Electoral Commission regulates the public finances through the Represented Political Parties’ Fund, private contributions are totally unregulated, and parties do not have to reveal the size or sources of their donations. There are a handful of other, smaller agencies in the government that combat corruption, but all have similar limitations.

Furthermore, while South Africa has an independent media, government and especially ANC-affiliated officials have accused investigative journalists of treason or racism. A number of private newspapers and magazines—among them, the Mail & Guardian, the Cape Times, and the Sunday Times—express sharp criticism of the government, to which the ANC has been particularly sensitive. As a result, many private media outlets have been issued gag orders and lawsuits related to investigations into corruption, and the ANC has in some cases even threatened to withdraw advertising. 

As a result, about half of South Africa’s population believes corruption is widespread among government officials and civil servants. This perception is intensified by a heightened awareness of inequality between South Africa’s elites and the population as a whole. While much of South Africa’s society is poor and lacking running water, electricity, and toilets, members of the ruling class flaunt luxurious lifestyles. Haroon Bhroat, an economist at the University of Cape Town, reported that South Africa now harbors “the most unequal society in the world.” According to Bhroat’s calculations, South Africa’s Gini coefficient, which measures the level of income inequality in a given country, is at 0.679 (0 is completely equal, 1 is completely unequal). He warned that the situation could lead to social instability and, indeed, protests comprised of citizens from the lower rungs of society have recently broken out in Johannesburg.

President Zuma says he is committed to rooting out corruption, and in fact he has made some progress in certain fields. A “mood of intolerance” toward corruption is newly noticeable and criminal charges, rather than light wrist slaps, are becoming a more regular punishment for accused officials. He is also trying to make public finances more transparent and to create more barriers between companies that perform work for public bodies and public sector employees, forbidding the latter to seek employment with the former. How effective such measures will be has yet to be determined, and it’s perhaps a bit difficult to believe that Zuma--  whose involvement in one of South Africa’s most serious corruption scandals was thrown on out due to prosecutorial transgressions rather than a determination of innocence-- when he talks about rooting out graft. If the experience of other single party-dominant regimes is any guide, the overwhelming control of the ANC in South African politics, and the sense among aspiring officials that pleasing party elites is the key to professional advancement, will serve as a serious obstacle to effective and sustained reform.