Challenges of the pan‐African parliament

It must be enabled to receive representation by individuals and associations whose interests have been affected by international or continental public policies or practices. In turn, it must be able to intervene decisively to protect rights in member states. By doing this, the parliament can deepen its credibility and relevance to African peoples struggling with poverty and injustice across the continent.     

Thabo Mbeki’s African developmental agenda through Pan-Africanism and the African renaissance

In 1996, the then South African deputy president thabo Mbeki opened parliament with his since then acclaimed ‘I am an African’ speech. Subsequently, Mbeki publicly persuaded Africans to embrace and advance the concept of an African renaissance for Africa’s development. While Mbeki’s African renaissance project was welcomed on the one hand; on the other, it was anticipated that it would be an elitist project. In this article, it is argued that to the contrary, the African renaissance as pursued by Mbeki has sought to benefit ordinary Africans in a practical sense. This article uses a historical narrative approach so as to give a historical context against which Mbeki’s African renaissance emerged, highlighting the successes, failures, constraints, setbacks and challenges that he had to confront. the argument is that African intellectuals and academics who correctly point out the absence of a mass-based African renaissance movement must not stand apart and merely point fingers, but must be actively engaged in the realisation of the African renaissance ideals.     

Towards a new paradigm for pan‐African knowledge production and application in the context of the African renaissance

Abstract

The article argues that the primary purpose of education, both formal and non‐formal, is the development of interrelated and interdependent sets of human capacity to think, to know and to act by honing social consciousness or awareness, values and skills. Investing in education is therefore viewed as investment in the development of social capital that combines with material resources and other non‐material phenomena to produce goods and services, as well as a favourable spiritual environment for human sustenance and development.

Education in Africa needs a fundamental paradigm change which entails, among other things, focusing on confronting, with a view to correcting and departing from, hegemonic knowledge and knowledge systems that are predicated on racist paradigms that have deliberately and otherwise distorted, and continue to distort, the reality of who Africans really are. The article visits some of the terrains most in need of this change: contestations about the roles Africans and Africa have played in human civilisation during the four main historical periods to date: Africa's leadership as the cradle of humankind or the Naissance of Humanity; Africa's leadership in all fields of knowledge and human achievements at the beginning of modern civilisation up to about the fourteenth century AD; the fifteenth century AD to the present which marks the only period in human development when Africa and Africans have been dominated and marginalised by mainly European civilisation and its global projections; and, the emerging era of the renaissance of Africa and other marginalised peoples.

A model curriculum that requires supplementation by the specific characteristics of each country that adopts it is suggested as a step towards this paradigm change. This modest effort at constructing a model curriculum is informed by the understanding that all Africans and peoples of African descent need to possess some basic, shared common knowledge about Africa, the Diaspora and the world ‐ and to acquire critical approaches to contextualised learning.     

Progress and challenges of consolidating the African state: “consolidation indicators” and the African Charter on Democracy,Elections and Governance

Since independence, there have been some improvements in political development in African states in respect to the prevalence of democracy, recognition of the rule of law, reduction in unconstitutional changes of governments, regular, transparent, free and fair elections, and a conducive environment for doing business. This article proposes a range of “consolidating indicators” that can be used to measure the consolidation of the African State in light of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG). Consolidation indicators examined include the level of internal integration/disintegration of the state, the degree and nature of peace, the nature of democracy and elections and of governance systems, levels of capacity, the social fabric of the state as well as issues concerning women and youth. The use of consolidation indicators is a new effort to address issues of contingency and preventive planning, with the aim of having more peaceful and progressive African states. Characterising African states, based on various consolidation indicators, is an important and relevant endeavour, especially because the concept of the “consolidation of the African State” is under-researched, with a paucity of a clear assessment. The discussion highlights the importance of the ACDEG and notes the increasing recognition by African states of the importance of democratic values and practices to the continent. Understanding the progress and challenges of consolidating the African State will help policy makers to strengthen the implementation of ACDEG, in pushing African states towards realising the African Union (AU) Africa Agenda 2063. This article takes an Afrocentric approach by discussing the positive role of regional and continental institutions in promoting and strengthening democracy and governance in Africa.     

An African response to the new wave of afro‐pessimism

The Afro‐pessimism that has resurfaced in parts of the world has no foundation and has provoked strong objections on several grounds. First, the timing is inappropriate as a number of new development indicators suggest that a good basis is now being laid in Africa for a better future economic performance. Secondly, there is an upsurge of Afro‐optimism among African and world leaders with the advent of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad). But more fundamentally, the growth concept which forms the basis for bleak projections on Africa's ability to reduce poverty, is flawed and the presumed strong growth‐poverty correlation empirically discredited. Additionally, it is a fallacy to assume that the reforms of the past 20 years were consistent with the continent's long‐term development trajectories given that the continent was unresponsive, remaining poor and ‘structurally undevelopable’.

On the contrary, these reforms have been pronounced by a World Bank assessment team as being defective in objectives and design, operationally dysfunctional and an example of massive resource misallocation, all of which have collectively worsened Africa's poverty and income disparity conditions. Particularly ironic is the concept of ‘structural stability’ prescribed in the ‘Memorandum for a New Start for German African Policy’, as it falls short of engaging fully and comprehensively the broader spectrum of structural distortions, weaknesses and rigidities, including the lack of economic structural transformation which is critical for achieving sustained economic growth and significant poverty reduction. The international community will now have to look at channelling resources to reshape, support and refine Africa's own initiative — Nepad.     

Rhetoric and Praxis: Nigeria’s Africa Diplomacy and the Shaping of the African Union

Although Nigeria has always promoted multilateral diplomacy in the African context, the civilian administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo made it a cardinal objective of its Africa policy. Through his foreign policy speeches, President Obasanjo emphasised the readiness of his administration to play a leading role in African continental organisation – the African Union (AU). Using data collected through the secondary and interview methods, and thematic analysis, this study analyses Obasanjo’s diplomatic outing in the AU. While there were some encumbrances (such as the failure on occasion to make wider consultations within the AU framework and the absence of a well coordinated inter-ministerial approach to project Nigeria’s leadership in the AU), the paper contends that the administration’s diplomacy in the AU was successful. This showed in the role the administration played in shaping the structures that currently define the existence of the organisation. The transmutation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to AU, the recalibration of its peace and security architecture, and the funding of the organisation benefited immensely from Nigeria’s diplomacy under President Obasanjo.     

Antithesis – the reconstruction of the African Union for a viable and sustainable solution for the unity of Africans

ABSTRACT

Franz Fanon, the Algerian revolutionary of African descent, once declared: ‘Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it.’ The challenge confronting African researchers on matters related to the Afro-Arab borderlands – regions spanning Tchad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania and the Sudan where the African and Arab worlds meet – centre on resolving, reversing and undoing historical denials and inaccuracies. This article critically reviews the falsification of history in this part of Africa, in the Sudan in particular, and the role of the Arab League, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the Organisation of African Unity and its successor the African Union, in addressing the plight of its inhabitants. The article concludes with the recommendation of the creation of a new, culturally based Pan-African organisation able to fill a void and offer redress.     

Xenophobia across the class divide: South African attitudes towards foreigners 2003–2012

In May 2008 anti-immigrant riots in South Africa displaced more than a hundred thousand people. Despite the media attention that the riots attracted, there has been no study that presents trend data on anti-immigrant sentiment for the period after 2008. This paper uses data from the nine rounds of the South African Social Attitudes Survey over the period 2003–2012 to fill this gap and test the success of government commitments to reduce anti-immigrant prejudice. The results reveal that attempts to combat xenophobia have been ineffectual, with anti-immigrant sentiment prevalent and widespread in 2012. Afrophobia was observed, with a majority of citizens identifying foreign African nationals as the group they least wanted to come and live in South Africa. The government is advised to urgently address the alarming and widespread pervasiveness of anti-immigrant sentiment in South Africa.     

From the Subject of Evil to the Evil Subject: “Cultural Difference” in Postapartheid South African Crime Fiction

This article takes up the question of “crime writing” and rejoins the debate around whether such literature stands in for the “political novel” in postapartheid South Africa. What social function might crime writing be serving? Research by political economists and cultural anthropologists suggests that acts of writing in “social detection” mode (rather than “crime writing”) serve as an allegory for occulted sociopolitical conditions. Cultural difference is seen, once again, to play a pivotal role in the legitimation of power, and writers in the detection mode are correspondingly seen to be probing the possibility of a resurgence of “bad” difference. This notion, it is argued, is a key differentiator in an otherwise murky scene in which the borderline between licit and illicit, and right and wrong, has become obscure. While many South African writers are brought into the discussion, including but not restricted to crime authors, a key novel by leading crime writer Deon Meyer is read as a case study to illustrate the more general points made in the article.     

Who is in the ‘‘We’’? Interrogating the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and Youth Political Participation

Most analyses of the African Union (AU) have focused on the politics of the state and the presidents. There are very few analyses that have focused on aspects such as youth development. The point of departure for this article therefore, is youth development. I argue that although the youth were always part of important historical developments in Africa, they remain on the periphery. In recent times, particularly since the transformation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) into the AU in the 2000s, the youth development agenda has begun to receive the attention at policy level. In 2015 the AU, through Agenda 2063 went a step further by including youth development into mainstream continental policy frameworks. While we welcome all these developments it has emerged that the continent remains hesitant in the area of youth development. Where the AU and its member states have adopted the discourse of youth inclusion—in cases where youth political participation is often limited, such efforts are not met with fitting institutional and practical policy arrangements. The article posits that the African elite is in for a rude awakening as we have witnessed—since 2011—given the discovery by the African youth of new methods of political participation in post-colonial Africa. The article advocates for the adoption of the African community outlook to youth state policy, argues for the youth to be linked to the project of economic freedom, and implores the African elite to embark on the decolonial project to resolve the bearing coloniality of being, power and knowledge.     

African solutions to African problems? The AU,R2P and Côte d'Ivoire

The African continent is inextricably linked to the development of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm and the latter's ethical interpretation of the duties associated with state sovereignty. With the African Union (AU) having institutionalised R2P in its legal-institutional foundation of 2000, the stage seemed set for the new African Peace and Security Architecture to demonstrate the continent's ramped-up interventionist approach to security. One of the first cases that presented an opportunity to do so was the humanitarian crisis that erupted after the 2010 elections in Côte d'Ivoire. As the crisis unfolded, however, it became clear that the AU was not only unable to operationalise its institutionalised R2P mechanisms, but indeed reluctant to invoke R2P explicitly. This raises serious concerns about the AU's willingness to intervene in its member states when humanitarian atrocities are perpetrated by governments against their own people, and throws into serious doubt the AU's promise to provide ‘African solutions to African problems’.     

BRICS corporates: In collaboration or in competition in Africa? Case studies from the South African mining industry

Framed by the 5th BRICS Summit in South Africa in March 2013, this analysis examines economic ‘South-South’ linkages on a company level. A qualitative case study focuses on a small number of private corporations operating in the South African mining and minerals sector. It looks at their reactions to increasingly competitive markets in the regions of Southern and West Africa, thus on their agency, defined as the ability to act in complex uncertainty. Findings present how the South African cases' engagements with strategically selected partner companies from the other BRICS economies can succeed. This contribution attempts to examine entrepreneurial rationale that can be taken as anecdotal evidence of a new ‘economic diplomacy’ at corporate level. The examples illustrate how agency enables certain adaptations of strategies for creating competitive synergies from collaboration with new actors from the other BRICS economies in Africa.     

South African–Swaziland relations: A constructivist reading

There are several accounts of the past relations between Swaziland and South Africa. Some are set in the realist school of international relations scholarship. These studies portray Swaziland's policy behaviour as ‘submissive’ because of ‘immutable structural forces’. The neo-Marxian analyses locate the relations exclusively in class/ideological setting. Other accounts depict the ‘kaleidoscopic’ nature of the relations. The post-apartheid understanding of this relationship is largely gleaned from regional studies – the dominant view of which is that South Africa is reluctant to exercise hegemony in its relations with regional states. This article critiques the one-directional thrust of the realist and Marxian accounts. While endorsing multidirectional and multidimensional accounts of policy behaviour, the article shows that they lack an over-arching theoretical framework. A similar charge is directed at the post-apartheid literature. The position of this article is that constructivism offers analytical tools needed to understand the relations between the two states and how South Africa can reorder them.     

Whither peacebuilding? A reflection on post-conflict African experiences

Peacebuilding is a key concept in efforts to reconstruct African states emerging from conflicts. At heart, it captures the whole array of activities associated with state-and nation-building in addition to building the foundations for local ownership of these processes. Popularised by the UN Secretary-General Boutros-Boutros Ghali in the early 1990s, peacebuilding has evolved alongside peacemaking and peacekeeping in the reconstruction repertoire. This article suggests that while there is considerable scepticism about the utility of peacebuilding in contemporary conflict resolution efforts, African experiences have, since the 1990s, provided solid lessons to both local and international actors on how to rebuild states, societies, polities, and economies.     

Economic partnership agreements: African–EU negotiations continue

When they were first proposed by the European Commission to the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries — all signatories to the Lome and Cotonou agreements which provided them with preferential access to the European market — economic partnership agreements were presented as supporting regional integration and development. However, most African states regarded economic partnership agreements with suspicion, fearing that the agreements would limit their market access and their policy space. Progress on negotiations has been slow, and more than two years after they were supposed to have been concluded there are still a number of outstanding issues that the individual African regions and the European Commission have to resolve. This paper explores some of the difficulties and the progress made thus far, and proposes some measure that would address the concerns around development and regional integration in the context of the challenges posed by the global financial crisis.     

The Management of Democratic Elections in Africa (MDEA) programme at the university of South Africa: Is this the right path towards African solutions?

There have been a number of initiatives in Africa to rid the Continent of political instability, conflict, poverty and disease. Many have argued that aid from the West has helped Africa in many ways—from stopping wars, to food relief and rescuing the African environment. Yet others have slated Western involvement which they contend, frequently leaves Africans dependant rather than capable of solving their own problems. In line with the pan-Africanist and the African Union (AU) ideals, there is now a realisation by Africans that there is a need to find African solutions to African challenges and problems. This review article explores the University of South Africa’s (Unisa’s) Management of Democratic Elections in Africa (MDEA) programme, by looking at its objectives and the reason why it must be labelled a Programme, its mandate, which is in line with the brief of the AU and pan-Africanist ideals. The article focuses on how Unisa’s programme responds to the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG); and how it has attempted to facilitate knowledge for peace in Africa, through empowering electoral officials from various African states. The article concludes by looking at the successes and limitations of the Programme over a five-year period, from its inception in 2011.     

Good governance and democratic leadership for an African Renaissance: A reflection on AU member states’ compliance with the AUCPCC

Abstract

After decades of corrupt post-colonial governance, African leaders collectively acknowledged that good governance was a prerequisite for African renewal and required an unprecedented fight against corruption prevailing on the continent. The Constitutive Act of the African Union (CA-AU) features good governance among its objectives and principles. Good governance was stressed further in subsequent AU instruments adopted within the framework of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and its African Peer-Review Mechanism (APRM). AU leaders’ commitment to fighting corruption culminated in the adoption of the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption (AUCPCC).

As Africans prepare to commemorate the first decade since the adoption of the AUCPCC, this article reflects on AU member states’ compliance with this instrument, the challenges, and the prospects for a successful fight against corruption. It argues that despite some progress made, this scourge remains unabated and has even aggravated. Most African states have failed to comply fully with the AUCPCC. However, the fight against corruption should be strengthened with the participation of all the stakeholders at national, regional and international levels. Partnerships have to be built and consolidated without neglecting the crucial contribution of the people under a democratic leadership committed to good governance in order to achieve an African Renaissance in the 21^st century.     

AFRICOM: a threat or an opportunity for African security?

The establishment of an African military command by the United States reflects the growing focus of the United States on Africa in the US National Security Strategy, which appears to be continuing under new US President Barack Obama. This article deals with several questions. What is the stated US National Security Strategy pertaining to Africa? What national interests does the United States have in Africa? What is the United States officially saying about its objectives in Africa and what has it actually been doing to date? And what are other opinion makers saying about US military involvement in Africa? Finally, it looks at the question of US perceptions of possible rivals in Africa and at potential scenarios for conflict before making a series of conclusions about the threats and opportunities posed by AFRICOM for Africa, and recommendations for a response to AFRICOM on the part of policymakers in South Africa.     

Building bridges? South African foreign policy and trilateral development cooperation

As questions concerning international development climb the international agenda, so countries find themselves drawn into a burgeoning number of negotiations on issues ranging from the future shape and direction of the post-2015 development agenda to ‘aid effectiveness’ and international development cooperation. Moving from the position of a ‘beneficiary’ state in the traditional donor–recipient aid hierarchy, South Africa is looking to define its own niche within the wider development diplomacy context as a development partner. This paper provides an assessment of South Africa's evolving approach towards international development cooperation, with a particular focus on trilateral development cooperation, and what this means for Pretoria's foreign policy in bridging the divide between developed and developing country positions within the international development regime.