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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The following pertinent issues remain to be addressed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Please send comments to [email protected]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Please send comments to

Literature

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EU Policy, EPAs and SADC

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

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

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

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

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

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

EPAs and Policy Coherence

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The document went further to say:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Globalisation and regional integration

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

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

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

NEPAD

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

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

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

AGOA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EPAs and FTAs

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

* Please send comments to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Please send comments to

ABOUT NAMIBIA:

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

NAMIBIA LINKS:

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

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

Strategic shift towards NEPAD

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

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

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

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

Divisive Free Trade Agreements

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

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

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

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

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

EU and US as partners?

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

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

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

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

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

* Please send comments to

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

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

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

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

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

* Please send comments to