May 23, 01:18 PM
Conference on African Governance
Finally getting around to a few words about “Debating Form and Substance in Africa’s New Governance Models,” the conference I attended in Jinja, Uganda, on May 11 and 12.
The basic jumping off point for the discussions was the idea that the new governments that were formed in African countries after the Cold War dictatorships finally fell may not be a great deal better than what they replaced. President Museveni of Uganda is turning into a dictator himself. Kenya is still rife with corruption. And so on.
There are glimmers of hope, though. The African Union, for example, may be an actual force for democracy instead of the dictators’ club that the old Organization for African Unity was.
So the conference attendees—university professors, heads of human rights campaigning organizations, and little old me, one of only two students and the only non-African in the room—discussed Africa’s prospects for development and for turning its countries into ones that can provide for human rights.
I didn’t say much, but I listened with great interest, honored to be included, at the invitation of Makere University’s Joe Oloka-Onyango, and warmly welcomed by everyone else.
A major concern of attendees was that dependence on outside donors for so much of African governments’ budgets undercuts democracy and leads to underdevelopment.
Leaders are more accountable to these organizations than to their own citizens because, to put it simply, he who pays the piper picks the tune. The tune picked by the US, the World Bank, the IMF, etc, is what the attendees call neo-liberalism, or strict market capitalism, and this is preventing rather than encouraging economic growth and access to food, water, education, improved lives, etc.
These are issues about which my mind is not entirely made up. I’m not an economist, but I have to wonder if integrating into the world economy (globalization) might be the only way to create jobs, wealth, and everything else these countries need. In other words, I think that the advice and requirements of the international donors might be sound.
The bigger problems in my mind are the ways in which aid money can prop up and support bad leaders, even when the donors have good intentions (as they did not have during the Cold War but have had, for the most part, since then.)
Exhibit A is Museveni, darling of the West for over a decade even as he was showing all kinds of signs that he was not really committed to democracy and was waging secret, illegal war in the Congo. He finally allowed multiparty elections earlier this year, but had his only real opponent arrested on bogus charges of rape and treason.
One of the interesting things to me at the conference was the seeming disconnect between this type of bald criminality and the somewhat abstract level at which much of the debate, as is the case at most academic conferences, took place.
What’s the “discourse around good governance,” one presentation asked? How do social movements get “captured” by outside interests?
The starkest example was during the presentation by Idris el Hassan, of the University of Khartoum. He talked about the long sought peace agreement for southern Sudan, the presidential elections scheduled for 1997, and the many problems inherent in trying to democratically govern a country as physically huge and culturally divided as Sudan.
He mentioned that even now there were armed “conflicts” in every region of the country, including the West. But this was the only reference, and a very passing one it was, to Darfur, where the United States government and countless human rights organizations have charged that the Sudanese government is not merely dealing with a conflict but committing genocide.
I decided I had to say something. How could the ongoing murder of hundreds of thousands go entirely unmentioned—in a discussion about the country in which they’re being murdered, in a conference about human rights?
About ten other people asked questions. What were the long term prospects for federalism in Sudan? What was the “discourse around” same?
The microphone got to me, and I first asked a question about the other presentation that was being discussed during that morning session. Then I turned to Prof. Hassan and asked if it was true, as the United States had charged and other states seemed to imply by their actions (even if they lacked the nerve to call a spade a spade) that the government of the Sudan was committing genocide in Darfur.
Then I asked all the other conferees whether, if genocide was indeed being committed, it wasn’t a bit inappropriate for us to be discussing an election that may or may not take place in three years’ time. Was this like gathering in April of 1994, when genocidaires were murdering hundreds of thousands in Rwanda, to have a chat about the 1997 elections in that country?
No one said anything, and then Hassan answered all the other questions he’d been asked, in order, before getting to mine. Only the United States has used the word genocide, he said. The United Nations has not done so. Horrible human rights violations were taking place in Darfur (passive voice), “but as far as genocide…?” He shrugged and handed off the microphone.
For the rest of the conference, the word genocide was not used again and there was no further discussion of Darfur.
One person whispered to me over the buffet table at lunch that, “You can never get an Arab Sudanese to admit the genocide.”
I wasn’t sure whether this was meant as encouragement for speaking out or an admonishment for not knowing better. Was everyone else just being too polite to discuss the genocide in front of an Arab Sudanese? That would be extremely unfortunate.
At another point, I was walking back from the restroom and someone said to me that “all” my questions had been “very good.” But since I’d really only spoken once during the whole conference, and since what I’d said had been all but ignored, I wondered if he was being sarcastic.
I felt a little confused, and I began to worry a bit that I’d sounded foolish. It was true that I’d not been able to closely follow the ceasefire talks that had been going on before we met at the conference. Was there something I didn’t know?
That doesn’t seem to have been the case, as the government-backed janjaweed militias are even now massing again in Darfur.
So what accounts for this seeming avoidance of the topic? Are some issues too big and too real and too close to home to deal with directly?
Then I thought about the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the lack of accountability for it, and about America’s highly secretive, highly illegal program of “extraordinary rendition.” Maybe we in America are just as content to talk about something else when the most important issues are staring us in the face.
THANK GOD THAT YOU SAID SOMETHING!!!!What you said was too close for comfort for those who knew that you were asking a question to which the real unspoken answer would have to be, Yes, it is genocide!
With love and much respect for who you are,
Mom
— Mom May 23, 07:26 PM #
I think that you were absolutley right in asking the question. Too bad it was largely ignored. You keep on asking the hard questions Mark, you are a good and honest man and I have the highest respect and admiration for you and your wife, traveling the world. Sharon “P”
— sharon pierson May 24, 01:09 AM #