Archive for September, 2012

The dynamics of a transforming society

By Francis W. Nyepon

The vision to significantly transform the Liberian society must first deal with changing behavior, attitude and mindset of people at the bottom of the social strata. Change can never come to Liberia with the majority of its people believing that public officials do not have their best interest at heart as a collective; or the majority of the people being stuck at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.

The lack of adequate healthcare, difficulties accessing education, employment, social marginalization, inadequate sanitation, unsafe drinking water, indecent hygiene practice, and treated garbage means that many Liberians are dying unnecessarily or living in destitution.

The real problem with injecting change in Liberia is the lack of new ideas and boldness amongst government functionaries, the press and civil society groups to inspire and stimulate change in behavior, attitude and mindset amongst the majority of our people.

Significant Social Transforming must first and foremost remove social rejection as a daily reality for the majority of our people. Secondly, improvement in sanitation, water, hygiene, health, education and livelihood must not remain stalled. Thirdly, it is immoral to continuously subject ordinary Liberians unnecessarily to conditions of abject poverty, given the enormous amount of mineral resources and wealth our country is endowed with.

Our society cannot and will not change unless and until we ourselves fundamentally change. By change, the author refers to social makeover, improved livelihood and provision of basic services to improve standard of living. The idea here is that if in fact Liberian leaders desire real change, then the livelihood of those living at the bottom of the social strata must fundamentally and strategically be improved.

In other words, the conscience of our people must be appealed to in order for real transformation to occur. Our society needs to be injected with appropriate new thinking with bold new policy formulation to basically root change in the people from the bottom up.

This author does not see ‘change’ necessarily as building fancy hospitals and school; when there are no sufficient personnel to run them properly or set the roadmap for restructuring the social order within which them mus operate.

In order for Liberia to fundamentally change and go through this kind of significant transformation that the author is pointing towards, the government must first engage in some fundamental restructuring of its own, and lead the charge. The government must strategically and methodically take the lead in lifting people out of poverty, misery and hopelessness.

Those whose whole focus is based on using the government as a springboard to acquire personal wealth must immediately be castigated and internally exiled, and the government must become the escort in a massive campaign to castigate such individuals by confiscating ill-gotten property and wealth. If this isn’t done and we are not careful, disenchantment could undermine the huge support base that President Sirleaf has vigorously championed over the years. Liberia cannot, and will not, and must never again allow itself to be seen as a war-ravaged country ruled by thugs, or governed by authoritarian or autocratic leaders.

This author is of the firm belief that if nothing is done to fundamentally change Liberians from the bottom up, then the country could be faced with the reality of hope being turned into despair. In other words, if we are not careful, our post-war hopes and aspirations could be turned into despondency, with corrupt, incompetent and divisive individuals claiming the higher ground once again as they successfully did for over 20 years.

The creeping in of a democratic framework of governance, and rearranging the socio-economic order after decades of burdens under debased tyrannies and autocracies must not be silenced. If nothing else, transparency, accountability, respect for the rule of law, decentralized democratic practices should be our guiding policy if stability and growth are to be sustained and sincerely rooted in the social order of the day.

The new political dispensation, which elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as President, was intended to change and evolve into a democratically driven society where the personification of integrity, honesty and a deep sense of purpose and nationalism would be achieved.

But what went wrong with the excitement and enthusiasm with which Liberians embraced the roadmap to change, and the beacon of hope which President Sirleaf personified? Did the cadre of intellectuals and technocrats become visionless? Did the new administration get duped? Did Recycled Politicians overwhelmed the process and offered no new ideas to transform the society?

Except for the President and a handful of committed and dedicated individuals, the majority of policymakers and bureaucrats have not produced much in terms of creativity and innovation over the past three years. The author believes that is the reason why ordinary Liberians have seen little in terms of progress.

What has most of those who have lead ministries and public agencies done over the years that have assisted in the Dynamics of a Changing Society? Many seem very comfortable riding around the countryside in SUVs with tinted window and trying to make every effort to impress the little people with their temporarily acquired influence and power.

Over the past three years, there have been revelations of gross misuse of public funds at a time when Liberia needs every dime for monumental reconstruction. The majority of our policymakers seem all too ready to rely exclusively on the ideas of President Sirleaf without offering any of their own. The President is one person, yes she is the visionary, but where are all the progressives?

No public official, past or present has the right to squander public funds and get away with it. Liberians must stand up, speak up and be counted on the side of real change. For example, property obtained by ill-gotten wealth must be confiscated; officials who knowingly rob the national treasury or the coffer of a public agency should not be allowed to keep stolen loot and walk around the society displaying illegal and ill-gotten exploits. What sort of example would that set for younger generation who make up over 46% of the population? Could this be the reason why ordinary Liberians call their public servants, ‘Recycled Politicians’?

The time has come for all to work together to raise our expectations and transform our country into world-class, high-performing communities, not just for some, but for all our people. This author believes that change is illusive unless and until it touches the lives of real people.

The author believes that by introducing multi-party elections at the county, metropolitan, municipal and district levels, would ensure the election of competent people to manage the urban, rural or local economy. This belief is premised on the assumption that the electorates would be informed, and would vote for competent persons base on their dedication and commitment to uplifting, advancing and improving livelihood, standard of livings, health and basic services.

Because good local governance and democratic decentralization has not been widely broadcast or implemented by the Sirleaf administration, our people are not fully realizing their social aspirations. According to UNDP, Sustained Poverty Reduction requires equitable growth—but this author would suggest that it also requires poor people to have political power that allows them to decide their future given applicable resources and political will.

And the best way this author believes that Liberia should achieve significant social transformation consistent with human development objectives is by building strong and deep forms of democratic governance at all levels of society, especially at the local and rural levels.

Francis W. Nyepon is managing partner of DUCOR Waste Management in Liberia. He is a policy analyst and vice chair of the Center for Security and Development Studies, and serves on several boards of humanitarian, environmental and human rights organizations in the United States and Liberia. He can be reached at [email protected]

Can Dlamini Zuma reform the African Union?

By Ralph Geeplay
A decade after its creation, the African union (AU) this year took a bold step and chose a woman to lead the continental body in a much contested electoral process that saw the South African Home Affairs Minister elected to the top post.

Dlamini Zuma has her hands full because the African Union is not a government bureau as her past experiences suggest, and the level of work that needs to be done on the continent as far as leadership and vision are concern are huge. Vision and leadership has been lacking since 1963 when the forerunner to the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which the AU replaced came into effect.

Many believe Madame Dlamini Zuma has the credentials and the requisite attitude to make the AU relevant, which has ignited celebration across South Africa. Judging from the reaction and excitement from South Africans, you would think Mandela has just come out of retirement.

There have been marches in the streets, and various civic and political leaders including the Government of South Africa, let it be known that they take pride in a South African heading the continental body. Zuma, however, had to remind the ANC Women’s League that she was elected to serve the whole of Africa and not just her country.

“When I go [and] work, I’ll be working as a servant of Africans, and not South Africa. As South Africa, we have to locate ourselves in that pan-Africanism, and not just narrow self-interest,” she said.

There are speculations that Pretoria wants to use the powerful AU post to position itself globally; especially to have a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

In many respects you want to empathize with South Africa’s reaction. In truth, they have been cut off from the rest of Africa for most of its history until recently.

Always led by an apartheid government that neither care what Africans and the world thought of its leadership as it held complete control over the political and economic life of the nation, South Africa, the continent’s most wealthy and powerful country made it known it wanted the AU position, and it made sure it got it.

But there is a lot of work that needs to be done, and it remains to be seen if the former Home Affairs Minister can reform the African Union. Zuma, as AU chair will seek to develop the African Union’s internal structures and its governance process, as economic activity on the continent are showing signs of promise, say analysts.

In recent years, however, the AU has grown considerably divisive. The mean fight that brought Zuma to power in which Nigeria led an influential bloc to thwart what was seen as South Africa’s ambitious power play, is considered one of those trivial squabbles that have often held back the continent, whose peoples are dirt poor.

African leaders finally realized that such petty politicking needed to be tabled. Zuma’s mandate set by the heads of state of governments, include aligning the continent to an inter African trade, the development of infrastructure, the responsible exploitation of raw materials, climate change, and the resolution of numerous conflicts on the continent. Interestingly though, the AU is broke and it seems the only fully functioning African institution today is the Tunis-based African Development Bank (ADB).

Since the AU took over from the organization of African unity (OAU), it still has not found it foot economically, and according to reports is inept. Simon Allison, who follows African politics, and writes for the Daily Maverick have mentioned that “Funding remains a huge problem. More than half ($160m) of its budget of $275m for 2012 is paid for by external partners, mostly the European Union. An audit of the commission finalized in 2007 recommended vast reforms, but little of this has been implemented by Dlamini Zuma’s predecessor,” Jean Ping. The former AU chair has been accused for being ineffective, one reason some wanted him to go.

Also important to note is the fact that only 52% of the AU senior and junior level posts are filled and “the average under spending is [currently] 37%”, noted Allison.

Zuma has a unique opportunity to chart a new course for the continent and bring credibility to the African Union by providing the leadership some have said she brought to health, foreign affairs and the home ministries in her native South Africa. But Zuma cannot be left off the hook all together, according to observers.

As South African foreign minister under Mbeki, it was on her watch that the Zimbabwe situation worsened while comrade Bob and his ZANU-PF terrorized its own people. Mediation efforts under South Africa’s leadership stalled and little answers provided while the political opposition and innocent citizens went to prisons, and a controversial land reform striped the nation of its ‘bread basket’ reputation.

It is one reason Africans have been skeptical about a South African leadership role on the continent in the first place, because its answers to the Zimbabwean, Ivorian and Libyan conflicts etc, because it is more than preserving the status quo. But Zuma’s election raised hopes and that her selection was in the right direction.

At the South African parliament building this week, the upper and lower houses gathered enthusiastically to bid the 63- year old diplomat a fond send-off, while heaping praises on her service as she takes on the all important African Union post.

President Jacob Zuma led the chorus, according to reports. “She will be sorely missed in the country,” he said, “but we know that we shall feel and hear her footsteps in Addis Ababa.” The South African President whose relentlessness and lobbying efforts saw his ex-wife elected to the top job added, “We pursued the issue of her election because Africa needs someone who would take the African Union and its operations to another level.”

Awaiting her immediate attention are trouble spots in Somalia, Mali, the Congo, and the ever-troubling Uganda and its eccentric rebel leader Joseph Kony’s Lord Resistance Army. These crises will no doubt test her grit. And then there are Africa’s growing ties with China, the United States, and Western Europe’s determination to keep their foothold on a continent rich in mineral resources from which its peoples have seen little dividends.

Consistently, Zuma has said she will take her new position to serve Africa and its interests seriously, a message she have told again and again whenever she is presented the chance to speak in public since her preferment.

At the parliament building when South African lawmakers wish her good health in her new post, she said, “I cry when I’m happy, I cry when I’m sad, and today I’m both.” In the coming years Africa will need the tears and hard work, because the continent is in dire straits.

Ralph Geeplay can be reached at [email protected]

The fight for Africa

By Ralph Geeplay

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recent Africa tour, which ran for 11 days indicates that Washington is determined to reassert itself on the continent, after a lackluster Obama first term that put forward no real Africa agenda. Don’t forget that America had extensive connections on the continent during the height of the cold war.

Clinton’s trip, which included stops in South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Senegal and South Sudan, came days after China assembled six African heads of state and ministers from 50 countries.

Her first stop was in Dakar, Senegal. She wasted no time when she let loose the cannon, telling university students that the US was committed to “a model of sustainable partnership that adds value, rather than extracts it” from Africa. She said, unlike other countries, “America will stand up for democracy and universal human rights even when it might be easier to look the other way and keep the resources flowing.” Although she name no names, it is clear the US Secretary was throwing a jab at communist China.

The Chinese news agency Xinhua complained immediately, that the United States were trying to “drive a wedge between China and Africa.” Xinhua went as far as terming her remarks as “rude,” and uncalled for.

China’s investment in Africa has been growing rapidly, and has also built diplomatic relations. Three years ago, China overtook the United States as the continent largest trading partner. While Washington attaches political strings to the aid it gives African countries China has no such policy.

Trade between the Asian giant and Africa reached 166.3billion in 2011; it also gave Africa 20billion in loans during the recent Africa - China summit. Add that to the 200million African Union headquarters it built in Addis Ababa as a gift to the continent and then you begin to understand the importance that China attaches to the AU and its member states.

When President Hu Jintao enthusiastically welcomed his African guests during the fifth Forum on China - Africa Cooperation in May this year, he called for a fresh paradigm between his country and the continent, stating, “We should oppose the practices of the big bullying the small, the strong dominating over the weak and the rich oppressing the poor.”

President Hu Jintao promised that China would be “a good friend, a good partner and a good brother.” Remarks some say the US thought was directed at Washington, given American unilateralism in world affairs during the past years that heightened under President George W. Bush and his neo-conservative assistants.

Critics say China, hungry for minerals to feed its growing economy, is extracting raw materials while exporting cheap products and manufactured goods to a continent that is just finding its foot economically. It is no secret that Clinton’s recent visit to Africa was meant to remind Africans that the United States was still a friend to the people of the continent. And by doing so, a U.S. policy in tandem is trying to slow China’s sway.

Speaking to the voice of America, American University Professor Emilio Viano validated these claims when he said, “One of the major objectives of the visit is to compete with China and try to limit China’s influence, business making and political power in Africa.”

On her African tour, Secretary of State Clinton took along American business leaders as well. Among the deals wrapped up reports say was a 2billion pact that the Export-Import Bank signed with the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa, to provide clean energy and infrastructural improvement to Africa’s biggest economy.

Analysts say though Clinton was right in asking African governments to seek the path of democracy in today’s world where China is now the leading investor in Africa. They also contend that the United States directly or through proxy fomented most of the continents wars by propping up dictators on the continent during the cold war.

For example, Liberia’s Samuel Doe was a staunch ally of the United States, so was Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. But when Africa went in flames the U.S. was silent if not quiet, often giving excuses when its leadership was needed.
The double standard of the west also alarmed Africans when the U.S. used its unipolar power during the last decades of the 20th century, to ignore those high conflict areas in Rwanda, Liberia and the Zaire now Democratic Republic of Congo, and other hot spots on the continent during the 1990s, but was eager to intervene in such places as Bosnia and Kuwait.

The U. S. always cited its “special interest,” sometimes merely to be expedient, other times just turning a blind eye even in the face of dire humanitarian needs to civilians as they were slaughtered to their graves, wars that saw despicable crimes against women and children and with soldiers as young as 10 years old. The United States offered an official apology through President Clinton, though, for ignoring Rwanda.

While China seeks to exploit these memories and especially Western European colonial hegemony and imperial links on the continent as evident by Jintao remarks, it does so by invoking the wrath of western powers who still have long standing so-called traditional and grand relations with African governments that dates back to the 1800s when Africa was partitioned. But China too is now without blame, according to observers.

Africans have already begun complaining about China, and the rifts can be seen in the microcosm that is the Zambian mines. Last year Chinese supervisors shot 13 coal miners in what amounted to wage quarrel; and then this year, rioting Zambians murdered a Chinese manager “Wu Shengzai, aged 50… by protesting workers after being hit by a trolley which was pushed towards him by the rioting miners as he ran away into the underground where he wanted to seek refugee,” said the BBC.

The challenge Africa today faces says observers, is whether the continent can learn from its past and forge its own future by clearly defining its own national interests as it welcome investors without being outdone by these powers again. “It would be interesting to see what new peddle will be put to the metal in Addis Ababa as Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma takes on the AU Top Post. Unless Africa put in place a clear policy, by defining its own interest in dealing with foreign powers, I am afraid it will still be a puppet with strings attached” says a political science professor at the University of Liberia.

Africans should brace themselves, say analysts, because the journey has just begun. Today it seems the continent is the new bridesmaid in town with all this wooing from foreign powers who have always protected their own interest when dealing with Africa. Rich in mineral resources (that attracted the European colonists to feed their markets in the first place) and a growing population that is young, can leaders on the continent managed the change and not squandered this opportunity?

The ordinary African was let down say pundits at the dawn of the 1960s when independent fever grip the continent ‘as indigenous now took their destinies into their hands, independent and free from colonialism,’ while expelling the European governors with much fanfare and zest, in what became a great disappointment to the average African from their own leaders during the succeeding decades: senseless civil/bush wars, famines, stooges for cold war powers, economic mismanagement and military dictatorships and coups.

Pundits say if the AU were to tax luxury good alone across the continent, it could fund its own development projects and not look to external partners to fund the AU budget, financial muscle that could enable it to give humanitarian, peace and security assistance to its member states, and probably repay China the 200million for the AU headquarters and not merely be contend to receive it as a gift.

The continent can never be truly independent when it is always holding the cap in hand, looking up to powers for help, say observers. China can look at the US and make a bluff, because America owe them about a trillion dollars. The AU, others say is lamed because it is broke. They also say at the core of Africa’s development is the need to feed itself, the first priority of any region or country that seeks industrialization.

As Gwynne Dyer recently warned, this short and long term economic growth currently on the horizon will mean nothing, unless “African governments invest enough in agriculture now,… keep everybody fed; if not, the long-term future of the continent is probably widespread violence and gradual economic collapse.”

Ralph Geeplay can be reached at [email protected]