Posted on 06/21/2002 4:12:06 AM PDT by Clive
NEPAD is flavour of the month. For much of this coming week, when G8 leaders gather in Kananaskis, Alberta, to discuss the recovery plan's merits with a group of African presidents, and in the weeks following, we can expect to hear of little else. It will also be at the top of the African Union's agenda when it meets in Durban next month.
Presidents Mbeki, Obasanjo and Wade are the leading advocates of the plan ù the New Partnership for Africa's Development ù but because they crafted it with a minimum of consultation with their own civil societies it is meeting considerable flak.
That's because it appears to fit too comfortably with current Western demands for good governance and the economic imperatives of globalisation. It is also too "top-down" in terms of policy-making, critics say.
In Zimbabwe, Crisis in Zimbabwe, an NGO umbrella group, has provided a forum for debate on the issues arising. The South African NGOs, mostly aligned to Cosatu and the South African Council of Churches, are debating their own response.
Nepad advocates in Canada this week are therefore likely to face criticism from two very different quarters: Critics of Thabo Mbeki will say he and his African partners have not done enough to resolve problems in their own backyard ù the flawed Zambian and Zimbabwean elections and civil strife in Madagascar come to mind ù while civic groups linked to the anti-globalisation movement will argue that they have been left out of the loop.
The G8 have agreed among themselves to give the "three wise men" a chance to prove their resolve. Mbeki, Obasanjo and Wade will not be given all the US$64 billion on offer. It will be handed out piecemeal, thus engaging them in a process rather than an event.
That is the reason Canada gives, for instance, for not bothering too much about Mbeki's manifest failure to rein-in Harare's rogue regime. They will get around to that, G8 leaders have convinced themselves.
On Wednesday Mbeki told parliament in Cape Town, following the funeral of ANC activist Peter Mokaba where the crowd chanted Mokaba's revolutionary slogan "Kill the farmer, kill the Boer", that nobody had the right to threaten the lives of others. His remarks came against a background of farm slayings in South Africa.
"White, Boer, farmers are as much African as I am," Mbeki stated.
His remarks will resonate across the Limpopo where lawlessness and killings on farms have been used as a strategy to demoralise and evict farmers with an attendant food crisis.
It is that food crisis that is now concentrating minds in Canada and wherever else governments are being asked to relieve mass starvation. Traditional donors are already leading relief efforts. But the political post-mortem will focus on why agriculturally productive states were able to sabotage the means of their own survival. Zimbabwe stands out as a case of egregious criminal folly in this regard.
Nepad faces another danger. If the African Union or Libya are allowed to hijack it from its present custodians it will be the end of the scheme. Remarks by OAU secretary-general Salim Ahmed Salim suggest there will be an attempt to redefine it in African terms. The terms will be those of despotic governments with a record of abuse, not civil societies whose views are crucial to its success.
We are seeing a familiar pattern here. At the World Economic Forum meeting in Durban recently Simba Makoni committed Zimbabwe to the Nepad process. But there are already signs of hostility from those in President Mugabe's inner circle. Like other policies the Finance minister has attempted to implement, Nepad in Zimbabwe is likely to fall victim to ideological absolutists and thus isolate the country further.
Those who see next week's meeting in Canada as Nepad's big hurdle should look again. Kananaskis will be a breeze compared to the challenges it has yet to face.
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