Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 84-99)

27 JANUARY 2004

MR RICHARD DOWDEN AND DR STEVE KIBBLE

  Q84 Chairman: This is the second of three planned sessions of the Foreign Affairs Committee in our inquiry into the role of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in relation to South Africa. This takes place before the visit to South Africa planned by the Committee from 9 February to 13 February. Today's session will divided into two parts. The first was to be on trade and investment; the second more general with certain regional issues. Gentlemen, as you have probably heard, one of our witnesses in the first session is stuck on a train; you have kindly agreed that we reverse the order. Therefore, may I, on behalf of the Committee, welcome first Mr Richard Dowden, Director, Royal African Society and I believe an adviser to the All-party Africa Committee. Mr Dowden, you have worked as an African journalist covering various parts of the continent from 1983 to the present. I have had the privilege to meet you in various parts of Africa. You have worked for The Times, been Africa Editor of The Independent, Africa Editor at The Economist latterly from 1995 to 2001, when you became Director of the Royal African Society. The Society seeks to: "strengthen links between Africa and Britain and encourages understanding of Africa and its relations with the rest of the world". We also welcome Dr Steve Kibble. You are the Advocacy Officer of the Catholic Institute for International Relations. The CIIR is a small, campaigning non-governmental organisation working in the field of development. We know that you have published extensively on Africa, particularly on southern Africa. Thank you also for your memorandum to the Committee. Gentlemen, it is fitting that we have this appraisal now of our links with South Africa because it is ten years since we had that landmark election there. I am not sure whether I met you then: I was in Port Elizabeth heading the international team. I should be grateful to start with to hear from both of you what you see as the principal achievements of the country over those ten years.

  Mr Dowden: The most obvious one is the final ending of Apartheid. Even though Apartheid started coming apart probably at the end of the 1960s as a grand scheme and was in retreat then for a long time, that election ten years ago put the gravestone on it. Since then, there was an expectation that South Africa might simply overturn the economic system which had existed and instead one of the Government's achievements has been to put economic stability not before the empowerment of black people but slightly ahead of it, and has not in any way tried to destabilise the economy. That has been the main achievement.

  Q85 Chairman: Do you think the balance of the Government has been right?

Mr Dowden: Indeed. At the same time it has, if slightly erratically, provided housing, running water, education and other things which were lacking before and begun on its programme of black empowerment. Those are the main domestic ones and across the continent they have given the rest of Africa a boost through their idea of the African renaissance and, secondly, through the construction of NePAD, the programme for economic development in Africa and carried that through. Those are the main achievements of South Africa.

Q86 Chairman: Dr Kibble, could you take that further?

Dr Kibble: The maintenance of peace and stability in certain parts of the region, not all parts of the region, has certainly been a successful part of the South African strategy. One can point to a number of failures obviously, but with the inter-Congolese dialogue, the attempt to negotiate, with some success, in Burundi and after some uncertainties over Nigeria and Lesotho, South African foreign policy is certainly becoming rather more coherent, except in the specific case of Zimbabwe, which I suspect we may touch on later.

Q87 Mr Olner: When we are talking about NePAD, it has been described as an agenda for change. Is that fairly accurate? Is it for change in South Africa, or is it for change in southern Africa? Which is placed higher?

Mr Dowden: It is a programme for change in the whole of Africa, but originally it was conceived as those countries which signed up to it. At the AU summit in 2000, the whole continent adopted it, which meant you had governments like Zimbabwe's and Libya's, which obviously had not read the small print, signing up to it. That slightly weakened it in a way.

Q88 Mr Olner: Having not read the small print, what are the other countries in NePAD able to do against those countries which did not read the small print?

Mr Dowden: We are finding this out at the moment with the peer review mechanism. This is a concept of a group of countries going around and investigating countries which are willing to be investigated to see whether they come up to the NePAD standard. It is not compulsory and I am told it will not be punitive, but this is still being worked on.

Dr Kibble: The exemplary element in NePAD is the one which is constantly being stressed now. Many people in South African and other civil societies do have a problem with its lack of consultation, its top-down approach, its reliance on one particular form of neo-liberalism. They doubt very much on the one hand that the African leaders who are human rights abusers can be brought on board and on the other hand that it will make much significant difference, when the G8 is a little hesitant about funding it at this precise moment, when there are so many provisos, so many qualifications to be worked out, not least the peer review mechanism to which Richard is referring.

Q89 Mr Olner: It really does mean something for all people. One side says it is securing better governance and the other side says it is a means of securing more aid for African nations. You cannot have it one way on a Tuesday and the next way on a Wednesday.

Mr Dowden: As I see it, all the ingredients in NePAD are elements of the existing relationship between the rich world and Africa and NePAD is the packaging which has been put round them. This is both good and bad. It does not offer anything new. Everything has already been worked out, but if NePAD falls apart, the actual ingredients of NePAD will remain, perhaps in a more bilateral way, but they are not going to change. They are: more aid from rich countries and better governance from Africa. That is the deal. It is both.

Q90 Mr Olner: How is NePAD viewed by the different "rich" nations? Do the French have a different view on what NePAD should provide from us, or the EU, or America? Do all the countries have a different perspective of what NePAD is?

Dr Kibble: The way I hear it, the Americans have more or less abandoned it. They do not think it has any legs on it whatsoever. In a sense it reverts back to a kind of European ownership within the G8 and that is unfortunate in some ways. In a sense NePAD was very much geared to having a sympathetic audience inside the G8 and many people say it actually arose from discussions which initially took part in the G8 rather than an internal African conversation. Richard may have a slightly different view here.

Mr Dowden: No, that is right, certainly what you say about America. The problem with it is, that it is like that elephant being investigated by blind men and some hold the tail and some hold a leg and some hold the trunk. It is a bit like that. The French see is as water; that has been their great contribution to it, which was already one of the things they were doing in Africa and they pursue it like that. Britain sees it as good governance. African nations see it as a chance for more aid. They are all in there, just being selective in the way they pick out what they want from it.

Q91 Mr Chidgey: President Wade has recently shown a great deal of concern about the effectiveness of the peer review mechanism, which I find rather surprising, as he was, of course, one of the original promoters of the whole concept of NePAD. Does the African peer review mechanism actually hold the potential to change significantly poor governance in African nations or will it prove ultimately toothless in your considered opinion?

Mr Dowden: It will not do anything for the ones who do not want to change themselves. It is a key, but the individual countries have to turn that key in the lock. That would be my image of it. For those countries which are having problems turning the key and bringing good governance, but want to do it, it will be very helpful. Countries which have done well will say "We did this. We did that. This is how you should do it". It will not do anything at all for the countries which really just do not want to turn it.

Dr Kibble: It does slightly remind me of the barons in 1066 And All That, that there will be this peer review in front of people who will understand. The lesson of African solidarity, or more precisely African leadership solidarity, means that there will not be a significant civil society input into that peer review mechanism and it will be as much about resisting regime change as it will be about good governance. That might be a slightly cynical view, but I remain to be convinced to the contrary.

Q92 Mr Chidgey: That is very interesting. May I just pursue your point about regime change for a moment? One of the Western viewpoints on NePAD and its enthusiasm for it is good governance and tackling corruption, which is not necessarily the same thing as preventing or encouraging regime change. How do you see that dichotomy?

Dr Kibble: In a sense I was being slightly mischevous by talking about regime change. If I were going to be more precise, I would probably say changing the patterns and economic accumulation strategies, the corruption of certain African leaderships, not necessarily changing the government in power in whatever culture it might be, Kinshasa, Harare, Mogadishu. The good governance aspect is still something where people say "Come on board and there are benefits". There are no sanctions, no ways by which you can force people to change except by saying "If you go down, we go down" and there is a kind of regional input into that. I think those mechanisms are very, very under-strength.

Q93 Mr Chidgey: Is there anything we, Western nations, could do to make this aspect of NePAD more effective, the peer review mechanism?

Mr Dowden: We may come onto this a bit later on, but the character of Mbeki is such that anything he is told to do, or he thinks the West is telling Africa to do, he resists quite vehemently. Therefore, while Western governments could help provide assistance to it, if it were seen to be pushing a Western agenda, that might lay the way open for Mbeki particularly to resist it.

Q94 Mr Chidgey: It is fascinating. On the one hand you are saying, and the perceived view is, that we in the West should go very softly on this whole issue, yet the view from the United States, who are obviously a very major player here, is not just to abandon NePAD, but positively to oppose it, as you confirmed a moment ago in one of your answers. What sort of reaction does that provoke in Africa as a whole and South Africa as a key player when the Americans are producing their version, which I think is the Millennium Challenge? This means, "You allow American investors in and we'll look after the bottom line"; never mind good governance, never mind any of the other issues we are talking about. You know where I am coming from on this. Here we have a key player, the USA, actually positively undermining this attempt by African nations to work out their own destiny?

Mr Dowden: I would confirm that the Americans are backing what they see as winners, American-friendly policies, which would include good governance and a lot of what is in NePAD. For those countries who do not follow that, there is nothing whatsoever. It is sorting out sheep and goats and that has been the problem with a lot of African policy, trying to sort out sheep and goats in Africa, because, like human beings, most African leaders and countries are a bit of both.

  Dr Kibble: May I just pursue something here? Many people have called for a twin approach, which is on the one hand addressing issues of global inequality, debt, trade and the rest of it, which is a kind of positive, at the same time as stressing good governance and democratisation on the other hand; to be absolutely equitable in both kinds of ways, both human rights and democracy, but also economics.

Q95 Chairman: How would you answer those who say that NePAD was in essence a contract? There were reciprocal obligations. We, the Africans, deliver good governance: you, the West, deliver trade investment and aid in various forms. The degree of delivery on either side will coincide. That is that if we deliver one to that extent the other side will deliver. Manifestly, by certain actions in certain parts of Africa, Africa is not delivering and therefore cannot expect that same full-hearted response from the West, the other party to the contract. How would you answer that?

Mr Dowden: I would agree that it is not written into the NePAD document, but there is a sort of deal there. Do not forget that the donor countries are also held to account in NePAD, in that there should be a peer review of the donor policies, getting them co-ordinated and so on. Frankly, I have not seen a great deal of that. If Africans say "Well, if you fulfilled your side of the bargain", they have a point. To some extent, if you look at countries like Botswana, like Malawi, which is a bit more complicated but the president has not gone for the third term and tried to change the constitution, there is some progress in parts of Africa on these. Kenya is now on a completely different track; Ghana. They could say that there has been quite a lot of movement in Africa. The problem is that the only sanction is that nothing happens and that is what I fear: nobody is actually saying "Come on. Let's keep it rolling. Let's get on".

Dr Kibble: There is always a great concern in Africa about Western selectivity and certain human-rights-abusing governments are not sanctioned[40]and others are. We are not naíve enough to believe that human rights always take a primary part in any foreign policy dialogue, but it is certainly a handle for those who wish to use that to berate the West. From that stems the mere ability to have the conversation, particularly with rural Africans, as to what NePAD could possibly give to them. What does it mean in terms of trickledown or ending corruption or developmental economics, empowering women, combating HIV/AIDS and the rest of it? I do not think that conversation has really even started yet.

Q96 Richard Ottaway: This Committee has taken quite a close interest in Zimbabwe. President Mbeki has quite consistently not criticised Zimbabwe. A number of reasons have been given: solidarity, shared history, Western double standards. Why has he taken it? Given that the relationship with Zimbabwe is costing his country money, why has he taken this line when countries like Botswana are quite prepared to criticise Zimbabwe?

Mr Dowden: There are several reasons, some of them to do with his personality, some of them to do with his politics. He fears a broadly "Africanist" group in South Africa, the rhetoric which Winnie Mandela has used on occasions and others. In addition, because of his own history, that he was not involved in the struggle, but was a diplomat and here in Britain much of the time, he feels vulnerable to that, that he was not as much part of the struggle as others. He is therefore very vulnerable to attack from that side. That is one thing. There is an issue of land in South Africa as well and he did not want to exacerbate that. There is a feeling about Mugabe. Mugabe supported them very strongly over the years and it is hard to put the knife into someone who has been one of your main supporters. That is another reason. What several people told me it came down to at the recent CHOGM was that he just did not want to be told what to do in Africa by outsiders and it came down to that. If you read the letter which he published on the ANC website the following week—I think it is called An Upside-down View of Africa[41]all that bitterness; the words "kith and kin" are repeated over and over again. Basically, he sees racist Britain, which protected Ian Smith for so long and protected Apartheid for so long and is now trying to tell him to put the knife into his old colleague and he simply will not do it. I think that is what it is about.

Q97 Richard Ottaway: It is that bad, is it?

Mr Dowden: It is not bad, but we see it as contradictory in relation to what he is trying to do on NePAD and what he is trying to do on Burundi and Congo and we see it as crazy and inconsistent. If you actually understand the character of the man, it is not inconsistent at all.

Q98 Richard Ottaway: Is there anything we could be doing to change it?

Mr Dowden: I am told that he will not say this in dialogue with Britain but he is very, very critical of ZANU-PF and Mugabe. He is not as totally supportive as he appears to be. How do you move him to try to change things? It is ironic that he did apply incredibly powerful levers on all the other SADC countries at the CHOGM to vote in favour of re-admission. He was quite prepared to use levers brutally on them, but he says when it comes to Zimbabwe that he has no levers, there is nothing he can do, what do we want him to do, invade? He just simply will not apply any pressure. What can be done from the outside? Britain keeping quiet was probably a good policy and should remain so, because Mugabe was so clever at turning round every time Britain spoke and playing the old imperial colonial race card. That means that Britain should do things quietly rather than publicly.

Q99 Richard Ottaway: Tony Blair, Jack Straw, racist, imperialist?

Mr Dowden: I agree.


40   Sanctioned as in "subject to sanctions" rather than "approved". Back

41   http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2003/at49.htm£preslet Back


 
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