South African President Thabo Mbeki on Monday chided African leaders for not consulting their people and failing to keep promises made while fighting for liberation.
”The promise of liberation was (that) the people shall govern,” Mbeki said in an address to a gathering of African experts here.
”We were not liberated so that people should have dictators of their own.”
Speaking on the opening day of a three-day meeting on Africa’s renaissance organised by the Africa Institute of South Africa, Mbeki said the good governance element of the Africa’s economy recovery plan, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), was designed to fulfil liberation promises.
Nepad, which offers good governance in return for investment and development aid, was launched in Nigeria last year at a meeting of some 20 African leaders and officials.
”Good governance is not some foreign concept given to us. It is the basis of our liberation,” Mbeki said.
”Nepad is a programme designed to benefit Africans first: to re-energise and re-activate ourselves. We are not doing this to please people outside Africa,” he said.
The South African president called on fellow African leaders to move away from the ”deification” of their office and to take ownership of their development policy to be able to build partnerships with the developed world.
”Nepad calls for partners, not benefactors for Africa,” he said, adding that Africans must accept their inter-dependence.
”If one African country goes wrong, then we all pay. The antithesis is also true. We all profit when African countries do well.
”On this basis Africans should be able to talk to each other and be accountable.” – Sapa