The Zimbabwean situation focuses a harsh spotlight on the credibility of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development’s (Nepad) peer review mechanism, and tough questions are sure to be raised at the G8 summit in Evian which started on June 1.
The mechanism is supposed to ensure that African countries follow principles of good governance. Zimbabwe remains the “first litmus test for Nepad”, says Chris Maroleng, an Africa expert with the Institute for Security Studies. He says Zimbabwe is bound to be raised at the G8 summit an at the Commonwealth heads of state meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, in December this year.
The G8 endorsed the African recovery plan last year, promising financial assistance and other spin-offs for countries complying with the principles of good governance. But countries such as Britain and France have indicated that Zimbabwe is likely to feature at the Evian meeting.
Only 12 countries, excluding Zimbabwe, have signed the accession document to the peer review mechanism, allowing themselves to be monitored for any human rights abuse and undemocratic practices.
But Eddy Maloka, head of the African Institute of South Africa, disagrees. He does not think that Zimbabwe is a test case for the peer review mechanism, saying that the situation in Zimbabwe is far more complex and the role of the British government is also in question.
The mechanism, which came into effect in April this year, is to be run by a panel of eminent Africans.
At the sixth summit of the heads of state and government implementation committee of Nepad in Abuja in March this year, the countries that volunteered to be subject to the review also adopted a declaration on democracy, political, economic and corporate governance.
The declaration sets out a code of conduct that the panel will use as a benchmark in reviewing governance. The code of conduct underlines the liberty and equality of all citizens, the right to political freedom, association, equal opportunity and participation in free and democratic political elections held periodically to elect leaders.
Maroleng points out that the Zimbabwean regime has managed to distort the crisis in its country as an “anti-colonial battle”.
In reality the “crisis is about human rights abuse and the socio- economic plunder of the country, which fall within the context of good governance”, he says.
He chastises the African Union member states for not being consistent in dealing with issues of good governance in the continent. While the AU barred Madagascar from participating in the July 2002 summit in Durban after a disputed election, it did not exclude Zimbabwe, Swaziland or Zambia, he points out. The 2002 summit took place soon after the Zimbabwean presidential elections, which were declared by a Southern African Development Community observer team as not being free and fair.
Swaziland, ruled by a king, does not have a participatory democracy. And there have been questions about the Zambian polls, held in December 2001.
Maroleng asks: “Is it because there are white interests involved in Zimbabwe?” Or perhaps, he asks, “Are the leaders of Madagascar not of the stature as those of Zimbabwe and Zambia?”
Last week the Zimbabwean opposition Movement for Democratic Change’s shadow foreign minister, Moses Mzila, also accused AU members of a hypocritical stance on Zimbabwe. He said Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe had broken every code of conduct rule prescribed in the peer review mechanism, and yet there had not been a single word of condemnation from the member states.
“Don’t these leaders stop to wonder that when journalists have to sneak into a country, something has to be terribly wrong there?” he asked.