The African Peer Review Mechanism’s (APRM) appraisal of South Africa will be skewed and lack credibility if resources are not urgently allocated so that the process reflects the daily hardships of ordinary South Africans.
Civil society activists are adamant that soliciting input takes time and money and are anxious to avoid ”rubber-stamping” a process driven by better funded government departments.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) may yet withdraw from the APRM at a conference next week.
”It is important for the process to go into the furthest areas of our country, especially rural areas, where problems of service delivery and poverty are most acute,” says Randall Howard, general secretary of the South African Transport Workers’ Union and a representative on the APRM national governing council. ”It must be a process that tells the story of the ordinary citizens of this country over the past 11 years to inform future policymaking.”
Broad consultation, Howard believes, will illustrate that the working class has not benefited from democracy in real economic terms.
Fellow council member Zanele Twala concurred: ”I suspect that when it comes to socio-economic and development issues, such as HIV/Aids and the lack of access to sanitation and water, we will have a lot of challenges.” Twala, who is also CEO of the South African NGO Coalition, expects the final report to confirm achievements in political and democratic governance.
But the APRM uses conservative fiscal indicators to measure development, says Elroy Paulus, from Cosatu. He explains a reluctance to use other indicators, such as access to anti-retrovirals, to avoid exposing real socio-economic challenges.
Political analysts caution that the review should not be a window-dressing exercise that hides negative findings from international investors and financial institutions that already consider African countries risky.
Already the government agency driving the process, the Department of Public Service and Administration, has increased civil society representation on the 30-member council to 20. After taking flak for announcing that department officials would draft the final council report, the government appointed Twala to the writing and editing team. The council extended the deadline for the first phase of compiling inputs and drafting a report and programme of action to March next year because of anticipated difficulties with consulting workers in manufacturing and the public sector, which ”shut down” during December and January.
In an ”inappropriately fast” process, these changes are like fixing a tyre puncture while the wheel is in motion, says Paulus.
But resource constraints remain a sticking point. Funds have been promised to civil society, but, to date, only provincial governments have been allocated budgets.
”By no means will the budget be enough,” said Twala. ”But it must be in place or else we will just be rubber-stamping.”
The director of the Public Services Accountability Monitor, Colm Allan is, however, sceptical about broad-based consultation alone ensuring credible outcomes.
To get to the root of service delivery problems, he suggests, researchers must evaluate the performance of provincial governments against resource allocation, strategic planning, expenditure management, service delivery monitoring and accountability of oversight bodies. Questioning people in the street will not provide information about these aspects of governance, he contends.
Civil society representatives in the North West indicate that people are confused by door-to-door questionnaires that seek their impressions of governance.
Yet political analyst Dr Adam Habib explains that public consultation is about increasing public participation in politics. ”It is not just an academic exchange. It is ultimately a political exercise of endorsement.”
Objectives of the peer scorecard
The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) is ”the mutually agreed instrument for self-monitoring by the participating member governments” meant to assist in improving the quality of governance in four areas: democratic governance, economic management, socio-economic development and corporate governance.
It seeks to improve the ability of African states to fulfil the objectives of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development.
So far, 23 member states of the African Union have acceded to the process.
The APRM is a voluntary mechanism and there are no sanctions based on its findings. The self-monitoring exercise comprises five stages in which the government consults widely to develop a report on governance and develops a programme of action. A panel of eminent persons monitors the process and is on hand to provide assistance.
South Africa launched the APRM in September.
It is slated to continue until August 2006.