After 19 tame and underfunded years, Africa’s human rights watchdog appears to have grown teeth.
Not a moment too soon, say the two South Africans most closely associated with the body known as the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR), which is one of the few continental structures to have twice criticised rights abuses in Zimbabwe. At its end of the year session in 2005, the commission came out strongly against the displacement of urban shack-dwellers in Zimbabwe last year. Its report and critique will be taken to the African Union summit in Khartoum on January 23.
Chief Electoral Officer Pansy Tlakula, who took her oath as a new commissioner at the ACHPR headquarters in Banjul, Gambia, last November, says it is doing very good work. The commission, established in 1987, comprises 11 members elected in their individual capacity by leaders at the AU summit in a secret ballot.
They hold office for six years and there is no limitation to the number of times they may be re-elected.
In the cozy days of the Organisation of African Unity, the ACHPR was little better than a group of political appointees.
Things changed with the new-look AU. In 2002 the ACHPR produced a report critical of Zimbabwe government behaviour during the election campaign of that year.
Tlakula has been made special rapporteur on freedom of expression and charged with looking closely at Swaziland, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania and Namibia.
Local election pressure drove Tlakula home before the end of the ACHPR session last month.
She was not in Banjul for the vote on the resolution on Zimbabwe.
It also condemned the human rights violations being perpetrated in Zimbabwe. ”I am fully aware of the resolution and I think it is a very good one. It shows commitment on the part of the ACHPR to uphold their tasks and functions,” says Tlakula.
University of South Africa’s principal Barney Pityana was an ACHPR commissioner from 1997 to 2003 and did not seek re-election.
He was co-author of the 2002 report that the Zimbabwe government tried for two years to suppress on grounds that it had not seen it.
This time around, it has closed off that avenue by angrily responding to the latest report.
”The 2002 report on Zimbabwe was unprecedented,” recalls Pityana. ”It was a battle to get it through the African Union Commission. Various members of the executive were very uneasy. But, notwithstanding their reservations, the report went through. The commission was prepared to have it in their report to the summit, where it received proper attention.
”Previously, the ACHPR work did not come to the summit.
”Zimbabwe had serious objections to the 2002 report. They wanted it removed, which delayed its consideration. Eventually, it went to the summit with a reply from Zimbabwe.
”For years I had tried to get the ACHPR to pay attention to what was happening in Zimbabwe without much success. In the end, I got them to send a fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe.” The mission in 2002 comprised Pityana and Jainaba Johm of Gambia.
”In terms of the AU Charter, the responsibility of the government had to be affirmed,” Pityana explains. ”The latest report on Zimbabwe, which expresses alarm and condemnation, is even stronger. It came out of the visit by Bahame Tom Nyanduga (of Tanzania), who was sent by Alpha Omar Konare to look at the effects of the urban clean-up campaign.”
The report will go some way to giving some credibility to the ACHPR, says Pityana. ”I fought a six-year battle to get them to take this more seriously. Things changed for the better with the appointment of Alpha Oumar Konare as chairperson of the AU Commission.
”Konare is fully supportive of the ACHPR. It’s properly funded for the first time and it gets proper support and has a role in the reconstruction of Africa,” says Pityana.
Our rights representatives
The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights’s (ACHPR) chairperson is Salamata Sawadogo of Burkina Faso. She is the first woman to chair the body. A former Burkinabe ambassador to Senegal and a judge, she was chairperson of the Association of Women Lawyers of Burkina Faso.
The vice-chairperson is Yasir Sid Ahmed el-Hassan of Sudan. He was chairperson of Sudan’s advisory council for human rights. Angela Melo of Mozambique is the commission’s special rapporteur on the rights of women. Bahame Tom Nyanduga of Tanzania heads the group dealing with refugees and displaced persons. He was sent by African Union Commission chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare to Zimbabwe in July last year to examine the effects of the controversial Operation Murambatsvina.
Mohammed Abdellahi Ould Babana of Mauritania, a former judge, oversaw the investigation in Mauritania’s abortive coup in June last year, three months before the putsch that ousted president Mohamed Ould Taya.
Sanji Mwasenono Monageng of Botswana heads the group on the prevention of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Pansy Tlakula of South Africa is organising the local elections in March and will get back to ACHPR business after that.
Kamel Rezag Bara of Algeria heads the group dealing with indigenous populations. The other newly elected commissioners with Tlakula are Musa Ngary Bitaye of Gambia, Mumba Malila of Zambia and Reine Alapini Gansou of Benin.