South Africa will deliver a long-awaited report on good governance to an Africa Union summit in June, the head of an African review board said on Tuesday.
South Africa should have published its the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) report back at an African Union (AU) summit in January, but refused to do so, citing ”factual errors”.
A leaked copy of that version seen by Reuters identified the spread of corruption, lingering racism, growing xenophobia, lack of official accountability and some of the world’s highest crime rates as serious problems.
On Tuesday Bernard Kouassi, executive director of the APRM, said South Africa and Algeria would be presenting their reports to the heads of states at the June summit in Accra.
The peer review was agreed upon by AU states as a voluntary instrument to promote accountability and good governance. That South Africa, the continent’s biggest economy, had not endorsed its review in January raised questions about the viability of the whole process.
The African peer review forms part of the continent’s economic rescue plan, the New Partnerships for Africa’s Development (Nepad), to attract foreign investments needed to reduce poverty.
Ross Herbert, who heads the APRM programme at the South African Institute of International Affairs, said failure to present the report undermined efforts to promote accountability.
”South Africa’s conduct of the APRM threatens the credibility of the entire system because it violated the letter and spirit of the process,” he told Reuters.
He said ”removing many critical issues” broke core obligations.
The country review was prepared by a team of Nepad ”eminent persons” and followed a self-assessment report submitted by South Africa after wide-ranging consultations involving civic groups, businesses and other sectors.
Since its inception, only three countries have successfully gone through the review process even though 26 countries have signed a memorandum of understanding.
”The pace is slow and we would like to shorten the period of self assessment carried out by the countries without compromising the integrity of the review,” said Afeikhena Jerome, the APRM’s coordinator for economic governance and management.
”The South African review was rushed because they tried to do in a year what other countries took 18 months to do.” – Reuters