Cabinet Minister William Ruto (right), Prime Minister Raila Odinga (second left), ODM Secretary General Anyang’ Nyong’o (left) and the party’s chairman Henry Kosgey. Mr Ruto has admitted he has presidential ambitions and that he will vie against Prime Minister Raila Odinga for the ODM ticket ahead of 2012. Photo/FILE

By MUGUMO MUNENEPosted Saturday, October 24 2009 at 22:30

SUNDAY NATION: Do you have a plan to run for president?

How far have these reconciliation efforts gone?

A lot of ground has been covered. The government has moved a notch higher and bought land for IDPs. We went out of our way as government to support IDPs by giving them seeds and fertiliser. The government has done the best it could to resettle IDPs and that programme is at its tail end. Of course, a lot of discussion has gone on among citizens in affected areas on how to forestall a recurrence.

One, that all effort should be made to make the country food secure. Within the next two years, we should have a food secure economy. Two, we should expand our economy to take on board more youth and in the next one year, we should agree on a new constitution. And that, I think, is doable.

source.nation.ke

Lilongwe (Malawi) — While campaigning in the last election, Margaret Roka Mauwa, Member of the Malawian Parliament, did not promise her voters that when she won she would buy them coffins.

Currently in Malawi, aspiring MPs have offered to buy would-be voters things that they need, like coffins for their dead, as a way of getting votes. Some officials have gone so far as to start coffin-making workshops in their areas just so the villagers who vote for them can get coffins for free.

It is a common practice, but one Mauwa refused to follow. Instead, she promised her voters what she knew she would be able to deliver

And as the deputy minister of agriculture, in a country that once was forced to import food, and now has a surplus of crops that it exports throughout the world, Mauwa has proved her point.

Mauwa believes that in a democracy, it is important for politicians to tell people the truth. In that way, you avoid misunderstandings with the constituents and you participate well in making democracy grow, she says.

But she is painfully aware that however hard she tries, she may not escape from the critical eye of the media, especially because she is also deputy minister of agriculture. Agriculture has recently become one of Malawi’s main source of income.

She likes the media because, she says, they are partners in shaping Malawi’s political system and help public servants to inform the nation about what their government is doing.

However, she has also learnt that the media can be disappointing.

“I have noticed that often journalists wait until something is wrong and they come to you. Sometimes they bring provocative questions, may be with bad intentions (to put the officials in bad light as being inefficient). That is why you see arrogance on the part of some of the politicians when dealing with journalists,” Mauwa says.

Mauwa is proof of the development of democracy in Malawi.

Malwai’s president, Bingu wa Mutharika, is also the active minister of agriculture. And Mauwa, a female, is second in command in a department that has won Mutharika praises around the world for Malawi’s improved food security situation.

She is among the 42 female MPs that made it to parliament in the elections. Of the 193 members that were elected to the national assembly in the May 2009 elections, 145 were new people. Mauwa was one of the new faces.

For the first time in the history of multiparty politics in Malawi, people did not vote for political parties and candidates because of the region from which the leadership of the parties came.

Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP), one of the prominent civil society organisations in Malawi, says one of the outstanding features of Malawi’s democracy to- date has been that voters have turned the corner from choosing people just because they have been around in politics for a long time and because they belonged to a certain region or political party.

“This recent election has shown how grown up Malawian voters are becoming. They are electing people based on issues,” says Christopher Chisoni, National Coordinator for CCJP.

The elections beat many bookmakers’ expectations. It was not expected that Mutharika and his party would win with a landslide. It was also not expected that Malawians would go for as many new faces in parliament.

“Citizens have come of age and politicians know now that voters can no longer be taken for granted. We have reached a stage where even ordinary Malawians are able to speak out loudly on issues that are affecting them,” says Chisoni.

CCJP gives thumbs-up to the media, among other key players, for keeping public servants on their toes. According to the organisation, Malawian media has been questioning the performance of public individuals and making them accountable to the people that elected them.

There are many such cases of this. A former minister is currently in jail after a newspaper revealed that he had spent public money on a wedding of his daughter.

And an investigation is reportedly going at the country’s communications regulator after a newspaper investigation uncovered corrupt practices in awarding of mobile licences. The minister involved is Patricia Kaliati, minister of gender, women and community development.

The public officers have also been relying on the media to account to the nation about what is being done by, for example, publishing information like country’s progress and shortfalls on reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

But the organisation observes that in the name of being seen to be doing a good job, some public officials are “exploiting the poverty” of some media to meet personal public relations matters rather than to bring worth to public debate and move development agenda for Malawi.

Not all media houses in Malawi are very profitable and not all journalists are well paid. There have been claims that some public officials give money to journalists so they can publish only the good about them.

However, there are some media houses that protect the independence of the fourth estate and have carried articles faulting public officials for failing to tackle real issues in their areas.

“As civil society, we are not interested in public figures who want the media when they are donating 20 balls to some barefoot young men in their village. That sounds like raising a personal profile. We want them to use the media in a way that adds value to national debate on our politics and development,” says Chisoni.

Executive Director for Media Council of Malawi (MCM) Baldwin Chiyamwaka says the media, which played a crucial role in bringing democracy in Malawi in 1993 through publishing diverse views in favour of change, has been facilitating the growth of that democracy by being a place where people discuss failings and successes of the process and of those meant to drive it.

“The media has been there with us every step on the way. As an emerging democracy, Malawi will continue to rely on the media as a tool to make public servants answerable to the people because that is a sure way of making our democracy strong,” he said.

On whether the media in Malawi are too hard on public officials, Chiyamwaka said that at times, journalists have expected too much from politicians, even when they are new and without adequate information on parliament. He said this has resulted in indifferent treatment of journalists by some politicians.

“Sometimes, in our hunger for news we seem to forget that politicians are human beings too. They experience what we experience. They have failings like us. They are not special machines to be producing miracles all the time. So, on occasions, it would pay to give them time. It would be worthwhile to put our pens down on them and look elsewhere where we can get better quality news,” Chiyamwaka said.

However, the authorities should not always expect the papers to be carrying positive stories only. He says it is the nature of the media to tackle both positive as well as the negative stories even if the public officials will not like it.

On her part, Mauwa said that the troubles that some Malawian MPs find themselves in are self-made.

A musician-cum-MP stirred anger among the people in his area when in his contribution in parliament last August, he complained that the music he had composed had been pirated. His constituents were angry with him, saying when he was campaigning, he did not say that he would fighting against music piracy but that he would be building bridges and schools in his area.

But in Mauwa’s campaign for the elections, she told her voters that she would not tell them what she would not be able to do just for the sake of getting votes.

“I told them that my job as their Member of Parliament would be to facilitate development. I did not promise to buy coffins for whoever dies in the area because I knew that I would not do it and that it was not the job of an MP.

“Because I told them what they would expect from me, there is a good understanding between us so far. I think that in a democracy, it is important to tell people the truth,” she says.

source.IPS

Johannesburg (South Africa) – The new muscular police strategy of shoot-to-kill to stop runaway crime is not the solution. The real danger of the policy is that it will encourage trigger-happy police, as likely has been the case in the tragic shooting of Olga Kekana in Pretoria, who was mistaken by the police for a car hijacker last Sunday.

Firstly, the argument that criminals have used South Africa’s model constitution and legislation to evade the law is just foolish. Surely, the woeful performance of the police and the poor state of the criminal justice system cannot be blamed on South Africa’s model constitution and its laws.

For another, the Criminal Procedure Act as it stands, which the Police Commissioner Bheki Cele blames for police inadequacy and wants to amend – with the support of President Jacob Zuma, already gives the police sufficient power to use force if they or the public are in danger. Better policing and an effective criminal justice system must be at the heart of any turnaround strategy to curb out-of-control crime.

The real issues are corruption, inefficiency and lack of adequate skills and resources in the police service and the criminal justice system. We need a comprehensive turnaround strategy.

We must start by dealing with the perceptions that some dodgy political figures are above prosecution, if they have the right political connections or are aligned with the right political faction within the ANC; and that in some cases people are prosecuted to settle political scores.

We must also take the politics out of policing, as we must also take business out of policing, asking those with business connections to get rid of it.

The police force has a credibility problem, which must be dealt with. There is a perception in the public image that some bad apple policemen are in cahoots with, if not criminals themselves. Often almost everybody in a township knows who the criminals are, where the drugs and stolen goods come from, where the gangsters hang-out.

Yet, the police in many cases often appear not to know this or ignore this. If the police leadership strategy is to score big wins early on in the fight against crime, the first thing the police must do is to round up the most known (by communities) big wig criminal bosses across the country. Furthermore, there is a perception that in some instances the police are picking on soft targets, rather than taking head on the big criminal masterminds.

For example, the metro police often sit comfortably on the side of highways and stop easier targets in cars, while the most effective action crime prevention action should be to police communities, where the murders, housebreaking, hijackings and serious crimes are happening. The police must get elementary police work right, take proper notes, be able to the right things at a crime scene, not to lose firearms and dockets. The vacancies in the police force must be filled, even if it means recruiting all those who took voluntary retrenchment packages before.

Cele must go on a drive to attract specialist skills to the police service, and expand the recruitment pool, especially to the leadership, to bring the best possible talent on board. He must reinstate the specialised police units, such as the narcotics bureau, the family violence, child protection and the sexual offences units. Build more forensic science laboratories, and recruit more scientists, even if means importing from abroad en-masse in the interim.

A police station should be built in every township. This should be done through public works programs, with the local unemployed in the area building it. Recruit at least 100 000 more police officers, for detective work. Furthermore, recruit another 150 000 matriculants who are unemployed, who have impeccable characters, and employ them as police assistants in the community.

The police must release crime statistics regularly and transparently, so that we can clearly measure progress, and so that civil society, the media and the public can hold the police accountable.

As part of a comprehensive anti-crime, poverty and job creation strategy, the government must introduce a basic income grant to help people affected by poverty and the impact of the global financial crisis. This will with one stroke deal with those who are forced to commit crime just to survive, and help focus police resources elsewhere, where it matters most.

* William Gumede is author of Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC.

source. Pambazuka/The Sowetan by illiam Gumede

Windhoek (Namibia) – Namibia’s friendliness towards the media has dropped 12 places according to the latest press freedom index released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) yesterday.

The media violations watchdog ranked Namibia 36th in the world and fourth in Africa. A year ago Namibia was 24th in the world and first in Africa, followed by Ghana, Mali and South Africa.
The Paris-based group gave Namibia the big drop after South African TV journalist Bonita Nuttall was arrested on November 28 last year for doing a report in Namibia after entering the country on a tourist visa. She was freed on payment of two lots of bail.
Ghana was boosted by yet another democratic election in January 2009, in which opposition candidate John Atta-Mills defeated the ruling party’s would-be successor to President John Kufuor.
In November last year RSF was one of the organisations which objected to the arrest of Nuttal and urged the government to ease Namibia’s relevant legislation, which imposes too many restrictions on foreign journalists wanting to work there.
A presenter on the South African TV station M-Net’s investigative programme ‘Carte Blanche’, Nuttall was arrested at Windhoek international airport as she was about to depart on November 28.
After spending the night in a holding cell at the airport, she was released the next day on bail of N$2 000 pending an initial court appearance. On December 3, the court ordered her to pay additional bail of N$8 000 pending trial in February.
She was arrested for doing a report about the nomadic Himba ethnic group without first obtaining the temporary residence and work permits which Namibia requires of foreign journalists.
RSF surveyed censorship, intimidation and violence against journalists around the world before releasing the latest report.
The media violations watchdog ranked Namibia above countries such as France, Spain, Argentina and Italy.
It said the horn of Africa was again the region with the most press freedom violations.
Eritrea (175th), where no independent media is tolerated and 30 journalists were in prison (as many as in China or Iran but with a much smaller population), was ranked last in the world for the third year running.
Somalia (164th), which is steadily being emptied of its journalists, was the world’s deadliest country for the media, with six journalists killed between January 1 and July 4.
This year confirmed that, in some African countries, democracy rests on solid foundations and respect for freedoms was guaranteed. But in other countries, political crises and instability dealt harsh blows to the work of journalists and news media.
In Madagascar (134th), which plummeted 40 places, the media were caught in a confrontation between ousted president Marc Ravalomanana and the president of the High Transition Authority, Andry Rajoelina.
Censorship, violent attacks on media premises, disinformation and a young journalist’s death while covering a demonstration were the reasons for the island’s sharp fall in the index.
In Gabon (129th), the media’s work was undermined by the news blackout about President Omar Bongo’s health which the authorities imposed in the run-up to his death and the poisonous climate during the presidential election in August this year.
In Zimbabwe (136th), RSF said, the press seems to be in the process of freeing itself from the regime’s vice-like grip.
“The situation was marred by former journalist Jestina Mukoko’s abduction and then imprisonment for many weeks. But hopes have been buoyed by the new government of national unity’s announcement in the summer that the BBC and CNN would be allowed to return and that the independent Daily News would be able to resume publishing,” RSF said.

Source.The Namibian

Maputo (Mozambique) — The Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA) is sending 24 observers to the Mozambican general and provincial elections scheduled for 28 October.

The mission is headed by Christiana Thorpe, president of the National Elections Commission of Sierra Leone. Other members come from civil society organisations and electoral administration bodies, not only from African countries, but also from EISA’s Asian and European partners.

The deputy head of the mission, and executive director of EISA, Denis Kadima, told a Maputo press conference on Wednesday that the observation mission hoped to verify if the conditions existed for elections in which Mozambican citizens could make a free choice, and whether the elections were in line with Mozambique’s own laws.

The mission would also seek to determine whether the election results “reflect the will of the Mozambican people”, and whether the elections meet SADC (Southern African Development Community) standards. These standards for election management, monitoring and observation were drawn up under the aegis of EISA and the SADC Forum of Election Commissions.

Kadima said that on Wednesday and Thursday the EISA observers would meet in Maputo with the various stakeholders in the elections, including the major political parties and the National Elections Commission (CNE).

On Friday, the observers will be deployed throughout the country where they will be able to observe the final stage of the election campaign, and the voting and count at the polling stations.

Kadima said the mission will issue a preliminary assessment of the elections on 30 October. Although the observers will be leaving by then, the EISA office in Maputo will keep a watch on the tabulation of results at district, provincial and national level.

Kadima said that only after the final validation of results will EISA issue its final report.

The CNE has until 12 November to issue the results – but they must then be validated and proclaimed by the appeals body, the Constitutional Council, and, judging by past experience, this could take another month.

EISA is a regional, non-profit making organisation based in Johannesburg, which describes its task as fighting for credible elections and democratic governance in Africa.

source. Agencia de informacao de Mocambique