Admin
25 May, 2020
Africa Day 2020
We celebrate Africa Day this year, amid the Coronavirus pandemic, which has certainly forced our focuses away from the African agenda and has indeed exposed the need for its acceleration. The United Democratic Movement (UDM) believes that some progress has been made with Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the formation of the Africa Union (AU). The OAU constantly had to put out fires across the continent and it saw military regimes toppling corrupt governments. Under the OAU’s watch many democracies had been formed in sub-Saharan countries like Namibia, South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Salim Ahmed Salim, former OAU Secretary General, did good work and managed the transition to the AU very well. We also remember the work of people like Chester Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the Reagan Administration (from 1981 to 1989) who was the architect of the United States’ policy of “constructive engagement” towards Southern Africa. He oversaw the implementation of the United Nation’s Security Council’s Resolution 435 which delivered Namibian independence in 1990. We are slowly reaching the goals of healthy democracies, enshrining civil liberties and human rights, amongst others, but the continent still has a long way to go, especially where fighting corruption is concerned. Unfortunately, conflicts and war, human rights abuses, food shortages, exploitation of mineral resources and poaching of rhinos and other animals are still at the order of the day. African countries also need to focus on infrastructure development and creating manufacturing industries in order to secure our riches for the benefit of our peoples, thus stopping our shores from being a dumping ground for imported goods. The UDM celebrates Africa Day 2020 with the rest of the continent and wishes all countries the best in managing the Covid-19 pandemic. Issued by: Mr Bantu Holomisa UDM President
Admin
28 Apr, 2015
Debate on the African Union’s Agenda 2063: “The Africa We Want”
Address by Mr Nqabayomzi Kwankwa, MP UDM Chief Whip In the National Assembly Debate on the African Union’s Agenda 2063: “The Africa We Want” Thursday, 30 October 2014 Speaker and Honourable Members, On 3 May 1999, respected BBC newsreader and former African correspondent, George Alagiah, wrote in a piece for The Guardian (of London) that, and I quote: “For most people who get their view of the world from TV, Africa is a faraway place where good people go hungry, bad people run government, and chaos and anarchy are the norm. My job is to give a fuller picture. But I have a gnawing regret that, as a foreign correspondent, I have done Africa a disservice too often showing the continent at its worst and too rarely showing it in full flower.” End quote. Making a bad situation worse is that even Africans themselves contribute to the negative African narrative. In a study of Afro-pessimism online in 2011, Matha Evans highlights that, and I quote: “Online expatriate responses to events in South Africa perpetuate its [afropessimist] thinking to varying degrees, with openly racist declarations and fantasies of recolonisation sitting at the extreme of the continuum, and predictions about the country’s decline and apologetic speculations about the benefits of apartheid situated further along the scale.” End quote. Even today there is a litany of media stories both here at home and abroad that propel this negative narrative about Africa. However, beneath this media-fuelled pessimism is a continent that dreams of moving out of the malaise of poverty and underdevelopment and building a new Africa. After many decades of relative economic stagnation, a number of African countries have achieved economic growth through the adoption of prudent macroeconomic policies and have seen improvements in political stability and more transparent elections. Therefore, the African Union’s Agenda 2063 should, among others plans and programmes, serve as a new trajectory for Africa’s development. Despite these achievements, we are aware that in Africa there is a yawning disconnect between word and deed, between our grand plans and implementation. And this disconnect regrettably tends to be couched in idealism rather than pragmatism. To achieve Africa Vision 2063, we must demonstrate the political will to implement our plans and commitments to eradicate hunger and poverty in Africa and by so doing place African countries on a path to sustainable growth and development. In Africa, we should commit to good governance and democracy and do away with the tendency to tolerate authoritarian regimes. As long as we tolerate authoritarian regimes, which brazenly fiddle with the public purse for self-enrichment, we will never remove the detritus that shackles Africa’s potential. We should compel African countries to create conditions necessary to help democracy take root. The success of nations rests on their ability successfully to entrench good governance, promote and consolidate democracy, because where there is democracy there is likely to be observance of the rule of law and of human rights. We all need to put hands on deck to end wars and conflicts in Africa and prevent new ones from occurring. We need to deal in particular with the “Big Men” of Africa who commit to bringing peace and stability in their countries, but simultaneously tear them asunder by conflict and endless civil wars due to, in part, their refusal to relinquish power. Fellow South Africans, Africans need a leadership that is able to reconfigure the hidden dynamics in the world that shape the relationship between Africa as the powerless continent and the mighty in the world, because these are important in how trade and wealth accumulation are determined in the world. We need a good leadership that takes on an iconoclastic character to providing African solutions to African problems. Taking the aforementioned bold steps would ,among other things, help to improve the depressing investment climate on the continent. Fellow South Africans, As we begin the process of implementing Africa’s Vision 2063, we should draw inspiration from the words of Haile Selassie, when he once said, and I quote: “We remain persuaded that in our efforts to scatter the clouds which rim the horizon of our future, success must come, if only because failure is unthinkable.” I thank you.
