Democracy in action

Earlier this week I read an article in the Financial Times about an American congressman named John Culberson who is doing something rather controversial. He’s using new technologies over the Internet, to provide live coverage of, and commentary on, Congressional committee meetings.

Culberson has been using his cell phone to send short messages to the internet via the social networking service, Twitter, and now he’s also started sending live video feeds directly from his cell phone, using a new service called Qik (For the FT article see http://ft.onet.pl/0,13117,a_qik_from_new_technology,artykul_ft.html. The Qik site is at http://qik.com/).

Qik allows a direct video feed from a cell phone to be streamed live to a web page. Viewers can type comments and questions back, which the phone user can see and respond to.

According to the newspaper article, the congressman says he’s doing this to enable citizens to take back control of government — it’s opening up the US Congress to public scrutiny in a completely new way. Apparently Culberson also tried to provide a live Qik feed from the Oval Office when he went to the White House to meet with the President — but he was blocked from doing that.

Qik may be new in allowing live video feeds, and Culberson may be getting a lot of publicity because of his position, but others have not been slow to become citizen journalists by using the potential of the Internet to place public representatives under scrutiny.

For example, the blog, Mzalendo (www.mzalendo.com/) provides detailed coverage of debates and discussions in the Kenyan Parliament. It’s the brainchild of two Kenyans — Ory Okolloh, and someone known only as “M”. On their site, they say they started the project was started because they “were frustrated by the fact that it is difficult to hold Kenyan Members of Parliament (MPs) accountable for their performance largely because information about their work in Parliament is not easily accessible.” They have certainly been instrumental in beginning to change that situation.

Anyhow, inspired by this example, I went off on Tuesday to the South African Parliament, to sit in on a public hearing held by the Portfolio Committee on Communications. They were discussing a proposed amendment to the Broadcasting Act, which will allow members of the board of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to be removed. (This is the latest in an ongoing dispute between the Committee, the SABC Board, and the SABC CEO, which has been covered in earlier posts on this site.)

When I arrived, a civil society coalition formed to mobilise for changes in the SABC, were making their presentation to the Committee. They were arguing that if the Act is amended, the changes should go further and incorporate measures to make sure the SABC board is free of political interference and that the Corporation is run in the interests of all South Africans. The discussion afterwards was lively and interesting.

I didn’t have time to do a proper citizen journalism job and report on the proceedings in detail, but I did haul out my cell phone and snap a couple of pictures. I also took some short audio recordings, just to prove that I could (one of my pics is attached to this post — a bit out of focus, I’m afraid).

Amid all the news we’ve had recently of attacks on the judiciary, and crises in our major institutions it was very heartening to me to be reminded that as a South African citizen, I am free to walk into Parliament, and sit in on almost any of the proceedings, and see my elected representatives at work. I can take photos, notes and sound recordings (even video) if I want to, and am free to publish the results. And to do all of this, all I need is some sort of ID to get through security. I don’t have to be a card-carrying journalist, or have any special title or position.

Of course, most South Africans live too far away from Parliament to be able to do this, but among those who are in easy travelling distance, I reckon far too few take advantage of this right, and go and monitor what’s going on.

I highly recommend it. It’s a great reminder of what democracy is all about.

(This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa site on 7th August: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org)

Undermining the rule of law

I’m hopping mad.

Zacob Zuma, the man who is likely to be South Africa’s next president, is in court today, to try and ward off a corruption case against him. It’s the latest in a long series of court appearances, as Zuma’s lawyers try every tactic to avoid or postpone his corruption trial.

That’s not why I’m mad. I’m mad about the stance that Zuma’s party, the ANC, is taking on the case. The front page headline on Business Day today, one of the biggest dailies here, is “ANC fears ‘mobilisation’ of judges against Zuma” (see www.businessday.co.za/articles/frontpage.aspx?ID=BD4A815022). The Argus, Cape Town’s afternoon paper, carries the headline, “Zuma slips into court”, with a sub heading, “Trial smacks of apartheid, charges ANC.” The article carries a quote from the ANC’s spokersperson, saying “this trial smacks of apartheid… when if you told a story often enough, it became fact.”

The statement that this trial smacks of apartheid is laughable. This is 14 years after the end of apartheid. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is an institution of the new South Africa, staffed with professionals from all racial and ethnic groups. There may be some old, apartheid-era judges left on the benches, but the judiciary has been dramatically transformed since 1994 — most of our top judges are black, many are women, and many of them have a solid record of involvement in the struggle against apartheid.

Furthermore, the assertion that the case amounts to nothing more than the repetition of a fabrication, is blatant nonsense. Zuma has already been shown to be corrupt. Because this happened during the trial of somebody else — Schabir Shaik — Zuma and his supporters can assert that he hasn’t been found guilty. While that may be technically true, the fact remains that a court has already established that Zuma took money from Shaik as part of a corrupt relationship. The NPA has boxes and boxes of documents and extensive forensic audits, to back up its case. I’m not saying that this in itself means Zuma must be convicted, but clearly there is substance to the case — substance worth serious consideration by a court. It’s not just based on rumour.

The ANC is the ruling party. It has an overwhelming majority in Parliament, has ‘deployed’ its members throughout state institutions, and has implemented a long-running programme of transformation. Yet the language it uses is from the past, as if it were still the outsider, struggling against an unjust regime. The language is the language of war, and political intrigue, plots and conspiracies. Judges who rule against Zuma are accused of being ‘counter-revolutionary’.

This is very, very dangerous stuff. It’s one thing to say, let Zuma have his day in court. It’s another to then begin a campaign to discredit the entire judiciary and prosecutorial system. The idea is that even if Zuma goes to trial and is found guilty, the verdict will not be accepted, as the courts will be seen to be suspect.

The ANC, which has considerable power in South Africa, is playing the victim and setting up imaginary enemies, in order to try to save its chosen leader, Zuma. In the process the party is prepared to  undermine public confidence in institutions vital to our democracy. The outcome of this can only be bad. A democracy must be based on the rule of law and if faith in that law, and in the institutions that uphold it, is undermined, the very foundations of our democracy will begin to crumble.

And all of this not in defence of a principle, or of human rights, but of one deeply flawed man. It’s shameful and disgusting.

This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa site: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org on 4 August 2008.

Ashamed to be South African

At one time, during the years of apartheid, I used to be ashamed to be a South African. I remember my first ever overseas trip, when I was lucky enough to be part of a student exchange programme with an American university.

I would hate having to tell people I was from South Africa, as the comments or just funny looks would then follow. As a white South African I was considered guilty for apartheid, unless proven otherwise. But it was even worse when the odd person saw my South African-ness as a good thing. I remember cringing when I was travelling long-distance on a Greyhound bus, and during our introductions the person sitting next  to me exclaimed for everyone to hear: “You’re from South Africa! You all are doing the right thing down there!”

Then, there was a time when I was proud to be South African. I was in Kampala in late 1993 for work, and people in the streets and the marketplace would ask where I was from, and then excitedly chat about the upcoming elections set for April 94. During and after the elections, of course there was all the hype and it felt good to come from a country where we were trying and seemingly succeeding to overcome our differences. The wins in the rugby World Cup and soccer Africa Cup of Nations just fed the feeling of pride.

Then over the years we began to realise the ‘miracle’ was more hype than reality, that it would take a long time, and hard work, to redress wrongs, to ensure people had houses, water, and electricity — the basics for a decent life. Our government did many good things, but many things that were not so good. Our economy was growing, but the gap between the rich and poor was widening, there was Aids denialism and so on. Still, we were normal — not much better or worse than most other nations. I could still hold my head up in international company.

Lately, I’m starting to get that uncomfortable ashamed feeling again when I travel. The comments about South Africa are once again either angry or derisory. “Did you see the CNN report on racist white university students torturing black staff?”  “Your president says there’s no crisis in Zimbabwe!”, “Jacob Zuma is going to be your next president — ha ha ha!”, “How could Thabo Mbeki prematurely announce our president’s death?”

The low point came last night, when I was traveling with some Zambian friends in a Lusaka taxi. My friend was asking about the recent xenophobia in South Africa and saying he was worried about his sister who lives in Johannesburg. He was also talking about how he was hijacked when traveling in South Africa, and saying how he always has to watch his back in Johannesburg. I wanted to say things are not all THAT bad. Then over the radio came the news bulletin — with the story that the entire Zambian under-20 soccer team had had its luggage stolen at OR Tambo International airport. I just groaned and hung my head.

(This first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa site on the 17th of July, 2008: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org)

Mugabe’s praise singers show contempt for ordinary Zimbabweans

(Although this was posted on the 19th, I wrote it on 12th May)

I was quite disturbed to read two opinion pieces in the SA Sunday papers, on Zimbabwe, where the authors were basically defending Mugabe.

In an article in The Sunday Times, titled “The West is conspiring to unseat that valiant warrior, Mugabe”, (www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Insight/Article.aspx?id=764077) Mohau Pheko repeats the tired old line that the MDC is an agent of the West, and that while Mugabe has had made ‘gross mistakes in governing’, the reason the West wants to unseat him is that he’s a ‘valiant warrior against Western superiority in Africa’. In another article (and now I can’t for the life of me remember which paper it was in), a former senior member of the Presidency in South Africa defends Mbeki’s approach, and again argues that the MDC is an agent of colonialism.

The thing is, these writers have some valid points to make*. In their articles they question why such a fuss is made about Zimbabwe and not about other countries where there are undemocratic governments, such as Uganda, and Swaziland, to name two. They point out that Britain and the West reneged on promises with respect to supporting land reform in Zimbabwe, and correctly remind us that all foreign countries are pushing their own interests.

But they then seem to think that if these things are true, it must be a logical conclusion that the MDC is noting but an agent of foreign forces, and that Mugabe’s actually the good guy (though of course he’s made some mistakes). But why can’t all of these things be true: that we should pay attention to other problematic regimes too, that a lot of the noise made about Zimbabwe is made by people and countries with their own agendas to push, that the MDC is a legitimate party with demonstrably legitimate support within Zimbabwe (and perhaps with some questionable alliances), and that Mugabe is a brutal dictator who may have done great things in the past, but who has now driven his country into the ground?

Arguments like those made by Pheko seem to spring from a need for simplistic judgments — the world must be seen in terms of black and white, good versus evil. So if there are some people and interests on one ’side’ that are seen as bad, then everyone associated with them must be bad, and the other side must be the good guys. There’s no allowance for the fact that the real world is complex. There’s a refusal or inability to accept that the man who was once a hero is now a villain, and that countries which have acted despicably in the past just might be doing a good thing by supporting his downfall (even if they’re doing so for the wrong reasons).

But perhaps more disturbingly, these arguments show contempt for Africa and Africans — contempt expessed by people who purport to be defending Africa and Africans against colonialism. Firstly, they show contempt for the MDC and other opposition politicians. There is the assumption that if the Americans and British offer support to the opposition, that the opposition is a puppet in the hands of these powers. There is no willingness to believe that the opposition may have agency in such alliances — that they may be strategically using what support and supporters they may get, for their own aims.

But secondly, there is utter contempt for ordinary Africans — in this case, ordinary Zimbabweans. A refusal to believe that ordinary Zimbabweans may have voted for the MDC not because they are being manipulated by crafty colonialists, but because they believe that it is in their own interests to do so (despite extensive measures by the state designed to make them believe otherwise). And a refusal to admit that it is more important to support and defend ordinary citizens who have been jailed and tortured and had their lives and livelihoods ruined, than it is to cling to a childish belief that one’s one-time hero can’t possibly turn into a monster.

(*Amid some others that are less valid — like Mohau’s condemnation of the MDC for calling for sanctions against its own country — excuse me, isn’t that just what the ANC did during apartheid? With good reason, and good results.)

This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa portal: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org.

Keep democracy, scrap elections

I am becoming disillusioned with democracy. Elected leaders, all around the world, seem to be getting worse and worse.

In London they’ve just elected Boris Johnson, a bigoted buffoon, as mayor. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi was recently re-elected as prime minister. This is a man who is notoriously corrupt, and who in his previous terms in power ran the government like his private business empire.

Here in South Africa, many of us spent last year terrified of the prospect of a Jacob Zuma presidency. But lately, Thabo Mbeki has revealed himself to be so bad that Zuma is beginning to seem like a better option. That this is so, just shows how far our standards have dropped.

Of course it’s our fault as voters, for electing every-more inept leaders. But it’s not like we have a great choice. The calibre of candidates seem to be declining year by year, so that now electorates are faced with choosing the least bad person, rather than the best one. In any case, money and PR spin have long removed any semblance of real choice from the electoral process. No wonder the idealistic youth are sickened with what they see, and stay away from politics.

More and more I agree with the person who said that the very  fact that someone wants to be elected, should automatically disqualify them. Hardly anybody seems to go into politics anymore with noble intentions — they go into it in a quest for power for money, or both. These are just the people who should be kept far away from the reins.  And the few people who may start out with some moral fibre and a backbone are either quickly corrupted by the whole dirty system, or they leave in disgust.

In my view, democracy is broken. And I have an idea about how to fix it. We need to look to the jury system that exists in some countries, and to the techniques used by public opinion and market researchers.

The jury system works on the premise that people should be judged by their peers. And behind that is the assumption that a pretty much randomly- group of ordinary people are competent to understand the issues involved, and to come to reasonable judgments.

So why not choose parliaments and governments in the same way? Present-day democracy is representative democracy. Representatives of the people sit in parliament and make decisions on the people’s behalf. At present we choose our representatives through elections. But this isn’t working, so let’s scrap elections. Why can’t the people’s representatives be chosen through a random process — every x number of years, through a random process, x number of representatives are chosen. It’s like the Lotto. If your number comes up, you have to go and serve in Parliament for a term. When your term is over, you are released and can go back to your life. For the sake of continuity, every year only 25 or 30% of the representatives are changed.

This would still be representative democracy — the chosen representatives would just be chosen in a different way. To see how it will be representative, we can look to the sampling techniques that market researchers use. They select a random group of people, but in a structured way, so that the make-up of the group mirrors exactly the make-up of the broader population. It’s random in that every member of the broader population has an equal chance of being selected. In that way, they can get pretty reliable knowledge about the views of the entire population, by only speaking to about 2000 or so people.

So why don’t we choose our public representatives (let’s stop calling them leaders) in this way, and mandate them to discuss the important issues and make decisions on our behalf?

This has actually been tried. American political scientist Professor James Fishkin has already undertaken several experiments along these lines, using what he calls ‘deliberative polling’. (See for example http://cdd.stanford.edu/polls/docs/summary/)

So, what are the benefits?

No more elections would mean no more campaigning, election violence, worrying about ‘free and fair’.  It would mean the end of political parties and the end of long-serving parliamentarians. It would thus cut out key motivators of and opportunities for corruption. It would mean the end of cronyism. Very importantly, it would also ensure equal representation. Instantly, 50% of Parliament would be women. A proportional number would be young, and old. Numbers of black and white would reflect the population. About 10% would be homosexual, and so on. What’s fairer than that?

The ‘jury’-like process means that those who are chosen in this way would probably be reluctant to do so, as it would mean disrupting one’s regular life to serve in Parliament.  Parliamentarians should not benefit excessively, as this would create an incentive to corrupt the process of selection. In fact, perhaps each person should get a salary linked to what they were earning in their everyday lives and careers.

This would have two benefits — although serving in Parliament would disrupt a career path, it wouldn’t lead to any financial losses. Secondly, this would avoid the problem that occurs now, where elected representatives become fat cats who lose touch with the concerns of their constituents. The rich would remain rich, the poor would remain poor. They would thus represent the perspectives and interest of rich or poor people respectively. But because there are many more poor than rich people, Parliament would tend to make pro-poor decisions.

But there should be some incentives to serving in Parliament, so that people also don’t try to corrupt the process in order to get out of it.  This benefit need not be financial. At any rate, ex-Parliamentarians from whatever background would be on a fast-track to good jobs, as their 4-year term would have served as an education in decision-making and a crash-course in leadership

One objection to this idea might be that a randomly-chosen group such as this would not necessarily be equipped to understand complex issues of public policy — to deliberate on them and make good decisions.

My first answer to this is that most of the current bunch chosen through elections, aren’t doing such a great job anyhow. Any randomly-chosen group of people is unlikely to do worse, and may well do better. And anyhow, democracy is already based on the belief that every citizen is capable of making informed decisions — at least once every 4 or 5 years.

But my more reasoned response is that we already have examples of randomly-chosen ordinary people being able to understand and make reasonable decisions on complex issues. The jury system works on this premise. It doesn’t always work well, but it works well enough for several countries to remain confident in it. Fishkin’s experiments in deliberative polling also indicate that ordinary people do a pretty good job of coming to grips with and making decisions on complex public issues.

Some may say this may be true in the developed world, where average education levels are higher — not in places with low average education levels, and high levels of illiteracy.

But this is nonsense. We also have examples in developing countries proving that the average person is perfectly capable of coming to grips with complex issues, no matter their level of education. This example is the work done by the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, and similar organisations such as the Treatment Advocacy and Literacy Campaign in Zambia. Through training in treatment literacy, thousands of ordinary, often poor and poorly-educated people have been able to master extremely complex medical and scientific information. Sometimes to the extent that they put ill-informed doctors and nurses to shame.

The system that I propose would in place Parliaments that are at least as competent as ours are now, but most likely they’d be a whole lot better.

This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa website: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org

A soap opera unfolds at the SABC

SBoy, am I glad I don’t work at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) at the moment! It’s been a week of drama. First the CEO, Dali Mpofu announced he was suspending the head of news, Snuki Sikalala. Then the next day we woke up to the news that the Board had suspended the CEO.

All of this, in turn, comes after Parliament’s Communications Committee passed a motion of no confidence in the SABC board last week!
(http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=6&art_id=vn20080501063442739C583465)

Many commentators have been saying that this is part of the battle between the Mbeki and Zuma factions in the ANC. So, it goes like this:  Snuki Zikalala is known as an Mbeki man, and he was suspended by Mpofu, who perhaps used to be an Mbeki man but is now apparently in the Zuma camp. Mpofu was then suspended by the Board, which is believed to be loaded with Mbeki supporters, and the board has been censured by the Parliamentary committee, which is full of Zuma’s people.

It’s rather like one of the SABCs own very popular soap operas. The only difference is that any scriptwriter who dared come up with such a plot would be fired for being too far fetched!

The tragedy is that no matter who wins in the end, it can no longer be denied that the SABCs independence as an institution has been seriously compromised.

But the SABC is a strange animal. Most of this news, as it was unfolding, came from the SABC itself. I listened open-mouthed in my car yesterday as SABC’s current affairs teams brought us blow-by-blow commentary. In radio, in particular, the current affairs teams of serving the various stations enjoy a fair deal of autonomy and while the SABC as a whole is in a sad state, it must be said that there are still many good, dedicated journalists there, with integrity, who are doing their best in the circumstances.

But of course turmoil like this is bad for morale. I know – I worked at the SABC for most of the 90s, and from about 1993 the organisation has been pretty much in permanent transition. The SABC has seen some of the most talented and dedicated journalists in SA pass through its doors, only to leave again when they could no longer stand the constant politicking and upheaval. I shouldn’t be surprised to see a new wave of good people leaving in the wake of this latest debacle.

Meanwhile, there is another point to be made from all of this, which is that we are seeing an increasing number of top officials sitting in limbo, as they wait out sometimes indefinite suspensions — as The Citizen newspaper has pointed out (www.google.com/calendar/render?tab=mc): “Other notables who find themselves in limbo are National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi and National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli. Then there’s the famous safe driver, Ekurhuleni Metro Police Chief Robert McBride, who’s not officially suspended although he’s not supposed to be at work.”

In my head I keep hearing the voices of Zimbabwean colleagues and friends, who have told me many times: “we see the warning signs that your democracy is in danger — it starts slowly. Watch out.” I wonder what they are thinking as they observe the latest events unfolding. I’m too scared to ask.

This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa portal – www.citizenjournalismafrica.org

A crisis by any other name

Originally posted on the Citizen Journalism in Africa portal on 14 April 2008 (www.citizenjournalismafrica.org),

Last week I wrote a comment in response to a blog by Sandile Memela, on the South African blog site, Thought Leader (http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/sandilememela/2008/04/09/why-mbekis-quiet-diplomacy-is-the-best-solution-for-zimbabwe-and-the-rest-of-dark-africa/). Memela’s blog was a defence of Thabo Mbeki’s ‘quiet diplomacy’. I ended my outraged response with the comment that in contrast with President Mbeki’s lack of action, Zambia’s President, Levy Mwanawasa was showing real leadership by calling a summit on Zimbabwe.

Well, it turns out my comments were a little premature. Yes, President Mwanawasa was showing more leadership than Mbeki, but clearly not enough. The SADC summit did issue a statement expressing concern about the situation in ZImbabwe, and calling for the election results to be released ‘expeditiously’ — but this seems to me rather wishy-washy and not nearly strong enough to ensure that strong action is taken right now.

By all accounts, the SADC heads of state were locked in discussions until 3am on Saturday morning. No, not hashing out the details of a high-level delegation to Zimbabwe, or possible measures to be taken against Robert Mugabe and his cronies, but debating whether the use of the word ‘crisis’, was appropriate. Apparently theologians during the Middle Ages used to have heated debates about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. The SADC summit’s agonised deliberations over the use of a single word seem to be to be just as useful and practical. As a guest on our national radio station, SAFM put it this morning, “if people are being harassed and even tortured because of their political allegiances, that is a crisis. When inflation is so bad that most people can’t afford to buy food, that is a crisis. In South Africa, we are experiencing problems with electricity supply and regular black-outs, and we refer to that as a crisis. So why is Zimbabwe not a crisis?” (I was in the car so couldn’t write down his exact words — but this is in essence what he said.)

But in the end, who cares what you call it — a dire situation, a crisis, a big big problem — the question is:  what do we do about it? Let’s have some concrete proposals of clear steps that need to be taken, with timeframes and dates attached, and consequences to be faced — not simply statements of concern.

But at least a statement of concern is more than anyone’s likely to get from Thabo Mbeki. “Crisis, what crisis?”, blared the headlines on Sunday, quoting our esteemed president. Not only does this make me spitting mad, but it makes me very, very worried. When I was a practicing journalist I had the occasion once or twice to attend press conferences addressed by Mugabe. I used to marvel that unlike other leaders, he didn’t try to put a spin on negative news. He just denied it outright. Where other leaders would say, ‘yes, this happened, but it’s not our fault because…’, Mugabe would just say ‘it never happened. The media lied. The photographs were doctored. It never happened.’ What worries me deeply now, is that our own head of state seems to be adopting the same denialist behaviour.

Of course, he has done it before — in the face of the huge HIV/Aids…um…crisis. But I thought that perhaps that was an exception, a special case, motivated by complex factors that many writers more intelligent than I have tried to explain, over the years. Now it is becoming clear that denial is a habit of his. I mean, even Jacob Zuma is starting to look better — at least he had the sense to criticise the delay in the release of the election results. What, Jacob Zuma looking like a better alternative to what we have? Now not only do I fear for Zimbabwe, but I fear for South Africa.

What also worries me about much of the public debate here about ZImbabwe, is that people talk as if it’s about whether Mbeki (and other leaders in the region) should back either Mugabe or Tsvangirai. Some writers have, for example, commented that Mbeki is reluctant to support Tsvangirai because the MDC grew out of the unions, and the parallels between this and Zuma’s backing from the unions in SA are worrying for him. This may be true, but it misses the point. It’s not about personalities. It is the people of Zimbabwe, and the ideal of democracy that need support.  Mbeki and others with power should be insisting that democratic principles and practices be upheld, and that the choices of the people of Zimbabwe must be respected.