More than 200 Africanist scholars have called on President Obama to take action through the United Nations to protect civilians in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).  The petition comes at a desperate time in the DRC, where the M23 rebels withdrew from Goma, one of the country’s largest cities, just last week.

Why the DRC will Figure in Confirmation Hearings for the Next Secretary of State

It also comes at a delicate political time in the US, where the departure of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is all but certain in the coming weeks and there is a storm gathering around Susan Rice, Obama’s presumed choice for a replacement.  First, Republicans on Capitol Hill grilled her for saying  in the days following Benghazi attacks  that the violence erupted from spontaneous protests (as the CIA at the time believed), rather than a planned act of terrorism.  Now human rights groups and journalists are drawing attention to Rice’s kind remarks about Africa’s dictators, and in particular, accusing her of helping to suppress evidence concerning Rwanda’s backing of M23.  Howard French, a former columnist for the New York Times, raised these concerns in the Atlantic in a detailed piece that has gone viral among Africanists.

The United Nations, through a formal committee reviewing sanctions on the DRC, has issued a series of reports describing Rwandan and Ugandan support for the M23 rebels.  The evidence presents a problem for the US, not only because of its unflagging support for the two US allies, but also because as a Senator, Obama authored an amendment to suspend foreign aid to any country that destabilizes the DRC.

The ACAS Petition to Obama

Organized by the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, the petition calls on President Obama to:

• Press the Security Council to ensure protection of civilians from further abuse and ensure support for the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC (MONUC) so that it has adequate resources and mandate to fulfill its protection role.
• Support a Security Council resolution requiring Rwanda and Uganda to immediately withdraw any support to the M23 armed group.
• Publicly recommend to the UN Security Council that officials within the Rwandan Ministry of Defense be added to the list of designated individuals targeted by the UNSC Sanctions Committee.
• Mandate the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to fully implement the Sec 1502 disclosure requirement of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requiring U.S. companies to disclose any products they manufacture using conflict minerals sourced from the Democratic Republic of Congo or contiguous countries.
• Press the Congolese government to stop violations being committed by the Congolese army as well as entering into alliances with armed groups, and fully implement the Public Law 109-456: The DRC Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006 (the “Obama Law”).
• End the waiver of Child Soldier sanctions on the Congolese Government and extend the sanctions to include nations that support guerrilla movements like M23 that recruit child soldiers.

You can download the ACAS press release with the text of the petition here.

 

To add your name to the petition, please contact ACAS.

To post a comment, please include your full name, and preferably your affiliation.

It will be difficult for Nigeria to make progress on petty official corruption, or to enhance local security, without a robust conversation about the state of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).  So President Goodluck Jonathan’s announcement of a Presidential Committee on the Reform of the Nigeria Police should have been enthusiastically embraced by a public tired of paying bribes on the highway, or living among armed bandits who always seem to slip away. After all, citizens consistently report lower levels of trust in the police than the military — this in a country with a history of half a dozen dictatorships since independence.

Unfortunately, the Commission was destined to follow its predecessors into the dustbin, with limited terms of reference and little support outside of government, including among non-governmental organizations that had been studying the issue for years.  The Network on Police Reform in Nigeria opted to form a parallel reform process.  Its report amounts to a powerful critique of the administration’s approach to the security sector, and it offers a thoughtful analysis of the deeper structural problems that undermine public safety and that lead to misguided strategies for dealing with Boko Haram and other security threats.  Some of the factors that undermine police effectiveness, according to the six-person panel of experts are:

• A constitutional and statutory framework that has created a “lack of operational autonomy, which has led to politicization and lack of professionalism.”  The constitution and the existing laws governing the police force need to be amended to distinguish between operational authority (which governs day-to-day functioning) and policy guidance.
• An over-centralized command structure. One of the consultants to the panel explained to me that this is not simply an issue of decentralization, it also relates to the failures to curb corruption and hold abusive police accountable.  At present, reports of violations move up the existing chain of command, rather than being investigated by independent offices.
• A lack of specialization, making the force ill-equipped to deal with complex crimes or to offer diverse career opportunities.
• An unusually brief training period, with insufficient emphasis on human rights and community policing techniques.

You can download the complete report, “Civil Society Panel on Police Reform,” here.  There is an especially thought-provoking discussion about whether the police should remain national, or whether subnational officials should have some control over police. Noting old concerns that this could contribute to the fragmentation of Nigeria, the panel said “these arguments are mere mantras” by people who wish to avoid “hard thinking.”  The panel called for “a much more informed debate on the subject.” The reality is that it will be difficult for the police to engage communities and build the trust needed for crime prevention, without some type of devolution of authority.  But state-level violence remains a serious issue, and Nigerian law enforcement needs to do more than put new wine in old bottles if it is going to seriously deal with Boko Haram and other complex public safety challenges.

“We have received numerous reports of mass arrests, extra-judicial killings, torture, and prolonged detention without due process of law.  While officials have initiated investigations in some of these cases, all too often those responsible have not been held accountable. Many Nigerians believe that the excessive use of force by security forces, often operating through Joint Task Force patrols, has alienated local populations and fueled support for Boko Haram.”  –U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Mike Posner

During a visit to Nigeria last week, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Labor, and Human Rights, Michael Posner, pointed out that ending the insecurity requires prosecution of Boko Haram members for the use of violence, which has killed hundreds.  But it requires accountability all around.  “We are also seriously concerned about abuses by members of the Nigerian security forces in combating Boko Haram’s extremist violence,” he said in Lagos.

To be more effective, Nigeria’s police will have to be more accountable.  Donors (including the U.S.), and some human rights groups will continue to have concerns about the wisdom of decentralizing Nigeria’s police.  But the CSO Panel is right that it is time to have a more comprehensive discussion of the issue, and I find the argument that it could enhance accountability an important one to debate.

At the United Nations in September, Barack Obama had Voltaire on his mind.  “I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day,” said the president. “And I will always defend their right to do so.” Voltaire of course famously said, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”  Obama’s comments were directed towards the heated debate over the video, “The Innocence of Muslims,” which triggered violent reactions in numerous Muslim countries.

In America, Alexis de Tocqueville admired the strong defense of free speech, noting in the 1830s “Among the twelve million people living in the territory of the United States, there is not one single man who has dared to suggest restricting freedom of the press” (page 182).  But unlike Obama, when Tocqueville explained in Democracy in America that the best way to prevent extreme views from becoming dangerous ideas was to legalize them, he was applying this thinking specifically to the US.  Extreme liberty worked in America, thought the young Frenchman, because of the equality of social conditions and the mores of a people without an aristocracy.

In the democratization literature, there is a great debate over sequencing: If elections are held too soon does this give nationalists or radicals an upper hand? Is social mobilization without institutionalization destabilizing? The US invasion of Iraq reignited these debates.  Based on Obama’s comments, it seems that he either believes that sequence does not matter (if you start from political freedom, tolerance will follow regardless), or that there are universal norms of free speech.  Both views seem potentially dangerous, and assessing them requires great imagination.  It is difficult to calculate consequences without a robust ability to imagine a future.  How can we better prepare our students to do this?

Joshua Mitchell on “Tocqueville in Arabia”

Before his October 2012 talk at American University, I asked Georgetown University Professor of Political Theory Joshua Mitchell to think about democratic sequencing, and a series of other issues as part of his lecture on “Tocqueville in Arabia.”  Students in the Middle East “often long to see farther,” he has written, yet they struggle to do so.

Mitchell’s most recent book is “Plato’s Fable: On the Mortal Condition in Shadowy Times” (Princeton University Press, 2006). “Philosophical Quarterly” called the book “a well-researched and eloquently expressed work of scholarship.” The reviewer called the introductory chapter “a tour de force of contemporary political and moral philosophy.”

Tocqueville serves as a lens for reflecting upon his five years teaching in the Middle East (not as a tool for advocating American democracy promotion).  In addition to the question of sequencing, what follows are some of the major themes and ideas I asked him to consider. You can watch a short three minute excerpt of his comments on iTunes University by clicking here.

The Family in Civil Society

The relationship between family obligations, and the broader construction of civil society, arises in various ways in his work.  Religion calls Muslims to practice social responsibility to the broader community, for example through zakat.  But do citizens learn democratic habits this way, I asked?  And how is democratic sequencing different without secularism?

The young generation in Russia during the mid-1800s, who invented the philosophy of nihilism, hoped to advance social reforms by renouncing the social mores of their parents.  Do the youths of Benghazi or Baghdad need to embed democratic rebellion within their family obligations, or do they need to escape them?

Education

In an interview with David Souter on PBS, the retired Supreme Court Justice expressed desperation about the general state of ignorance in America about the Constitution, alluding to a possible solution: that we can somehow become better citizens through exposure to the right political knowledge. As numerous public scholars have pointed out though, the great paradox of the information age is that we have more access to information than ever dreamed possible a generation or two ago, but it is hard to argue that we have gotten any smarter. So maybe civics is not the solution after all, and exposure doesn’t count for much. Right?

Allan Bloom thought we could remedy this not through civics but through Western philosophy, lamenting in The Closing of the American Mind the rise of MTV and other horrors of the 1980s.  But where he feared that multi-culturalism was killing the cannon, Mitchell’s concern is different: “student-centered learning” has replaced the cannon, as has a philosophy of sympathy, and this ultimately provides a poor guide for understanding the world. He also would like to see the “great ideas” resurrected, so that students would become armed with critical thinking not only through Plato and Plutarch, but through “comparative canonical inquiry.”

Martha Nussbaum makes a related argument in her recent book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, explaining that literature, philosophy and the arts are essential building blocks of creative and engaged citizens. With the School Reform Movement in America today, I don’t think either Bloom or Nussbaum will be satisfied: education has failed because it is not practical enough.  Of course this notion of practicality is also far removed from John Dewey’s idea of practical education through pragmatism. Today Democrats and Republicans alike both want to see education vocationalized: students will be trained for their place in the economy, rather than their place in the polity.  I too am very worried about the students churned out by such schools.

Alternatively, maybe it is not what we know, but how we know each other.  And in this way, the “friending” debasement of friendship, the replacement of companionship with “connectedness” (Mark Zukerberg’s mantra during interviews), becomes what Mitchell describes as a “soliloquy” for young people, a “reoccurring loop that can be halted by the one thing that many of them are most frightened to do, namely, involve themselves in actual face-to face relations – not for a moment, but for an extended period.”  Students today are more connected, and more alone. As many universities embark on massive, ambitious online degree programs that will link more and more students linked to the academy primarily through their computers, can pedagogy make good democrats of our pupils under such conditions?  If not, will they become even lonelier?

Individuality and Collectivity

Another theme Mitchell explores is the dialogue between individuality and collectivity.  I interpret individuality as a precondition for autonomous judgment. This means that the democratic person is on the one hand proud of her independence (self-sufficiency?) and on the other hand prone to loneliness. The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics recently offered grim evidence of the latter’s rise: the suicide rate increased 15 percent over the last decade, and for the first time it now exceeds the fatality rate from car accidents. What does the college campus tell us about this balance between self-sufficiency and alienation?

Things have of course changed in Arabia since Tocqueville wrote. In Egypt he said the ruler believed his people “extremely ignorant and very nearly equal” in the early 1800s (page 677).  At that time – as under Hosni Mubarak’s more recent rule – the centralized state provided a stark contrast with America, where federalism is practically fetishized. Today, can we guess that Tocqueville would write that Egyptians are “extremely angry and very nearly democratic”?

As a post-script to the presentation, I can’t resist noting that the day after Obama’s re-election, the maker of the controversial and insensitive video maligning Islam was sentenced to a year in prison — on charges of violating his parole but not for making the offensive video.  Tocqueville was an astute observer after all.

You can download the full length lecture by Professor Mitchell via iTunes University.

According to the recently released African Economic Outlook, the number of youths in Africa is set to double by 2045. This ‘youth bulge’ typically carries negative associations, as frustrated young men for example become easy recruits for violent entrepreneurs. But what are the other manifestations of Africa’s emerging generation shift?  What are the other attitudinal distinctions between citizens and leaders — youths and elders — with regard to economics, politics, and history? How do young Africans in the US confront negative stereotypes of the continent, while also describing the often bleak political realities back home?  At an event called “Young Voices and New Visions from Africa,” I posed these and other questions to a panel of students, young bloggers, and activists at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, where I am an Associate Fellow.  (The panelists all spoke strictly as individuals and not on behalf of any organization.)

LEFT – RIGHT: Michael Appau, a native of Ghana studying at Georgetown University; Jumoke Balogun, a Nigerian-American co-founder of CompareAfrique.com and public relations expert at the Service Employee’s International Union; Estelle Bougna Fomeju, a Cameroonian student at Sciences Po in Paris; Mame-Khady Diouf a Senegalese working in the Africa Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center; Kizito Byenkya, a Ugandan working at the Open Society Institute, and co-publisher of the blog, CompareAfrique.com. And me.

One motivation for organizing this event stems from my experience last summer at the University of Nairobi, where I co-led the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Africa Workshop.  At several points during the two week seminar, scholars described a major generational shift among African scholars.  The old generation trained in the US and stayed.  They continue to be influential but are disconnected – from events in Africa and from a newer generation on the continent, said my colleagues.  Second, I described how empowered I felt in 1991 when I was invited to the IPS for the first time to discuss student opposition to the Gulf War.  (For some reason, the Vietnam War movement remains the standard image of anti-war activism, even though my generation organized a quarter of a million people in the streets of DC against a war before a single body bag came home.) Third, last month at the Congressional Black Caucus Africa Braintrust at the Annual Legislative Conference, I listened as a student asked the panel – which included Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Carson – how much hypocrisy she can expect from the politicians when she returns to Africa, armed with her Western education.

 Positive Images of Africa

There is a push within the Africanist community to project a positive image of Africa.  On the one hand, this is necessary in order to confront stereotypes or ignorance about the continent.  But does this interfere with honest assessments about current conditions in Africa?  In posing this question, I had in mind the controversy surrounding the Sullivan Foundation’s conference in Equatorial Guinea, and also the work of leaders such as Andrew Young in drawing private investment to dubious democracies such as Rwanda’s.  Just a few days before the panel, Amnesty International reported on torture and official abuses in Rwanda.  But I also had in mind my own experience in attending roughly half of the CBC Annual Conferences over the last two decades, and watching the topics shift from civil rights and progressive political reform, to an environment that sometimes feels like a trade fair.  Do some young people take those struggles for granted and see Africa simply as “the next big market,” or a place for making a buck?  Finally, the generation gap is visible for example in the African National Congress.  As the generation that defeated apartheid ages; it is interesting though, that the radicals once again appear to be the youths.

Click here to download the first of three short MP3 audio files of the event.

Jumoke discussing the ghosts of Biafra

Mame-Khady started off this response reflecting on the problem of positive images.  Jumoke then talked about Biafra’s atavisms among the Igbo in Nigeria.  While the elders look at troubles today and might say – let the north go – a younger generation often finds such talk irrational. Kizito then related the generation gap to Uganda’s politics; it’s hard to vote against Museveni today, remembering how hard it was in the years before the NRM arrived. Why jeopardize two decades of peace?

 The Politics of the Generation Gap

The generation gap is perhaps especially pronounced given the esteem ascribed to elders in most African cultures. The phrase “youth bulge” is evoked in think tank studies about civic conflict or electoral violence in Africa.  So I asked the panel, Is this perception unfairly negative? How does the generation gap really manifest itself attitudinally?  With this, I also had in mind my own introduction to Nigeria in 1999, where I was constantly reminded that more than half of the citizens at the time had never experienced democracy.  This generated very high, often unrealistic expectations about government performance, and this can be dangerous.  So what does the “Third Wave generation” think of the regional context of democratization today?

Mame-Khady responds.

Mame-Khady argued that in terms of the generation gap, she has her views, but she does not yet have a “seat at the table.”  Jumoke countered, they (the older generation) has been at the table for 50 years in Nigeria – she wants them out of the table.  They’ve done nothing and you can’t name a country that’s working.  This part of the conversation highlights this debate. Estelle then interjected to point out that many people aren’t even voting anymore because no one expects a turnover until President Biya dies; there’s no meaningful participation anymore in Cameroon.

I then discussed how there is a temptation to romanticize youth, since they have been at the vanguard of so many great social movements.  Afrobarometer surveys in 19 countries however released last year – at the height of the Arab spring – should give us pause though:

• In comparison with older citizens, Africa’s youth tend to vote less.
• They express a lower level of partisanship, consistent with findings for the youth in other regions of the world.
• However, Africa’s youth are not more likely to protest than older citizens. Even though they very often question the credibility of elections, youths are not very likely to turn to the street to convey their political preferences, or to demand reforms for such problems.

Ignore the obvious for a moment: many elections are not credible.  Do African politicians neglect the youth vote?  It would seem there is a huge constituency for them. The key question for the panel was, Absent the ballot box, how will African youths have their views heard?

Michael pointed out that the last time people picked up guns, democracy and a lot of hope was lost after independence in Ghana and beyond. These lessons have been learned.  Click here to download the second audio file and hear the searching discussion that resulted.

The Third Wave Generation at Home and Abroad

The South African poet, Arthur Nortje, wrote “Origins trouble the voyager much, those roots that have sipped the waters of another continent.”  These were his reflections on exile.  For many Africans here in the US, they are here for different reasons.  Unlike their parents perhaps, they are less likely to have fled a dictator. The led to me asking the panel, Does anyone question your standing – your right – to criticize the government back home?  Either because you’ve been gone long, or because you somehow haven’t “suffered” enough?

Women

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and other African women receive a lot of attention. I then noted that a recent report by Search for Common Ground about “Youth to Youth” engagement in Liberia states “While older women are increasingly holding positions of power, young women continue to be much more hesitant to engage in politics than their male counterparts. Female youth carry the additional burden of child rearing and suffer the brunt of sexual‐ and gender‐ based violence.”  The report also describes how young men feel unprepared to cope with these dimensions of social change.

Do we have an incomplete picture of the changing role of women that marginalize the experience of young women? Where do men fit in to this image of the new African woman?

Click here to download the third audio file to hear responses from Michael, Estelle, and the other panelists on this issue and regarding the role of women.

Neither Here Nor There?

The Ethiopian novelist Dinaw Mengistu just won a “genius award” from the MacArthur Foundation.  The National Book Foundation had previously named him a “5 under 35,” as a up and coming author.  In his book, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, he reflects upon gentrification in Logan Circle in DC – just a few blocks from IPS.  Racial tensions escalate between the white newcomer(s), and African-Americans old timers.  The main character, an African immigrant owner of a convenience store, struggles to build cultural bridges from the neighborhood to his white friend.  His failures become part of his alienation.   So I asked the panel, We want to believe in multi-culturalism.  But are there moments of cultural isolationism, where you are neither here nor there?  If so, how does a young member of the diaspora cope?

Estelle responds.

The Demographics of Development

The 2012 African Economic Outlook reported that about 60% of the continent’s unemployed are aged 15 to 24 – and more than half of these, many women, have given up on finding work.  In response, the director of the African Development Bank in May commented “The continent is experiencing jobless growth.” There is a gender component to this question, because fertility rates and development rates are inextricably linked.  The best information about family planning, from the United Nations, suggests great variation across the continent:

• In North Africa 50 percent of the women use some method of contraception.  But in east Africa it is only 26 percent, and it West Africa it is only 14.5 percent.
• In North Africa, only 10 percent of women report an unmet need for family planning. In east Africa, nearly 28 percent do.

I was hoping to get at the relationship between population growth and development, but after asking a rather personal question, the panel took a slightly different direction.  How big do you want your family to be?  And how big does your father want your family to be?

The third audio file covers these responses, including a few chuckles about this personal question.  Thanks for your honest answers.  And congratulations on an amazing conversation!