Governing Africa by Tieku Thomas Kwasi;

Author:Tieku, Thomas Kwasi;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Rules

Nature: The AU has introduced a number of rules that seek to regulate political governance across the African continent. The foundational rules are in Articles 3(g) and 4(m) of the Constitutive Act of the African Union. The former Article encourages the creation and development of democratic principles and institutions, popular participation, and good governance, while the latter Article promotes respect for democratic principles, rule of law, and good governance. The supporting rules can be found in the PSC protocol, protocol of the Pan-African Parliament, and of course, the African Governance Charter. In addition, the AU Assembly has adapted many declarations that strengthen the Union’s legal position on good political governance in Africa. The most seminal of these declarations are the Harare Declaration (1997), Algiers Declaration (1999), and Lomé Declarations (2000). The African Governance Charter brings together all the key rules on good political governance.

Novelty: The AU governance rules provide innovative ways to address key and peculiar African political problems, including unconstitutional changes of government. Unconstitutional change of government has been at the root of African governance problems since the 1950s. The rules spell out five grounds for unconstitutional change of government in Africa. These are: a military coup d’état against a democratically elected government; an intervention by mercenaries to replace a democratically elected government; the replacement of a democratically elected government by armed dissident groups and rebel movements; the refusal by an incumbent government to relinquish power to the winning party after free, fair, and regular elections; and finally, amendment or revision of the constitution or legal instruments that infringe on principles of a democratic change of government.[17] The African governance charter made the definition of unconstitutional change of government open-ended by stipulating that the five scenarios indicated above are just examples. The open-ended nature of the definition gives the AU rules the necessary adaptive capacity and flexibility to stand the test of time. It should, however, be noted that the history of abuses by powerful African actors of open-ended clauses in international treaties should serve as a cautionary note.

Although the Constitutive Act and the PSC protocol advanced the precision and enforcement of key principles in these declarations, many of the democracy promotion ideas in the declaration remained aspiration and unforeseeable. Senior Africrats, especially the AU legal team, knew that the Constitutive Act and the PSC protocol did not provide enough legal cover for the Commission to promote good political governance in Africa. Senior Africrats started looking for additional legal tools, which made them team up with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) of South Africa and the African Association of Electoral Authorities (AAEA) to cohost a conference on strengthening African initiatives on democracy and governance in South Africa between April 7 and 10, 2003.[18]

The conference, which brought together representatives from AUC, the electoral management bodies, academic community, and civil society organizations in Africa, made a number of recommendations, including the creation of democracy charter. Africrats put the conference recommendations together with a request to African leaders to mandate the Commission to draft a charter on democracy.

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