Maravi

Graca calls for balanced view of Africa

Graca calls for balanced view of Africa
By Bivan Saluseki
Wednesday September 12, 2007 [04:00]

APRM panel member Graça Machel yesterday called on Africans to begin to have a balanced view of the continent and not just focus on the negatives. Meeting Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Mutale Nalumango over the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), Graça also wondered why it was tough for youths, women and the rural poor to win seats in Parliament when they were the majority and it was their right.

Graça said Africa had made outstanding achievements, which needed to be highlighted especially by the young people. "We must have a balanced view of who we are. It's just that. Africans are not only a failure. Africans have very good things they have done. They have outstanding achievements," she said.

"Let me give an example. You see, we were colonised for hundredsyears for many centuries as a continent but the liberation of our continent took only, mostly 50 years if you start from Ghana to Namibia, which was a colony and then end up with South Africa. Which means out of the five centuries, we came together, that again is the importance of unity."

Graça said African leaders at the time indicated they were not going to accept the liberation of one single country.
"We have to be all free. The liberation of one has to be the liberation of all and they created instruments which bound them together and because of that and we see leaders like Kaunda and Nyerere concerned about independence of countries in West Africa. They took the continent as a whole," she said.

"Africa must be able to say we were able to overcome and undo all the intricate issues of colonialism and within a relatively short period of time."
Graça said Zambia had played an important role during the independence struggle for Africa.

"It’s important to tell young people that this is what makes the profile of Zambians. And in many countries when you go and say ‘I am a Zambian’, people will know that these are the people who gave the little they had to allow us all to be free. We must take pride of that," she said.

"When you say that today we still face a lot of problems, just look back and say how many people were qualified when Zambia became independent? How many were they? In my country I will tell you. When we became independent we had 93 per cent of illiteracy.

I don't know what was the percentage in Zambia. So how much have we done so far so that even the free education which we are talking about today....to give free education to every child should be looked at in the context of where we are coming from as a nation. I am saying the nation; I am not talking of the government but the nation, the effort which the nation has made to allow every single child to have a primary education. And then it may come to a point where it's free and compulsory."

Graça said Africa needed to build self-confidence.
"If we concentrate only in our weaknesses we won’t even be able to go and search for those energies which are within us to face the challenge of today. It may well be that the challenges of today are not bigger than the past and even if they are bigger, if we have overcome some in the past, it’s because we can overcome these too. How do we do this?

The parents have a role to play, the traditional leaders have a role to play, the mothers, the young the old, those who are educated, not educated, that is why this review must be a national process, not government alone," she said.
Graça also said African countries should be trading among themselves too.

"All of us we trade with everybody else outside the continent but we trade very little among ourselves. Sometimes the argument is that we are producing the same things that are not true. If you go item by item, you find that there are certain items from some African countries we could import from," she said.

Graça said if transport and roads were a hindrance to trading within Africa, then such infrastructure should be fixed.
"Let’s look within ourselves and identify the weaknesses within the continent also which have to be solved. That is the issue of governance at continent level," she said.
Graça called for the presence of youths, women and the rural people in Parliament.

She said that was what APRM was all about.
Graça said currently women were having to be very tough to get to Parliament, which was not supposed to be the case.
"If they are not tough, they can’t make it. It shouldn't be so tough because it's a right. It shouldn't be so difficult for you to exercise your right. We have to find those answers," she said.
Graça said APRM was a learning process.

She said the APRM wanted to encourage interaction within Africa so that the countries could move together and the African Union would become a union that would be relied on.
And Nalumango said Zambia had domesticated some international treaties though there were still areas that needed to be worked on.

She said Parliament would help the executive in scrutinising the legislation.
Nalumango said countries should be moving towards good governance of the economy and even cooperate governance.
Graça who is APRM panel member for Zambia.

APRM is a mutually agreed instrument voluntarily acceded to by the member states of the African Union as a self-monitoring mechanism to encourage conformity in regard to political, economic and corporate governance values, codes and standards, among African countries within the framework of New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).

Labels: APRM, GRACA MACHEL

posted by MrK @ 3:15 AM