Day: August 12, 2021

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has acknowledged rampant corruption within his ruling African National Congress party under former President Jacob Zuma. Addressing a judicial inquiry on graft this week, Ramaphosa said a line had been drawn in the sand and said the party is going to be very serious in dealing with corruption.

Better late than never — that’s what President Ramaphosa told a graft inquiry about his party beginning to clean up years of corruption.

The judicial commission is investigating the looting of the state’s coffers under former president Jacob Zuma, in which Zuma’s business associates allegedly won state contracts and undue influence over government.

Ramaphosa was deputy president under Zuma for four years before succeeding him in 2018.

He told the commission the ANC party is changing its ways.

“We are prepared to hang out our linen in the open and now having drawn a line in the sand we are going now to be very serious dealing with corruption,” he said. “You may say why didn’t you do so over a period of so many years but it’s better late than never.”

But after widespread riots last month that were fueled by frustrations over the state’s failures and worsening poverty, political analysts say better late may not be good enough.

Leaza Jerberg is an independent international relations expert in Johannesburg.

“Civil society would like to see my stronger condemnations and actual action. I think that’s the biggest frustration is not that we think that Ramaphosa is pro-corruption. I think we all confident that he is anti-corruption, but there needs to be more actual prosecution and action,” she said.

Ramaphosa claims to be in the dark about many corrupt dealings and kickbacks to politicians and their associates during the Zuma administration.

He also said he chose to stay in politics and move up the ranks in order to bring about positive change.

Narnia Bohler-Muller, a professor with South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council, says he is living up to his word.

“He’s done a lot in the sense of fixing institutions, and that’s so important when it comes to fighting corruption. So he’s made really good appointments, strengthen the SIU,” she said.

The SIU, the Special Investigations Unit, looks into claims by whistleblowers.

However, Jernberg says many South Africans see the long-ruling ANC as synonymous with corruption.

“It’s really hard to disentangle these connect these corruption networks within the ANC. The other concern is that obviously, the ANC itself has become completely embedded within the state and the state within the ANC. So there’s no clear delineation anymore between party and state,” she said.

Lawyers at the inquiry have tried to determine where the party’s influence over government decisions begins and ends, and how party loyalty contributed to corruption being swept under the rug.

Bohler-Muller says Ramaphosa needs to be clear about his priorities going forward.

“He has to make a choice, really, he has to decide with who’s going to be acting in the interests of South Africa and South Africans, or if he’s going to continue to protect the bad apples in the ANC,” she said.

After holding more than 400 hearings, the inquiry is due to close at the end of September.

Presiding Judge Raymond Zondo will issue his findings and the country is waiting to see if the so-called bad apples will finally be prosecuted.

Source: Voice of America

Opposition lawmakers in Ghana are pushing President Nana Akufo-Addo into a tight spot by promoting an anti-LGBT law widely condemned by critics for undermining rights but applauded by many Ghanaians.

Gay sex is already illegal in the highly religious West African nation, but while discrimination against LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people is common, no one has ever been prosecuted under the colonial-era law.

A proposal that includes criminalizing LGBT advocacy, requirements to denounce “suspects”, advocates for conversion therapy and imposes longer jail sentences was introduced in parliament earlier this month.

The international community has joined activists in condemning the “promotion of proper human sexual rights and Ghanaian family values bill” drafted by eight lawmakers, mostly from the opposition party.

“Adopting the legislation in its current or any partial form would be tantamount to a violation of a number of human rights standards, including the absolute prohibition of torture,” a group of UN experts said in a statement.

“It will not only criminalize LGBTI people, but anyone who supports their human rights, shows sympathy to them or is even remotely associated with them.”

If the text is passed by parliament, the president can either decide to ignore critics and sign it, or veto it — something analysts and diplomats say he may be unwilling to do, given widespread support for anti-LGBT legislation.

Nearly 90 percent of Ghanaians said they would approve of a decision by the government to criminalize same-sex relationships, according to research group Afrobarometer using 2014 data.

Knowing how popular it would be, “the opposition party is using this a major political tactic to get the current government to take a position one way or the other for political reasons,” said Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher Wendy Isaack.

‘Demagogic’ bill

Akufo-Addo, who won a second term in office in December, has said publicly that same-sex marriage would not become legal under his watch.

But the British-educated former rights lawyer with a cosmopolitan reputation has nothing to win from this proposed bill, analysts and diplomats say.

“There is nothing in it for him… it’s not his bill, he didn’t initiate it,” said Henry Kwasi Prempeh, director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development.

A western diplomat who asked to remain anonymous said it was “quite obvious he (the president) is not very fond of this bill… but it’s a delicate issue, they can see the general public opinion.”

The opposition has a “red carpet to surf on a homophobic wave and come up with a law that is particularly demagogic,” another senior diplomat said.

Lawmakers pushing for the bill argue that homosexuality is foreign to Ghanaian culture.

“We need to protect our children who are currently being targeted by these LGBTQ+ people making them believe that it’s the new way of life,” one of its main sponsors, Samuel Nartey George, told AFP.

“Our culture should not be destroyed.”

Activists like Davis Mac-Iyalla, director of the Interfaith Diversity Network of West Africa, have widely criticised that cultural argument.

“To tell me that it’s not part of our culture and that these people don’t exist, I would say it’s a blunt lie, people know LGBT in their communities, in high places,” said Ghana-based Mac-Iyalla.

The debate is coming at an inconvenient time for the president who wants to attract African-Americans and the Ghanaian diaspora through his program “The Year of Return”.

With a reputation for stability and respect for the rule of law, Ghana has also attracted businesses like Twitter who said it would open its first Africa office in the country.

“If we’re getting the accolades we get, it’s not for anything else but because we are a free society,” said Prempeh.

“If this is where you get your influence… and you’re going to attack that, it makes really no sense.”

Increased homophobia

Most people don’t really believe he will sign it,” said Danny Bediako, director of human rights organization Rightify Ghana, “but it’s difficult, because religious institutions are very powerful here.”

Activists worry Ghana will follow the same path as Nigeria and Uganda, where similar bills were passed in recent years.

“When countries legislate prohibitions around association and freedom of expression, which are fundamental human rights that are protected under international law,” said Isaack, this “gives members of the public the authority, the tools, to perpetrate violations.”

“People are attacked on the streets, people don’t get medical treatment… people are kicked out of schools, people are kicked out of their homes.”

Bediako and Mac-Iyalla both say they personally know LGBT people in Ghana who are already thinking about leaving the country.

“The sad situation is that it has really led to an increase in homophobia in Ghana,” said Bediako.

“Many are already in serious dilemma,” said Mac-Iyalla, and “there’s a high interest in fleeing Ghana already, because of the threat coming.”

Source: Voice of America