Khanya-aicdd, will be hosting an afternoon seminar entitled ‘Is there a crisis of governance in Southern Africa? If so, whose crisis and whose responsibility’ on Thursday, 29 January 2009, in Johannesburg. The objective of this seminar is to stimulate debate on whether the ‘crisis of governance’ in Southern Africa, has implications for addressing the needs of the poor in the region. Panelists will include eminent policy analysts Andile Mngxitama (co- editor of Biko Lives! Contesting the legacies of Steve Biko), Dr. Vincent Hungwe (Rethinking Governance, Khanya-aicdd) and Lebohang Pheko (Independent Policy Analyst).

40 years into independence, and it has been claimed that the level of poverty, the state of infrastructure and basic service delivery, is worse at present than it was at the time of independence in some countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Add to this the rising threat of food insecurity, and the challenges posed by HIV/ AIDS and climate change, and the world is presented with a bleak picture of the region’s prospects.

Various perspectives attempt to provide explanations for the ‘crisis of governance’ in Africa:

1. In planning post- independence broad development goals, country governments did      not link the development of requisite human capacity to the achieving of national development goals.
2. Other arguments also allude to a ‘crisis’ of leadership - in the sense that independence was sold to the masses under a ‘nationalist’ banner, whose ideals were quickly eschewed, with the emergence of the ‘elite’ ruling classes.
3. Other theories point to the fact that the region is still reeling from the impact of the Berlin Conference of 1884, thereafter colonialism, and subsequently inheriting unsustainable colonial administrative systems
4. Lastly, it has also been proposed that economic and development policy formulation in the region was often underpinned by a neo-liberalist, western approach at the behest of the Bretton Woods Institutions. Where policy prescriptions were often linked to aid conditionality, a significant shortcoming could have been that prescriptions were not contextually relevant.

In light of the proliferation of theories - what holds true is that the system of governance within each state has influenced the trajectory of the region’s development. This milieu has in turn been influenced by both internal and external factors such as globalization, and the dynamics that come with vibrantly pluralist states. Should this become a trend, countries in the south could be faced with questioning ‘How to defend their ‘cause’ when the dominant ideology is not consistent with international politics?’ In choosing to walk this path, the impact of these approaches are bound to reverberate in the region, and in the process unsettle the status quo.

Does this present a crisis? And if so, for whom does it present a crisis? With whom does the responsibility to address this alleged ‘crisis’ lie? Join us as we debate these critical issues and provide an opportunity for networking with development practitioners, opinion makers and academics from Southern and Eastern Africa.