Today our Principal Managing Partner Arnold Tsunga delivered a key note address at the University of Wits on activism in an anti-rights environment and lamented among others:
Key Challenges Facing Rights Activists
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Weak states and fragmented multilateralism that has created a climate of impunity for rights violations as oppressive leaders and unscrupulous business people collude to steal from public coffers and use control of the state as a feeding trough for a few in the patronage system and violate socio economic rights of the majority.
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State capture fuelled by Illicit financial flows & money laundering that has deprived Africa of billions of dollars that could be used to develop Africa and protect economic social and cultural rights of ordinary people.
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Weak institutions of protection and the rule of law characterized by captured judiciaries and state security apparatus and weak and often underfunded national human rights commissions.
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Business complicity in violations and abuse of rights characterized by large scale land grabs and mass evictions, degradation of land and deprivation of communities of land and their civic space.
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An economic model anchored on fossil fuels and extractivism that has made natural resource rich communities see resources as a curse.
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Shrinking resources/support for rights activists with the Western traditional funders pulling plug on rights activists, for example USAID being shut down and the EU diverting to security, armaments and militarisation.
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The increasing scramble for Africa's natural resources with seeming consensus between the West and East that development is more important than rights and that Africa is a geography of extraction and that a sustainable environment does not matter.
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The failure and fracture of multilateralism has weakened external scrutiny and enforcement, giving repressive governments more room to shrink civic space or restrict rights without accountability or consequences.
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Corruption is a major enabler and accelerator of anti-rights conduct in Africa diverting resources needed for development and implementation of economic social and cultural rights as it also undermines institutions meant to protect rights.
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In Mozambique corruption has been the main driver of conflict and instability in Cabo Delgado, with the state securitising and militarising civic space, often identifying rights activists as terrorists sympathizers. Corruption and resultant underdevelopment in the north coupled with securitization of civic and democratic space and targeting of youths has created a fertile ground for extremists to recruit young people into terrorism.
Conclusion
He concluded that in an era of shrinking donor funding, weak multilateralism and increasing domestic repression, people to people solidarity is key. Rights activists must accept that they are alone and cannot outsource the struggles of African people to donors or 3rd countries from outside Africa. None but ourselves.
Jeremiah Bamu