The Community of Practice for African media practitioners working on HIV/AIDS was recently launched in Livingstone, Zambia by Idasa’s Governance and AIDS Programme.  Two of the participants speak in this video clip, about an initiative in Ghana called “Models of Hope” which provides positive role models for people living with HIV.  See more here.

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It was hot, humid and sweaty and the airline had lost my luggage.  After filling out a few bureaucratic forms with a smiling Zambian face, I joined the bus of strangers – new recruits to Idasa’s Community of Practice for African communications practitioners who write about HIV/AIDS.  We were to spend two days together, at the start of a 4 year relationship.  The bus journey to the hotel was peppered with polite, get-to-know-you conversations…

Two days later, many hours of sharing stories and exploring how to build citizen action through media and communication work, we were no longer strangers.  The group sessions promoted discussion and deliberation about the role of citizens, and the role of journalists – and how these two overlapped for people in the room.  Questions shot around the room about how to wear two different hats, how to manage conflicts of interest, how to avoid being used for personal agendas, and make sure your journalistic skills are not exploited.

The discussions were thought provoking and relationships formed in a way that will encourage deeper engagement over the next four years.  The workshop included a session on how we should keep talking to each other, especially in between meetings, and for the duration of the 4 years.  Following their suggestions, a social networking hub was set up for participants to keep talking – and a googlemap was also used to plot participants work and partnerships across the continent.  See some of the interviews on video here.

- Samantha Fleming was an Idasa participant at the launch of Idasa’s Community of Practice -

More public and less experts: how do we re-connect the work of journalists with the work of citizens?

- by Marietjie Myburg -

For the last 10 years I have been working in the field of HIV and AIDS Communication. During this time, I have watched in frustration what should have been a conversation between citizens and people with power to change things (policy makers, planners), but was actually a conversation between the well-intentioned funders and (often opportunistic) politicians and bureaucrats.

I have watched how, instead of challenging the course of this conversation, journalists become the channels for UNAIDS, USAID and Bill and Melinda Gates to talk to and on behalf of citizens to Departments of Health and AIDS Councils and Presidents and celebrities with an attitude which Donaldo Macedo aptly describes in his foreword to Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of Freedom: “There is no need to hear your voice when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself (Freire, 2001:xxvi)”.

As a journalist I have always been fairly suspicious of the language of communication for development or communication for social change. I notice the same suspicion when engaging journalists – now from the side of the suspects. I want to believe that their suspicion, like mine, stem from an intuitive mistrust of the marketing and evangelical jargon that is characteristic of some versions of communication for development. More importantly, my experience of these models, that remains expert-driven despite the best intentions, is that they continue to be disempowering in that, instead of “providing sites where citizens can engage in the political process (2002:9-10)”  they demobilize people and limit their participation in self-determining decision making.

Drawn in to the modes of development speak, journalists seem unprepared to ask the why and the how questions. Without feeling their “objectivity” or “neutrality” compromised, journalists attend thousands of training sessions telling them how to “name” the pandemic, how to refer to the people who are sick, which photographs to use, what the gender issues were and how poverty fitted into the overall picture. While these are important issues to address, this kind of training has perpetuated reporting practices which centre on the “thin edge” of the story if I may borrow an analogy from a participant in one of the Highway Africa sessions on the media and development. Journalists seem content for the HIV and AIDS conversation to be dictated by the development and funding marketers and evangelists. Infections rates continue to rise. Ordinary citizens seem unmoved by these event-driven and statistical reports about unfathomable numbers of new infections and deaths.  Journalists tell me that editors are not interested in publishing stories about HIV. Editors tell me readers are not interested in reading stories about HIV.

Despite being declared a national emergency in many countries in Sub-Sahara Africa, the Afrobarometer survey which measures household perceptions about the quality of governance and democracy in 20 African countries, could not find one country in which citizens rated HIV and AIDS as the top problem on the development agenda – unemployment yes, poverty yes, food shortage, yes but not HIV and AIDS (“Key findings about public opinion in Africa,” 2002:1). This does not mean the problem does not exist or does not exist as a stark reality in the lives of the infected and affected. The statistics are validated when you talk to ordinary people. They tell the stories of loved ones who die. People talk of attending more funerals than they used to. In rural areas more and more burial services are the eerie reminders that the statisticians were correct. The problem is that most of the stories which journalists tell somehow leave most of us unaffected – at least unaffected enough to continue to have multiple partners, unprotected sex – it even provides space for a president to say he didn’t know anyone who has died of AIDS and a vice-president who declared in public that he had a shower after unprotected sex and he thought that would protect him from contracting the virus.

There is clearly a disconnect between the conversation about HIV and AIDS as conducted by the funders, aid agencies and health activists and the conversation as conducted by citizens. One conversation is about PLWAs, OVCs, and rights based approaches while another is about how to care for sick people if they don’t want to take ARVs or what to do with children whose parents are sick and have died. Journalists are covering the numerous conferences and press briefings and reporting the statistics and launch of new prevention programmes and policies. On the odd occasion they even tell a story from a “human angle”.  Despite indications that the HIV and AIDS conversation is an important one, journalists, for the most part, seemed to be happy for the conversation to be dictated by the very funders and development agents they do not trust. While remaining suspicious in the corridors, they are seduced by the simplicity of reducing HIV and AIDS to statistics and sensation. Safely ensconced by the easy access to these themes journalists seem to lack the courage to tell an important story in a way that is compelling enough to make a difference.

But what is “compelling enough to make a difference”?

This question takes me one step back and out of the HIV and AIDS arena to examine the general relationship between citizens and journalists. To tell compelling stories journalists turn to people, not institutions or organisations. That is Journalism 101. To tell stories that make a difference, journalists do not quote statistics or regurgitate press releases. But for journalists to want to talk to people about HIV and AIDS they need to believe that people have a story to tell which is worth more than the stories from officials at the Department of Health or the Presidency or UNAIDS. They need to value the narratives that come from ordinary citizens who live in ordinary houses and sometimes in less than ordinary circumstances. James Carey said:

“The god term of journalism – the be-all and end-all, the term without which the entire enterprise fails to make sense – is the public. Insofar as journalism is grounded, it is grounded in the public” – James Carey

And that is what I find wanting in the relationship between citizens and journalists. The potential of journalists to build a habit of participative and informed political discussion between government and citizens and between citizens and citizens has been eroded by a breakdown in trust between citizens and journalists. This breakdown is in part due to journalists being seen as experts favouring other experts as sources and marginalising the views of citizens – not just in relation to covering of events but also in the investigation of possible solutions to public problem solving. This mirrors technocratic and expert-driven tendencies in government which alienate citizens further from political process.

In the past year I have been looking for clues in three theoretical frameworks – democratic professionalism, public journalism and deliberative democracy – to explore the effects of expert-driven professionalism both in the state and in journalism and the implications of this approach for the relationship of journalists with citizens. It proposes that a shift in the way journalists consider their professional role could lead to a re-assessment of the political work of journalists and the political work of citizens and build new habits of participation and discussion in the political process of communities. This could, of course, also suggest implications for the way journalism education and training is currently conceived.

In application my colleagues and I at Idasa have developed learning material which we are testing in training with journalists, government communicators and civil society representatives in East London, George, Newcastle and the Sekhukhune District Council in the Limpopo Province. This learning material covers approaches to journalism with citizens in general and not HIV and AIDS in particular. We have used the same material with particular reference to journalism approaches to reporting on police reform in the DRC and we would soon start to work with a Community of Media and Communication Practice consisting of journalists from nine countries in Sub-Sahara Africa which will have a particular focus on reporting socio-economic aspects of HIV and AIDS. These include ways in which the pandemic affects local government’s ability to deliver services and manage and spend budgets and also reporting how the pandemic affects the ability of citizens to participate in democratic process.

The learning material focuses on the ability of journalists to tune in to conversations that are taking place among citizens and to reflect those conversations in a way that would provide information that is useful in decision making processes on individual and local community level. There is also an attempt to explore with journalists how to provide public space for citizens to identify and describe problems AND to propose solutions appropriate to the communities where they live and work – information that catalyzes a conversation about citizens as active participants in solving public problems instead of turning citizens, in the words of Cole Campbell, in eavesdroppers on a conversation between experts.

In developing the learning material we are guided by the following questions:

1.    Do current themes of HIV and AIDS reporting reflect the way citizens interpret HIV and AIDS problems in their own communities and does it propose solutions to HIV and AIDS problems as put forward by citizens as well as experts?
2.    Do journalists describe the aspirations and work of citizens in a way that imagine citizens, along with government, as people with confidence and talents who are co-creators of society and not merely clients and users of services provided by governments?
3.    Does this reporting acknowledge and galvanize the social and cultural assets and capacities of citizens in HIV and AIDS problem-solving?

In one of the sessions at this conference, in response to a question on the use of new media in elections, one of the panellists said that citizens were getting more and more confident to use technology to inform other citizens. “We must make sure citizens don’t beat us at our own game,” he said. In response I quote Paulo Freire: “This type of speaking from the top down is in itself a clear demonstration of the absence of a democratizing mentality, the absence of the intention to speak ‘with’ (Freire, 2001:103).”

Unless journalists speak “with” citizens about HIV and AIDS, or any other of the big common challenges that face communities, “the media of communication” in the words of James Carey, will continue to be “sites of competition and conflict” and communities will continue attempts to “seize newspapers and other journals to lay down definitions of group life, identity and purpose (Carey, 1997:32)”.

References

Carey, J. W. (1997). The Chicago School and the history of mass communication research. In E. S. Munson & C. A. Warren (Eds.), James Carey – a critical reader (pp. 14-33). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Freire, P. (2001). Pedagogy of freedom – ethics, democracy and civic courage. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Jacobs, S. (2002). How good is the South African media for democracy? Mapping the South African public sphere after apartheid. Unpublished research paper. Transregional Center for Democratic Studies New York.
Key findings about public opinion in Africa. (2002). Afrobarometer briefing paper no. 1: Afrobarometer.

SA Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan delivered the South African medium term budget statement on 27th October. Government priorities remain social spending, infrastructural expansion and job creation. See Idasa’s comment in the video and statement below.

- By Len Verwey -

Pravin Gordhan became South Africa’s new Minister of Finance under difficult circumstances. Although it appears as though the global economy may be moving out of recession, and that South Africa will soon follow, economic headlines leading up to Tuesday’s MTBPS speech focused on the ballooning budget deficit, the poor performance of tax revenue which is one reason for it, and on what seem to be continuing tussles within government over who should be running the economy.

It was therefore not surprising that the Minister did his best to calm the waters, to insist that in fact everything was under control. The credibility of these assurances, and the degree of fiscal risk South Africa takes on board over the coming medium-term, should inform our discussions going forward, as well as Parliament’s deliberations on the budget.

The basic story is a commitment on government’s part not to cut spending over the coming medium-term, even though tax revenue will only recover slowly from its slump. In fact, tax revenue looks likely to recover more slowly than the growth rate, in part because South Africa’s over-indebted households will not be spending as much for quite some time as they did in the boom years. Thus, we not only get the 7.6% budget deficit which is estimated for the current fiscal year, but deficits of 6.2%, 5% and 4.2% in the following years. Large deficits mean more debt, and the 2009 MTBPS estimates debt stock at 41% of GDP by 2013. This is large by recent South African standards, but not particularly large within the current crisis-response paradigm.

The MTBPS did not contain big surprises as far as allocations are concerned: government priorities remain social spending, infrastructural expansion (much of it led by the state-owned enterprises), as well as job creation. Whilst all South Africans would agree on the importance of these, job creation in particular requires establishing a more inclusive and competitive economy. This will not happen overnight and cannot happen solely through the agency of government.

As expected, the Minister emphasised that government would try to save some money and reduce corruption. There was also a surprising degree of emphasis on improving tax compliance, suggesting that SARS may believe tax evasion has increased in the current harsher economic environment. Emphasising these points is clearly necessary for a government that will not be able to increase its spending much over the next three years  but has to get the most value possible out of every allocated Rand. It is a welcome emphasis and Parliament, the media and NGO’s need to contribute to what may be called ‘value for money’ oversight.

It remains to be seen, though, whether government’s growth and tax predictions have come through these turbulent times with credibility fully intact. The issue here is less the economics of the budget and more its role in enhancing fiscal predictability and transparency. The 7.6% deficit which seems likely for the current year stems from a significant under-estimation of growth, accompanied by a very significant spending increase from 2008/09 to 2009/10. That increase in spending was warranted, and remains warranted, not only because curtailing infrastructure plans would’ve been foolish, but also because increased spending, combined with relaxing monetary policy, is the right way for government to dampen the recessionary shock.

But clearly February 2009’s budget was far too optimistic in its assumptions for 2009/10 growth and therefore tax revenue and therefore the deficit. Then, Trevor Manuel said the economy would grow by 1.4% over the 2009/10 fiscal year. This at a time when the economy had already been contracting for a quarter and was busy contracting at an annualised rate of 6%. Pravin Gordhan now had to take the stage and revise that growth down to -1.6% for the same fiscal year. This kind of divergence exposes how little we understand about the nature of our economy’s adjustments when it comes under strain, understandable perhaps given the complexity of the variables involved. .

Over the next three years, while growth is expected to slowly recover and tax revenue even slower than that, government will keep spending. It does not have a choice, given the poverty, the inequality, and the unemployment that still mar our democracy. When the books are closed on the 2009/10 fiscal year, government spending will have made up about 35% of GDP. Although this ratio will go down over the medium-term, it will not go down below 30% again in the foreseeable future. The MTBPS also makes it clear that, three years from now, South Africa is likely to be significantly more indebted than it has been in some time. These figures point to obvious risks as far as the sustainability of public finances is concerned, but  no clear debt trap or other alarmist scenario awaits us. However, what is required, now more than ever, is value for money. The social and economic stakes may well continue going up under Minister Gordhan’s financial leadership, and effective and broad oversight of public finances must now take center stage in our conversations about how to get from a Finance Minister’s speech to a South Africa that fully meets the aspirations of the Constitution.

The Ibrahim Index of African Governance is a comprehensive ranking of sub-Saharan African nations according to governance quality. The criteria for assessment capture the quality of services provided to citizens by governments and focus on the results that the people of a country experience.

The criteria are divided into five over-arching categories which together make up the cornerstones of a government’s obligations to its citizens:

•Safety and Security
•Rule of Law, Transparency and Corruption
•Participation and Human Rights
•Sustainable Economic Opportunity
•Human Development

See more and downloadable country reports here.

By HOPEWELL RADEBE – Business Day

President Jacob Zuma ’s administration could significantly increase economic growth if it carefully spelt out the objectives of its economic relations with the US, says Witney Schneidman*, who advised Barack Obama’s presidential campaign on African affairs.

He was at the University of Pretoria yesterday, where he delivered a lecture in memory of the late US senator Edward Kennedy, who had a particular concern for SA.

Schneidman said SA was important to the Obama administration, but was trailing Angola when it came “to a game plan”.

“From the moment (US) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed in Angola to the time she flew out of Lusaka during her recent African Safari, they (Angolans) tabled their strategic document, which outlined goals and objectives about the two countries’ future relations.”

Schneidman, who was also deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa in the Bill Clinton administration, told Business Day yesterday the Obama administration wanted relations with SA that would advance the continent and the world on issues of climate change, alternative energy, agriculture development and capacity building for the continent’s institutions of democracy.

On Zimbabwe, he said the US would play a bigger role in a bid to help both SA and the Southern African Development Community resolve the political impasse.

Source: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=85185

* Witney Schneidman is a member of Idasa’s board in the USA

Idasa recently hosted the ‘Southern African Civil Society Consultation Workshop & Multi-Stakeholders Consultation on Aid Effectiveness: Catalysing Broad Implementation Of The Accra Agenda For Action (AAA)’. This was one of a series of workshops on the African continent and around the world. Others have been held in the Philippines and Columbia. These workshops are aimed at providing information and building capacity for participation in the aid reform process, ultimately making aid more effective, transparent and democratically accountable in achieving mutually-agreed development objectives. See more here.

Who is responsible for development in Africa?

Dambisa Moyo

This is the question I’m mulling over, after a presentation by Dr Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid.  The book has caused quite some controversy, not least among NGOs and recipients of the aid that Moyo critiques.

Foreign aid is a complex subject and one that has many vested interests. Any discussion on the future of aid is likely to be heated and emotional.  There are those of us whose very livelihoods depend on it, for without that donor money, we wouldn’t be able to pay our own bills.  And there are those of us lefties who struggle with the politics of the author – neo-liberal, economic focus, seemingly aligned to the interests of global capital. Her work experience is at the World Bank (seen by some as an arrogant manipulative International Financial Institution (IFI)) and Goldman Sachs. Her background at these institutions dents her credibility in South African development circles, where your politics and credentials are judged before you’ve opened your mouth.

Some people view her ideas with skepticism and see her as an emissary from yet another global institution that is intent on imposing their own agenda. Moyo contests this vocally, saying she is born and bred Zambian and has strong roots in the heart of Africa.  For most of us, despite any critique, it is fabulous to have an African academic raising these issues for debate.

I think Moyo’s biggest problem, when talking to an audience of civil society, is that she’s an economist with a background in capital markets.  Activists (quite rightly) get frustrated at what they see as her lack of engagement with the politics behind her ideas.

We might get some fresh perspective if we could separate the message and the messenger.

Moyo may have neo-liberal roots and come from a World Bank model.  However, her core message packs a punch that is worth more than a cursory glance.  The heart of her message is one that seeks to empower Africans to take back the control that, for years, has either been stolen or relinquished to others. 

The reality is that aid has been around for several decades.  Donors themselves have begun to ask how they can be more effective – as evidenced in the Paris Declaration of 2005 and subsequent conversations (and www.developmentaid.org.za).  As the global financial climate teeters uncertainly and funding dwindles after the crash of 2008/9, it is the perfect time for those truly interested in Africa’s development to ask some pertinent questions. 
Do we really want the current funding and development models to continue?
Isn’t it time Africa took back the reins and began to control our own development?
Vested interests aside, isn’t it time to recognise that IFI’s (rather than citizens) have been making decisions that control the fate of Africa, for far too long?
Shouldn’t we put citizens at the centre (instead of donors) and make governments accountable to their people (instead of donors)?

Global governance faces a shake-up in these uncertain times.  This rumbling provides an opportunity for civil society to raise their voice and demand an accountable, transparent partnership between African governments and their citizens, to build strong, resilient, democratic societies.

Without information, citizens live the lives assigned to them or lives of chance. With information, they choose their future.
Celebrating International Right to Know Day on 28th September, Idasa has a range of activities planned – starting with the screening of a documentary about participatory budgeting in Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela. Beyond the documentary, Idasa’s commemoration of Right to Know day includes panel discussions on the importance of information in quality basic education in Argentina and the quest for quality basic education in Malawi.

Idasa believes that the citizen’s right of access to information is at the heart of a healthy democratic system. The right of access to information facilitates the ability of citizens to claim other rights (e.g. health, education). enhancing dialogue between citizens and their representatives and ensuring transparency and accountability in the use of resources.

See the full press release here.

Listen to the podcast about Your Right to Know Right to Know Day – Idasa.