SWAZILAND IN GOVERNANCE DENIAL

Why is the Swaziland Government Press Secretary Percy Simelane in denial about the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and its recent report that Swaziland falls below Zimbabwe in an analysis of good governance in sub-Saharan Africa?

And why is the Times of Swaziland allowing him to get away with claiming that Mo Ibrahim is some kind of fly by night organisation that doesn’t do its homework.

For those new to this story, Simelane was reported in the Times yesterday (18 October 2007) saying the Mo Ibrahim Foundation ‘never conducted a study of the country’.

The Times goes on to report, ‘Simelane said their investigations had revealed that the foundation had never conducted a single study on the country but merely depended upon information supplied to it by various individuals.’

Then, in what I can only describe as a racial slur, the Times reports the Press Secretary saying, ‘We also discovered that the person behind the organisation (Mo Ibrahim) is a Sudanese national.’

These are the facts that the Times wants to ignore. Mo Ibrahim is a world respected foundation whose supporters include Nelson Mandela; Kofi Annan, former United Nations Secretary-General; President Bill Clinton, former US President and José Barroso, president, European Commission among others.

So, I’m afraid Simelane has got it horribly wrong. It would have taken the Times of Swaziland five minutes to check to see whether he was telling the truth about how Mo Ibrahim did its research (that’s how long it took me).

Mo Ibrahim breaks down its research into countries into five categories. They are Safety and Security; Rule of Law, Transparency and Corruption; Participation and Human Rights; Sustainable Economic Development and Human Development.

To give you an example of how thorough the foundation is, Mo Ibrahim then breaks down the ‘human development’ category into three sub-sections: national poverty results, health outcomes, and educational opportunity.

Let me illustrate how one part of ‘human development’, the analysis of health outcomes, is done. Eleven sources of information are used, as follows:

1. Life expectancy at birth, expressed in years, collected by the WDI, based on various sources, including census reports and data from national statistical offices and the UN Population Division’s World Population Prospects.

2. Infant mortality per 1000 live births, based on WDI estimates of data from the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and World Bank sources.

3. Maternal mortality per 100,000 live births. Data are from the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Indicators, which draws on data from WHO and UNICEF.

4. Undernourishment (percentage of the population whose food intake is below the minimum dietary energy requirements), as determined by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and compiled in the WDI.

5. Percentage of children (aged 12-23 months) immunized against measles, according to the WHO and UNICEF, as reported in the WDI.

6. Percentage of children (aged 12-23 months) immunized against diptheria, pertussis (whooping cough), and tetanus (DPT), according to the WHO and UNICEF, as reported in the WDI.

7. Percentage of people (aged 15-49 years) living with HIV, from the MDG Indicators.

8. Estimated number of new TB cases (incidence) per 100,000 people, from the WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Control Report, as reported in the WDI.

9. Access to qualified physicians: density of physicians per 1000 people, from the WHO.

10. Access to trained nurses: density of nurses per 1000 people, from the WHO.

11. Percentage of the population with access to potable water, from the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation.

Remember that these 11 sources of information make up one third of one fifth of the overall analysis of Swaziland. It is difficult to see how more thorough the foundation could be in collecting its information.

Simelane and the Times can rubbish the Mo Ibrahim Foundation all they want. But suggesting the foundation is dishonest simply won’t wash. Simelane and the Times are the dishonest ones.

Governance in Swaziland is appalling. It’s a fact and unless we all recognise this and mobilise to fight it nothing will change.

The Times reports Simelane saying that ‘the government was still going to issue a comprehensive statement in response to the “findings” attributed to the organisation.’

Let’s hope that next time this ‘comprehensive’ statement contains some truth. The statement from Simelane as published in the Times does not.