Human Rights in Africa

(Dr Abdunnur Kakande-Gava is a lawyer and was
Acting Secretary-General of the Ugandan Human Rights Activists in Kampala, Uganda.)

Volume 1 1989

The story of Africa became even darker after independence. Honest leaders who had fought for and vowed to protect the rights of the people were killed. Constitutional safeguards were thrown overboard.

The causes for this chaos are numerous. They include elements that were pathogenic in nature, political greed, hypocrisy, immaturity, ethnic strife, religious divisions and even sheer recklessness. The end result for African states has been animalistic brutality, human degradation, social injustice, constant violence, severe oppression and torture, arbitrary imprisonment, genocide, mysterious disappearance of people and mass killings.

Uganda, in this respect, perhaps offers the best example: between 1980 and 1985, nearly 800 000 people were killed, not to mention the property destroyed, which is estimated at well over US$125-million. And this is simply the tip of the iceberg. Political upheavals have bred famine, insecurity, tension, phobia and uncertainty. It has affected human, social and physical development and has distorted economic development. It has caused many people, especially intellectuals, to flee their respec tive countries. For this reason, Africa alone has perhaps the largest number of refugees in the world. In certain countries, even being a refugee is a luxury. Many others who are not so lucky are imprisoned, tortured or killed. But, there have been cases where even refugees have been returned home and subjected to torture, murder and other forms of degrading treatment.

Power, in most of these nations, is absolute. Checks and balances are unheard of, something that has led to ‘dictatorial rulers' in most parts of Africa. There is no clear-cut division of power between the judiciary, the executive and the legislature. In many cases, all three are embodied in one institution, if not one individual.

Soon after independence, most African countries which had begun as pluralistic democracies, degenerated into one party systems. The common feature of these systems is that they are headed by “life presidents” who thoroughly rig elections and whose word is law.

Violent changes of government are rampant and sudden in Africa. When such changes occur, political opponents are freed, but the new rulers compete with those they have overthrown to put behind bars as many of their political opponents as possible. What is surprising is that those who issue the new order to detain their “opponents” are themselves graduates of these same jails, now freed to do exactly what was done to them! This terrible perpetual cycle engulfs Africa.

Apart from refugees and political detainees, most people belong to the least known of the enslaved; they are by far the majority in Africa. These people are denied virtually every right by the ever-present risk of being permanently silenced by the gun. They are forced to be silent for the sake of their property. They go about half naked. Many are homeless. The majority of Africans are refugees in their own lands. Whatever paltry resources provided them are misappropriated by rulers who then tell them they must tighten their belts, while those in power loosen theirs.

In many African states, there exists the complete and strict governmental control of the mass media: radio and television stations are state-owned entities. News and films are, therefore, censored. Furthermore, in some states, where dictatorship has reached a high level, even posted letters are opened, censored, then resealed.

The various political malpractices, as well as the lack of freedom of expression and other freedoms, have kept Africans backward since independence, and suffocated all social and economic development plans in most African countries. The results: constant frustration, stress, poverty famines, malnutrition, poor health and a steady rise in the mortality rates.