Browsing by Author "Powell, Derek"

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
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    Breaking to build: decentralization as an efficient mechanism for achieving national unity in Cameroon
    (University of the Western Cape, 2010) Eyiomen, Raymond Yosimbom; Powell, Derek; Faculty of Law
    Governing an ethnically diverse country constitutes a major challenge for state power and government in Cameroon. The call for national unity, championed by the regime in power has had to survive strong demands for greater autonomy and threats of secession by groups from within an English-speaking minority. In response to these demands and threats, and in conjunction with reforms to improve democratic governance and service delivery, Cameroon state administration has in the last decade resorted to decentralization as a technique for promoting national unity. The question this paper seeks to answer is whether decentralization is helpful or harmful to Cameroon national unity. This study traces the historical, constitutional and political development of the concepts of national unity and decentralization and critically examines their application in the Cameroonian context. It further tests the consolidation of national unity in Cameroon against a theoretical and empirical framework of decentralization. A one-dimensional view of the findings of this study is not very encouraging to regimes seeking to enhance national unity through the implementation of decentralization. However, the major conclusion of this study holds the position that the political outcome of decentralization on Cameroon national unity is largely a product of the constitutional regulation of both concepts and the manner in which the theoretical dimensions of decentralization are transplanted onto Cameroon political landscape. The paper recommends certain reforms to assist and guide Cameroon as it simultaneously implements decentralization and consolidates national unity.
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    Constitution-Building in Africa
    (Community Law Centre, University of the Western Cape, 2015) de Visser, Jaap; Steytler, Nico; Powell, Derek; Durojaye, Ebenezer
    The process towards the adoption of a constitution is determined by the context in which the constitution is written. It navigates such issues as political engagement, keeping politically agreed timelines, ensuring the inclusion of a variety of constituencies and groups, the use of domestic and foreign technical expertise, and ensuring legitimacy and public awareness. This book examines examples of constitution-making processes around the continent and how they attempt(ed) to accommodate the many interests at play. As such, the chapters offer a range of different constitution-making narratives. In Zimbabwe, the Global Political Agreement (GPA) provided for a parliamentary select committee, co-chaired by the three main political parties, to lead the drafting of a constitutional text. The process included public hearings and a referendum. In the case of Malawi, all of its five constitutional review projects were initiated by the presidential appointment of a constitutional review commission or technical drafting committee. The drafting of the country’s 1966 Constitution took place primarily under the auspices of the ruling Malawi Congress Party; the 1995 constitutional review process was led by a National Consultative Council and consisted of various consultative processes. While this review was markedly more inclusive, it still lacked legitimacy. The making of Kenya’s 2010 Constitution was, by all accounts, impressive in its inclusivity. With the horrors of the 2007/2008 post-election violence engraved in collective memory, and the experience of the impressive consultation, led by the Ghai Commission, still fresh in mind, Kenya’s Constitution was drafted on the basis of extensive consultation.
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    The impact of the global financial crisis on decentralized government in South Africa
    (L'europe En Formation, 2010) Steytler, Nico; Powell, Derek
    Th e global fi nancial crisis has had a severe impact on South Africa.1 Th e economy went into recession in 2008/09 for the fi rst time in 17 years. Nearly a million jobs were lost in 2009 alone. Growth has resumed, but the recovery is fragile, and another recession possible. Rising unemployment and poverty have placed greater demands on state resources even as revenues contracted, and there is mounting political pressure on government to review its economic policy. Th is paper examines the impact of the global fi nancial crisis on South Africa, in particular on how the highly centralized federal system absorbed and responded to the crisis. We make two arguments: First, the political implications of the crisis are far-reaching.
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    The impact of weaknesses in the Urban Councils Act on efficient and effective service delivery in urban local councils in Zimbabwe
    (University of the Western Cape, 2011) Madzivanyika, Last; Powell, Derek; Faculty of Law
    This study focuses on the impact on service provision arising from uncertainties in the UC Act. There are serious problems with the delivery of basic services in urban areas: including frequent interruptions in water supply, persistent power cuts, uncollected refuse, poor health services and dilapidated infrastructure. The purpose of this study is to highlight specific weaknesses in the UC Act and examine how these contribute to poor service delivery. The specific weaknesses to be examined are the unfettered powers of the minister, lack of legal certainty on powers and functions of UCs, limited revenue generating powers and lack of autonomy in recruiting senior council administration. First, UCs exercise delegated powers from central government. The minister has powers to give directions on matters of policy, suspend, reverse, or rescind council resolutions. There is no legal authority to check and balance the unfettered powers of the minister. Poor service delivery may be attributed in part to the unfettered powers of the minister. Secondly, UCs do not have devolved fiscal powers. As agents of central government, UCs can only levy those taxes and borrow money as authorised by the minister. The limited capacities of UCs to generate own revenue impacts negatively on the capacity of UCs to respond to the needs of the communities they serve.
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    Imperfect transition – local government reform in South Africa 1994-2012
    (SUN Press, 2012) Powell, Derek
    Local government is a mirror of the larger political and economic forces, cleavages and problems that are shaping South African society. It is these deeper fault lines in society, rather than the Zuma government’s turnaround strategy or the 2011 local elections result, which will drive future policy and determine its effects. This is the first lesson of local government reform in all four terms of national government examined in this chapter. In each term, national policy reforms were moulded by shifting political and economic circumstances and larger national interests, not simply by the unfolding logic of the original blueprint for local government in the 1998 white paper. The outcome of eighteen years of policy reform, however, was not the new society imagined in the white paper, but an imperfect transition that is local government today: where peaceful electoral competition coexists with violent public protests, racial group areas endure in fact, even if not in law, pockets of good governance survive amidst systemic corruption and mismanagement, and national policy goals consistently exceed local government’s capacity to deliver them and the economy’s skills base. The second lesson flows from that reality – due to the fact that the problems of local government are so nested in the broader problems of our society, further local government policy reform and sweeping national turnaround strategies are likely to have imperfect impacts on ‘the problem of local government’ in South Africa.
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    The role of constitution making and institution building in furthering peace, justice and development: South Africa’s democratic transition
    (Oxford University Press, 2010) Powell, Derek
    The international community accepts that peace, justice and development are indivisible properties of human freedom and thus wants a more coordinated approach to post conflict recovery. Today, transitions to democracy are typically launched through constitutional negotiations and anchored in efforts to fix broken state institutions or create new ones. These are settled strategies for addressing the social and economic causes of conflict in troubled societies. Transitional justice (TJ) has been slow to appreciate or capitalize on the inherent potential of these political processes to further justice and peace. By not taking a wider view of the opportunities for change that are presented by the transitional moment, TJ limits its capacity to construct the institutions that must work if a return to conflict is to be prevented. With this in mind, prominent practitioners have begun to look at how to extend TJ’s brief to include a wider set of issues linked to social justice. They are also looking for concepts and tools to bridge the divide between the field and related disciplines. This article presents South Africa’s transition as a case study of this wider view and is written from the perspective of a practitioner who was involved in building the post-apartheid democratic state. It aims to contribute to the current debate about TJ’s stake in post conflict transitions.
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    State formation after civil war: Local government in national peace transitions
    (Taylor & Francis group, 2016) Powell, Derek
    State formation after civil war offers a new model for studying the formation of the state in a national peace transition as an integrated national phenomenon. Current models of peacebuilding and state building limit that possibility, reproducing a fragmented, selective view of this complex reality. Placing too much emphasis on state building as design they place too little on understanding state formation as unplanned historical process. The dominant focus on national institutions also ignores the role that cities and civic polities have played in constituting the modern state. Mining ideas from many disciplines and evidence from 19 peace processes, including South Africa, the book argues that the starting point for building a systematic theory is to explain a distinct pattern to state formation that can be observed in practice: Despite their conflicts people in fragile societies bargain terms for peaceful coexistence, they make attempts to constitute the right to rule as valid state authority, in circumstances prone to conflict, over which they have imperfect influence, not control. Though the kind of institutions created will differ with context, how rules for state authority are institutionalized follows a consistent basic pattern. That pattern defines state formation in peace transitions as both a unified, if contingent, field of normative practice and an object of comparative study.
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    The withholding of rates and taxes in five local municipalities
    (Community Law Centre, University of the Western Cape, 2010) Powell, Derek; May, Annette; Ntliziywana, Phindile
    The Community Law Centre, in partnership with the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and SALGA, recently completed a research project on the phenomenon of rates withholding in five South African municipalities. 'Rates withholding' is the practice by ratepayers of withholding their property rates and, in some cases, fees for municipal services because they believe that municipalities are not delivering. We argue that this practice, though less visible than service delivery protests, is equally destructive.