Windhoek
A group of academics gathered for three days in Windhoek to explore how rhetoric can be used for, among other things, good governance and conflict resolution in Africa.
Officiating at the 6th International Conference of the African Association of Rhetoric, University of Namibia vice-chancellor Professor Lazarus Hangula stressed that good governance is a prerequisite for a democratic dispensation in any nation.
“[Its] forms of virtuous leadership resonate with the principles of good governance and democracy that have been prescribed, for instance, by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the European Commission, the Independent Commission on Good Governance and Lord Nolan’s Seven Principles of Public Life,” Hangula explained in a speech read on his behalf.
“The principles in question include, among others, legitimacy and voice; direction; performance; fairness; participation; effectiveness; accountability; openness; integrity; objectivity; accountability; honesty and good leadership.”
He continued: “It is not an understatement that these principles, imbedded in the rhetoric of our leaders, are crucial in fostering democracy and good governance not only in Africa, but also in the whole world.”
He added that leaders can use rhetoric to unite or divide nations depending on their ultimate goals. The deliberations which ended yesterday would investigate ways in which rhetoric could be used to promote good governance in Africa.
Speaking at the same event, New Era Publication Corporation CEO Dr Audrin Mathe presented a paper that attempts to understand the dynamics of political deliberation.
This was done by exploring how a foundational document of a political community – the Constitution of Namibia – emerged from negotiations between participants representing a diversity of political views and backgrounds.
Mathe said that his academic paper represents original research, focusing on the parliamentary record of committee deliberations as its data corpus.
“Like the American debates, the Namibian Standing Committee took place behind closed doors and the proceedings were kept secret,” Mathe said.
“The secrecy could be kept because the group of delegates was small at only 21 members and the Assembly itself lasted for only 80 days. On the other hand, the French debates were intensely public; there were more than a thousand delegates and the proceedings stretched for more than two years,” he noted. Mathe added: “Constitution-making is a timely and important area of study in rhetorical theory. In the context of Namibia, it brought together former enemies to engage in the process of working out a shared ownership of the new nation.”
Mathe argued that although economic, historical, and institutional factors play important roles in the shape and direction that typify a given society, social actors grapple with them as well.
It is his belief that the catalytic agency for such transformations is society’s discourse, the agency through which possibilities for social action are located.
“Rhetoric is thus the agency by which we make and remake our political and social relations through revisable agreements, which is to say that rhetoric is among the social practices by which society constitutes itself.”
He added that in the process of remaking social relations through revisable agreements history, as interpreted by various social actors, plays a significant part.
“Indeed, history, and the specific burden of history (apartheid and colonial history) played a significant role in the constitutional negotiations in Namibia.”
“The paper thus should be seen in terms of its contribution to the process of how a society produces or (more accurately in the present context) constitutes itself as seen through the microcosm of the constitutional assembly.”
He explained that his paper analyses the complex interplay of these factors in the deliberative process in the case of the Windhoek Assembly. It is his opinion that the process turns out to include a rich repertoire of rhetorical actions: rational argumentation, interest-based bargaining, creation of shared goals and shared ground, emotional appeals, and compromise.
Mathe noted that political decision-making entails the application of reasoning in conditions of irreducible contingency, which includes, among other factors, prominently history.
“The literature on deliberation often posits ideal models of democratic deliberation based on rational argumentation, compromise or consensus building.” He said his paper shows that democratic deliberation cannot be identified unilaterally with either rational argumentation or compromise and consensus.
“Compromise is one of the means of conflict resolution, not an end in itself. Participants sit down together not in order to compromise but in order to achieve a shared outcome.”