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MALI – Reinforcing the Foundations

 

INTRODUCTION

 

This study is an analysis of the likely outcomes arising from the presidential and legislative elections to be held in the Republic of Mali in April 2002. As such, however, it is not solely centred upon the likely candidates and interested parties and the issues they will have to deal with. It is also an appraisal of the emergence and maintenance of viable democratic institutions and an enthusiastic participatory democracy. To look at the future of national politics, it is also necessary to look into the past, and outside the narrow confines of national borders, to integrate domestic issues with regional and international developments.

 

The first section deals with Mali’s past in two ways: Firstly, locating Mali’s civic and political culture as rooted in distant history and long-term trends, especially significant as the governments of Mali’s Third Republic base present progress squarely upon a perception of common heritage and shared culture. Secondly, in the post-independence state, where several key themes can be seen to be politically significant. The present political anatomy and state of play is a historical product, and must be understood as such in order to speculate upon the future.

 

The second section examines the economic foundations of the state. Mali in the global economic order relies upon a few undiversified and vulnerable sectors, and the implications of this are investigated with respect to state revenues and capacity. Environmental degradation and population growth are also considered as factors, especially the inherent dangers in underproviding for the youth of the nation. Additionally, though, there are causes for optimism amidst the relative underdevelopment of the nation, in the strategies and creative responses by Malians to their economic situation.

 

In the third section, the domestic political environment since the removal of the Traoré dictatorship is taken apart in terms of institution-building, the resolution of the Azouad conflict, regional devolution and human rights. Developments in all these fields have taken place on a foundation of local social capital and on a wave of popular will to change ‘from below’, and in all these areas a remarkable amount has been achieved with very little in the way of material resources.

 

Fourthly, the international perspective is taken into account. This is manifest globally in such issues as the interest of the international community in supporting continuing democratic and accountable government. Within the West African sub-region it also involves the relationship between Mali’s national interests and its stake in deepening regional economic integration and co-operation on matters such as peacekeeping.

 

After the generally positive story told in the previous sections, the fifth part outlines some reasons for caution and a number of issues which may be catalysts for trouble. The greatest potential problem which emerges is not any single political issue but instead the danger of loss of faith in the democratic institutions as a whole.

 

Lastly, the likely contenders, issues and outcomes of the 2002 ballots are suggested, together with the constraints within which the new administration will have to operate.

The study will tie together to point to the overarching conclusion that, more than any person or party, the electoral process must be the clear winner, in order for the ‘work in progress’ of Malian popular democracy to stay on course.

 

HISTORIC BACKGROUND

 

The lands which today comprise the Republic of Mali have since the medieval period been the centre of many kingdoms and empires centred around the bend of the Niger. Their wealth was based upon control of the trade routes across the Sahara to the north, and to the forest-zone polities to the south, as well as upon extracting surplus from the local farmers and pastoralists over whom they governed.

 

All the polities of historic Mali have been created by an elite from one particular ethnic group, but have to a very great extent incorporated others. Thus, the (Malinké) empires of Sosso and Mali, the (Songhai) dynasty of Askia, the (Moorish) invasion from the north, the (Bambara) kingdom of Ségou, the (Fulani) jihad state of the 19^th century and others were all multiethnic ‘patchworks’ built by conquests and alliances. And ethnic identities are further cross-cut/ subdivided by clan/ caste identities as enshrined in family names with their associated traditional occupations. This has left Mali with a valuable heritage of co-existence and accommodating the differences of close neighbours, which has been one of the foundations upon which a sense of common nationhood has been built. As people say, ‘Malians understand each other very well’ – the most famous manifestation of this being what is known in French as ‘cousinage’ – the joking relationship based upon ethnicity and surname which is universal in the nation.

 

The rise and fall of empires culminated in the imposition of colonial rule as French Soudan (also a multi-ethnic polity dominated by a surplus-extracting elite), and the incorporation of the region into the greater French Empire. The mix of peoples in the newly-conquered region made it hard for the French to use one particular group as intermediaries in indirect rule, and so one cause of lasting inequality and possible cause of ethnic strife was avoided from the beginning.[1]

 

Colonisation coincided with the final decline of inland West African trade routes in the face of coastal-oriented trade, and so Mali’s economic position since the beginning of the colonial period has been one of impoverishment. Attempts to use the waters of the Niger to make Mali the breadbasket of West Africa stalled at an early stage of development, and other French development projects progressed little beyond providing a minimal road network linking major towns. Most of the French colonial energy was directed to more obviously profitable areas such as Senegal and the Côte d’Ivoire, leaving Mali on the eve of independence as a sleepy backwater with a legacy of underdevelopment.

 

Moreover, as the bulk of Mali’s population remain rural farmers and herders living at or just above a subsistence level at the fringes of the Sahara, the nation has always been highly vulnerable to environmental fluctuations. This became most obvious in the droughts of the 1970s and has played a part in pressurizing political situations at various times in Mali’s recent history.

 

Independence was negotiated within and between the colonies of Afrique Occidentale Française from 1946-1959. Two noteworthy themes which recur in subsequent episodes of Malian political development first appear at this time. The first is regional integration: Mali was one of the loudest supporters of a continued West African francophone federation, not least because it had been a net recipient of funds from the other colonies, and was perceived by head of state Modibo Keita as being much less viable on its own. It was also the last to cling to this federal ideal, which led to a short-lived union with Senghor’s Senegal during 1960.

 

The other noteworthy theme is the role of civil society in the independence movement, just as it was to replay the role in 1991. Long before ‘civil society’ was a term in common use, the independence movement was characterised by the rich associational life that had grown up in the interstices of the colonial state. By this is meant not only the Bamako-based, French-educated leaders of emergent political parties, but also the unions, notably the railway workers union whose strike in 1947 was one of the first ‘modern’ grassroots manifestations of organised anticolonial sentiment.

 

After the break with Senegal, Keita’s Mali moved further down the route of (pan)African socialism, closing French military bases, enlarging state functions, and acting in concert with West Africa’s other leading radical states, Touré’s Guinea and Ghana under Nkrumah, especially in eagerly accepting Soviet, Eastern European and Chinese aid. Though in hindsight Keita’s policies in many areas may seem misguided, he contributed a great deal in terms of making Mali’s independence meaningful in a neo-colonial context where France effectively retained the final say in the internal affairs of most other Francophone African states.

 

In 1968 economic crisis and political interests likely to have been mobilised by the former colonial power brought about the overthrow of the Keita regime by junior military officers headed by Moussa Traoré. Under the new regime the country continued along a more or less state-socialist path, although Traoré worked to restore relations with the West (particularly France) in his later years. Another attempt at a regional federation (this time with Guinea) in the wake of droughts and further national impoverishment ended with the death of Sékou Touré in 1984. In 1979 Traoré civilianised his rule by creating a one-party state. Although Keita and Traoré were bitter enemies, and although Traoré came to far exceed Keita in terms of abuses of power and maltreatment of the opposition, their administrations shared several characteristics: they suppressed internal dissent in the form of other political parties and trades unions, and both used violence to a greater or lesser extent to deal with possible internal enemies and competitors. In addition, both regimes were incompetent managers of the Malian economy, allowing inefficiency and corruption to blunt the efficacy of homegrown development and foreign aid. But most significantly, both of these governments were Bamako-based, one-party, highly centralised affairs, in which the administration in the capital was unresponsive to the needs of the rest of the nation, in which the centre was enriched at the expense of the greater part of Mali – especially the north, and in which there was no room for feedback ‘from below’. Mali was increasingly, from 1960 to 1991, an example of what the Cameroonian writer Achille Mbembe calls the ‘postcolony’: a nation ruled over by a surplus-extracting elite whose power is based upon the apparatus of domination, rather than upon legitimacy from the people.[2] These sadly familiar themes of authoritarianism, corruption, repression, economic mismanagement and regional underdevelopment combined with one of the periodic droughts to which the Sahelian countries are so vulnerable to produce an uprising of the Tuareg populations of the Azouad (northern regions) in 1990. This and other slow-burning crises precipitated the civil protests in Bamako in March 1991, which were at first violently suppressed by the armed forces under the orders of Traoré with the deaths of 106 people. Subsequently, however, the army refused to obey orders to continue fighting against unarmed civilians and deposed the dictator on 26^th March, replacing him with Lt-Col Amadou Toumani Touré. He held power while civil society and opposition groups debated the future of the nation in a National Conference, one of 10 such gatherings held in francophone Africa between 1989 and 1992. Popular will as expressed through this conference produced revolutionary changes: a new constitution, an elected government and an elected civilian head of state, a strong commitment to responsive grassroots government, and, resulting from a recognition of the damage done by highly centralised administration, a real urge to meaningful decentralisation, to give Mali’s regions some control over their own development. All of these changes were propelled into legislation by a wave of national euphoria and a consensus that the martyrs of 1991 should not have died needlessly.

 

As the Tuareg conflict continued, peaking in 1994 with the establishment of armed militias among other populations of the north and the splintering of the insurgent groups, which brought the country to the edge of civil war. Mali’s newborn democracy was held together through this by popular will, and when the successful peace process was initiated, it came not from ‘orders on high’ but from very localised processes. Dialogue between the warring sides was established with international support, but the process that led to the ‘Flames of Peace’ ceremony in Tombouctou in March 1996 stemmed entirely from local initiatives, based upon a tradition of village, community-based and inter-ethnic consensus-building politics. This is what is meant by the indigenous ‘social capital’ upon which the Malian Third Republic is consciously based, and the decentralisation programme is supporting the peace thus established by redressing the underdevelopment of the North which provoked the conflict in the first place.

 

“There are strong reasons to believe that pluralism and decentralised governance are historically ‘the Malian way’”.[3] However, as we shall see, progress along this way is far from assured and it is vulnerable to destabilisation from many directions: The best safeguard of Mali’s young democracy is the continuation of the popular enthusiasm which saw it reborn in the first place.

 

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS

 

It is helpful at this point to take a look at the economic background against which political developments in Mali are taking place. Neither in the narrow sense of conventional economic indicators, nor in a broader sense encompassing the parameters of population and environment, is the picture encouraging. Mali remains one of the poorest nations in West Africa, with a per capita GDP of $820, and one of the least developed and diversified, with 80% of the workforce engaged in either agriculture or fishing the Niger.[4] In common with many of its regional neighbours, Mali is overwhelmingly a primary producer, with little processing capacity, industrial or service-sector activity. Mali’s two biggest export earners are gold and cotton, followed closely by livestock.

 

The gold industry, located in the south-west, especially around Kangaba, is continuing to survive the worldwide drop in gold prices due to the cheapness of production (this is due to open-cast mining and the low cost of Malian labour). New developments are in progress, for instance at Syama, a typical project in that it is reliant on foreign capital and management: ownership is 40% Anglogold (South Africa), 40% IAMgold of Canada and 20% the Malian Government.[5]

 

Cotton, however, is doubly vulnerable – to fluctuations in price and to fluctuations in rainfall. Although the industry is doing well at the moment, a downturn will affect large numbers of communities, especially in the area around Mopti, and this will be more significant than a gold slump as the majority of cotton producers are indigenous farmers. Beyond this, cotton is the lifeblood for whole communities, and a rich associational life has grown up around agrarian politics.[6]

 

Potential value-adding activities such as textile mills are non-viable as their products are undercut by products of Asian factories and discounted clothes from Europe in local markets, so there is an in-built tendency for the economy to stay undiversified.

 

Cattle, sheep and goats, although third in the export charts, are in some ways more significant than gold and cotton as they provide livelihoods for many more small-scale producers, especially among the Fulani/Peul and Tuareg. In 2000, the Malian national herd stood at around 20.2 million animals.[7] In contrast to gold and cotton, most of these exports go to states in the region, especially to feed the urban centres of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. They are vulnerable in two ways, however: firstly through vulnerability to environmental conditions, as seen below, and also because exports have at times been undermined by the EU policy of ‘dumping’ cheap meat surplus on the West African market in order to support overproducing farmers within Europe.

 

Mali does have other less tangible exports which are worth mentioning here: it has the largest number of internationally successful musicians of any sub-Saharan African country, and it has a rich heritage which is exploited in two ways: legitimately through the (still tiny) tourist industry, and illegitimately through the illegal export of stolen antiquities for the ancient Niger-bend civilisations.

 

The environmental vulnerability of Mali’s economy can be seen in the droughts of the past, which were not just economic phenomena as all had profound political repercussions. The long-term Sahelian drought known as the sécheresse, which was most acute in the years 1973-74 and 1983-5 devastated cereal production and the national herd, making Mali hugely reliant upon imports and aid, and this was one of the factors which led to the fatal weakening of the Traoré regime. In addition, returning Tuareg drought refugees from Algeria and Libya, along with those whose pastoral livelihoods were destroyed by the failure of the rains and who therefore had no stake in the status quo, were the prime movers behind the 1990-1996 revolt.

 

Population

 

Environmental risks are not a constant, but a danger which increases as the population increases. Mali’s population stands at around 10 million, a growth of 1 million since 1995, a significant problem if the already fragile economy begins to slow down. As herding and agriculture land reaches the limits of its carrying capacity, greater numbers of people migrate to the cities of Gao, Tombouctou, Ségou, Mopti and especially Bamako. Added to the increasing numbers born in the cities, this places a strain on infrastructure and services, especially those providing for the young.

 

Youth

 

The whole phenomenon of youth presents a challenge in Mali as in many other African states. 45% of the population is under the age of 15[8] and this age cohort presents several different problems, present and future. In the long-term, economic growth will have to keep pace with the demands of this generation as they become adults. In the shorter term the government will have to engage with youth by ensuring the provision of education and jobs, and by making the young feel politically involved. The young of Mali’s cities already view the state as the main channel to advancement, but also as an incomprehensible oppressive force.[9] The mystery of the state must be dispelled and the marginalised young integrated into mainstream political processes, otherwise we have dire warnings from Sierra Leone on how a young, able-bodied ‘constituency of the dispossessed’ can wreak havoc when manipulated by destabilising forces.

 

In fact, there are signs that the Malian state at present cannot cope with the demands and aspirations of its young people. There are a small but significant number of unemployed youths and street children who lend an edge of violence and looting to any protest situation – they were visible in this capacity in 1991, for instance. More importantly, student riots over maintenance caused the resignation of the government in 1994. Most significantly of all, Mali’s education system remains in permanent crisis at all levels, in terms of enrolment, capacity, pass rates, although literacy rates at least are showing some improvement as reading and writing are increasingly taught in children’s native languages instead of in French at an early age.

 

Labour Migration

 

Luckily, there is to some extent a safety valve in that for a long time now, Mali, like its neighbour Burkina Faso, has been a large-scale exporter of labour, both regionally and globally. In Côte d’Ivoire there are an estimated 2 million Malians working on cocoa plantations and in the informal economy (although as highlighted recently, this also includes an unsettlingly large number of youths from poor families illegally sold as child domestic or plantation slaves). Many Malians also emigrated to France, where they work as manual labourers, in the main confined to unskilled jobs. The remittances sent back by these workers are a valuable source of family capital for development, especially so in the harsh and underdeveloped region of Kayes. The Sarakollé of this region believe that the mark of a man is the willingness to travel to the ends of the earth to make a living to send back to his family.

 

In addition to the young and able-bodied, who are lucky enough to be in a position to seek work and advancement abroad, there are also a number of marginalized and disadvantaged groups within Malian society who are not in so lucky a position. These will be dealt with later in this study: for now, it will suffice to note that some have the roots of their marginality in the ancient systems of Sahelian society, while the disadvantaged position of others is more clearly a product of modernity.

 

The most serious problem which Mali as a state faces is a product of expanding population and environmental degradation – the encroaching desertification of productive land. As the resource base contracts, and in the absence of greater economic productivity, state revenues will be in gradual but constant decline and therefore so will the capacity of the state. This will affect not just the ability of the state to perform basic functions like attempting to provide education, security, etc. but will also have deep implications for the progress of democratic reform as called for by the people in national consultation. For instance, the drive for decentralisation, to be effective, must be backed up by giving the new local authorities workable budgets of their own, so government must find the income to provide these.[10]

 

This constant inability to afford to provide the basic functions has been the cause of much political disturbance. Most notably, student-led riots in 1994, precipitated by the overnight 50% devaluation of the CFA franc brought down the first government and Prime Minister, and in 1998 students once again took to the street in protests and ‘bread’ riots – i.e. over the lack of provision of basic necessities.

 

These student riots also help to highlight the permanent crisis in state education which has been a constant source of disillusionment with the government. The system is not just in crisis at the higher level, but it is also totally inadequate at all levels down to the village school. In sub-Saharan Africa generally, efforts to remedy this are hampered by the debt burden and the public-service-cutting rhetoric of structural adjustment.

 

So all of the above presents a fairly gloomy picture of the economic viability of the Malian state, underfunded and under pressure from world markets, environmental decline and an unstable demographic. Yet this is not quite the full picture.

 

Paradoxically, I would argue that Mali’s relative poverty augurs well for the continuation of democratic reform. The lack of valuable and easily exploitable resources may well have been one of the conditions making it possible to get rid of the authoritarian Traoré and his military clique, and to consolidate reform and civilian control of the army in the wake of 1991. I would contend that, wherever there are significant wealth-creating resources which can be profitable to those in control of the state, despots and dictators are hard to remove and, if they are removed, other elements in their retinue soon move to resume power. Thus the diamonds of Sierra Leone, the oil of Nigeria and the assorted wealth of DRC have brought plenty of incentive for self-interested rulers to cling to power. But the absence of this kind of ‘honeypot’ in the case of Mali meant that when the dictator was removed by popular will, there was no great stake to be made by contesting the reform. So maybe instead of seeing Mali as underendowed with natural wealth and thus as condemned to underdevelopment, we should be thankful that it has escaped the curse of riches.

 

And the problem of state revenues is also not as acute as it might seem. It is partially alleviated since the semi-return to the Francophone fold in 1968 by France’s annual underwriting of the national budget shortfall. Mali’s social project, although in dire difficulty, is becoming less impossible as stagnant state finances are to some extent compensated for by Mali’s increasing popularity as a destination of international aid. But this will be dealt with more fully in a subsequent section.

 

THE DOMESTIC POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT AND RECENT HISTORY

 

The rule of General Moussa Traoré was a depressingly stereotypical dictatorship of the cold war period. But it is the manner of his removal which represents the turning point in Malian political reform and which has set the tone for political developments since.

 

Traoré’s removal was part of the wave of national conference movements which swept the Francophone African political scene between 1990 and 1992, and it progressed in certain stages. As political parties had been banned under the military dictatorship, subtle opposition had been building around cultural organisations like Dr. Alpha Oumar Konaré’s ‘Jamana’ cooperative. As pressures grew within the increasingly bankrupt state, opposition groups such as CNID[11] and ADEMA[12] (headed by Dr. Konaré) organised pro-democracy demonstrations in 1991 which were increasingly violently repressed. The schools were closed and the military were put on the streets of Bamako. From 22^nd March 106 people were killed in political violence in Bamako.[13] It is worth noting that whilst the vast majority of these were caused by the security forces, there were also other political and personal scores settled in these days of instability. The existence of the ‘deux cent cinquante franc’ shows that this was not a wholly a ‘velvet revolution’ on the part of the people.[14]

 

The second stage of the revolution came on 26^th March when the military, sick of being used as a tool of repression and themselves having suffered under Traoré, deposed the president and set Lt-Col Amadou Toumani Touré as head of state. This was immediately protested by the coalition of democratic opposition forces, who were then invited by Touré to share transition government as the CTSP.

 

The third stage was the setting up of a National Conference in Bamako in late 1991. Like the Conference in Benin, this had several tasks: to approve a framework in which to hold elections, to write a new constitution for Mali’s Third Republic, and to debate the future of the political landscape. As such, it included representatives from all civil society groups with an interest in national politics.

 

This resulted in the fourth stage: eventually the country went to the polls on the new constitution (12^th Jan 1992), municipal elections, two rounds of legislative elections (23^rd Feb and 8^th March), and two rounds of presidential elections (22^nd March and 5^th April). These resulted in a victory for ADEMA and Konaré who became president.

 

So the revolution in Mali was a result of the combination of politically ‘literate’ civil society groups, mass unrest and, crucially, the intervention of the military. But Mali also stands out for the ways in which these groups continued. The military, far from maintaining their renewed central role, stood aside and accepted civilian political control (which included the disbanding of potentially destabilising NCO ‘unions’ within the army). Like wise, the ADEMA administration, which could easily have taken a high-handed approach to government, given its initial majority, has come back to consultation with civil society and the people time and time again, not just when crises loom, but also to decide upon the trajectory of the nation.

 

Thus the ‘Journées Nationales’ in 1991 and similar Regional Concertations of 1994 were consensus-building initiatives with the civil society of Mali’s regions, from which emerged a clear national will towards the decentralisation of government. Such consultations performed the dual function of distancing the new state from the haughty centralism of old in the eyes of the people, and of escaping from a stale politics of confrontation between elites, towards a truly inclusive and legitimate government of the national community. The retributive actions of the new government were also limited and humane, with Traoré and his ministers receiving death sentences which were commuted to life imprisonment for economic crimes and the events of 1991.

 

The Azouad revolt of 1990 to 1996 was in the end also a vindication of Mali’s new institutions, administration, and ability to build upon traditional consensus-reaching mechanisms. The revolt in the north, instigated by environmental conditions and returnee refugees as mentioned above, in combination with regional underdevelopment and resentment of the regime (a universal in Mali at the time), was brought to a short-lived peace agreement in 1991 and again in the Pacte Nationale of 1992. However, warfare continued, escalating in 1994 to the point where it threatened to derail the whole process of reform and civil government in Mali. With the formation of sedentary self-defence militias such as the Songhaï Ganda Koy, the country threatened to fall into civil war. But instead of going this way, as Robin-Edward Poulton and Ibrahim Ag Youssouf recount in ‘A Peace of Timbuktu’,[15] a lasting peace and disarmament programme was built up over several years. It began from grassroots involvement of community and Tuareg clan leaders, using intermediaries from local and national civil society of both sexes, and religious personages, and decided how enough mutual trust could be established for disarmament to begin. It was a holistic plan, not ending with the ‘flames of peace’ destruction of weapons in 1996, but going beyond to encompass the reintegration of ex-combatants into civilian life. Throughout, the international community acted as a facilitator of initiatives begun at a local or national level, rather than imposing an outside-ordained blueprint for peace. This peace process was in concert with the use of traditional social capital and devolved local decision-making throughout the reconstruction of the Malian state, and thus it can be seen that democratic reform and the Azouad settlement were mutually reliant processes.

 

Two lasting aspects of the peace process were the emergence of a ‘Security first’ doctrine in guiding international efforts to help resolve conflict and maintain subsequent peace building. This meant realising that peace is only sustainable when national and personal security are assured. Related to this was the leading role Mali took in calling for a regional ban on the trade in light weapons as one of the prime destabilising factors in the West African political environment. This resulted in the ECOWAS moratorium on the importation, exportation and manufacture of small arms, signed in Abuja in 1998 and the inception of the PCASED structure to manage this moratorium.

 

The devolution and regionally-controlled development (including the establishment of a commissariat of the North) which followed in the wake of the national consultations and the Tuareg revolt represents in a way the end of a top-down, high-handed, institution-centred state and its replacement with a bottom-up, more responsive system with the rights of the individual citizen at its core.[16]

 

Real decentralisation was enshrined in legislation establishing administration by region, urban and rural commune, all the way down to village level. This rested on a conception of Mali having a heritage of communitarian consensus-building politics and on the reality that many decisions on, for instance, land use were reached under the ‘palaver tree’ in the centres of villages, completely bypassing inadequate state structures. Decentralisation may also broaden the base of those involved in politics, beyond the traditional elites.

 

As one recent analyst perceptively notes, the fact that Konaré’s government carried out one of the most thorough decentralisation programmes in Africa to date, willingly and under minimal pressure, at the very beginning of its term of office, greatly helped to give the potentially weak post-military government and the ADEMA party essential popular legitimacy and widespread local support outside urban centres.[17] But, it is a contested process. Opposition parties worry that it is unworkable, and there is also the consideration that the multiplication of local governments may also multiply the opportunities for nepotism and corruption. A Malian NGO director working in the Mopti region sees the decentralisation programme as being problematised in three ways: in part because traces of the ‘command’ mentality’ of the old single-party days continue to exist in the political elites, in part because confusions continually arise between the various actors appointed to positions of intervention in local affairs, and in part because “the current actors revolve around the fact of a rupture between the state and civil society which is still an incomplete ideal.”[18]

 

As mentioned above, Mali’s reforms (as well as the political rhetoric of some of next year’s likely presidential contenders) are consciously based on traditional formations and indigenous social capital, intended to naturalise the link between Mali’s democracy and the traditional cultural values of its people. Thus the rich forms of associational life which exist in the Third Republic include both donsotonw hunter’s guilds and new initiatives like women’s micro credit banks, as well as those which have characteristics of both traditional and modern, such as youth groups, and those which have some history in post-independence Mali, such as cotton-producing village associations.[19] Out of these roots, the capacity for debate and cooperation in self-government is expected to grow. Alhassane considers that “the context of the ongoing decentralisation in Mali will (…) foster popular participation in development planning, particularly at the local level.”[20] One example of this would be the development of the ‘pastoral code’ to regulate land use and interactions between herders and farmers which is now under discussion. There are also active and successful semi-state institutions at work in Mali today: one example would be the nationally organised networks of ‘jeunesse’ local youth associations, or the organisations and networks overseeing AIDS education.

 

Since the events of 1991, the position of the Malian government towards human rights and freedoms has been extremely enlightened. In addition to the commuted sentences of the previous regime mentioned above, the administration has continued to respond proportionally and with restraint to subsequent disturbances. This conciliatory attitude has been a hallmark of the Konaré presidency and has proved valuable in preventing the radicalisation of the political opposition. After disturbances arising from the perceived privileged ‘starting position’ of the ruling ADEMA party in the 1997 election,[21] Konaré made moves (resented by his own party power-brokers) towards reconciliation with the parliamentary and the extra-parliamentary radical opposition. This reconciliation, resulting in an ADEMA-dominated broad coalition government, held together through episodes of political violence (most notably the lynching of a police officer at an opposition rally), and the political activists arrested during this period were later granted a presidential pardon. The same approach has been deployed in response to local disturbances at municipal elections and to student protests.

 

In addition, the notorious prison at Kidal (a symbol of the years of repression) was closed in 1997. Press freedoms are guaranteed in a statute passed in 1992, and Mali has a variety of dailies and periodicals.[22] Given the rate of literacy and the difficulties of distribution, the radio, however, is of much greater importance than the print media. Democratic Mali had, at the last count, around 100 local-language radio stations.[23] In view of the long-term withering of the ‘reach’ of the state – especially in the north – throughout the years of centralised dictatorship, local-language radio, which reaches approximately 80% of the population, is invaluable in helping rural Malians feel like part of the wider national community, and thus is a factor in keeping such people involved with national government.

 

Mali also demonstrates its commitment to open government through initiatives such as a yearly televised session of central government in which supplicants come from all areas of the nation to ask for resolution of local disputes. It remains to be seen whether this practice, redolent of the medieval savannah kingdoms, is useful or mainly symbolic in its effectiveness. It is in fact inaccurate to distinguish between the ‘really useful’ and the ‘symbolic’ in this situation, as locating the practices and structures of democratic government in local understandings and traditional forms has been one of the great strengths of the current administration.

 

All in all, though, in rebuilding the state from the local to the national level, Malians have so far achieved a remarkable amount with very little. This is partly to do with the conscious realisation by those in control that much can be done by using existing social capital, and by allowing the potential already in Mali’s people to be more fully realised. Partly it is also to do with the multiple forms of modern and traditional civil society which have played a part in transition and peace building. But it also proves something about the will of ordinary people and their involvement in political processes.

 

Theories of modernisation hold that “economic development leads to changes in attitudes and eventually political culture, the result being better quality democratic governance”.[24] According to this functionalist schema, phenomena like the rise of a bourgeois middle-class lead to calls for more political involvement. Yet in the case of Mali’s transition to democracy, it is clear that political change on a wave of popular protest took place in the absence of any real improvement in the economic condition of the people: in fact one of the reasons for the revolution was continuing economic decline, and (in the exact opposite of modernisation theory) perhaps the only key to wealth-creation and development was the deposition of the corrupt and venal regime and the creation of an equitable government. Additionally, regional democratisation was not so much propelled by the actions of educated elite and middle-class political actors but by the need to solve the armed rebellion of ill-educated and excluded rural groups in the north.

 

This counter-functionalist story is also true of Mali’s neighbour Senegal, in which Wade and the opposition parties secured a peaceful succession to power in 2000, thus proving the consolidation of peaceful democracy, despite a stagnant (and according to some, declining) economic situation.

 

MALI’S POSITION IN THE SUB-REGION AND THE WORLD

 

As the West African sub-region becomes increasingly inter-reliant and globally integrated, it makes sense to view Mali’s development outside the purely domestic context. There are also strong reasons to be optimistic about the future of Mali’s democracy stemming from regional and international interactions. Some of these take the form of ‘democracy dividends’ which have rewarded Mali’s continued stability in an increasingly volatile region.

 

In the wake of the reforms set in motion since 1991, Mali is a popular destination for aid funds. On a national level, it is seen as a ‘deserving cause’, which can be relied upon to spend aid dollars responsibly. And on a local level, the stable political context makes it possible for donors and NGOs to commit to long-term sustainable development projects in Mali’s towns and rural communities. For instance, Save the Children in Kolondiéba, in the south of the country, are committed to a 15-year literacy and capacity-building project. The locally-organised NGO ADAC, in partnership with Britain’s International Service, co-ordinates savings and micro-credit banks for women across a large stretch of Mali’s cotton belt, and Oxfam have for some time now been involved in an array of similar activities, as well as small-scale community-based projects to help inhabitants of the north become more able to survive periods of drought and reconstruction.

 

On a national scale, French government-related aid and the American USAID agency have both become more active in recent years, as Mali is in many ways an ideal state to implement their stated aims of helping to implement development-oriented and accountable government. Of course this also masks the increasing competition for influence between France and America in post cold-war francophone Africa, but no matter what the vested interests at work, it is still true that political reform and aid inflows (valued in 1998 at $308 million)[25] sustain each other’s impetus.

 

Mali has already travelled a long way along the path of economic liberalisation and structural adjustment, and it has brought both costs and benefits. SAPs have weakened the already tiny capacity of social services, but as these changes have been brought in gradually under accountable government, they have occasioned less instability than in some less democratic states of the region, where SAPs have reduced the ability of corrupt leaders to maintain unity through patronage at the same time as reducing standards of living, thus producing violence and instability. Mali’s government, by contrast, has a popular mandate which gives it a stronger position to mediate outside-imposed reform agendas, and modify them to a shape which best suits the needs of the nation. Still, foreign investment under the liberal regime brings worries that the country is being recolonised via the back door, as previously public-sector services are bought up by French interests.

 

This ‘open-to-all’ regime also brings success stories, however, as with the gold mines mentioned above. Increasingly, the USA and France are competing to invest, as proved by on the one hand the biennial Franco-African summit and meetings of La Francophonie, and on the other the African-American summit and new Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit to Mali as the first port of call on his African tour. In addition Mali welcomes ‘South-South’ initiatives, such as India’s help in developing fresh water supply in the Tombouctou area.

 

Because of its acceptance of the neo-liberal paradigm, Mali is popular with the international financial institutions. Its inflation controls and 5% growth rate over three years qualify it for status in the HIPC initiative, which will bring welcome respite from capital outflows in the form of crippling debt service payments – according to the pressure group Jubilee 2000 this debt is in the area of $3,183,000,000.

 

Increasingly, Mali’s economic development is guided by a ‘technocracy’ in government, best exemplified by Premier Ministre Mandé Sidibé, previously a banker at the CFA-currency-issuing Banque centrale des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest with an MBA from the USA. Much more important than its financial position, though, is Mali’s prestige in the West African sub-region. For a small nation, Mali has reaped big rewards in terms of international standing from its well-managed transition to democracy and its resolution to the Azouad conflict.

 

The peacemaking and peacekeeping experiences of the northern conflict, and the ‘Security First’ approach have also been amplified into deep involvement in regional peacekeeping efforts. Mali has been involved in the RECAMP initiative – a French-supported exercise in building the military capacity for a regional peacekeeping force. This includes the enlargement, with French aid and instructors, of the Koulikoro military academy, and Mali’s participation in the 1998 Guidimakha peacekeeping training exercise, held partly on Malian territory. [26] Mali can assume this role with some credibility as it is a small nation with no main rivalries in the region and thus is not assumed to have hidden interests or agendas.

 

The moral authority of those involved in the democratic transition has also been manifest in other ways in the regional environment. General Amadou Toumani Touré, the military head of state during the transition period, has since gone on to act as a regional statesman, for instance as the OAU representative overseeing the control of political unrest in the Central African Republic.[27] Mali’s current President Konaré seems also to be shaping up for a post-presidential career as a regional statesman in some capacity, perhaps as a head of the new ‘African Union’.

 

Whatever the personal interests in developing the role of statesmanship for Mali, it is clear that as with the mutually reinforcing cycle of aid and democratisation, the international respect for Mali’s achievements to an extent safeguards the continuation of democracy at home. So, if Mali is punching above its weight in regional involvement with peacekeeping and mediation, it must be noted that the country is also a keen regionalist because it punches below its weight economically. Because Mali’s wealth comes mainly from outside – as mentioned in the historical context – it has always been enthusiastic about regional integration. Since Houphouët-Boigny announced that independent Côte d’Ivoire would not subsidise the ex-French West African nations, Mali has been briefly confederated with Senegal and prepared for union with Guinea, in efforts to avoid being thrown back onto its own meagre resource-base. Historically, all Mali’s regimes have been avid integrationalists at some time, and Mali has a clause in the national constitution enabling it to waive its powers of sovereignty should the need arise. Presently, Mali is a keen member of both the UEMOA[28] (CFA-zone) and ECOWAS, from which it stands to gain much, in a position analogous to that of the Low Countries in the EU. Konaré has been an active president of both organisations.

 

There is one final point to draw from putting Mali’s experience in regional perspective: one school of received wisdom holds that democratic (and other) change flows initially from regional ‘heavyweights’ to their smaller neighbours. But Mali and the other states which enjoyed successful National Conference transitions to democratic rule did so while West African giants like Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria were labouring under the hand of dictatorships. This makes their achievement all the more worthy of recognition.

 

REASONS FOR CAUTION

 

So far, we have examined many positive indicators for Mali’s democratic future. But it is only right to sound a warning note: the work of maintaining the impetus of democratic reform and popular political involvement can be upset by a number of factors.[29]

 

Some of these are located in the regional political environment. We have already seen that Mali is a keen advocate of regional integration. But this is not to say that the national interest is always harmonious with that of neighbouring states, as was shown by, for instance, the dispute with Burkina Faso over the mineral-rich Agacher Strip border area in 1974 and 1985.

 

More recently, regional threats to stability spring from conflicts in the Mano River Union states. Bamako has a sizeable number of refugees from this area, who have chosen the city as a residence indefinitely, or who, along with migrants from other West African states, use Bamako as the first staging post on the way to the Maghreb and the EU. The situation in neighbouring Mauritania might also be a cause for concern: many of its black citizens are at the moment displaced in refugee camps within Mali, and a further deterioration in political and inter-ethnic relations there may swell these numbers considerably.

 

The potential for much larger and fatally destabilising migrations exists, in the form of the nationalist rhetoric now being employed by some Ivoirean politicians. In particular, Gbagbo’s drive to chauvinistically redefine ‘Ivorité’, if it were to gain the upper hand, could cause massive problems for the estimated 2 million Malians living and working there.[30] If such workers were to be forcibly repatriated because of economic decline (action for which there is a precedent in West Africa) the influx of refugees would probably be more than Mali could cope with.

 

Arms proliferation stemming from the Mano River conflicts is a danger of which Mali is well aware, and has, as we have seen above, taken active measures to combat. The danger still remains, however, that groups which ‘fall out’ of the democratic process will find ways to arm themselves in order to be heard. This would only be likely in the event of Mali’s current domestic problems growing to a point beyond the state’s ability to cope.

 

The problems to watch in this respect are no longer rural regional underdevelopment as in 1990-1996. New threats would be more likely to emerge from Mali’s overloaded cities, their unemployed youth, street children and student leaders protesting the constant crisis in education and thus prospects for the future. In this last respect the state cannot even cope at the present time.[31]

 

Youth Problems

 

The last crisis of the kind mentioned above which could serve as a warning was in 1994. At this time the 50% overnight devaluation of the CFA Franc, the poor wages of state employees, the crisis in the schools and higher education,[32] accusations of high-handed government by ADEMA, the disaffection of extra-parliamentary opposition parties and World Bank imposed austerity measures all led to protests initiating the resignation of Prime Minister Abdoulaye Sow. His replacement by Ibrahim Boubacar Keita failed to stop the protests, which escalated into violent demonstrations, resulting in the closure of schools and in a ‘day of inaction’ strike. The whole process went as far as an armed barricade of the Bamako streets by gendarmerie cadets (resulting in one death), before reconciliation measures calmed the situation. This example serves to show how easily Mali’s democracy was brought to the brink of collapse by a combination of factors, to which we might add environmental degradation as another possible cause of instability. If the conditions of 1994 were to be replicated in a West Africa awash with weapons from Mano River Union conflicts, the results could be catastrophic. The inadequacy of educational provision combined with the inability of the economy to absorb school-leavers and students has also led significant numbers of the young in the cities and regional centres to mobilise behind a form of activist political Islamism which is often sceptical of the value of engagement with the democratic process. If these groups remain outside the system they could present cause for concern in a number of ways: in that they are likely to grow if economic conditions worsen, in that they are frequently receptive to ideologies and influences emanating from (perhaps extremist) outside sources, which are then mobilised as social critique, and (most likely of all) in that they represent a ready pool of malcontents who can be mobilised by elite politicians to further their own ends.

 

There are also less dramatic slow-burning issues which may affect the building of a true participatory method of government in Mali. Chief among these is the issue of groups which are or which feel excluded from political processes. We can highlight three:

 

RURAL GROUPS: the elite politics of Mali has traditionally centred around urban and administrative centres, an anomaly and an arrogant oversight in this predominantly rural nation. The dangers of forgetting about the remoter communities in political calculations have been demonstrated in the Azouad conflict, where Tuareg herders took to armed rebellion to be heard, and in the later stages when sedentary Songhaï also formed militias as the central government failed to satisfy their security needs. Equally, the benefits of braving Mali’s decrepit road system to bring politics to the remoter countryside were proven in the 1992 elections, in which ADEMA were the only party to bother campaigning in the rural areas and therefore won by a landslide.

 

WOMEN: despite the higher public profile of women in West Africa as compared to other parts of the continent, and despite the achievements of some women activists in the present political system, political life remains highly male-dominated – although in April this year Sidibé Awa Sanogo became the first woman to announce her presidential candidacy. The discrepancy is most acute at the local level, where public and community decisions tend to be made by men with the assumed agreement of the women. It is becoming more important to empower women as political actors as more powers are devolved to local administrations. To this end, NGOs such as the US-based National Democratic Institute are currently focusing on strengthening women’s political participation.

 

THE BELLAS: as a marginalised group are a very specifically Sahelian problem. They are the descendents of slaves of the Tuareg, and as such the greater proportion live in extreme poverty. Although most are no longer in traditional subservient relationships with particular Tuareg clans, they are still looked down upon. As the nomads’ capacity to keep slaves and the need for their labour declined, many Bella washed up on the ‘shores’ of the desert, in towns like Gao and Tombouctou, where they live in makeshift reed huts and seek casual labour (or else contract themselves into bonded labour in enterprises such as the Taoudenni salt mines). The Sahelian droughts worsened the position of the Bella at the bottom of the social structure, and although there are some signs of improvement (mainly among the young, who can become breadwinners by acting as tour guides particularly in Tombouctou), there are still no visible government initiatives aimed at stabilising their position or encouraging their political participation. The dangers of a permanent underclass in such a poverty-stricken environment are obvious, and need addressing urgently.

 

All the above excluded and marginalised groups are significant because of what may be the greatest threat yet to Mali’s democracy: voter apathy. Although this is also a problem in Western ‘mature’ democracies, its significance is different here, as public apathy may encourage reactionary groups to believe that there would be little opposition to a return to authoritarian government, and thus they are more likely to attempt coups, assassinations, etc. This apathy is a very real problem: even in the first democratic legislative elections, only 43% of the eligible electorate voted, and this figure was down to 20% in the final round of the presidential polls. In the 1997 presidential vote, radical opposition groups boycotting the election claimed that the turnout of 28.4% illegitimated Konaré’s victory.[33]

 

It is vital that Mali’s government be seen to be legitimate in the eyes of the people for its continued viability. However, much of the apathy in recent years is itself the product of mismanaged electoral procedure. The fiasco of elections organised by the hastily-created independent CENI commission did not do much to engender popular perceptions of Mali’s democratic processes as anything to have confidence in, and the aftermath (in terms of disturbances and reconciliation with opposition parties) extended into 1998. In particular, the phenomenon of boycotts is discouraging but unsurprising in this light. As a result of this the Ministry of Territorial Administration (under Ousmane Sy, the mastermind of the decentralisation programme) ran the 1999 polls with the constructive help of the Army (an unusual occurrence for the region, surely) and the CENI in an observing role. It seems that the 2002 polls will be run by the same Ministry, although with a revised electoral roll to satisfy the opposition parties about the possibility of vote-rigging: to this end voter identity cards have already been cancelled and reprinted because of alleged irregularities, and revisions to the electoral laws have been passed through the National Assembly with large support from both government and opposition. Though complaints about the electoral system and preparations are still being voiced, it seems that the Malian political establishment in general is concerned to have an efficient and visibly legitimate process which engages the mass of the people, and it is in the interest of most parties to expend considerable effort to ensure this.

 

This leads us to the issue of ‘democracy fatigue’. There is a danger in many West African states that the public unity and popular consensus forged in removing a long-standing and abusive dictator can start to unravel after democratic government has been in power for some time. Coalitions such as ADEMA can fall prey to infighting, and, as politics becomes the private game of an elite, the public begins to lose interest. More than this, if the democratic regime fails to deliver physical and economic security, the population is more receptive to those offering a radical solution (such as a military coup). In the opinion of the Malian NGO worker previously quoted, “The present economic reality tends to alter the infatuation and adhesion of the population to democracy”.

 

It cannot be stated enough that the greatest guarantor of the safety of democratic government is that the mass of the people continue to care about it. The problem is just as pressing in the municipal and local elections. People must stay involved in these processes to maintain the workings of decentralised government, and as a democratic vector for them to be able to control their development at a local level. There are still conflicts around issues of decentralisation, and a wide variety of views as to how the system should work: many are of the opinion that the system remains too dominated by the executive centre, which retards the consolidation of democratic development at other levels. Mali’s democracy remains very much a ‘work in progress’, and it must keep both the elites and the grassroots involved in order to stand a chance of survival.

 

LIKELY FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

 

The 2002 elections, which already have the pulses of Mali’s political actors racing, are not likely to bring much radical change in domestic or foreign policy. In the absence of any unforeseen crisis, and given such factors as the more-or-less entrenched rule of civilian political authority over the military, it is unlikely that Mali’s politics will be radicalised to the extent that it is possible for an authoritarian ruler to seize power. Equally, given the increasingly vocal nature of diverse groups in public life, it is unlikely that an elected leader would have leeway to abuse the executive powers and act unconstitutionally. Even so, it is possible that many Malians may perceive strong leadership as a desirable thing, given the periodic crises besetting the nation and political life, and this may lend encouragement to senior politicians of the near future to act in an increasingly authoritarian way.[34] The rejection of a ADEMA-proposed constitutional amendment referendum last year does not mean the issue will not reappear under other leadership as a tool to extend powers of control.

 

Whichever president and administration emerges as successful, the government of Mali is likely to proceed within the same parameters of:

 

·        Neo-liberal economic reforms,

·        Cultivating an ‘donor-friendly’ face to ensure essential aid inflows,

·        Working towards closer regional cooperation and economic integration,

·        Taking a lead in regional conflict-resolution and arms-management initiatives,

·        Domestic and social policies oriented towards development and crisis management, as directed by both the pressures of civil society and the threat of social unrest.

 

Who actually inherits the mantle of Head of State and Head of Government does make a difference, as their personal political style will set the tone for debate and action, as we have seen by the (re)conciliatory style which has marked most of the Konaré/ADEMA period.

 

The shortlist of likely contenders at the present time consists of three from within ADEMA, as well as others from parliamentary and extra-parliamentary oppositions. The prospective ADEMA candidates are former finance minister Soumaïla Cissé (currently minister for transport, territorial administration, urbanisation and the environment), the ‘technocrat’ current Prime Minister Mandé Sidibé, and Soumeylou Boubèye Maïga, ADEMA vice-chairman and minister for armed forces and veterans. Outside of the ruling coalition, the high-profile but controversial ex-Prime Minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who caused a split in the party on account of his perceived radical tendency when elected head of the ADEMA party in 1994,[35] is running as the candidate of the breakaway Alternative 2002 group of MPs, which on 3^rd July 2001 was superseded by the Rassemblement pour le Mali, the nations’ 74^th political party. Keita has a sizeable personal following among sectors of the population with the standing to influence the votes of others in their communities. The COPPO opposition grouping[36], which represents a coalition of power-brokers and pressure groups as disparate as the MPR (successor to Traoré’s single party) and elements of the US-RDA (Keita’s African Socialist party) is expected to field the candidature of Choguel Maïga, from the MPR.

 

Although ADEMA is often regarded as a spent political force, weakly held together, it is clear that very few issues unite the COPPO grouping, and much horse-trading of alliances and factions is going on in both arenas. In addition, CNID, the other party which played a role in the democratic transition, and ADEMA’s coalition partners UDD and PDP (moderate opposition groups) maintain bases of support. In this fractured environment, a good chance of success seems to lie with Amadou Toumani Touré, the ex-president from the National Conference period. His retirement from the Armed Forces on September 19^th makes his candidature, although still unannounced, very probable - especially given the existence of a website and publicity machine announcing his ‘vision for Mali’[37]. Domestically, his role in the unseating of Traoré and the subsequent return to democracy has given him a high public profile and popular respect, which is reflected on the regional scale due to his involvement with conflict resolution initiatives, notably in the Central African Republic. However, according to some sources he is unpopular with a significant section of the influential Malian political elite. Internationally his familiarity with senior UN and US figures augurs well for his ability to further Mali’s standing and interests, as does (given American and Western priorities since September 11^th) his stance as a Muslim who is politically secular and committed to peacekeeping.

 

In a broader sense, the lack of a clear perceived successor in government is actually a good thing for Mali’s democracy. The electoral process is a game open to all runners, and is not seen as a foregone conclusion, so there is more at stake, more public interest and more popular involvement (we can see how foregone conclusions create voter apathy from the recent British general election). But whoever wins, their role in maintaining unity will be problematic. The Konaré presidency’s public legitimacy stemmed directly from the popular wave which deposed Traoré: whoever succeeds it will be playing an Mbeki to Konaré’s unifying and conciliatory Mandela.

 

The 2002 elections will also feature a novelty on the Malian political scene: the likely first appearance in this ancient Muslim country of Islamist voting patterns[38], as a small number of vocal religious activists criticise the nature of the secular state and the incumbent government.

 

Beyond all the issues of personalities and alliances, the paramount issue as we approach the 2002 elections is that popular involvement and thus the institutions of Mali’s democracy must remain strong. If government proceeds in ruling the nation with a responsive ear to the concerns of the people (as against choosing for its priorities outward appearances, or the interests of a narrow elite) then Malians will continue to care deeply about the institutions and processes by which they are governed, and will continue to monitor them with a constructive but critical eye.

 

It is important not just to the inhabitants, but to Mali’s neighbours in an often-unstable region, and to the international community, that democracy is entrenched and nurtured. This means respect for the constitution, for electoral procedure, peaceful and non-inflammatory campaigning, a maintained and functioning linkage between national and decentralised local administrations, respect for individual rights and freedoms above the interests of the state, and continued open access to the workings of government. And it means building on the work already in progress to use government as a ‘non-command’ framework, rooted in local concepts and conditions, for the people to live, develop and articulate within.

 

CONCLUSION

 

We have seen that despite the precarious economic, social and regional environment, a democracy has been built in Mali using social capital and human resources instead of financial capital and institutional resources. Furthermore, there are good reasons why we should expect Mali to ‘work’ as a national community – both rooted in history and in the way recent crises have been negotiated. As the nation approaches the next hurdle it seems that the main danger comes not from military intervention, rebellions or a reactionary coup, but from the erosion of popular interest in participatory democracy and the stunting of the growth of institutions designed to enable the elected government to function at all local and national levels. If these are allowed to wither from neglect – either by the citizens or by the international community – then the state will become easy prey for the destabilising influences we have discussed above. Malian democracy cannot be allowed to become a top-down process as it will then become an empty shell, its institutions ‘hollow’ structures for legitimising revenue extraction and the underdevelopment of the nation to the benefit of a privileged few, as it was prior to 1991.

 

________________________________

By Olly Owen; London, 13 March 2002.

 

For further information on this and all other working papers,

please contact

The Centre for Democracy and Development, London

Tel: +44 (0)207288 8666, Fax: +44 (0)20 7288 8672, e-mail: cdd @ cdd.org.uk

 

 

 

ENDNOTES