Globally, citizens are increasingly becoming more confident in expressing and demanding their right to participate in public decision-making. Yet, the space for such participation is not always provided or it does not always lead to better governance.

Rueben Lifuka is the Vice Chairperson of Transparency International global movement and the head of Transparency International Zambia chapter. Lifuka who is a strong advocate for anti-corruption and good governance spoke to The New Times' Julius Bizimungu about this.

In an interview on the sidelines of the Social Accountability Symposium in Kigali last week which was organised by Transparency International Rwanda, he also explained how funding to organisations that are supposed to advocate for accountability, good governance was dwindling.

Excerpts:

The story of activists in your country demanding more from the Government is an interesting one. Is that essentially what it means when social accountability is promoted in any country? What is it in a broader context?

I think social accountability is simply a mechanism for citizens, communities or other stakeholders to hold duty-bearers, who could be governments, private sector and service providers, accountable for the decisions that they make.

Social accountability is about the empowerment of the citizens to do what they should have been doing. By the nature of citizens of different countries, we are duty-bound to really claim our rights. But we often don’t do that.

Social accountability comes into the picture to remind citizens that in actual fact, duty bearers and service providers, have an obligation to provide the services or (deliver on) whatever activities that are needed.

But we also have a right to first be beneficiaries of the services and demand them where they are not available. Quite often, citizens are content that there are no services and the least they can do is to beg that services be provided. You have no water and so you beg to get water access; no, they are not asking the right question. They should be asking, why don’t we have water?

With social accountability, it allows citizens to be empowered in order to play a meaningful role in society.

If we talk about empowering citizens to ask the right questions and have the ability to hold their leaders accountable, where do we find such efforts more apparent – developing world and developed world?

I think social accountability is more apparent in developing countries because in developed countries everyone is conscious about their rights, they do not even need all these social accountability training in order for them to claim their rights. It is now developing countries where we see the need for social accountability. Of course, even in developing countries, we have to take into account the literacy levels and the fact that rural communities may not be well informed and may not, therefore, do social accountability like an urban community.

That’s why the provision of information is important. We see that most of the social accountability mechanisms just lie on providing information and building peoples’ capacity to then use that information to demand accountability.

How exactly do you think communities, especially those in rural areas, will be in a position to demand their rights and services?

Well, it is possible and there are several examples where communities have been empowered. I was talking about the example of Zambia and Forest No 27, which is degazetted by Government, and we have a local community conservation group going to the highest supreme court – they started from the high court and went to the Supreme Court – and they stopped this development.

This is not a group that is coming from out of the country, they are a local group.

Why? Because they have been empowered to know how the system works, but also to know the sort of impact the forest could have on water quality and on the general environment.

Who has empowered these communities?

Different stakeholders – civil society, some government departments and among themselves, because they always maintain the forest.

I think civil society has to make sure that there is sufficient space for citizens to air their voices. Quite often, civil society does not do enough to create an opportunity for freedom of expression, we do not speak truth to the power enough for them to understand that citizens have a role to play.

Also, citizens should not be gullible. The problem we have is that as citizens we tend to be gullible; politicians come to us and tell us that this road has been constructed because of me when in actual fact, this politician’s role is simply to lobby. We need to empower the citizens with the knowledge to know that politicians do not deliver development, the development comes from public resources. Politicians simply act as aggregates for that development.

Until the citizens know that they have the sovereign power, politicians are always going to take advantage of them. One of the roles of civil society is to get the citizens to understand that sovereign power lies with them and they can exercise that directly or through their elected representatives. Until they realize that, there are always going to believe that sovereign power lies with the people they elect into power, but it lies with them.

We are living in a completely changing world and most things may not necessarily be relevant in the world we live in today. How relevant are civil society organisations in the 21st century?

I think civil society organisations are becoming more relevant when you look at the involvement of the private sector and the corporate world. The private sector through state capture is really determining the shape of the world. Globalization has made the private sector to be at the centre of most of the decisions.

Today, most of the political debates are around the actions of the private sector. So, civil society should be able to moderate the influence of elected power but also private interest, otherwise private interest working with elected power can easily forget about the citizens.   I understand the relevance of civil society, but on the other side of the equation, we see civil society losing prominence as a result of dwindling funding and political influence. How can they regain that prominence?

We (civil society) need to innovate; we cannot continue as business as usual, we cannot use the same methods we used 15 years ago, we have to move with the times, we have to use technology, and we have to package our messages so that they are relevant with the new population.

The millennials understand issues differently, we cannot use the same modes of communication. But we also need to be nimble in the way we do things. At times we tend to be over bureaucratic over ourselves and we do not respond in a timely fashion to some of these issues.

At times as civil society, we have what I call "paralysis because of over-analysis”. We often analyse an issue and we get paralysed and we don’t move at the same pace. But we should also guard against the danger of being co-opted. Most civil society leaders have been known to be the next government officials.

We shouldn’t go into civil society with an eye for political offices.

Isn’t that probably another reason why civil society is losing prominence?

That could be perhaps another reason, but it could also be that governments are becoming more adept to deal with civil society. The best way of neutralizing the civil society is not to come up with the law, is simply to co-opt them. If we do not co-opt them, it’s to infiltrate them.

As civil society, we should allow ourselves to be co-opted or accept to be infiltrated. We need to regain independence. We should understand that we don’t serve to own ourselves, we exist to serve the interest of the greater majority.

How can civil society leverage on technology to empower citizens?

Technology gives us an opportunity to do our work in a more efficient manner, to mobilise at a faster rate, to disseminate information at a faster rate. We need to start looking at new technologies and adapt them to the things that we do.

The campaigns that we do can be done using technology, the research that we do can be conducted through technology. We are in a better position now to gather evidence which we need for advocacy because of technology.

What we need is to invest in technology. At times, as civil society, we believe that technology will follow us but we need to follow technology.

editor@newtimesrwanda.com