Measuring Democracy and Human Rights in Southern Africa

Are there ways and means of measuring democracy and “good governance”? The contributions to this Discussion Paper present attempts to do this by means of surveys on democratic attitudes in Mozambique and Namibia respectively as well as by exploring the degree of commitment to and violation of human rights in a comparative perspective in Namibia and South Africa. They illustrate attitudes by offering empirical evidence of the preferences and views of local people, as well as by examining the track record of a human rights culture. In doing so, by going beyond a level of theoretical analysis, they offer concrete evidence of attitudes prevalent among both individuals and state agencies in societies of Southern Africa.

This publication has been compiled within the context of the research network on “Liberation and Democracy in Southern Africa” (LiDeSA), currently operated by the Nordic Africa Institute. The contributions were originally presented to a Workshop organised in Cape Town in December 2001.

YUL DEREK DAVIDS is Manager of the Public Opinion Service of the Institute for Democracy (idasa) in Cape Town.CHRISTIAAN KEULDER is Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research in Windhoek.GUY LAMB is Co-ordinator for the Project on Peace and Security at the Centre for Conflict Resolution at the University of Cape Town.JOÃO C. G. PEREIRA is a Junior Lecturer at the Department of Political Studies of the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo.DIRK SPILKER studies at the Department of Journalism and Communication Studies/University of Music and Drama in Hanover. He was an intern and consultant at the Institute for Public Policy Research in Windhoek during 2000 and 2001.