Africa

by Guy Arnold

  In due course, when Mugabe has passed from the political scene he will leave behind mammoth problems both of rebuilding a shattered economy and of healing the bitter divisions that his policies have created. Following the defeat of his referendum in 2000, Mugabe blamed the white farmers and the MDC, and on ZBC television addressed the white farmers as follows: ‘Our present state of mind is you are now our enemies, because you really have behaved as enemies of Zimbabwe and we are full of anger. Our entire community is angry and that is why we now have the war veterans seizing the land.’12 What was difficult for Mugabe to explain was the fact that he and ZANU-PF had been in power for 20 years and had not solved the land issue. Could it be that he had not bothered and only saw the land issue as a vital political concern when his popularity was plummeting and he needed a popular cause to rekindle support? ‘Land for Mugabe was a political weapon. He had used it successfully during the war to help him gain power; he used it now to help keep him in power. With a population growing ever more disgruntled and restless after 18 years of his rule, it was the last political card he had to play.’ As the same critic also claims: ‘The colonial regime under which Mugabe grew up, however, engendered in him an abiding sense of bitterness. Rhodesian whites were generally contemptuous of the African population, treating them as an inferior race, demanding unfailing obedience to white rule. “We feared the white man,” Mugabe recalled. “He was power. He had guns.” Fear and distrust of white society were part of everyday life, deeply ingrained.’13 Undoubtedly, the bitterness and distrust from the past were playing their part in the events unleashed by Mugabe at the turn of the century.

  Writing in African Affairs14 Stephen Chan contrasts the cultural nationalism of Zimbabwe with the racial and cultural exploitation of the British and makes the point, too often overlooked by aid donors laying down principles, that the new middle class in Zimbabwe was no more interested in land seizures on behalf of the peasants, as opposed to for themselves, than were the former white settlers concerned with land for the peasants – they made sure they had the best for themselves. Thus, the black elite in Zimbabwe expects to replace the white elite while the peasants are expected to remain peasants and serve the interests of the new elite. Hardly anywhere in Africa have the post-independence elites worked to create egalitarian societies, as naïve aid donors have often assumed; they wished only to replace the settler or colonial elites with themselves and this is true of Zimbabwe. At the same time, well-organized peasants make good political cannon fodder. Regimes such as Mugabe’s survive, despite all pressures, not only because they repress or restrict opposition but because sufficient numbers of people support them. ‘The regime may be morally wrong, but be regarded as intellectually right. The regime’s critique of globalism – and British pressure – strikes chords unappreciated in Whitehall, and the inappropriate depiction of white farmers as British agents illustrates a wider critique rather than narrowing and vulgarizing it… Mugabe may be bad, and it may be sad, but he is certainly not mad. Nor has he succeeded only by force of himself. Mugabe is not Zimbabwe; despite his need to rig elections, significant numbers of Zimbabweans voted willingly for him; Mugabe is supported by many Zimbabweans. This simple fact is passed over and not discussed by most authors.’15 Most Western critics of Mugabe forget the corroding influence of colonialism and, especially in Southern Africa, the abiding contempt for Africans expressed by Europeans whose racism was necessarily encouraged by the need to justify holding on.

  When the Commonwealth summit, which had been postponed as a result of 11 September 2001, met at Coolum in Australia early in 2002, the African members pulled the proposed tough British statement on Zimbabwe to pieces so that a watered-down mild criticism was all that survived. The conference did agree that John Howard of Australia, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria should act as a committee to report back to the Commonwealth after the Zimbabwe elections had taken place. There had clearly been no meeting of minds between the British and the African heads of government in Australia where Blair only seemed concerned to line up the white Commonwealth in his support. This was clearly demonstrated when, on his return to South Africa, Thabo Mbeki wrote in the ANC weekly newsletter that critics of the Commonwealth decision on Zimbabwe were possessed by a ‘stubborn and arrogant mindset that at all times the white world must lead’. He continued: ‘Those inspired by notions of white supremacy are free to depart if they feel that membership of the association reduces them to a repugnant position imposed by inferior blacks.’16 These words, coming from Thabo Mbeki, who spent many years in Britain and is seen as balanced, diplomatic and tolerant, should set alarm bells ringing, above all in Blair’s Britain where the Prime Minister had announced that he wanted to put Africa at the top of his agenda. Mbeki reluctantly went along with Obasanjo and Howard to suspend Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth.

  The next stage in the diplomatic saga saw Britain trying to persuade South Africa, of all countries, to exert upon Zimbabwe the kind of pressure it was no longer able or willing to exert itself. There was an extraordinary historical irony in the spectacle of Britain calling upon South Africa to do anything of the kind. Over the years of apartheid when Africans begged Britain to act, London argued for a ‘softly, softly’ approach and insisted that change would come from within. Similarly, over the UDI years Africans asked Britain to take effective action against the Smith regime, also in vain. Now, with the position reversed, Britain demanded of South Africa actions against Zimbabwe that it had never been prepared to take against either apartheid South Africa or UDI Rhodesia. Further, London paid scant attention to South Africa’s own problems. By early 2000 the crisis in Zimbabwe was causing considerable damage to the South African economy while many thousands of Zimbabwean refugees were coming into the country. At the same time, the breakdown in Zimbabwe was frightening away investors from the whole region and any action, short of invading Zimbabwe, would damage South Africa as much as it did Zimbabwe. Furthermore, South Africa had a land issue that dwarfed anything in Zimbabwe with large numbers of desperately poor rural peasants, often still dispossessed from the apartheid era and waiting for redress through an unbelievably slow court procedure, seeking land while the bulk of the best land remained in the hands of the Afrikaner farmers, the bedrock of the old apartheid state. A wrong move in relation to Zimbabwe could spark off a land crisis that would do irretrievable damage to the new South Africa. None of this appeared to be appreciated in London.

  Back in South Africa from his Commonwealth travels, the normally mild Mbeki lashed out at Britain and the United States. The Mugabe-Zimbabwe question is, of course, a race issue. Mugabe said: ‘Today, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and America, what colour are they, the people there? Those whites, they are the ones leading in the fight against Zimbabwe, the fight of resisting the completion of the independence struggle.’ Race remains at the centre of most arguments between Europe and Africa. Throughout its imperial relations with both South Africa and Rhodesia, Britain was prepared to leave the whites largely to their own devices. Only rarely has Britain shown real concern about black against black violence and it is pertinent to ask whether it would have made such a fuss if the land resettlement programme in Zimbabwe had only been a question of replacing one lot of black farmers with another.

  CHAPTER THIRTY - NINE

  Corruption

  External observers of the African scene have bestowed upon the continent a reputation for corruption that suggests Africa is unique in this regard. In fact, Africa is probably no more corrupt than any other region of the world though its sins in this respect have been much highlighted for political reasons. Three broad categories of corruption are considered here: venal corruption – the demand for bribes and payments for services or contracts; patronage corruption – nepotism and the provision of jobs or kickbacks for supporters; and political corruption – the manipulation of elections and constitutions against the existing rule of law to perpetuate an individual’s or party’s hold on power
. In the years since the end of the Cold War the West has taken to lecturing Africa, using accusations of corruption as a weapon with which to manipulate economic and political behaviour.

  Western business and venal corruption go together. In the knowledge that Western companies will go to almost any lengths and use most available means in order to secure lucrative contracts and exclude rivals, Africans have naturally responded to such ‘institutionalized’ greed by demanding bribes or ‘sweeteners’. Representatives of Western companies argue that by giving bribes they are simply acting according to the customs of the country with the accompanying implication that they are not corrupt but what else can they do?1 Corruption in its various forms is to be found in all societies; in some it appears endemic although it is absent from none. The high profile of African corruption, at least in part, results from the inadequacy of the mechanisms to deal with it. Britain, France and Italy, for example, may suffer from as deeply entrenched forms of corruption as any African state but it is never argued by outsiders that it is impossible to deal with these countries because of it. The weak structure of many African states, on the other hand, is a major part of the problem and this is compounded by the fact that they are supplicants for Western aid. This allows would-be donors to lecture African recipients about their shortcomings and use the elimination of corruption as a condition of control. It is open to question whether most donors are concerned about corruption in any ethical sense.

  On the other side, African coup-makers, for example, always announce as one of their first priorities the elimination of corruption. Indeed, it is usually cited as a reason for overthrowing the existing regime. Once in power, after token attacks upon the corruption sickness, attacks that often bypass their own supporters, they soon settle into a pattern that differentiates them little from their predecessors. The degrees of corruption present in African states are closely associated with questions of meaningful economic independence, and calls by donors for recipients to tackle corruption never lead to a curtailment of aid though occasionally they are followed by a temporary suspension of it as part of a ritualistic donor-recipient confrontation. One particularly harsh judgement suggests, ‘In Africa, for at least four decades, the role of the state has simply been to entrench itself while sucking the people dry.’2 This may have been the case in some states but too often the state has failed to entrench itself and that is part of the problem. Western pieties about African corruption collapse in the light of Western behaviour. The revelation that US$20 billion of IMF loans to Russia was flown out of the country to be laundered in the US and Europe3 reveals just how hypocritical are Western attitudes. Nigeria is often cited as the most corrupt country in the world though it would be difficult to better Mobutu’s Zaïre in this respect, but when corruption involves 10 per cent or more of the national wealth this may reflect the fact that the state is the main employer, buyer and seller and that much of the incoming revenue is derived from oil companies, for example, or customs rather than internal sources.

  Levels of corruption do not appear to have been much affected by either democracy or economic liberalization. In so far as it can be accurately measured, there is probably no more corruption in Africa than in Asia or the West: in Asia it is more discreet, in the West it is principally confined to corporate business dealings. In Africa, on the other hand, it is more overt and is accepted as an integral part of the social-political order. Certain forms of corruption become the norm and, for example, many Africans have enriched themselves while the continent as a whole has failed to develop. Patrimonialism is a crucial aspect of African societies and the patron or ‘big man’ is expected to look after his followers. ‘It is when patrons cease to redistribute their legal or ill-gotten gains to their clients – that is, in effect, to be accountable to them – that their activities become criminal, in the sense of being perceived as illegitimate by those who might have stood to benefit but no longer do.’4 Here is an aspect of corruption that is especially African. Yet all forms of corruption have to be analysed in the context of the societies in which they occur and usually Western analysis is solely in terms of Western norms as though these alone apply worldwide. If the state, for whatever reason, has been reduced more or less to an empty shell, then the real business of politics has to be conducted outside, or regardless of this shell. In these circumstances corruption as defined in the West is broadly meaningless.5 Defining corruption, drawing lines between what works and what is merely greedy personal accumulation, is far from simple. When is patrimonialism corrupt? If an action or series of actions makes for the smooth working of the state must they be abandoned if adjudged to be corrupt even if the alternative would result in a less efficient state? The questions that the subject raises are endless. In a very poor country, for example, the petty corruptions at the bottom of the scale, which are necessary supplements to an inadequate wage or salary that is often not paid on time, can be excused, especially if the elites at the top are seen to be hopelessly corrupt. In Africa, ‘corruption is not just endemic but an integral part of the social fabric of life. For those at the bottom end of society, like lowly civil servants, the sale of the limited amount of power they possess is virtually their only means of survival. Higher up, extortion is one of the major avenues of enrichment; it facilitates social advancement and the upholding of one’s position.’6 The difficulty here is that systematic pilfering at the lower end of the scale or massive corruption at the top between them weaken the economy as a whole and therefore reduce its contribution to the efficient working of the state. Since officially all African societies have accepted Western norms about corruption they are obliged, periodically, to expose and punish the most blatant examples of corruption when these come to light just as new regimes taking power denounce the corruption of their predecessors.

  The report of the Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighbourhood, which sets out proposals for a new world order, allots the problem of corruption two pages. Corruption is a worldwide phenomenon affecting both the public and private sectors, compromising the processes of legislation and administration, regulation and privatization. Corrupt dealings between the worlds of business and politics at very high levels have come to light in recent years in dozens of countries, both industrial and developing. ‘In a number of developing countries, corruption flourished under despotic rulers as well as under democratic regimes. Vast sums that should have been in government treasuries to be spent on national objectives were siphoned off to be invested abroad. The people of these countries were effectively robbed. The great powers that supported corrupt rulers in the full knowledge of their venality must share the blame. So must the banks that help stash away ill-gotten funds and launder the money of drug dealers and other criminals.’ These sweeping generalizations by a committee of the ‘great and the good’ tend to make the reader feel that since all is known, effective action must follow. The problem is, what action? ‘Most opportunities for significant corruption in developing countries,’ the report continues, ‘arise in interactions between their politicians and officials and the business sector in industrial countries.’ At this point we come to the role of democracy in combating corruption. ‘The strengthening of democracy and accountability is the antidote to corruption. While there are no guarantees against corrupt practices, as so many democracies confirm, a free society with vigorous independent media and a watchful civil society raises the chances of the detection, exposure, and punishment of corruption.’ This statement must be considered with care. The principal Western donors, that are so anxious to impose democracy and accountability upon developing countries in Africa and elsewhere, are without exception democracies and claim to have free media. Yet they are also the countries whose business operations in Africa are complicit partners in the corruption outlined above and democracy in Italy has not prevented that country acquiring notoriety for its corrupt practices. There is something hypocritically equivocal about the report, which continues with the remarkable adjuration: ‘It is al
so important that the privatization of state-owned companies should be carried out without any taint of irregularity, so that the process of economic reform, of which privatization forms a part, is not discredited.’ African critics of privatization would argue that the very process, when pressed upon their countries by aid donors and the international financial institutions, is a form of corruption since its principal object is to provide an opportunity for the business corporations of the developed world to acquire the best assets of the developing world at knockdown prices against the wishes and instincts of the states that own them.7 Later, the report deals with multilateral trade and argues that ‘Governance would be strengthened through multilateral agreements that define minimum standards of corporate behaviour. It is in no one’s interest that standards of safety are allowed to slide to the level that allowed the Bhopal disaster’.8 In the end, the pontificating of such a report leaves the reader with a sense of unreality, for it does not spell out – and in fairness to its members does not know – how to deal with the problem of human and corporate greed.