by Guy Arnold
A second report of the 1990s was that of the South Commission yet despite the prevalence of corruption in the countries of the South, The Challenge to the South only spares one page of text to the subject of corruption. It says: ‘Corruption has been on the increase in many countries – in all parts of the world. Circumstances differ and so do the causes. In the West it tends to be associated with big business and such activities as manipulation of the stock markets; in socialist countries and the South over-regulation and the absence of effective systems of public accountability make it tempting to resort to corrupt practices. Over-centralization, limited administrative capabilities, laxity of tax administration, and authoritarian tendencies have combined to provide fertile conditions for corruption in many developing countries.’ It continues: ‘In the South, the excessive concentration of economic power in the hands of the government and the corporate sector, poverty, insecurity, and the underpayment of public personnel also account for some of these undesirable practices. So do corrupting influences from Northern sources related, but not confined, to obtaining profitable contracts and to the trade in arms and the illicit traffic in drugs.’ These statements set out the problem in matter-of-fact terms as one that is simply a part of the ongoing political-economic scene. The report places much of the blame squarely on the shoulders of governments in the South. ‘Regardless of these factors (stated above), governments must bear a large part of the responsibility for corruption in the South. By and large they have not regarded its eradication as a priority, despite its acknowledged economic, social, and political costs.’9 These two reports are worth quoting at length since they represent the official collective international view of corruption, which they see as a major part of the world in which we live and implicitly do not see much likelihood of changing.
Of course, there are obvious ways in which the incidence of corruption can be decreased. Thus, public officials should be banned from accepting any emoluments apart from their official salaries, such as consultancy fees, and salaries should be sufficient to discourage corruption while they are in office. They should also be banned from paid employment with corporate or other groups that could benefit from their inside knowledge for several years after leaving office and pensions should be adequate to enable them to live without recourse to such employment. Passing such rules is easy; ensuring that they are followed depends upon the willingness of governments to enforce them. An interesting African viewpoint on relations with Europe is to be found in Congo-Paris, whose subtitle ‘Transnational Traders on the Margins of the Law’ indicates its content. It describes the activities of African traders to Paris from the two Congos who smuggle, deal in drugs and break the law in order to service the African diaspora. Their activities are often illegal if not specifically ‘corrupt’ within the obvious meaning of the word. ‘In Europe, traders and others explicitly state that operating outside the law, even in theft, drug-dealing and other activities, is justifiable because: “In the past Europeans looted Africa, now it is the turn of Africans to help themselves to the riches of Europe”.’10 Attitudes such as these are crucial to an understanding of more general Afro-European relations. The ideas advanced in Our Global Neighbourhood (see above) provide a global ethic but how, in fact, is this viewed by power-hungry transnational corporations or a unilateralist United States, and whose global values are we discussing?
Africans often accuse the West of double standards and they make a sound case. ‘Throughout the long years of the Cold War, the US and its allies were quite happy to exploit the inherent weakness of the Third World countries in pursuit of their own narrow political and corporate interests. Indeed the record of sustained Western-sponsored subversion, manipulation, corruption and repression of human rights in all parts of the Third World over the last 50 years is well documented.’11 By their sustained support for corrupt and brutal dictators such as Mobutu, the US and its allies have ‘contrived both to undermine their own moral authority in the Third World and progressively to weaken their ability to influence events’. As a result, dictators who owed their position to Western support demanded ever greater indulgence and favours, including the misuse of aid as their price for acting as Western stooges. ‘The damage done to the reputation of the developed world’s leadership has been compounded by its willingness to aid and abet the crimes of Third World dictators and their henchmen both before and after their overthrow.’12 If leaders of African states, or would-be leaders such as Charles Taylor of Liberia, can behave as though their countries are simply there to be seized as estates for the benefit of the warlord who seizes them and are then promptly recognized by Western governments, this destroys any moral authority the Western world might otherwise claim when it advances the merits of democracy. In 1995, President Chirac of France demanded that his government should make a clean break with heads of state who prevaricated in the face of change and were corrupt or autocratic. French development aid, he argued, should be used in the struggle against crime, corruption and drug trafficking. Given Chirac’s personal reputation in relation to corruption or the cynical use of French influence to manipulate African governments to adopt policies favourable to French interests his stand at this time must have caused surprise. He was, of course, reacting to developments then taking place in Africa and, not least, the rearguard actions against the democracy the West had found it expedient to champion. ‘There were signs (1995) that authoritarian governments in Africa were taking vigorous counter-measures to halt the advance of democracy, in spite of the impressive size of popular pro-democracy pressures which were sweeping the continent and despite the general spread of multiparty political movements, some of which had actually toppled governments from power.’13 While President Chirac was indulging his favourite pastime of seizing the moral high ground, Britain and Switzerland were willing to allow the proceeds of the egregious acts of theft of Nigeria’s Gen. Abacha to be deposited with no questions asked in their banks and the US and Europe are prepared to grant the right of abode to virtually any foreigner with huge amounts of money.14
THE CORRUPTING INFLUENCE OF AID
By the end of the century it was clear that aid had failed its avowed purpose of assisting development and, instead, had encouraged the widespread corruption of government officials and, even more disastrously, had increased African institutional dependency. Donor governments had shown themselves either unable or unwilling to impose any serious conditionalities in regard to either economic or financial matters or politics. ‘Aid can deliver bridges, vaccines and training services, but at the same time, it can decimate, demoralize and corrupt a nation’s corps of civil servants, teachers and health professionals. Recipients overtly welcome aid, but at the same time conceal their resistance to its rules… Where foreign aid is a major source of jobs and the social wage of health and education services, and where debt repayment puts prior claims on revenues, the importance of aid chains to politics – who gets, what, when, and how – cannot be overestimated.’15 Those in recipient countries whose positions depend upon the continuing flow of aid will go to great lengths to persuade donors that they are using the aid as the latter intended, no matter what they do with the aid in reality. In many African countries a whole chain of agencies, banks, departments, politicians and individuals have become dependent upon the continuing flow of aid and will go to great lengths to ensure that donors continue to provide it. The donors, for their part, have their own agendas for continuation. Since, after 40 years, donors have failed to work themselves out of their jobs as they should have done, they can hardly continue using the old arguments in support of aid. Instead their rhetoric is no longer about development but rather is centred upon the new orthodoxy of good governance whose lack is blamed for the failures of past development efforts. They argue that the adoption of good governance will be followed by the development that has eluded recipients for so long. Thus, good governance, which in the past was implicit in the aid relationship, became the reason for aid in the 1990s.
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et despite the new orthodoxy of linking aid to good governance (democracy, trade liberalization, less corruption) there is no evidence that bad governments receive less aid than good governments or that an increase in foreign aid reduces corruption.16 Aid, especially if it is on any scale and comes to be regarded as necessary for particular projects, inevitably has the effect of undermining the government itself and weakening state structures since the government has ceased to be the source of finances upon which projects depend and those involved in such projects cease to look to their own governments but turn instead to the aid donors. Over the years donors have become increasingly arrogant and prefer to work with minimum interference from governments once they have established themselves in a country. Aid has become big business and like any other business the donors have to keep going or lose their influence. Since this is perfectly understood by recipients a two-way charade is conducted in which donors and local recipients in charge of an aid project work together to the exclusion or downgrading of government influence. This process may be especially marked in countries where aid is the country’s second-largest employer after the public sector. The longer aid is used to support a programme or institution of whatever kind, the harder it becomes for either donor or recipient to envisage the aid input coming to an end. As a result, the process of continuation and, therefore, of dependence becomes more or less permanent and correspondingly insidious.
Thus, the West downsizes governments and corrupts African leaders with its aid. While aid ought to be used to support development strategies that increase self-sufficiency and regional integration, in fact the opposite is usually the case. Aid donors insist that recipients abstain from any measures that might increase their financial self-sufficiency and so reduce their dependence on foreign aid. Weak countries, such as Rwanda, are not allowed to give protection to local agricultural and manufacturing enterprises, which have a reasonable potential for competing in its home markets but must give support instead to export-oriented production such as tea and coffee.17 Aid in return for policy reforms has become the norm and policy reforms are not seen to operate in the interests of the people on whose behalf they are supposedly implemented. ‘Since the imposed policies are themselves all too often shown to be hopelessly unrealistic and damaging to the economy and to living standards, to the extent that they can be implemented at all, their effect is to intensify popular discontent. In such a climate of corruption and alienation it is all too common to find that the integrity and effectiveness of institutions and administrations progressively breaks down.’18
STATE-SPONSORED CORRUPTION
African governments, like governments all over the world, seek scapegoats for their own failures and aid donors provide easy targets when the need arises. However, a brief look at four countries where corruption appears endemic – Algeria, Angola, Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo – shows that while assistance from outside is always welcome, corruption in one form or another is attained without undue effort from within.
In Algeria Abdelhamid Brahimi, who had been Chadli Benjedid’s prime minister from 1984 to 1988 when he fell from power, emerged from obscurity in 1990 to announce that FLN corruption in government had cost the country US$26 billion over the years, the equivalent of the entire debt burden. He made this statement deliberately at that time to assist the FIS in the local and regional elections. Meanwhile, the West was presenting Benjedid as the apostle of reforms while overlooking what the rioters of 1988 had known only too well, that ‘Benjedid had been the apex of a system of generalized nepotism and corruption for years, and in various ways, such as promoting and “covering” members of his own family – something Boumedienne had never done – had set an example which his subordinates had merely followed with alacrity.’19 The same author points to the deterioration of Algeria’s relations with France. These descended into corruption. France had wanted to establish an exemplary relationship with Algeria, but instead this had declined into a matter of involvement with individuals. From the Algerian point of view ‘it is the story of a shift from a form of co-operation between two states, which qualified but did not necessarily cripple Algeria’s nascent sovereignty, to a complex and unsavoury system of patronage, reciprocal back-scratching and corruption which rapidly subverted this sovereignty, delegitimized Algeria’s rulers in the eyes of their people and helped precipitate and perpetuate Algeria’s political crisis.’20
In his examination of Angola at the end of the century, Tony Hodges 21 provides a depressing yet understandable picture of the petty corruption at the lower end of the scale where, he says, there is a weak sense of public duty or service among officials, including the front-line service delivery institutions, such as the National Health Service. The problem was made worse in the 1990s by the spread of the practice of public officials demanding bribes or tips (gasosas) for the provision of services. ‘Low salaries are one of the main driving forces of petty corruption, which has become endemic throughout the public administration, particularly in services with a high degree of contact with the general public, such as the police, health services and education.’ A survey by the Ministro da Administração Pública, Emprego e Segurança Social (MAPESS) (Ministry of Public Administration, Employment and Social Security) and the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE) (National Statistics Institute) in 1998, found that 67.5 per cent of those in professional posts and 74 per cent in administrative posts admitted they would be prepared to accept a ‘gift’ to perform a service. At the same time, other employees exploited positions of authority to extract money for the issuance of documents such as driving licences. In the absence of a bribe the required document can be delayed for months.22 At the same time, ‘There is very little documented information about higher-level corruption, although there is a more or less universal presumption among Angolans that it is deeply entrenched in a system of public administration characterized by arbitrariness and lack of transparency.’ The problem was acknowledged at the highest levels by the 1996 legislation that established the Alta Autoridade contra a Corrupção to tackle the problem although in fact the authority remained a dead letter.23 The armed forces loot in lieu of pay, general poverty encourages corruption if only so that people can survive and from on high, as it were, aid donors and NGOs who find Angola a difficult place in which to operate voice their concern about entrenched official corruption.
In his lively, personal account of travelling in Nigeria, Karl Maier, the author of The House Has Fallen, provides a vivid account of corruption in Africa’s largest black state. At the beginning of his book he quotes a Nigerian, Dr Folarin Gbadebo-Smith who is considering money-laundering, as follows: ‘A man who receives stolen goods is called a fence, but what do you call a country that is in the business of receiving stolen goods? They lend Nigeria money, somebody here steals the same amount of money and gives it back to them, and then they leave these poor Nigerians repaying what they never owed. The role of the Western powers has been totally disgraceful.’24 As he continues, Nigeria’s leaders, like the colonialists before them, have sucked out billions of dollars and stashed them in Western banks. The reference to colonialists is important here, for it implies directly that the process of extracting wealth from Africa, which was the starting point of colonialism, now continues with Africans as the prime movers with the West as more passive recipients. Maier continues his examination of the ‘Fallen House’ with a look at the Nigerian role in the international drugs trade, and the way in which profits are made out of fuel shortages: ‘The system of corruption had become so ingrained that entire villages in northern Nigeria depended on the fuel shortages for their livelihood: The longer the lines of vehicles outside the legitimate gas stations in the big northern cities, such as Kano, Kaduna and Zaria, the more numerous the roadside gangs of youths selling plastic jugs full of pink motor fuel.’ And so his story continues. Maier quotes M. D. Yusufu, the former inspector-general of police: ‘I think Babangida was even worse than Abacha. Babangida went all out to corrupt s
ociety. Abacha was intimidating people with fear. With him gone now, you can recover. But this corruption remains, and it is very corrosive to society.’ A government commission headed by the economist Pius Okigbo in 1995 found that during Babangida’s time in office and during the first several months of the Abacha regime more than US$12 billion could not be accounted for. The author has other stories to tell but overall the picture he paints is one of a society where everybody is trying to make money on the side by more or less corrupt means.