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 also 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.

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.

Yet 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 society. 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.

When Obasanjo came to power in 1999 he introduced anti-corruption legislation and suspended controversial oil contracts that had been awarded by the Abacha government as it stepped down. He sent envoys to London, Washington and other capitals to seek access to Abacha’s bank accounts. The Swiss government froze four accounts, three in Geneva and one in Zurich. Abacha and his associates had siphoned off at least US$2.2 billion, which the government hoped to recover. Meanwhile, the new Assembly voted itself a US$25,000–US$35,000 furniture allowance at a time when the minimum wage per month was US$30. As Maier points out, a known incorruptible is not supported for office by his local community ‘because he won’t eat and he won’t let us eat’. This book paints a particular portrait of Nigeria but one that is familiar to people who know the country. When Nigerians are told that their country is regarded as the most corrupt in the world, they reply: ‘This is how we do things in Nigeria.’25

According to a Congolese, the story of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (formerly Zaïre) is one long tale of corruption. At the top under Mobutu it was a matter of state kleptocracy. Mobutu ensured that his supporting clique all became corrupt and, therefore, were complicit in his corruption and consequently pliable. Lower down the scale survival depended upon corrupt practices of one kind or another. Further, the mineral wealth of the Congo has corrupted almost every outsider who has become involved in the country – Belgium, France, the US, the neighbouring states, multinational corporations – each after their ‘share’ of its wealth. Once money was seen as the ‘goal’ that everyone pursued in order to be anyone then how it was obtained became of secondary importance. Moreover, if the leaders and ‘big men’ are seen to be overtly corrupt, why not everyone else? Whatever the role of outsiders, they cannot operate without the willing complicity of Congolese nationals. The corrupted and the corrupters feed on each other and such a society breeds plenty of people who want to be corrupted. At the end of the Mobutu era corruption had reached an all-time high. ‘The corrupters, of course, have no respect for diplomatic niceties such as national sovereignty and territorial integrity that may stand in the way of short-term profitability. They make deals with whoever controls a mineral-rich territory, including warlords and invaders, as they have done in the Congo with the AFDL, Rwanda, the Ugandan warlord Brig. James Kazimi, both wings of the RCD and the MLC. For the African partners, all that does matter is the amount of money foreign businesses are prepared to pay up front to win lucrative contracts, and the percentage of earnings that will later go back to political authorities or warlords.’²⁶ Corruption and wealth on the scale of the Congo will draw participants into the scramble for a share from all over the world. ‘In one transaction in May 1997, the AFDL received an initial payment of US$50 million from Consolidated European Ventures of the Lundin Group of Vancouver, Canada, for a copper and cobalt investment deal worth US$1.5 billion, with the remainder US$200 million to be paid over four years.’²⁷

Africa’s endless wars are natural breeding grounds for greed and corruption. In a climate of violence and endless uncertainty it is not surprising that people are tempted to take anything they can as a hedge against an uncertain future. In wars, ‘Moreover, there is nothing like greed to forge the social networks needed to overcome problems of scale and co-ordination. In other words, the true cause of much civil war is not the loud discourse of grievance, but the silent force of greed.’28 In war after war – Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s are good examples as was the carve-up of Democratic Republic of Congo by its predatory neighbours – greed is the driving force. If they can, the ordinary people try to distance themselves from the fighting though too rarely do they succeed in doing so. These wars do not serve justice or solve problems, no matter what reasons were advanced for the original involvement of participants. Rather, the warlords manipulate the people into fighting for an apparent cause while they are only concerned with their own enrichment and power. These wars are financed by the illegal sale of looted resources – diamonds, coffee, coltan – and in the background are the Western money-launderers and arms companies who service the warlords and ask no awkward questions.

THE END OF THE RAWLINGS REVOLUTION IN GHANA

The corruption of Rawlings’ Ghana can be seen as a classic story of revolutionary zeal turning into autocratic cronyism. At the personal level, Rawlings’ ‘wild streak’ that had made him such a charismatic reformer when he first seized power, in his later career at the end of the century only appeared mean-spirited. By 2000,

As corruption soared and life became harder, particularly for urbanites, the former foot-soldiers of the ‘revolution’, increasingly marginalized, became disillusioned; with increasing policy distortion, the alliance with business also frayed. The fall-off of donor patronage tightened the crisis. The unemployed and marginalized youth of Accra and the towns, the trade unions and students – in some respects the very social forces that had propelled the ‘Rawlings revolution’ almost 20 years earlier – came together with other interests in a ‘democratic revolution’ to expel the regime.²⁹

This scenario typifies the end to which so many reforming regimes come, so much so as to raise the bleak query as to whether the natural state is one of corruption, the revolutionary state merely an aberration from the norm. Prior to Rawlings, Ghanaians had seen the Acheampong regime as deeply corrupt, a corruption shared by the armed forces. The coups of 4 June 1979 and 31 December 1981 were marked by the implosion of the armed forces. ‘It was an indication of the malaise in the Ghana Armed Forces that on both occasions only a small handful of ranks and junior officers were able to overthrow the military hierarchy.’ Corruption had made it ripe for collapse.30 Fighting corruption can all too easily become counter-productive because the anti-corruption forces themselves become corrupt. This happened, for example, with the Timber Task Forces (TTF) that were responsible for controlling illegal felling and logging. They became laws to themselves, used violence, raided villages and sawmills and indulged in illegal sales of logs in order to enrich themselves until they were abolished by the Minister for Lands and Mineral Resources.

Aid played its part in subverting self-help schemes to make them dependent instead upon inputs from outside. But, most disturbingly, a regime that had begun by tackling the country’s blatant corruption and had made great headway in eradicating a great deal of it, later saw its elite become like their military predecessors, and begin to erode the ascetic image that had been the hallmark of the Rawlings revolution. By the end of the 1990s ‘Commissions on state contracts destined for the coffers of the NDC (National Democratic Congress) were alleged to be widespread (estimated at 10–15 per cent of contract values), as were demands that businesses large and small make contributions to the NDC; the price for this was the growing number of abandoned or poorly finished projects.’³¹ It is not easy to explain such a descent into the corrupt practices that had justified the Rawlings coups in the first place. There are various possibilities: a deeply entrenched cultural affinity with corruption; lack of any clear accountability in administrative structures; underpaid civil servants improving their lot; or forced privatization providing easy opportunities for quick personal gains? There is also a danger that dictatorial regimes always give rise to, and that is the readiness to ignore the law and act arbitrarily and if the government is doing this in one direction the temptation for ordinary citizens to enrich themselves arbitrarily should not be ignored. In the early Rawlings years whatever corruption took place was carefully concealed but this changed after the 1992 elections for the party (NDC) had opened its doors to moneyed individuals in order to finance its campaign, and these newcomers were not ascetic reformers but carpetbaggers. According to reports of the Serious Fraud Squad corruption and embezzlement became widespread in the District Assemblies. By 1999 activists had become sufficiently disillusioned with the Rawlings government and the NDC that a section of the party broke away to form a separate party, the Reform Movement. By this time the revolutionary party that had fought corruption and eschewed foreign aid had, instead, become dependent upon aid. When an African state relies upon aid rather than its own resources it becomes an adjunct, a form of local government, in the global, Western-controlled economic order and this had happened to Ghana. Nyerere had warned against this in his 1967 Arusha Declaration but his warning had been largely ignored, including in the end, by Tanzania itself. The Ghana story is especially instructive because the corruption of power was most noticeable in Rawlings, the charismatic, ascetic revolutionary who wanted to clean up his country but found by 1998 that a reform movement inside his own party was calling for an end to corruption and sycophancy. As usual, the international aid community played its part in this transformation. Rawlings’ original populism resulted from his emphasis upon the moral rectitude of the poor majority and his attack upon elite corruption. Such an attitude did not endear his Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) to donors and creditors who were naturally opposed to people’s socialism in any form. Once Rawlings had turned to the World Bank, whose darling he became in the 1980s, aid donors and multilateral agencies sighed with relief and corruption once more reared its head.

Forms of corruption vary from country to country. In Kenya, for example, President Moi constantly agreed to economic reforms or human rights improvements as suggested by donors but once the aid had been released ignored or positively reneged on his promises. In this case the real corruption was that of the donors who knew how he would behave yet provided the aid anyway, thus reducing their ethical stands to a hypocritical charade. A Kenya-donor ritual grew up during the Moi years: Kenya was promised aid; the government refused to reform as required; the aid donors threatened to withhold the aid; Kenya implemented ‘reforms’, that were not subsequently carried out; the aid was delivered. On the other side of the continent in Côte d’Ivoire the austerity measures announced in 1990 led to popular attacks upon elite corruption that was not affected by such measures. The most preposterous corruption of all concerned the megalomania of the country’s octogenarian ruler Houphouët-Boigny spending half the country’s wealth in the construction of Notre Dame de la Paix, a gilded copy of St Peter’s (Rome), in Houphouët-Boigny’s home village of Yamoussoukro at a cost of US$300 million (the cost had doubled from the original estimate). When the ruler of Guinea, Sekou Touré, died in 1984, the military took control and, while bringing an end to the corruption of the presidential elite, they deregulated the plundering of the state and made corruption open to all. One of Africa’s supreme warlords was Charles Taylor of Liberia, known in his ministerial days under Samuel Doe as ‘superglue’. His activities helped corrupt Liberia’s neighbours Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone. Taylor’s ambition was to wrest from Doe the royalties of the world’s largest commercial shipping fleet and the rents to be earned from narco-dollars passing through Liberia. Taylor offered a stake in the enterprise to Joseph Momoh, the President of Sierra Leone, but he offered his services to the highest bidder who turned out to be Samuel Doe. Following Doe’s death and Taylor’s ascendancy in Liberia, he punished Momoh by starting a rebellion in Sierra Leone where, of course, he had his eyes on the diamonds.32

SOUTHERN AFRICA

Before Mozambique began getting massive doses of aid in the second half of the 1990s, its public sector management and legal system ‘may have been basic and unimaginative, but at least they were not ravaged by corruption, loss of good staff, demoralization, legal decay and rampant gangsterism’.³³ A sad story from Mozambique is that of Francisco Langa, a FRELIMO hero of the liberation war who in 1980 succumbed to accepting a bribe but then committed suicide rather than face his comrades. ‘Two decades later, however, officials with big houses and cars flaunt the money stolen from the aid programme. The shift in culture from Puritanism to self-seeking greed has been rapid and dramatic. In the early 1990s Mozambique was the poorest country in the world. ‘Steadily corruption became endemic, as people struggled to survive, while all around them were wealthy foreigners and large amounts of aid. And aid workers anxious to get their projects going without being delayed by what they saw as Mozambican “bureaucracy” were only too happy to allow rules to be ignored at the cost of a small bribe or turning a blind eye to some aid being diverted.’³⁴ By 1999 the issue of corruption had become a topic for debate for it was recognized that the country had become deeply corrupted. During the floods of 2000, the country rose above it.

We had no reports of significant diversions of aid, and many reports of integrity and selflessness. But Mozambique has established a new and unenviable reputation with donors so there were efforts to avoid a corruption which was now expected. This ranged from the South African decision to send goods rather than money to attempts by a number of small agencies to do their own distribution, allegedly because they feared corruption, but more often because they wanted to control the distribution.³⁵

In his book about the machinations of Enron, the US company whose collapse in 2002 represented the biggest corruption scandal in US corporate history, Vijay Prashad recounts a story about its activities in Mozambique and, more important, the efforts of the US government to support it. The US readiness to lecture developing countries about their corruption does not sit well with the following episode. In 1995 Mozambique sought investment to develop its Pande offshore gas field. The best two bids were from South Africa’s SASOL and Argentina’s Plus Petrol. Then Enron stepped in and worked to replace SASOL and was backed in its attempt by the US. At that time US$1.1 billion of Mozambique’s US$1.5 billion budget was financed by foreign aid and of this amount US$40 million came from USAID. John Kachamila, the Minister of Mineral Resources, told the following story which was published in the Houston Chronicle:

There were outright threats to withhold development funds if we didn’t sign (the deal with Enron) and sign soon. Their diplomats, especially Mike McKinley (deputy chief of the US Embassy), pressured me to sign a deal that was not good for Mozambique. He was not a neutral diplomat. It was as if he was working for Enron. We got calls from American senators threatening us with this and that if we didn’t sign. Anthony Lake (US national security adviser) even called to tell us to sign… Enron was forever playing games with us and the embassy was forever threatening to withdraw aid.

A study commissioned by the World Bank found that many of Mozambique’s concerns were warranted. The view of an unnamed State Department official is also quoted: ‘This project represents tax revenue, hard currency earnings in a big way for the Mozambique state… If the Mozambicans think they can kill this deal and we will keep dumping money into this place, they should think again.’ It was at this time that Anthony Lake wrote to President Chissano to say that the US would not release US$13.5 million in aid funds unless Mozambique accepted the Enron bid.36 When the subject of African corruption in relation to aid is raised such brutal arm-twisting by the US State Department should be seen as part of a two-way corruption process where all the cards are in the hands of the donor. Reverberations of the Enron scandal continued through 2003 when, for example, six major Western banks including Barclays Bank, Deutsche Bank and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce were implicated for their alleged knowledge of what Enron was doing. The United States, Britain, Germany and Canada are among the world’s leading aid donors that regularly lecture African recipients about corruption.

Political corruption, the unsanctioned use of public resources for private ends, is regarded as endemic when it becomes open and routine. South Africa since 1994 has certainly not been seen as one of the continent’s most corrupt countries by a long way but plenty of petty corruption has been recorded. Pension frauds between 1994 and 1998, in the form of ghost or double claimants, accounted for R5 billion while police corruption (which was endemic in the apartheid era) did not improve: partly this was ascribed to demoralization and disloyalty to the new regime. In 1998 10,000 policemen out of a force of 140,000 were under investigation on charges of bribery, theft, fraud and involvement in crime syndicates. According to the accountants Deloitte and Touche, losses by public sector fraud in 1998 probably exceeded R10 billion. Between 1994 and 1998 the government lost up to R20 billion as a result of corrupt employee behaviour. In 1998 the Special Investigative Unit headed by Judge Willem Heath claimed that the R10 billion it was investigating represented only 5 per cent of the total though this went back to instances of corruption prior to 1994. In 1999 the government-sponsored National Anti-Corruption Summit resolved to establish a National Anti-Corruption Forum. Two years later it was only just ready to function. South Africa’s provincial governments are open to corruption and difficult to monitor since departments keep disciplinary procedures secret. Neither does the government welcome civil society anti-corruption initiatives. In November 2000, for example, the Minister of Safety and Security, Steve Tshwete, rejected proposals for a private sector agency to monitor police corruption – the police had its own unit for the purpose. Nonetheless, in 1998 and 1999 the government hosted two major anti-corruption conferences and all political parties, including the ANC, focused on this issue during the election campaigns. The extent of police corruption in South Africa is seen as alarming given the role the police ought to play in rooting out corruption. In early 1999, of the 80,000 cases the Special Investigative Unit under Judge Heath was investigating, only two or three cases had been referred to it by the government, a clear indication that investigating corruption was not a government priority. Thus, while the government was seen to denounce the evils of corruption it was not seen to pursue corrupt practices with any obvious conviction. This reluctance to pursue corruption was borne out in the case of Andrew Feinstein, an ANC MP, whose over-keen pursuit of corruption led to his removal from an investigative committee. This was justified under party discipline: ‘Some people have the notion that Public Accounts Committee members should act in a non-partisan way. But in our system no ANC member has a free vote.’37 The party, clearly, would look after its own. As the same authority claims: ‘The political will to punish corruption in high quarters remains inconsistent – and nonexistent in certain provincial governments. Though elected politicians have occasionally lost office as a result of corruption accusations, not a single ANC minister or parliamentarian has been charged with or convicted for a corruption-related political offence.’³⁸

*

Western critics often take African leaders to task for shielding one another or refusing to criticize individual state or leader deficiencies: the reluctance to condemn Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for his land policies at the turn of the century is a good example and implicit in such criticism is the suggestion that Africans cover up the corruption or other shortcomings of their continental peers. This Western attitude is doubly hypocritical. In the first place, most Western governments have been prepared to deal with leaders and governments whose corruption is often notorious when it suits them to do so. More important, however, is the comparable reluctance of Western governments to criticize each other. President Chirac of France and Prime Minister Berlusconi of Italy both have reputations for corruption that would place them high in any pecking order, yet their European counterparts, who readily denounce corruption in Africa, deal with their European counterparts without qualms or complaints.

Some aspects of corruption have a lighter side to them. It was only possible to salute the brazen impertinence of Nigeria’s Gen. Abacha as he despatched Nigerian troops under ECOMOG to restore to power the democratically elected government of President Kabbah in Sierra Leone. The notion that it was better to keep the Nigerian ECOMOG soldiers outside the country also played a role in the decision. In any case, ‘Kabbah’s government was as corrupt and neo-patrimonial as any other, but as in the case of Liberia a former rebel leader had been given legitimate status in order to stop the fighting’. Sierra Leone, indeed, has a long history of corrupt practices to its credit. ‘…the parallel economy in Sierra Leone, which exceeded the official economy in size, expanded as a consequence of the systematic corruption, theft of state revenues and personalist rule of President Siaka Stevens between 1965 and 1985.’39 In both Liberia and Sierra Leone, unfortunately, the Nigerian troops became as mired in corruption and self-seeking as the regimes they were supposedly coming to discipline. There is little evidence to suggest that democratic elections reduce corruption though, for a time, they may lead to greater openness so making it easier to spot the corruption that is taking place. Chabal and Daloz, already quoted, suggest that some corruption may be regarded as an habitual part of everyday life, an expected element of any social transaction. ‘Provided the beneficiaries of graft do not hoard too much of what they accumulate by means of the exploitation of the resources made available to them through their position, and provided they redistribute along lines that are judged to be socially desirable, their behaviour is deemed acceptable.’⁴⁰ In other words, there is unlikely to be much censorship of corrupt practices if their fruits are suitably redistributed to the patron’s followers. Condemnation is reserved for cliques who appropriate public resources for themselves purely out of greed.

One final comment is worth making. In developed societies such as those of Europe high levels of corruption can be subsumed by the system and only occasionally do they erupt to become major public scandals. In developing countries where most systems remain fragile and the majority of the people are extremely poor corruption is at once more apparent and often more necessary to the working of the system as a whole. And here it is worth pointing out that there is nothing to prevent those Western countries that so readily condemn African corruption from seeking out the secret accounts of money laundered out of Africa by corrupt rulers to return such funds to the successor governments for the provision of social services such as schools or clinics.