Understanding Africa Book 2

UNDERSTANDING AFRICA

Book 2

by Brian Ross

Published by Brian Ross at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Brian Ross

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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UNDERSTANDING AFRICA

Book 2

This second volume continues examining the problems afflicting Africa. Examples quoted are still at least ten years behind the times. However, they do show readers the sort of dilemmas that face reformers. There are chapters about Corruption, Health, Media, Democracy and other matters, including the futility of most Aid programmes.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Corruption

Chapter 2

Health

Chapter 3

Media

Chapter 4

Democracy

Chapter 5

Land

Chapter 6

Crime

Chapter 7

Roads

Chapter 8

Aid

Chapter 9

Sunlit Uplands

Endnotes

Chapter 1

CORRUPTION, cronies and cupidity

Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist

Edmund Burke, 1729—1797

Corruption exists all over the world. Some societies are fortunate enough to have administrations that make valiant attempts to limit it, others seem to ignore it. A Brazilian makes the point (Ricardo Semler, Maverick! 1993): "You can run a successful business or be ethical. Take your pick. You hear this a lot in Latin America, with good reason. Corruption wasn’t invented on that continent, but it is rivalled only by Africa as the warmest greenhouse for foreign investors".

The late Sir John Field, in his time a British colonial administrator, told me how, as the administration of Nigeria was handed over to the people of the new independent country, corruption appeared immediately. One of his examples was the day he was walking past an army barracks when he heard a great hullabaloo. He went over to investigate. The new Nigerian army was being established and recruits were being promised two meals a day plus regular payment. A group of ragged men were being marched to sign up. They were intent on being part of the new army of the new country. The problem was that they had to get into the barrack grounds in order to sign the necessary papers. The sentry on duty was insisting on payment of a couple of shillings before they could get in, and the row was the vigorous complaining of the recruits who did not have the money.

It was at the very beginning of the new state that the evil practice came into being. It should have been stamped out there and then. How does Nigeria, for example, reduce the incidence of corruption today when it is enmeshed in the fabric of society? In a study of the problems afflicting Nigeria, The Economist (15 January 2000) wrote: Most of Nigeria’s rulers have been crooked, but Sani Abacha was probably more crooked than the rest. Whereas his predecessors usually made at least some effort to disguise their thieving, for example by laundering the loot through dummy companies, Abacha simply grabbed it straight from the treasury and stashed it in his offshore accounts.

Angola earns about $3.5 billion a year from its oil. However, the money bypasses the budget, disappearing straight into the hands of the presidency. Angolans, who have long suspected something of the kind, call the nexus of the presidency, the Central Bank and Sonangol, the state oil company, the Bermuda Triangle: the place where the money vanishes without trace. (Economist 15 January 2000) A British group calling itself ‘Global Witness’ has been investigating the Angolan oil story. The apparent inability to explain the destination of income flows in the hands of African executives puts non-African executives on their guard. People with enormous wealth that has been earned outside the laws of a country are normally referred to as ‘crooks’ or in similar derogatory terms. Of course, when in the country of that crook, when he controls the police and army, you are extremely foolish to utter such remarks. So it is with Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

When you are a fugitive from your country where the authorities are keen to try you in a court of law for many crimes, you have a problem. When you are an enormously wealthy fugitive you are able to stop most people criticising you by ensuring that money is splashed into the hands of as many functionaries as possible, long after the apartheid government officials who let you into South Africa, have retired. The interesting thing about rich crooks is that often they are in a position to assist one another to keep the law at bay. Vito Palazzolo, escapee from a Swiss gaol, has business interests in Angola, the country that specialises in crippling its citizens with landmines. Palazzolo seems to control four diamond concessions,( Mail & Guardian, 7 December 2001) part of the lifeblood that keeps the Angolan war going, and making rich men richer, and the poor hungrier.

Now, here comes the interesting piece: Kupola diamond company lists Angola’s president as a director alongside Vito Palazzolo. In other interests Palazzolo is partnered with a powerful Angolan general and the governor of Luanda. Angola is an esteemed member of the SADC, the Southern African Development Community, where Robert Mugabe is the kingpin, the liberator who stayed on, and on, and on, and on. South Africans regularly meet their old liberation colleagues in this distinguished forum. So now we see the connection—no extradition for a European criminal, and business as usual for all the fixers who ensure respective peace of mind for wealthy crooks.

The bigger a public works contract is, the more likely it is that ‘inducements’ will be part of all negotiations—everywhere in the world. It is to be expected that an African country is likely to fall for the soft talk and free lunch. The small kingdom of Lesotho was almost guaranteed to get involved in skulduggery when it embarked on a massive dam building scheme. The European Union and World Bank, some of the funders of the R10 billion project, monitored a case in the High Court in Maseru, Lesotho. A Mosotho aged 52, Ephrahim Sole, a Canada-trained engineer, stands accused on 16 counts of bribery. Although the highest paid individual in Lesotho, having returned to his country to take on the position, it seems that he was quite prepared to pad his benefits considerably.

The official foreign interest in the case was not, however, focussed on Sole but rather on those accused of paying the bribes, a roll call of prominent people and companies from France, Germany, Sweden, Canada and Britain. As was to be expected this case dragged others into court. Also indicted are Jacobus Michiel du Plooy, a South African from Ficksburg (my grandfather built the town hall there more than a century ago) whose Swiss bank account was allegedly used as a conduit for bribes of at least $375 000 paid to Sole by Highlands Water Venture, comprising Kier International of the UK and Impregilo of Italy. (Sunday Tribune, 11 June 2000)

The trial was eventually segmented into 14 cases, so that Sole and the executives from contracting parties could be tried separately. Before the actual trial of Sole could commence, it had to be established by the defence attorneys that the High Court in Maseru had jurisdiction in the case. In mid-April 2001 Sole lost a case in the Lesotho Court of Appeal and was ordered to return R7,5 million taken from the Lesotho Highlands Water project. "The case will revolve around whether Sole was the recipient of bribes alleged to have been siphoned from engineering concerns specialising in dam construction, which received funding from poverty alleviation budgets provided by the World Bank and other bilateral donor organisations. (my italics)." As the case dragged on it transpired that $2-million (about R16-million) was deposited into a Swiss bank account in the name of Musapha Sole.

In Cameroon there is a very busy two lane road between the commercial capital of Douala and the administrative capital of Yaounde. John Matshikiza reports, "There are murmurs that the highway was originally funded ….as a fully-fledged four-lane affair, a match for the logging trailers, busses and private vehicles that roar along it in both directions for seven days of the week. As with so many other African development projects, half the resources apparently went into a variety of mouths well placed along the food chain of political power before the first bit of tar was laid, and so the country got only half a highway." (my italics). The road was, naturally, built with international financial assistance. [See Endnote 1 for a story comparing African and Asian corruption.]

Of course sub-Saharan Africa is not the only part of Africa where bribery is expected. The powerful ruler of Libya, Muammar Qaddafi, organised a huge public relations extravaganza when he masterminded the release of hostages taken by rebels in the Phillipines. We need not comment here on the factors involved, like Libya’s 20 year programme to assist the rebels in the first place and the convenience of paying ransom to buy more arms as a method of humanitarian relief. In the case of the hostages involved, release was wonderful, and they had to endure the many hours of being paraded so the maximum leader, who faces no boring democratic opponents, could cut a dash. The corruption factor I bring up is that the chartered aeroplane used to fetch the South African hostages from Libya had to pay bribes merely to be permitted to refuel. [Endnote 2]

In August 2000 Chuba Okadigbo, president of the Nigerian Senate, was impeached. He took over as president of the senate in November 1999 when his precedessor, Evan Enwerem, was dismissed for falsifying his age on his electoral papers. Strangely enough, the speaker of the lower house, Salisu Buhari had been removed four months earlier for a similar Nigerian practice: he had claimed to have a degree from the University of Toronto although he never studied at the institution. The new administration of Olusegun Obasanjo was trying to clean up Nigerian public life by attempting to introduce some standard of probity. The likelihood of success, given the depth of corruption in Nigerian life, is dim.

A Senate committee appointed to investigate how the senator spent money voted to run the Senate discovered a mixed metaphor: on opening Pandora’s Box they found a can of worms. Okadigbo and three fellow senators had accepted a secret payment of $208 000 for spending on such things as Christmas and Sallah (Christian and Islamic festivals) gifts. The Senate president had also spent $225 000 on garden furniture for his official residence as well as $340 000 to furnish the inside of the house. One is left to presume that each incumbent removes all taxpayer-paid furnishings upon dismissal. In rich countries, legislators who vote funds for foreign aid, particularly to Africa, must wonder if providing luxurious furnishings to grasping foreign politicians is the best approach. Would it not be more beneficial to vote some of those funds to be spent in their own country to improve the lot of fugitives from foreign oppression who have been given refuge in their host country?

To continue with details of the politician’s way with the public purse: Okadingbo purchased a massive electric generator (electricity maladministration is dealt with in the chapter on Administration, Book1). The senate committee discovered that the claimed cost of the said generator, $135 000, had been inflated. This is a new twist, is it not? I do not know if the English language has a word, although possibly one of the West African tongues can supply the appropriate one; English is always home to foreign words that work: in this case, a word for ‘to claim a capital cost much higher than the actual cost’.

Let us consider the generator claim. This man Okadigbo aspires to the elevated office of President of the Senate of Africa’s most populous country. Why he should require a better electricity supply at home than he had before becoming so important, I do not know. Did he change all the light fittings in the house as part of the furnishing expenditure, requiring a generator with far greater wattage? Now, when he claimed his reimbursement by the Nigerian taxpayer, he had to present an invoice to show the name of the supplier of the generator as well as the price. My imagination boggles at the mental picture this incident conjures up: the great Chuba Okadigbo carefully falsifying the figures on the invoice to inflate his (taxfree) income.

Of course, the president of the Senate needs wheels, does he not? He controlled 24 official motor vehicles. Presumably he was capable of allocating one of them to his own use. In a crisis, for instance, if one ran out of fuel, he could order another of the cars for his use. This seemed too complicated. He bought eight more cars at a cost of $290 000. The investigating committee could not find them! Look on the bright side: they cost less than the furniture. Plus, in Nigeria’s favour, the committee did investigate and produce a report released to the public.

Lest you grow depressed at these tales of malfeasance spare a grin while you read of one of this rogue’s tricks: in June 2000 Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo wanted to impeach Okadigbo but the ritual of a British relic frustrated his scheme. The ceremonial mace had to be present in the chamber and it was not found. The slippery senator had hidden it, friends later confided to the media (Cameron Duodu, Mail & Guardian, 18 August 2000), under the guard of a seven foot python. Truly, a droll African tale.

Obasanjo’s attempts to modernise Nigeria and root out corruption are a case study of a man trying to change the mind-set of a nation’s leaders. The majority of them clearly fulfill the old-style leadership definition for Africa. In February 1999, 360 representatives were elected to the National Assembly and 109 senators. By August 2000 they had only managed to pass five pieces of legislation sent to them by the President. One item passed was the budget, and it spent five months in contention as the legislators tried to inflate money allocated to parliament. The majority of these typical current African leaders try most of their time to obtain money for themselves, national benefit ranks at the bottom of their programmes. A contract to build a 160-room set of offices for parliament was increased from 4 billion naira ($40 million) to 11 billion. The street lighting contract for a stretch of road outside parliament rose somehow from 57 million naira to 155 million. (Economist, 12 August 2000)

An attitude towards Obasanjo’s anti-corruption drive was displayed by Taiwo Obasanjo, a former wife. He has not given me any business since he came in, she complained, Politics is like business. You don’t put your money in a business you know will not yield anything.

The effect of African corruption on their brightest and best is cataclysmic: they often seek an honest way out. The world’s successful economies abound with capable, thoughtful men and women from Africa who move to countries happy to welcome immigrants who display competence and resourcefulness. Nurses, academics, businessmen and professional people flow from Africa to reinforce western economies because they do not have to bribe their way to success. These Africans have the competence to build up the countries of their birth. They have great aspirations and want to live their lives where they can see their children educated well.

They want to live free from crime, in communities that reflect their values of cleanliness and comfort, where roads are maintained, electricity is provided as a matter of course, telephones work, where they are rewarded for hard work by fair returns and where the rule of law applies to everyone. The basis of Africa’s renewal lies with its children, the ones who have striven and achieved and now find themselves cheated by their own leaders, across sub-Saharan Africa. Hence the flow, Africa’s lifeblood, drained away, a disaster greater than the slave trade, this is a brain trade: sons and daughters forced into foreign service by their leaders, direct spiritual descendants of the slave trading kings and chiefs of old.

After the Zimbabwe referendum and election with the violence and police complicity in land invasions it was natural that seminars on emigration to other countries should attract enquirers. In a report from Harare, the capital, it appeared that not only the fearful white farmers were present at one presentation, but fifteen black Zimbabweans. One of them, Tim Magaya, 40, an engineer with six children, wanted to emigrate to Australia. I have no prospect in this country, he was quoted as saying, Living conditions are deteriorating and the level of corruption is an outrage. Africa is committing economic suicide through its ruthless corruption and incompetence. As John Matshikiza wrote, quoted in chapter Europe Discovers Africa, the people just want competent leaders to permit them to make a success of the continent!

In Zimbabwe a veteran nationalist Michael Mawema commited suicide when it was disclosed that he had fronted for a ruling party Zanu-PF scam. Involved were two ministers and a vice-president, selling farms acquired through farm invasions. The farms went to party hacks. The activistists paid Z$7 million (about R1 million) and were not issued with receipts, and were demanding the farms. The unfortunate intermediary could not face the shame. The corruption that pervades Zimbabwe is best seen by foreign visitors at the new Harare airport, built by a nephew of Mugabe’s. Per passenger handled, it is the most expensive airport building in the world.

Farmers suffer from the vagaries of the weather and market conditions. They do not also need corruption to rob them after all else. In the year 2000, with inflation then running at 60%, peasant farmers in Zimbabwe were not paid despite delivering a bumper maize crop to the Grain Marketing Board. The farmers could not be paid the expected cash as corruption had bankrupted the linchpin of Zimbabwe’s farm-based economy. (Economist, 14 October, 2000)

Chad has little going for it, economically. The World Bank had taken a decision to make a token loan towards an oil pipeline, nearly $200 million, in support of massive investments by international oil giants. Without the ability to export their oil, Chad has no substantial trading advantage. The pipeline is to move Chad oil through Cameroon to the Atlantic coast. Many hopeful protective safeguards have theoretically been put in place, like keeping 10% in trust for future generations. Petroleum accounts are to be audited and published annually as well as money spent on education, health and rural development, all the usual hoped-for African ideals. As the Economist said in discussing this project, "Natural