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From: "A.Y. Kamara" <kamara@WIZ.UNI-KASSEL.DE>
To: LEONENET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Africa's crisis of Governance
Date: Sun, 9 Aug 1998 13:26:40 +0200
By Tunde Obadina (Africa Economic analysis
Some people see in Africa's political and economic failings proof that
Africans are incapable of
ruling themselves. Such people may also believe that the colonial powers
opted out of the
continent prematurely and that some more years of tutelage might have
made a difference. In this
liberal age such views are rarely spoken openly by either the enemies or
friends of Africa. But
it would be naive to think that Africa's experience has not raised
questions about the quality of
the character and mind of the African. The doubt certainly occupies the
thoughts of many
Africans as they watch their prostrated countries treated as basket
cases. Self-doubt has grown
with each decade of apparent failure.
Ordinary Africans, bewildered and disappointed by the outcome of
self-rule, find little around
them to instil the confidence that as a people they can manage their own
recovery. In some
respects Africans are now more vulnerable to theories of black
inferiority than they were during
colonialism. Under colonialism they could dream that with liberation
would come the
opportunity to prove their worth. The future was uncompromised by the
failures of the present.
After more than three decades of misgovernment, many Africans have lost
faith. In 1990 a state
governor in Imo state in southeastern Nigeria explained to a public
meeting in the capital
Owerri that his cash-strapped government was unable to solve the severe
erosion problem
devastating the region. After he had spoken an old man in the audience
stood up and said "Since
you and other black leaders have tried your best but have not been able
to improve the lives of
us ordinary people, why don't we ask the whites to come back. When the
white man ruled us
things were not this bad. Please ask them to come and save us." The
statement, spoken with
sincerity, met momentary silence in the audience followed by some
laughter and applause.
In a way, the whites have been returning. Some would say, they never
left. Over the past two
decades western governments, aid agencies and multilateral finance
institutions have sent
experts to African countries to help them develop. The help increasingly
involved attempts to
direct the political and economic development of the recipient nations.
Calls for recolonisation
The experts and their prescriptions have failed to shift Africa. The
next stage, it seems, is for the
West to directly take over the management of troubled African nations.
Last year writer Norman
Stone in 'The Observer' newspaper proposed a programme of enlightened
re-imperialism' to
sort Africa out. Conditions in Africa today, he said, were similar to
the bloody mess that
prevailed before European colonisation in the nineteenth century. "There
is a strong case for
another version of the nineteenth-century liberal international order to
be re-imposed....Empires
do not have to be formal or tyrannical.... There are times when they do
good, and the
post-independence history of Africa indicates that this is one of them."
Why not simply privatise whole African countries?, asked Robert Wheelen
of the Institute of
Economic Affairs. In the journal of the institute in September 1996
Wheelen argued that
multi-national companies should be invited to bid for the right to run
African nations under
leases of up to 21 years. They would undertake to provide specific
services and bring about
efficiency and discipline in return for pre-set tax revenue.
The tragedy of Africa's situation is that as absurd as these proposals
by latter day imperialists
sound, there are many Africans who would support some degree of direct
governance by
external agents to straighten out their countries. For instance, some
Liberians called for their
war-battered nation to become a trust territory of the United Nations.
International football star
George Weah, apparently exasperated by the anarchy and hopeless
condition of his homeland,
told the New York Times in May 1996: "The United Nations should come in
and take over
Liberia, not temporarily, but for life. To make Liberians believe in
democracy, to make us
believe in human rights." For his outspokenness, two of Weah's female
cousins were raped and
his house burnt down by gunmen from one of the warring factions that had
for six years turned
Liberia into a killing field in a senseless war.
Weah's comment was naive but understandable. Blaming Africa's woes on
bad leaders has
become the mantra of many people concerned about the continent's future.
A change in
government, preferably through democratic means, is viewed as the main
pre-requisite for
making a fresh start and attracting economic investment. Analysts focus
their minds on how inept
African leaders can be got rid of. George Ayittey, a Ghanaian professor
at the American
University in Washington, DC, suggested that African dictators be paid
to relinquish power.
Citing the example of Somalia where a war-induced famine in 1992 led to
an international
mercy mission, Ayittey told a reporter during the OAU summit in July
1996 "The humanitarian
mission cost more than $3 billion. If we had just taken $50 million and
bought out the regime,
imagine the savings in terms of life and infrastructure." In a similar
vain, the Financial Times
Africa expert Michael Holman, had suggested in his paper that a
demobilisation fund be set up
to ease the army out of power in Nigeria and "provide golden handshakes
to officers who want
to leave."
The tendency is to view Africa's woes in terms of the excesses of
individual dictators and their
cronies. The image that comes to mind is of kleptomaniacs and
megalomaniacs like Mobutu
Sese Seko and Jean-Bedel Bokassa. It is easy to draw from this the
conclusion that the simple
solution to Africa's governance problems is to change its leaders.
The belief that a nation can be redeemed by removing a set of crooked
leaders inspired the
killing of Nigeria's first post-independence civilian rulers by
idealistic army majors. But the
coup only succeeded in shifting power to another set of ineffectual
leaders. Since independence
in 1960 the leadership of Nigeria has changed nine times. This is more
changes of government
than occurred in most European democracies during the period. Despite
the changes of
governments, the Nigerian state remained corrupt and ineffective.
Throughout Africa, changes in
helmsmen have not lessened corruption or quickened the pace of economic
development.
Ignorance and lack of capacity not the main causes
Some people put the persistence of mismanagement down to a lack of
capacity for good
governance. One result of this view is the explosion of capacity
building programmes initiated
by donor and multilateral agencies. The aim of the schemes is to help
African countries put in
place structures and reforms that will strengthen the rule of law,
support democracy and
promote greater accountability and transparency. Underlying many of
these programmes is the
notion that poor governance is due largely to incompetence, ignorance
and inadequate
infrastructure. In effect, the aim is to do now what many feel should
have been done by the
colonisers before they relinquished power. That is, teach Africans how
to govern themselves.
Certainly African nations suffer from poor administrative, inadequate
judicial infrastructure and
insufficient numbers of expertise. But these short-comings cannot
explain the abuse and misuse
of state power in the continent. For instance, Nigeria has a large
number of highly-trained
professionals, including accountants and constitutional lawyers. Laid
down budgetary
procedures, include provisions for checks and balances, are adequate.
But the fact remains that
Nigerian rulers have ignored the provisions of the constitution and laid
down administrative
procedures are irrelevant to the actual workings of government.
Abuse and misuse of power and authority by Nigerian rulers have not been
largely due any
national lack of capacity for good governance. Nigerian leaders have not
been ineffective and
tyrannical because they are incompetent or ignorant. Neither has the
lack of administrative or
intellectual expertise to formulate and properly execute growth
enhancing policies been the
major problem. Quite simply, Nigerian leaders have acted in their own
selfish interests in total
disregard to existing rules and laid-down procedures.
The popular image of African rulers as bungling buffoons is not helpful.
It obscures reality.
Anyone who has observed the way in which the military has dominated
politics in Nigeria
would see that the generals are no fools. They and their advisers have
shown themselves to be
quite adept in the art of retaining political power. Since the early
1990s they have toyed with the
civilian political class. General Sani Abacha has since seizing power in
1993, with remarkable
political skill undermined the opposition - sowed confusion in their
ranks and made them loss
credibility in the eyes of the public. Judged by Machievellian
standards, Nigeria's ruling
generals and their advisers have shown great political sophistication.
It would be a mistake to
approach Abacha and his cronies as a bunch of idiots, ignorant of the
art of politics.
Similarly, we should not see reactionary economic policies and practices
of African
governments as stemming mainly from lack of knowledge of economic theory
and management.
Many of the economic policies and actions that have entrenched African
countries in economic
under-development were deliberately carried out to serve the interest of
those in power. African
ruling elites have benefited enormously from the economic misfortune of
their nations. Not
surprising, they prefer to maintain the status quo as chaotic and
depressive as it may seem for
the majority of Africans and liberal observers from abroad. There is
reason in the anarchy.
Scramble for wealth and power
Rather than view African rulers as buffoons, we should see them and
their actions from the
perspective of the interests they serve. The failure of democracy and
economic development in
Africa are due to a large part to the scramble for wealth by predator
elites who have dominated
African politics since independence. They see the state as a source of
personal wealth
accumulation. There is high premium on the control of the state, which
is the biggest and most
easily accessible source of wealth accumulation. The people in power and
those who seek
power use all means to attain their goal. This includes fostering ethnic
sectarianism and
political repression. Competition for control of the state, whether
between the military and
civilian classes or between civilian political parties, is invariably
ferocious and generates
instability. Many of the apparently senseless civil conflicts in Africa,
including in Liberia and
Somalia, are due to the battle for the spoils of power.
Franz Fanon in his book 'The Wretched of the Earth' published in 1961
eloquently described the
character of the class that inherited power from the colonialists. It is
"a sort of little greedy
caste, avid and voracious, with the mind of a huckster, only too glad to
accept the dividends that
the former colonial powers hands out. This get-rich-quick middle class
shows itself incapable
of great ideas or of inventiveness. It remembers what it has read in
European textbooks and
imperceptibly it becomes not even the replica of Europe, but its
caricature." This class, said
Fanon prophetically, is not capable of building industries "it is
completely canalised into
activities of the intermediary type. Its innermost vocation seems to be
to keep in the running and
to be part of the racket. The psychology of the national bourgeoisie is
that of a businessman, not
that of a captain of industry." The description remains accurate for
today's elite who have grown
through civilian politics, military governments, business and the civil
service.
As long as African political rulers and administrators are drawn from
this class of predators, no
amount of preaching the virtues of good governance or tuition on public
administration will
fundamentally alter the quality of governance. This is not to say that
constitutional reforms and
increasing civil society infrastructure are not important. They are. But
they are not the key to
solving the problem of bad governance.
Good governance is the effective exercise of power and authority by
government in a manner
that serves to improve the quality of life of the populous. This
includes using state power to
create a society in which the full development of individuals and of
their capacity to control
their lives is possible. A ruling class that sees the state solely as a
means of expropriating the
nation's limited resources is simply incapable of good governance. More
specifically, such a
class will by its character and mission abuse power.
An underlying cause of many of the manifestations of bad governance,
including political
repression, corruption and ethnic sectarianism, is the endeavour by the
ruling classes to be and
remain part of the global elite despite their nation's poverty. The
competition for national
resources leads to conflict and repression. It is difficult to see how
there can be good
governance when the orientation of the elite is to stay in the running
and be part of the fifth of the
world's population that forms the international consumer class.
Bad governance is not a mainly problem of ignorance or lack of
infrastructural capacity or even
of individual dictators. States in Africa are incapacitated as
instruments of development because
ruling classes, including people in and outside government, are
motivated by objectives that
have little to do with the common good.
Africa's tragedy is not that its nations are poor That is a condition
that is a product of history.
The tragedy is that it lacks ruling classes that are committed to
overcoming the state of poverty.
Real politics here has little to do with social and economic
reconstruction. The observation of
the assassinated South African writer Ruth First in her book The Barrel
of a Gun published in
1970 remains valid today. "There has been eloquent, inexhaustible talk
in Africa about politics,
side by side with the gaping poverty of political thought. Down there on
the ground in Africa,
you can smother in the small talk of politics. Mostly it is about
politicking, rarely about policies.
Politicians are men who compete with each other for power, not men who
use power to confront
their country's problems."
As long as politics is dominated by predator elites it is difficult to
see how meaningful
democracy or economic development can be sustained.. The challenge
facing those who want
better governance is how to make those in power accountable and
ultimately rescue the state
from them to transform it an agency for positive change.
Tunde Obadina is director of Africa Business Information Services
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