God must be a white man
By Steven Wöndu
June 14, 2013 – Africa boasts the dubious distinction of being the least developed continent on earth. This is true whether one is thinking of economic, social or political development. As teenage students in the 1960s and 1970s, we debated the causes of Africa’s stagnation. Two explanations emerged; ignorance and poverty.
Early this month African Heads of State and Governments assembled in Yokohama to deliberate on how Africa can break the vicious circle of underdevelopment. The leaders were accompanied by their respective countries’ economic experts (inter alia). United Nations and Western aid agencies were present. The Vatican and immerging economies like Malaysia, Indonesia and Brazil sent delegates. The Tokyo International Conference on Africa’s Development (TICAD) process is the Japanese government’s vehicle for pulling Africa out of its economic quagmire. TICAD convenes to mobilize Official Development Aid (ODA) and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for Africa and to set new development benchmarks beyond 2015 to replace the elusive Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
From the presentations and interventions of the conferees, neither ignorance nor poverty was accused of causing Africa’s backwardness. Africa was portrayed as a very rich parcel of real estate. It has minerals, water, forests, fish, livestock, land, wildlife, oil, gas, sun and sand – all in great abundance! There is no ignorance in Africa, not anymore. African leaders and officials demonstrated profound knowledge of their countries recourses endowment and how best the wealth potential can be harnessed to boost economic growth and the welfare of their citizens.
Africans articulated the futility of growth without equity. A society of few filthy rich and multitudes of starving depraves is not a developed or even a safe one. Income distribution or wealth spread must be a key fiscal policy consideration. They knew that urban concentration of growth bore no benefits to the majority of the population and led to urban drift, slumps and poor sanitation. African leaders had no difficulty identifying infrastructure, education and gender equality as the three foundations of development. They knew that roads and electricity have direct linkage to agriculture, social services, commerce, peace and security. Roads connect communities and markets. Roads facilitate public administration. Roads unite and define a country. Nobody knows these matters better than the African Heads of State and Government assembled at TICAD.
African leaders spoke strongly in favour of regional integration and the need to remove barriers to free movement of people, capital, goods and services. They elucidated the necessity of public-private partnership (PPP) in speeding economic growth. They discussed the need to mobilize all citizens, including women and youth to become agents of change. Emphasis was placed on the building of resilient economies – ones that are resistant to civil strife. In such an economy, everyone has access to opportunities and responsibilities. In other words, a resilient society is an inclusive one where every citizen has an equal stake in peace and prosperity. Discriminative societies risk fragility. Those excluded would have nothing to lose by rebelling. Therefore, empowerment through the political and legislative processes (call it democracy) guarantees socio-economic stability.
Economic and social stability can be interrupted by natural calamities like floods and droughts. Consequently, attention to issues of environment, climate change and disaster preparedness cannot be overemphasized in the development agenda. Not surprisingly, the Holy See emphasized the relevance and importance of moral imperatives and family values. TICAD dealt with themes like human resources development, land reform, economic diversification, demography, technology, skills transfer, and all the variables in the economic development book.
So if ignorance and lack of resources are no longer restraining factors, why is Africa not growing and developing as fast as Malaysia for example? Why are our educational, administrative and health institutions worse than they were fifty years ago? Why have many parts of Africa deteriorated from good roads to bad roads to no roads after independence? How come some African communities complain bitterly about marginalization? Why is Africa hungry? Why do African mothers have to deliver babies on trees during floods? Why, if we know so much about the prerequisites of a resilient economy do we have so many refugees? Why is the African narrative full of negative nouns like tribalism, nepotism, kleptocracy, censorship, lynching, corruption, plunder, and failed state? Has anyone heard of a European physician referring a patient for specialist care in an African hospital? Check the students’ registers in all the universities in sub Saharan Africa north of the Limpopo and see if there is a single Greek. TICAD did not pose these questions. No monkey sets the forest on fire.
Last month, the Auditors General of English speaking African countries met in Mauritius to discuss…well, auditing the accounts of African governments. The host arranged some tourism and civic education for us. Seeing how Mauritius was stable, well managed, clean and beautiful, some of us used the safety of distance to lament audibly. Mauritius is fine because the majority of the population is Asian. The miserable state of most of Africa is because it is in the hands of Africans. Africans used to be passionate about the extended family. They were minimalists, enjoying life to the full without excessive material belongings. Africans cared about the neighbour. African leaders in years long past used to be givers and protectors of their subjects.
The Africans of today are designed, created and wired to be dirty, disorderly and dangerous (the 3 Ds). When they find themselves in positions of power, they perceive their success in terms of the magnitude of their greed and graft (the two Gs). African ‘big men’ see themselves, not as leaders and stewards but as rulers. They see their positions, not as challenges to serve but as opportunities to receive and take. They see it as their chance to ‘eat’. The term ‘civil servant’ has been inverted upside down in Africa. Where else in the world can you find health officials pocketing the medication of their own patients? Where else do education authorities swallow the budget for curriculum development into their bellies? Where else do citizens hire police to clobber and rob and rape and kill them? Where else do leaders procure obsolete weaponry for their armies? Where else? Where?
Donors beware! The African big man eats without limit. He accumulates without consideration for the needs of others. ‘Enough’ does not exist in the dictionary. Africans in power do not want to consider the fundamental zero-sum concept that the more you scoop from the common pot, the less everyone else gets. They refuse to ponder the life or death consequences of misappropriating resources intended for interventions in maternal care, solid waste management, infant vaccination, and clean drinking water. They do not feel the danger of living in a massive mansion surrounded by tragic slums. In the rare event that an African big man visits a village, he would ‘donate’ a class room, or a clinic or a road that would never exist except in the government’s financial expenditure schedule of that year. The announcement of the fake donation is proof that the big men know the needs of their people. Why they choose not to do the right thing beats imagination. But then, they are modern African big men!
At Sugar Beach (the venue of our meeting), it was accepted that other parts of the world have their own share of economic vices and crimes but that elsewhere in the world, offenders are a rarity. They are the exception rather than the rule. In other words, corruption in the other parts of the world is not as cripplingly rampant as in Africa. That is why, by comparison we are the least able to supply public goods. If you see any bridge or medicines or books in Africa, they must have been provided by a foreign philanthropist who has been smart enough to circumvent our institutional delivery systems.
We are very efficient in taxing our poorest people mercilessly. In Africa, a woman with three chicken eggs to sell because the baby has fever is taxed in the village market. Nobody knows the destination of Africa’s tax proceeds. We only know they do not go to municipal services. Municipal services my foot! In Africa, every upper class household is a municipality with a mayor, a generator, a bore well and a septic tank. In Africa top government officials proudly import 4-wheel drive SUVs duty free.
In other parts of the world, corrupt officials risk prosecution, fines, imprisonment or even hanging. There is a judicial deterrent to graft. In Africa, impunity is the norm. In the best case scenarios, selective justice is applied. Only the ‘small fish’ see the jail house. Reports about major embezzlement in high places only warrant inconclusive investigations. That is why African corruption is not practiced discretely. There is no need to disguise sleaze. Conversely, scruples are equated to stupidity. That is why African auditors have no difficulty reaching adverse findings.
The finding in our informal sharing of experiences over Mauritian rum was that the Creator gave the African an overdose of mediocrity, recklessness, laxity, myopia and insensitivity. The other races were awarded acumen, creativity, civility and vision. In our opinion, God must be a white man.
The author is South Sudan General Auditor