God must be a white man
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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
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