As Kenyan-born public intellectual and pan-Africanist PLO Lumumba often reminds us, there is something distinct about Africans – we are too tolerant of corruption among those who govern us, unlike the Chinese, who insist on nothing less than capital punishment for rogue politicians and other bad guys who are caught with their figures in the cookie jar.
According to Lumumba, the European template for dealing with venal politicians includes sending them to jail, while the authorities in Japan are seldom called upon to tackle corruption in high places, as most politicians and bureaucrats in that country who may be found to have engaged in corrupt activities would rather take their own lives instead of enduring the shame of a criminal trial.
One of Lumumba’s biggest laments about corrupt African politicians is that they don’t have any qualms about “offering themselves for election to public office”. He has been vindicated many times.
In five days, assuming you are reading this article on its publication day, Zimbabweans go to the polls to elect a new President, new Parliamentarians and new councillors. Guess what? The incumbent President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, will be seeking a fresh five-year mandate, despite having been implicated in the Gold Mafia scandal, an exposé by Qatari television channel Al Jazeera of massive money laundering and gold smuggling by Zimbabwean politicians and their cronies.
In Al Jazeera’s furtively recorded footage, broadcast in April, a Mnangagwa associate tells the channel’s investigative journalists, who pretend to be crooks intent on “washing” $1.2-billion in dirty money from Hong Kong, that the President would be funding the governing Zanu-PF party’s upcoming election campaign to the tune of $240-million using his own money. These are greenbacks, by the way, and equate to R4.47-billion.
Insisting that Mnangagwa does not take bribes but appreciation gifts, the President’s associate tells the Al Jazeera journalists: “So, when somebody has got that money to spend on an election, you give him one million, it’s like a slap in the face, unless you say this is to thank you.” So Mnangagwa does not have a problem with people saying, “Mr President, here is $1-million for you, just to thank you”? A bribe by another name is still a bribe.
Mnangagwa may not have been charged in a court of law but, as Lumumba often highlights, even an unsubstantiated whiff of corruption is enough in countries like Japan for one to withdraw from any contest for public office. We need such standards in Africa.
Mnangagwa is not the first high-profile African politician to go into an election with a cloud hanging over his head. A couple of months ago, Bola Tinubu successfully contested for the Nigerian Presidency, despite revelations that court papers from the US linked him to drug trafficking and his eventual forfeiture of $460 000 to the US government.
Of course, those of us in South Africa are aware of how Jacob Zuma managed to become President in 2009, not so long after corruption charges he had been facing for years were withdrawn. But after a series of court tussles, he is standing trial for the same charges once again.
Now I hear two Liberian officials who were last year sanctioned by the US government for their involvement in “public corruption” are running for Senate seats in elections due on October 10. The two are former Minister of State for Presidential Affairs Nathaniel McGill and former National Ports Authority (NPA) head Bill Twehway.
When it sanctioned these officials in August 2022, the US Treasury Department alleged that, during his tenure in government, McGill bribed business owners, received bribes from potential investors and accepted kickbacks for steering contracts to companies in which he had an interest. For his part, Twehway allegedly orchestrated the diversion of $1.5-million in vessel storage fee funds from the NPA into a private bank account.
We need to put an end to this.