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The African Solution to Ethiopia’s Civil War

George BN Ayittey, PhD

More than 40 Civil Wars have raged in postcolonial Africa since independence in 1960. These wars have wreaked wanton destruction; reduced infrastructure to rubble, uprooted people sending refugees creaming in all directions. Several states have failed or collapsed as a result of war -- CAR, Congo DR, Liberia, Libya, Somalia, among others -- on the African continent

Some wars never end –in the Spanish Sahara, Casamanche in Southern Senegal and Somalia. Other wars descend into genocidal expeditions to settle ethnic scores. Still, others metastasize into sheer banditry. War and attendant insecurity provide rebels with the cover to fleece villagers and impose “security taxes.” In Somalia warlords extract “taxes on goods – even foreign aid shipments – passing through Mogadishu. Elsewhere, unpaid government soldiers disguised themselves as “rebels” at night and bedrob civilians. In Sierra Leone’s Civil War in 1996, government soldiers were indistinguishable from rebels at night. They would shed their uniforms, don rebel attire and commit atrocities including robberies.. So they were called “sobels” (the combination of soldiers and rebels) because both were predators.. In many countries – such as Ethiopia and Zaire -- unpaid government soldiers openly sold their weapons to rebels. And for their part, corrupt and incompetent governments often used the war as an excuse to shield budgetary expenditures from scrutiny and award lucrative contracts to cronies.” Either way, war created its own “profitable” logic,” making it more difficult to stop it. In short, there are no winners in Africa’s Civil Wars.

Some wars don’t even make sense – none whatsoever. Ethiopia’s harrowing Civil War is a case in point. It is the second most populous African nation with over 100 million people and at least 82 ethnic groups. The country was never colonized but has been ravaged by at the least three wars since 1972. The most grievous occurred in the 1980s. It wreaked so much havoc and destruction that it instigated the onset of a famine that claimed at least one million lives. And while the rest of the world was organizing rock concerts and songs (“We Are the World”) to save famine victims, then leader of the military junta, Comrade Mengistu Haile Marian – a Soviet-backed Marxist coconut-head – was spending $10 million on imported Scotch whiskey to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Soviet imperialism in Ethiopia! Over $423 billion was raised for famine victims but much of it was embezzled.

In 1989, a coalition of determined rebels decided to put their differences aside and made a renewed effort to topple Comrade Mengistu. They comprised the Tigrayan People Liberation Front (TPLF), Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF). After Mengistu was ousted in 1991 – he fled to Zimbabwe. The rebel groups, together with others formed the Ethiopian People Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Interestingly, all the groups were Marxist with a jaundiced view of “revolutionary democracy,” whatever that meant. And inexplicably adopted a colonialist stratagem that reeked of “divide and conquer.” It allowed for the practice of ethnic federalism and even permitted secession. Eritrea seized upon this opportunity and declared itself independent in 1993. But its leader, Isaias Afewerki, was no freedom fighter nor democrat. Always itching for war and constantly beating the war drums to keep an iron grip on his people and divert attention from economic problems and domestic malfeasance, he seized upon a dispute over a worthless piece of real estate at the border town of Badme to start a war with Ethiopia in 1998.

It was a war that defied logic. The world’s two poorest nations that relied on food aid were spending about $1 million a month to hammer each other, take a break to bury a innocent civilian casualties and then get back at it again pounding each other. Hostilities came to an end in 2000 but Pres. Afewerki kept stoking the fire to use as justification for state of emergency that conveniently served as a conscription tool. Young Eritreans, upon graduation from college, were required to sign up for an indefinite “National Service.” It has been the main reasons driving Eritrean youth to flee the country for Europe -- to avoid that National Service. Unfortunately, many do not make it and drown in the Mediterranean. As it turned out, Afewerki has been just like the rest of the African crocodile liberators, who betrayed their people. EPRDF did too; never brought democracy to Ethiopia in 1991.

In 2005, it held its first elections which were blatantly rigged. When people protested in the streets, security forces opened fire killing about 1500 people and also arrested at least 20,000 opposition supporters. The election in 2010 brought no respite. The EPRDF won 99.6% of the vote (546 of the 547 parliamentary seats). In the 2015 elections, the opposition did not win a single seat! Its rule was characterized by brutal repression.

Ethiopia’s economic fortunes remained bleak under the morose leadership of the EPRDF regime until it embarked on the construction of its $5 billion Renaissance Dam. In May 2018, a young man by the name of Abiy Ahmed emerged from the ruling elites and begun to reform the rotten system. He freed all political prisoners and invited exiled opposition leaders to return home. He opened up the economy placed several state-owned enterprises – such as the airline, banking, among others – on the auction block. He reached out to President Afewerki whom Ethiopia had been at war to cement a peace deal. For his efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. Ethiopians hailed him as the “Messiah.” Nursing mothers named the other babies after him. But this is precisely the problem with African reformers or Messiahs – such as Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Jerry Rawlings of Ghana’s and Abdel al-Sisi of Egypt. They started out well but cult personality set in. With their heads in the clouds, they become unreachable. John Jerry Rawlings of Ghana or J.J. Rawlings became known as “Junior Jesus” and Abiy Ahmed as “Messiah.”

Under pressure to reform Ghana’s decrepit political system, Rawlings’ hand-picked Constitution assembly prepared a Constitution according to his dictates and set up his own party the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in 1992. While the Constitution stipulated a two-term rule, Rawlings argued that all those years he served after he seized power in a 1981 coup (1981 to 1992), did not count toward the two-term rule because Ghana was not a democratic country and had no Constitution. Museveni pulled off a similar ploy in 2003. In 2018, PM Ahmed of Ethiopia established his own political party, the Prosperity Party. It is a monumental conflict of interest situation. Reformers do not reform the political system, set up their own party, run for the presidency and expect to lose. In fact, in Nigeria, Gen. Sani Abacha allowed only five political parties to be established in 1995. Immediately, the all chose him as their presidential candidate!

Military officers have left an opprobrious record of governance in postcolonial Africa. ALL collapsed dates were ruined by military coconuts. And iIn case after case where they managed a transition to democratic rule, the results were often disastrous. They either created their own parties (Gambia in 2003, Ghana in 1992, Egypt in 2014) or shoo in their favorite political parties (Nigeria in 2001). PM Ahmed is most likely to succumb to this proclivity – especially when the completion of the Renaissance Dam appears imminent. The formation of PM Ahmed’s own Prosperity Party is a serious violation of conflict of interest. His partiality toward his own ethnic group – Oromo – has caused alarm. Ethnic tension between Oromos and Amharas, Afar and Somali, as well as other ethnic groups could lead to the unraveling of Ethiopia. Elections were slated for August 22, 2020 but the coronavirus pandemic necessitated a postponement to 2021 to the displeasure of TPLF.

Tigrayans constitute only 6% of Ethiopia’s population but the TPLF so dominated the EPRDF it was indistinguishable from the apartheid system in South Africa. It even operated an ID card that documented the bearer's ethnicity (for the first time in Ethiopian history). Blatant favoritism was demonstrated in all sectors of society, including the economy, military, education, and even religious institutions. Resentment and impatience boiled over.

The TPLF re-drew boundaries of regional states in Ethiopia along ethnic lines. Seeing power slip out of its hands by the emergence of Abiy Ahmed, TPLF began a campaign to reclaim its old glory back by defying the central government. It held elections in Tigray region. But it was the massacre of central government troops on Nov 4 in Mai-Kadra that broke the camel’s back and started the war. PM Ahmed probably thought he could finish off the Tigrayan hotheads in a couple of weeks but this has dragged on for six months.

Naturally, appeals would be made to the international community but they are unlikely to elicit much response. The international community is thoroughly fed up with Africa’s incessant wars and appeals for aid. Even then, the international community does not understand Africa’s problems and unlikely to offer viable solutions. It often suggests a “government of national unity” (G(NU). But time and again GNU has failed spectacularly – in Angola (1993), in Zaire (1998); in Sierra Leone (1998) and, in Liberia (2003); and Ivory Coast (2005); in Zimbabwe (2009) and Kenya (2009). Africa’s experience shows that GNU is just a short hand device for joint plunder of the state. It requires distribution of government posts between government and rebel forces. Quite often nobody is satisfied with what they got and they return to the bush to fight it out.

The Village Meeting/National Conference

When a crisis erupts in an African village, the chief and the elders would summon a village meeting. There the issue is debated by the people until a consensus is reached. During the debate, the chief usually makes no effort to manipulate the outcome or sway public opinion. Nor are there bazooka-wielding rogues, intimidating or instructing people on what they should say. People express their ideas openly and freely without fear of arrest. Those who care participate in the decision-making process. No one is locked out. Once a decision has been reached by consensus, it is binding on all, including the chief.

In the early 1990s, this indigenous African tradition was revived by pro-democracy forces in the form of "Sovereign National Conferences" (SNCs) to chart a new political future in Benin, Cape Verde Islands, Congo, Malawi, Mali, South Africa, and Zambia. “Sovereign” because it wielded sovereign/ultimate power and its decisions could not be abrogated by anyone.

Benin's nine-day "national conference" began on Feb 19, 1990, with 488 delegates, representing various political, religious, trade union, and other groups encompassing the broad spectrum of Beninois society. The conference, whose chairman was Father Isidore de Souza, held "sovereign power" and its decisions were binding on all, including the government. It stripped President Matthieu Kerekou of power, scheduled multiparty elections that ended 17 years of autocratic Marxist rule.

Congo's national conference had more delegates (1,500) and lasted longer three months. But when it was over in June 1991, the 12-year old government of General Denis Sassou-Nguesso had been dismantled. The constitution was rewritten and the nation's first free elections were scheduled for June 1992. Before the conference, Congo was among Africa's most avowedly Marxist-Leninist states. A Western business executive said, "The remarkable thing is that the revolution occurred without a single shot being fired . . . (and) if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere" (The New York Times, 25 June 1991, A8). Unfortunately, General Sassou-Nguesso did not accept his defeat graciously and overthrew, with the help of France and Angola, the civilian government of Pascal Lissouba in October 1997.

A similar national conference in Niger in 1991 denounced the military dictatorship of Colonel Ali Seibou and stripped him of his power, leaving him with one main task: To organize the transition to civilian rule. “For the first time since the independence of the country in 1960, free and fair elections were held and in March 1993, Mahamane Ousmane became the newcomer in the political arena” (West Africa, Dec 6-12, 1999; p

In South Africa, the vehicle used to make that difficult but peaceful transition to a multiracial democratic society was the Convention for a Democratic South Africa . It began deliberations in July 1991, with 228 delegates drawn from about 25 political parties and various anti-apartheid groups. The de Klerk government made no effort to "control" the composition of CODESA. Political parties were not excluded; not even ultra right-wing political groups, although they chose to boycott its deliberations. CODESA strove to reach a "working consensus" on an interim constitution and set a date for the March 1994 elections. It established the composition of an interim or transitional government that would rule until the elections were held. More important, CODESA was in "sovereign." Its decisions were binding on the de Klerk government. De Klerk could not abrogate any decision made by CODESA -- just as the African chief could not disregard any decision arrived at the village meeting.

Clearly, the vehicle exists -- in Africa itself -- for peaceful transition to democratic rule or resolution of the war and political crisis in Ethiopia. Ethiopia from all walks of life – leaders of political parties, religious organizations, trade unions, student groups, ethnic groups, etc. should demand the convocation of SNC. Forget about the Africa Union. It is hopelessly useless; it can’t even define democracy.

If Ethiopia appeals international community for aid in resolving its Civil War and humanitarian crisis, it should be told that the solutions to its problems lie in Africa itself.

The wise learn from the mistakes of others while fools repeat them. Idiots, on the other hand, repeat their own stupid mistakes.

[ayittey1]

The Destoolment (Removal) of Chiefs From Power

An unspecified number of members of the `Oyoko' clan, King‑makers of the Okumaning stools, have been rounded up by Kade Police for allegedly beating up their chief, Nana Karikari Appau II. The King‑makers have preferred 13 destoolment charges against the chief. These include the alleged embezzlement of C50,000 ($18,182) land compensation belonging to the entire Oyoko family at Okumaning and the signing of a land agreement with an Italian firm, Greenwhich Chemicals Company, involving some 16,000 acres without the consent of the entire family (Daily Graphic, 28 October, 1981; p.8). The Chief of Akyem Osorase near Oda in the Eastern Region (of Ghana), Barima Adu-Baah Kyere and his supporters including the Gyaasehene have allegedly fled the village to unknown destination following assassination attempts on them. A pick-up vehicle being used by the chief was said to have been burnt to ashes by the irate mob which besieged the palace. A police source said there has been a dispute between Barima Adu-Baah and section of the people of Osorase over accountability on the village's revenue (Ghana Drum, June, 1994; p.12). Nana Sobin Kan II, the Chief of Asansi Dompuase traditional area in the Ashanti region, was destooled on Feb 7, 2012. The charge was “continuously showing gross disrespect and disregard to kingmakers and elders of the stool. He had continuously sown seeds of confusion and litigation in the traditional area through the rampant sale of stool lands to private developers without plot numbers and site plans. He was also accused of having received huge sums of money as compensation on behalf of the Adansi-Dompuase traditional areas from AngloGold Ashanti last year but failed to disclose the amount involved to kingmakers.” (Daily Guide, Feb 10, 2012; p.17) THE PARAMOUNT Chief of the Nsawkaw Traditional Area in the Tain District of the Brong Ahafo Region, Nana Kutu Ayim Baffour II, has been destooled. Kingmakers of the traditional area yesterday performed customary rites to destool the Omanhene after they accused him of denigrating the Nsawkaw Stool. As a result, a sheep was slaughtered followed by the pouring of libation to symbolize his destoolment. The announcement of the Omanhene's destoolment was greeted with thunderous applause from a large crowd that emerged at the forecourt of the Krontihene's Palace, where the event took place. Copies of the statement that heralded his destoolment have been sent to the Brong Ahafo Regional Minister, Regional Police Commander, Presidents of the National/Regional Houses of Chiefs, Minister of Chieftaincy Affairs, among other institutions. The embattled chief is currently facing criminal charges at a Techiman Circuit Court for fraud and impersonation, after the Attorney General's Department found him culpable of forging documents to facilitate his enstoolment” (Daily Guide Aug 11, 2013) The traditional ruler and the paramount ruler of Mahin kingdom, in Ilaje Local government Area of Ondo State in Nigeria, Oba Lawrence Omowole, was removed from office for “ceding Aboto community which is an important part of Mahin kingdom to another person either in the garb of a king or otherwise.” He denied the allegation (Nigerian Tribune, February 18, 2017). Consider the case of Oba Samuel Aderiyi Adara of the Ode-Ekiti community of Ekiti State in Nigeria, who was dethroned for non-performance: The traditional ruler, who is a born again Christian, was accused of not contributing enough to the progress of the community and of frustrating the celebration of the yearly festival. The monarch was equally blamed for the deaths of some notable indigenes, including four professors, one of them a former don of the University of Ado-Ekiti. The traditional ruler was invited to the community meeting where he was accused of failing in his duty of moving the town forward. But attempts by the monarch to extricate himself from the allegations failed when he was asked to mention his personal contribution to the growth

[ayittey1]

The Role of Women In Traditional African Societies

One area where the traditional societies were well advanced than their Western counterparts was in the area of women’s rights. Women in non-Western traditional societies were long “liberated” before those in the West. In fact, the Western feminist movement drew a lot of inspiration from the role women played in traditional Iroquois society. According to Jacobsen (2009),

 An aspect of Native American life that alternately intrigued, perplexed, and sometimes alarmed European and European-American observers, most of whom were male, during the 17th and 18th centuries, was the influential role of women. In many cases they hold pivotal positions in Native political systems. Iroquois women, for example, nominate men to positions of leadership and can “dehorn,” or impeach, them for misconduct. Women often have veto power over men’s plans for war. In a matrilineal society — and nearly all the confederacies that bordered the colonies were matrilineal — women owned all household goods except the men’s clothes, weapons, and hunting implements. They also were the primary conduits of culture from generation to generation.

 The role of women in Iroquois society inspired some of the most influential advocates of modern feminism in the United States. The Iroquois example figures importantly in a seminal book in what Sally R. Wagner calls “the first wave of feminism,” Matilda Joslyn Gage’s Woman, Church, and State (1893). In that book, Gage acknowledges, according to Wagner’s research, that “the modern world [is] indebted [to the Iroquois] for its first conception of inherent rights, natural equality of condition, and the establishment of a civilized government upon this basis.”

Gage was one of the 19th century’s three most influential American feminists, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Gage herself was admitted to the Iroquois Council of Matrons and was adopted into the Wolf Clan, with the name Karonienhawi, “she who holds [up] the sky.” (Jacobsen, 2009).

 It is not just in the Iroquois nation that women held important political positions. As we have shown above, most traditional societies have Clan or Queen Mothers with the power to appoint and depose a chief.  Her role is to scold, reprimand and rebuke an erring chief since a bad chief brings shame to the royal family.  If the chief continues in his errant ways, the Queen Mother has the power to recall and depose the chief.

 In other traditional; systems, women even played a more visible political role:

 ·        Women ruled the Mongol Empire (Weatherford, 2005).

 ·        Quen Nzinga of the Mbundu people of Angola put up a ferocious resistance against Portuguese colonial rule (http://www.blackpast.org/?q=gah/queen-nzinga-1583-1663).

 ·        The kings of Dahomey were assisted by a cabinet which consisted of the migan (prime minister); the meu (finance minister) created by Tegbesu; yovo-gan (viceroy of Whydah); the to-no-num (the chief eunuch and minister in charge of protocol); the tokpo (minister of agriculture); the agan (general of the army); and the adjaho (minister of the king's palace and the chief of police). The most interesting and unique feature of the cabinet was that each of these posts had a female counterpart who complemented him but reported independently to the king (Ayittey, 2006: 243).

 ·        During his reign, Gezo increased the number of the full-time soldiers from about 5,000 in 1840 to 12,000 by 1845. This army consisted not only of men but also of women, the famous Amazons `devoted to the person of the king and valorous in war.' This unique female section was created and organized by Gezo and consisted of 2,500 female soldiers divided into three brigades. Commanders of this army were also top cabinet ministers in charge of the central government thus enhancing the position of the army in decision making (Boahen, 1986; p.86).

 ·        In the Yoruba Kingdom (Nigeria) in early times it was not necessarily a male who was chosen as ruler, and the traditions of Oyo, Sabe, Ondo, and Ilesa record the reigns of female oba (kings) (Smith, 1969: 13).

 ·        In Asante, the British captured and exiled the king to Sierra Leone in January 1897. But to the Asante, it was the golden stool, not the king, was the symbol and soul of their nation. When the British made a vain attempt to capture the golden stool in April 1900, they met a stiff and humiliating defeat at the hands of an Asante woman, Yaa Asantewa, the Queen Mother of Edweso. Though this rebellion was finally crushed, the British never gained possession of the golden stool. Of course, British historians rarely mention this defeat, much less at the hands of a woman!

 Needless to say, there were bad women rulers too. One was Dode Akabi, whose accession to power constituted the first major female figure in Gá, and indeed Gold Coast. But in her long reign, 1610-1635, she cast aside the practice of rule by consensus and issued a series of brutal decrees which displeased her people. She was f killed after she had ordered her subjects to sink a well at a place called Akabikenke (Ayittey, 2006: 232)

 Women In The Traditional Economic System

 With the exception of Islamic countries in the Middle East, women also played a much more visible and important role in the traditional economy – especially in agriculture and market trading. Most traditional societies practice sexual division of labor. In early times, activities considered dangerous and physically strenuous such as waging wars, hunting, fishing, manufacturing (cloth weaving, pottery, leatherworks, iron smelting, sculpturing, etc) and building were male occupations. Food cultivation and processing were traditionally reserved for women. Since the family's entire needs could not be produced on the farm, a surplus was necessary to exchange for those items. It was only natural that trade in foodstuffs and vending came to be handled by women and for market governance to lie in their hands. Indeed in many localities, market rules were generally laid down and enforced by "Market Queens", usually selected from the women traders.

 Women still play this role today since agriculture continues to account for a higher share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of developing countries. For example, three out of four Africans are engaged in agriculture, with women making the most significant contribution. They perform “some 90 percent of the work of food processing, 80 percent of food storage tasks, 90 percent of hoeing and weeding, and 60 percent of harvesting and marketing, besides load carrying and transport services” (FAO, 1985, Chapter 7).[i] Rural markets and trade are also largely handled by women. Local farm produce ‑ either cash crops or food crops ‑ are marketed at the local market, almost invariably by women.

 In West Africa, for example, market activity has been dominated by women for centuries:

 ·        In 1879, Governor Rowe of Sierra Leone expressed his admiration of these women:  “The genius of the Sierra Leone people is commercial; from babyhood the Aku girl is a trader, and as she grows up she carries her small wares wherever she can go with safety. The further she goes from the European trading depots the better is her market” (White, 1987; p.27).

 ·        The market in every Ga town is run entirely by women. No trading, except that initiated by foreigners is ever carried on by men...Many of the women are very shrewd and ingenious in their trading. One day when good catches of fish were coming in I saw a woman, who had no fishing men‑folk, exchange a bowlful of fried akpiti cakes for a panful of fresh fish, and then hastily sell the fish to a `stranger' who was trying to make up a load to take away. The sale of the fish brought her three shillings and four pence. The sale of the cakes would have brought her one and sixpence. The materials out of which she made the cakes probably cost less than sixpence (Field, 1940: 64).

 ·        The market place among the Akan of Ghana is largely a woman's world. Except for the small percentage of traders who are men, the processes of trade are said to be mysteries to men. Men often seem uncomfortable in the market; they prefer to send a woman or a child to make purchases for them, and avoid entering it if possible. For women, the market place is not only a place of business but of leisure as well. Sales are sometimes slow and women chat and josh with each other” (McCall, 1962).

 ·        In South Dahomey, commercial gains are a woman's own property and she spends her money free of all control...Trade gives to women a partial economic independence and if their business is profitable they might even be able to lend some money ‑ a few thousand francs ‑ to their husbands against their future crops (Tardits and Tardits, 1962).

 The object in trading was to make a profit. The Yoruba women "trade for profit, bargaining with both the producer and the consumer in order to obtain as large a margin of profit as possible" (Bascom, 1984; p.26). And profits made from trading were kept by the women in almost all of the West African countries.

 Though the amount of profit was often small by today’s standards, many women traders were able to accumulate enough for a variety of purposes: to reinvest and expand their trading activities, to cover domestic and personal expenses since spouses have to keep the house in good condition, to replace old cooking utensils, to buy their own clothes and to educate their children. The case of Abi Jones was earlier cited where profits from her trading were used to educate her sons. Indeed, many of the post‑colonial leaders of Africa were similarly educated ‑ with funds accumulated from trading profits.

 Another important use of trade profits was the financing of political activity. As Herskovits and Harwitz  (1964) put it: "Support for the nationalist movements that were the instruments of political independence came in considerable measure from the donations of the market women" (p.7).

 To start trading, women often looked to their husbands for support or borrowed from the extended family pot. For example,

As soon as he is married the Ga husband is expected to set his wife up in trade (`ewo le dzra' ‑ he puts her in the market). It is part of every woman's normal occupation to engage in some sort of trade and every reasonable husband is expected to start her off...When she is unlucky in her trading and loses her capital her husband is expected to set her up again, but if she loses her capital three times she is a bad manager and he has no further obligation in the matter (Field, 1940:55).

 Market trading generally made African women economically independent. Chatting at the market place also provided an important social release for pent‑up emotions.  Of course, today, much of this market activity has spilled over into the informal sector, where women still play an important role in food-related activities, such as, food vending by the roadside.

 [i] Perhaps this gender characteristic explains why Africa’s agriculture revolution never materialized. In many countries, it was crafted with the help of Western agricultural experts who tended to prescribe “mechanization” with the importation of male-driven agricultural machinery.

References Ayittey, George B.N. (2006) Indigenous African Institutions. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational Publishers.

Bascom, William (1984). The Yoruba Of Southwestern Nigeria. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, Inc.

Boahen, A.A. (1986). Topics in West African History. New York: Longman.

 Bohannan, Paul and George Dalton eds. (1962). Markets In Africa. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Field, M. J. (1940). Social Organization of the Ga People. Accra: Government of the Gold Coast Printing

Herskovits, M.J. and Harwitz, M. eds. (1964). Economic Transition In Africa. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

 Jacobsen, E. (2009) The Iroquois Constitutionhttps://ca01001129.schoolwires.net/cms/lib7/ca01001129/centricity/domain/221/the_iroquois_constitution.pdf

Johansen, Bruce E. (1990). “Native American Societies and the Evolution of Democracy in

America, 1600-1800,” Ethnohistory, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Summer, 1990): pp. 279-290.

______________ “Native American Ideas of Governance and U.S. Constitution

http://www.america.gov/st/peopleplace-english/2009/June/20090617110824wrybakcuh0.5986096.html

McCall, Daniel F. (1962). "The Koforidua Market," in Bohannan and Dalton, eds. (1962).

 Smith, Robert S. (1969).  Kingdoms of The Yoruba. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd

 Tardits Claudine and Claude (1962). "Traditional Market Economy in South Dahomey" in  Bohannan and Dalton (1962).

 Weatherford, Jack (1989). Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas transformed the  World. New York: Ballantine, 1989.

_______"The Women Who Ruled the Mongol Empire", Globalist Document - Global History, June 20, 2005

 White, E. Frances (1987). Sierra Leone's Settler Women Traders. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

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Why Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs)  Failed in Africa

A heated emotional debate erupted over the success or failure of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) in Africa. Much of the controversy derived from the involvement of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Africa's adjustment programs. These two institutions, deservedly or not, have had a rather poor image in Africa and their involvement in any program on the continent draws automatic suspicion and flak. This is unfortunate since the efficacy of a program should be assessed objectively, regardless of its sponsor.

A program may fail for a variety of reasons. It may be poorly designed and poorly implemented, and this may have nothing to do with the Bretton Woods institutions or the SAP itself, just as Africa's problems with democratization have less to do with sponsoring Western agencies or "the inherent flaws in principle of democracy." In addition, the success or failure of a program depends upon the existence – or lack thereof --  of supporting institutional infrastructure. For example, the removal of price controls alone does not automatically establish a free market. Such a market requires the existence of supporting infrastructure and institutions that establish civil society, fairness, due process, and rule of law. These supports include a private press (for the free flow of information), freedom of expression, an independent judiciary/legal system (to uphold the rule of law, enforce market contracts, and protect private property rights), and an independent central bank.

Meaningful market reform cannot endure if the legal system is not functioning and has been replaced with tribunals or kangaroo courts. In the absence of the rule of law, commercial properties can arbitrarily be seized by the state without due process. Where the central bank is under the thumb of the government, the state can gun the money supply, wreaking disastrous inflationary havoc with fragile financial markets and business decision-making.

Since SAP is often referred to as "the bitter IMF pill, perhaps a more fruitful method of assessment is to use a patient-doctor analogy. A sick patient goes to see a doctor, who performs some tests. After determining the cause of the ailment and making a diagnosis, he prescribes a medicine. Whether the medicine cures the patient or not depends on a host of other variables that have nothing to do with the doctor. For example, to be effective, certain medications must be taken three times a day. It may not work if taken once a week. In addition, the medicine only will work under certain conditions. For example, it should be taken before meals and the patient, while on the medication, may not consume alcohol or coffee, which may counteract the effectiveness of some drugs. Clearly, a patient who does not follow this regimen would not be cured.

By the late 1980s, it was clear that many African economies were "sick." Their governments saw the "doctor" (the World Bank/IMF), which prescribed SAP. Keep in mind that the World Bank was not the only "doctor" around. If an African government loathed the World Bank and its "fees," there were other "doctors" to consult. After years of "adjusting," however, Africa's economies were not "cured." The reason was simple: Although the pill was the right medicine, it was prescribed by the wrong doctor (World Bank), administered by the wrong nurse (a gangster African state) and implemented using the wrong tactics. Note only one "right" but three "wrongs."

The "Right" Medicine

In the postcolonial period, African governments, under various ideological guises, arrogated onto themselves the power to intervene in almost every conceivable aspect of their economies, ostensibly for "national development" and protect the new African nation against "foreign exploitation." They were suspicious of "capitalism" and foreign exploitation, with most of them opting for socialism. Under socialism, a large role was envisaged for state participation in the economy through the operation of state-owned enterprises and the institution of a plethora of state controls.

Subsequently, state controls and state hegemony in the economy became pervasive. The bureaucracy swelled with payrolls padded with government/party supporters. The controls created shortages and opportunities for illicit enrichment by the elites and bred a culture of bribery and corruption. In addition, they killed off the incentive to produce. Inevitably, the state sector became grotesquely inefficient and wasteful. The rot at the government house propelled the military to intervene in politics. Notwithstanding the fact that the soldiers often made matters worse, their primary objective was explicit: to clean house. And most Africans would agree that the state sector had to be cleaned up and government operations rationalized.

The basic thrust of SAP -- to grant greater economic freedom to the people -- is unassailable. The pervasive control African governments wield over their economies need to be rolled back. Peasants who produce foodstuffs and cash crops should be allowed to keep a larger portion of their proceeds. Countries that move away from a state-controlled economy toward greater reliance on the private sector generally do better economically. Innumerable examples, from Asia to Latin America and the former Soviet bloc, can be adduced for testimony. The stupendous growth of China in the new millennium further attests to the correlation between economic liberalization and economic prosperity.

It should also be recalled from Chapter 5 that African natives enjoyed much economic freedom in their own indigenous economic system before the advent of the colonialists. They themselves determined what they produced and sold their surpluses on free village markets. Prices were determined by bargaining, not fixed by chiefs. Free trade and free enterprise were the rule. But after independence, African governments stripped them of their economic freedoms. "Throughout the continent, the problem has been policies that don't encourage farmers to be more productive," said Mario Quinones, the head of the Sasakawa project in Ethiopia (The Washington Post, May 25, 1998, A18).

Where economic reform was implemented, the results were spectacular. The purpose of economic reform is to free businesses from the stranglehold of state controls. It may be recalled from Chapter 4 that three terms explain the stupendous peasant prosperity from 1880 to 1950: peace, infrastructure and economic freedom. State controls and regulations have stifled economic freedom in many African countries. Economic Freedom of the World measures the degree to which the policies and institutions of countries are supportive of economic freedom. The cornerstones of economic freedom are personal choice, voluntary exchange, freedom to enter markets and compete, and security of the person and privately owned property in five broad areas:

1 Size of Government: Expenditures, Taxes, and Enterprises; 2. Legal Structure and Security of Property Rights; 3. Access to Sound Money; 4. Freedom to Trade Internationally; 5. Regulation of Credit, Labor, and Business.

The Heritage Foundation, the Wall Street Journal, the Cato Institute as well as other think tanks publish the World Index of Economic Freedom annually. Generally, countries with greater economic freedom out-perform those that are not economically. free. Of the 38 countries and the bottom of the Index for 2014, 29 of them were from Africa. (See http://www.heritage.org/index/)

A few African countries, such as Egypt, Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe, performed remarkably in the initial phases of reform to restore economic freedom. Once free of statist controls, Tanzania's agriculture expanded annually at 5 percent in the early 1990s. State-owned enterprises that Tanzania privatized also chalked up spectacular results.

The Ashanti Goldfields Corporation of Ghana is another example where privatization turned a moribund state-owned corporation around. The AGC, which accounted for 20 percent of Ghana's foreign exchange earnings, increased its output from 272,000 ounces in 1987 to 355,700 ounces by the end of 1989. "This represented an increase of 30.8 percent over the last 3 years" (West Africa, 5-11 February 1990, 190). Other state-owned enterprises chalked up impressive turn-around after privatization:

“Most of the enterprises divested by the state had been modernized and brought back to life. The magnificent Golden Tulip Hotel, formerly Continental Hotel, at the time of its divestiture, had about 116 employees. Services at the then hotel were nothing to write home about. Today, the hotel under new management and new name now has 347 employees. The service of the hotel is rated number one in the hospitality industry.  Tema Steel Works at the time also had about 130 employees with very poor production figures. After six years of operation under new management and injection of fresh capital coupled with the modernization of its production line, the company can now boast of about 584 employees.  Alongside the government's stake of 25 percent, Swiss company Industrie Bau Nord, with more than 40 years experience in Africa has turned around Tema Food Complex -- now Ghana Agro-Food (GAFCO), rehabilitating its plant and machinery, doubling output and increasing its workforce from 494 to 1,600.  The Coca Cola Company Limited which was formerly a subsidiary of the state-owned Ghana National Trading Corporation had a pre-divestiture employment of about 340. After just three years of operation the workforce of the company has not just increased to about 530, the company has also increased its production figures and added a new line of drinks to the existing ones.  The same pattern exists at the Ghana Rubber Estates Limited. Prior to divestiture in 1996, there were about 3,085 workers. Current statistics indicate that the company now has more than 3,833 employees.  Another success story of the privatization program was the divestiture of Ghana Telecom. The company was privatized in December 1996, by selling 30 percent stake to a consortium of strategic investors led by Telekom Malaysia.  Since 1997, when the new managers of Ghana Telecom rehabilitated and installed new facilities, the services of the company have remarkable shown some level of improvement.  As at the end of February 1998, the company had delivered more than 27,000 lines and installed more than 1,000 pay phones in most urban cities. This exceeds the contractual agreement of the company to deliver 25,000 direct lines and 300 pay phones (Daily Graphic, 4 January 1999, 23).

These few examples -- and many others exist -- show that macro-economic restructuring of an economy away from a state-controlled system does work, if pursued with dedication, seriousness, and honesty. As Stephen Buckley, a foreign correspondent, noted in The Washington Post (25 May 1998), after the removal of price controls and providing better incentives to farmers:

"Ghana doubled its corn production between 1986 and 1996. Nigeria's corn output leaped by 50 percent between 1990 and 1996. Mozambique, emerging from nearly two decades of civil conflict, has seen agricultural output grow by 50 percent. In the past decade, Ugandans have doubled or tripled production of several main crops" (p.A18).

In Tunisia, the government ran the airline, the steel mill, the phosphate mines, and 150 factories, employing a third of Tunisian workers.Under a privatization program, private businessman, Afif Kilani, bought one such company called Comfort, a featherbed for 1,200 workers who built 15,000 refrigerators a year. Mr. Kilani paid $3.3 million for the place in 1990. Five years later, he had whittled the workforce down to 600 workers who made 200,000 refrigerators a year. "Like all state companies, its point had been to support the maximum number of jobs”, he said. "It was social work. A sort of welfare”. (The Wall Street Journal June 22, 1995; p.A11).

Wrong Doctor

Over the years, the credibility of the Bretton Woods institutions eroded considerably. According to The Times of London (Sept 2, 1999):

“The decline of the IMF is linked to the perception that it had become little more than a proxy for Western, and notably American, commercial and strategic interests. Having allowed Western banks to go scot-free in Thailand and Korea, it played hardball in Indonesia, but this had less to do with combating charges of moral hazard and everything to do with America's desire to topple President Suharto. Moral hazard returned with a vengeance in the case of Russia, which in August 1998 was handed $22.6 billion on very weak conditionality because America required that Boris Yeltsin should be supported at any cost. America's role is less than edifying. It has long used the IMF as a tool for remaking the world economy in its image, but has woefully failed to meet its obligations as the world's economic superpower. It has failed to tackle its arrears in funding to the IMF."

In Africa, the Bretton Woods institutions, deservedly or not, have had a rather poor image and low credibility. As such, their involvement in any development program on the continent draws automatic flak and politicizes the issue. The late Julius Nyerere, for example, characterized the World Bank and the IMF as "imperialist institutions and devices by which powerful nations maintain their power over poor nations" (Time, Jan 16, 1984; p. 39). Marxists charge that the real objective of the IMF-sponsored liberalization measures in Africa is not domestic economic recovery but rather the "penetration of imperialist capital." Leftist radicals have denounced conditionality as unwarranted imperialist interference in their internal affairs. “The SAP as a strategy -- a monetarist prescription of the supply-side economics variety -- however, gave more power to donors in the planning and supervision of domestic African enterprises, and as a result most African countries who espoused SAP are poorer now than they were two decades ago" (African Link, First Quarter, 1998, 10). In Kenya, "the World Bank's policies were viewed as a monster that no one wants to hear about" (The African Observer, 28 September - 11 October 1995, 21).

This kind of emotional rhetoric unnecessarily politicizes the debate and impedes the search for solutions. Additionally, it provides a convenient shield for incompetent African despots to conceal their own failures. They claim acceding to structural adjustment in this atmosphere amounts to succumbing to foreign dictates – a problem compounded by the fact that there is often no African input in the design of the programs – the very people who would be most affected by World Bank decisions. As Wayne Ellwood wrote:

“Time and time again local communities are ignored. Misconceived, harmful development projects are dropped in their laps without consultation and the people of the industrialized countries, who bankroll most of the Bank's activities, are asked to pay the bill.   The Bank needs its own glasnost so that informed public debate can take place, says Probe International's Pat Adams. "Decision-making," she adds, "should be returned to the people who have to live with the physical consequences of the decisions; they're the people with the best judgment about what risks to take with their environment" (New Internationalist, Dec 1990; p.6).

The World Bank employs the services of management consultants. About 80,000 expatriate consultants work on Africa alone. Less than 0.1 percent are Africans. In 1988, the World Bank spent close to $1 billion on consultants on SAPs. Characterizing this as the "great consultancy rip-off," South (Feb 1990) noted:

“There is increasing concern (World Bank) advice is often overpriced, poorly researched and irrelevant. Although some management consultants give value for money, many simply recycle standard off-the-shelf reports, regardless of whether they are appropriate, say critics. Frequently, management firms send rookie staffers with little experience of Africa to advise on sensitive political issues there. Or they provide theoretical studies, full of high school economics, but with no practical applications...One top World Bank man, who declined to be identified, says that of all the countries in Southern Africa, the only government which gets value for its money from management consultants is Botswana, which has a rigorous bidding procedures for the work (p.42).

The World Bank's credibility h been most battered in Africa. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, it funded disastrous statist policies -- for example, the establishment of state owned enterprises (SOEs)-- in such African countries as Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria and Zaire. Imagine the World Bank telling African governments to dismantle the very same statist structures it had helped them build! The World Bank's support for statism was reflected in its lending policies. Most of its loans focused on government-devised infrastructure projects. For example, throughout the 1980s, the Bank committed about 80 percent of its funds to government enterprises, or parastatals.

The IMF, on the other hand, provided less direct support for statism. Its focus was on balance-of-payment disequilibria and its loans were subject to conditionalities such as devaluation, trimming budget deficits, and general macroeconomic management. However, IMF emphasis and insistence on conditionalities and macro-management had the effect of reinforcing the notion of state management and control. An African government that followed IMF prescriptions would solve its country's economic problems. Nothing could have played more into the hands of Africa's statist governments. "For 30 years, Zambia's statist policies of import-substitution, subsidized food prices and state enterprises were backed by Western economic advisers including the World Bank. True, the IMF always disliked them, but then, as one IMF official says privately: `Why did we lend $1.2 billion to a government whose policies we disapproved of?'" (The Economist, 1 July 1995, 34).

As Whitaker (1988) noted:

"From the early 1960s on, the World Bank and the International Development Association supplied at least 25 percent of the loans to Africa. U.S. aid fluctuated widely, doubling during the Kennedy and the Carter administrations, and receding in the mid 1980s when the United States itself became a major debtor nation. Yet throughout this period, the World Bank, the United States and most Africans felt that development would occur by creating industries and services which would expand and diversify the economy. Governments themselves would move into areas that Europeans and Asians nearly monopolized. The United States and the World Bank actively supported national planning as the basis for government activity and their own projects. (66)

Said Stephen Thomillionon of Washington: “Behind the World Bank's astounding incompetence is its basic economic philosophy, which is more in line with that of the old Soviet Union than of the West. Its preferred way of operating is to set up some Soviet-style development "project" that in one fell swoop is supposed to lift the economic status of the area to a higher plane. Of course, such projects are usually done more or less as government programs, resulting in theft, bribery, kickbacks and other corruption on the part of government officials” (The Washington Times (20 June 1995, A18).

Even more bizarre, the World Bank itself was afflicted with the same ailment it set out to cure in Africa: corruption, nepotism and bloated bureaucracy. While it was exhorting African governments to trim their bloated bureaucracies, its own bureaucracy was swelling. Was this a case of physician heal thyself? As The Washington Times (24 August 1995) reported: "The World Bank is quietly eliminating 600 positions at its downtown headquarters. By the end of this year, the bank hopes to have identified all the positions that will be eliminated. By the end of fiscal 1997, which begins in July, the bank expects to have saved a net of $96 million over two years" (A1).

Then came this bombshell:

“The World Bank has hired outside auditors to investigate expenditures from its annual $25 billion fund for development projects after an internal examination uncovered "alarming information" about possible kickbacks and embezzlement, according to bank officials.  World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn said the investigations were triggered by his decision that "if the bank were going to campaign against corruption in our borrowing countries, we had to be absolutely certain that we held ourselves to the highest standards on the inside" (The Washington Post, 16 July 1998, A1).

Headquartered in Washington, the World Bank has been a major force in global economic development. It employs about 9,000 workers and pours billions into emerging countries each year for projects ranging from infant feeding programs to gigantic infrastructure improvements. The bank's money comes from selling low interest bonds backed by its 180 member nations. It then lends money to governments of relatively stable emerging nations such as Thailand and Brazil and makes interest free loans to the poorest nations such as Bangladesh or Uganda. The U.S. Treasury Department and Congress exercises oversight over the bank's activities. However, Questions about program inefficiencies and the many possibilities for corruption in dealing with emerging nations have long surrounded World Bank programs. Wolfensohn, an Australian born former investment banker who took over as World Bank president in 1995, has talked openly about these issues and encouraged his employees to come forward with concerns. (The Washington Post, 16 July 1998, A1).

In 2005 George W. Bush tapped Paul Wolfowitz as president to clean the place up. To his credit, Wolfowitz made rooting out corruption his primary mission. But he met such ferocious resistance and was forced out in 2010. In 2012, when Dr. Jim Yong Kim took over the reins of the World Bank, its problems had gotten worse; it was most dysfunctional. It had a 2011 aid portfolio of $57 billion and little oversight by the governments that fund it.

Forbes magazine (June 29, 2012) did an investigative report on the Bank and here some of its findings

• Problems have gotten worse, not better, at the World Bank despite more than a decade of reform attempts. “The inmates are running the asylum,” said a former director. • Part of the problem is philosophical: No one, starting with outgoing president Robert Zoellick, has laid out an articulated vision for what the World Bank’s role is in the 21st century. • Another part of the problem is structural: Internal reports, reviewed by FORBES, show, for example, that even after Zoellick implemented a budget freeze some officials operated an off-budget system that defied cost control, while others used revolving doors to game the system to make fortunes for themselves or enhance their positions within the bank. Why not track all the cash? Good luck: Bank sources cite up to $2 billion that may have gone unaccounted for amid computer glitches. • Sadly, the last part is cultural: The bank, those inside and outside it say, is so obsessed with reputational risk that it reflexively covers up anything that could appear negative, rather than address it. Whistle-blower witch hunts undermine the one sure way to root out problems at a Washington headquarters dominated by fearful yes-men and yes-women, who–wary of a quick expulsion back to their own countries– rarely offer their true opinions. • Numerous managers and vice presidents say that corruption continues unabated. Five years ago a commission led by Paul Volcker drilled into the bank and called it a massive problem. He recommended restructuring the bank’s corruption-fighting unit, including moving the leadership into a more powerful notch in the bureaucracy. Zoellick adopted everything in the Volcker plan, but there are big questions today whether it’s having a deep impact. • A similar report that the bank buried, attacked and then ignored was done by another respected internal investigator, Anis Dani. This report found a “dramatic dip” in the quality–meaning effectiveness, impact and results–of bank projects over the past five years, says Dani. He also found a seemingly premeditated effort to remove the only whistle-blower function within the bank that dealt with all its projects, called the “Quality Assurance Group.” Zoellick’s team dissolved it in 2010, and while the bank maintains that it is working on replacing it with something else, Dani calls that claim “hogwash.”

According to Forbes, Carman L. Lapointe was the auditor general of the World Bank, where her team issued 60 internal reports per year on what was really going on inside the agency. Carman’s reports were candid. But it led to Lapointe being gently walked out the bank’s door in late 2009. The bank’s management ¬didn’t want to hear the tough messages:

The World Bank is a place where whistle-blowers are shunned, persecuted and booted–not always in that order. Consider John Kim, a top staffer in the bank’s IT department, who in 2007 leaked damaging documents after he determined that there were no internal institutional avenues to honestly deal with wrongdoing. “Sometimes you have to betray your country in order to save it,” Kim says. In return bank investigators probed his phone records and e-mails, and allegedly hacked into his personal AOL account. After determining he was behind the leaks the bank put him on administrative leave for two years before firing him on Christmas Eve 2010. A five-judge tribunal eventually ¬ordered the bank to reinstate him last May. Despite the decision, the bank retired him in September after 29 years of service” (Forbes, June 29, 2012).

The Bank’ plan to cut 500 jobs over three years as part of a broad restructuring meant to make it more competitive and efficient rankled employees. The cuts were announced on Oct 29, 2014 and represented about an 11 percent reduction in the 4,500-employee workforce of the bank's internal-facing divisions, including finance, human resources, research and security -- divisions which employ about a quarter of the bank's total staff, according to Reuters.. The $400 million the Bank will save would allow it to boost lending to middle-income countries. But,

“Employees complain the bank is overly focused on minor cuts to areas such as breakfast allowances and parking instead of dealing with meaningful changes to the quality and efficiency of the bank's lending. Staff were also incensed after discovering the bank's chief financial officer, who has pushed much of the cost-cutting, received a $94,000 bonus this year. To quell staff discontent, Bertrand Badre earlier this month said he would forego the $24,000 or so of the bonus that he had not yet received” (Reuters, Oct 30, 2014).

Employees, however, were not mortified and began organizing regular work "stoppages" on Thursdays. They mushroomed into a full-blown rank-and-file revolt in the Bank's atrium, attended by hundreds’ “The mood here is pretty grim,” said one staffer, who asked not to be named. “Many people here have no idea whether they will have a job or not in the future,” he added. “The fear is palpable in this place.” Several World Bank employees, who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, said there are serious concerns about the restructuring plans themselves, and anger is also growing over a “climate of fear” in which employees fear retaliation from management for speaking out” (The Guardian, Dec 4, 2014).

“Wrong Nurse”

To compound the problem, the SAP medicine was administered by the wrong nurse. Too many African reformers lacked legitimacy, credibility, and trust. In fact, some "reformers" were the same incompetents who precipitated the economic crisis in the first place. In Burkina Faso, Ghana, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, the "reformers" were avowed Marxists and socialists, whose conversion to free market philosophy was at best dubious. Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, who in 1980 vowed to institute Marxist-Leninism, finally ditched socialism in 1990 and embraced the free market. Yet at ZANU-PF's pre-election congress in Harare in September 1994, he declared ebulliently: "Socialism remains our sworn ideology" (The African Observer, 12 January 1995, 9).

In Ghana, the "nurse" was the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) -- an unrepentant Marxist regime, heavily imbued with a "control mentality." The regime closely associated itself with Angola, Cuba, the former Soviet bloc, Libya, and Nicaragua's Sandinistas. It did not believe in the "medicine," which entailed deregulation and loosening controls on the economy. Nor did it believe in private enterprise and free markets.

As we noted earlier, in the halcyon of the Rawlings revolution (1982-83), stringent price controls were imposed on most commodities and ruthlessly enforced by Price Control Tribunals. Private businessmen were attacked. Traders who violated price controls were hauled into jail and their wares confiscated. Criticisms of these inane economic measures were mercilessly crushed with brutal abandon.

Back in 1982, the World Bank and the IMF were denounced by the PNDC regime as "imperialist institutions dedicated to the oppression and exploitation of the Third World." In fact, Dr. Kwesi Botchwey, the former minister of finance, vowed that Ghana would never bow to the IMF. These economic inanities sent the economy reeling to its lowest nadir in 1983. A 180 degree turn came in 1983 with the signing of the SAP agreement with the World Bank, which astonished even the PNDC's own Marxist supporters.Thus, the PNDC agreed to implement SAP, which was known in Ghana as Economic Recovery Program (ERP), not out of conviction but out of economic necessity, with the hope that the program could be ditched when conditions improved.

To implement economic reform, the regime had to overcome its own self-doubts in order to take Ghana on an economic path fundamentally antithetical to its own borrowed Marxist beliefs. That it did not believe in economic reform was revealed by its often erratic actions and contradictory statements. As mentioned earlier, it assured foreign investors that they were welcome in Ghana and then lambasted them for "exploiting Africa." It preached "accountability" but refused to be held to same standard. It sought to "liberate" the economy but at the same time keep the control structures in place. All these served to confuse investors about the direction in which the PNDC was taking Ghana.

Nor did the regime have any clue as to the causes of Ghana's economic woes, which President Rawlings blamed on the opposition. During a 6 November 1996 campaign tour of the Central Region, he scowled at opposition politicians, accusing them of "deliberately discouraging investors to come into the country to invest." He also charged that "Opposition politicians destroyed the banking system in the country by borrowing heavily and refusing to pay back (Ghana Drum, December 1996, 35). Said an irate Hawa Yakubu-Ogede, a former independent member of parliament and an opposition politician, "Ghana's economic malaise is not the result of lack of opportunities or of resources. Ghana suffers from the affliction of dishonest leadership" (The Ghanaian Voice, 12 February 1995, 8).

The regime’s lack of credibility did not arouse public confidence or support in the ERP, which jeopardized its success. The people did not enthusiastically embrace the program. More serious, perhaps, was the failure of the military regime to build a constituency for reform, that is, nurture a group or coalition of groups -- in urban or rural areas -- to support ERP, even among members of the regime itself. Said the Ghanaian newspaper,The Guide, in its September 10-16, 1996 editorial: "There was no attempt to convince anyone -- not even members of the government -- about the rationale for reform. For many Ghanaians, the tendency was to view ERP as a short-term government program that was a basic requirement for receiving aid." (4)

Similar theatrics were on display in Nigeria and Zimbabwe. In 1986, Nigeria's military dictator Gen. Babangida vowed that Nigeria would never go to the IMF and the World Bank to beg for loans. But within three months, he had secretly signed up for SAP. In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe's vitriolic attacks on the Bretton Woods institutions were well known. Therefore is stretched credulity for Mugabe to sign up for SAP.

Wrong Tactics

Even worse was the manner in which the pill was administered. The method chosen by Ghana's PNDC regime was brutal and savage. No attempt was made to cajole or persuade the public to accept belt-tightening. In fact, there was no public debate. Five years after the program started in 1983, the regime scheduled a public debate -- that was canceled -- until finally held in 1997.

More serious, perhaps, was the failure of the military regime in Ghana to build a constituency for reform, that is, nurture a group or coalition of groups -- in urban or rural areas -- to support ERP, even among members of the regime itself. Among the urban population, the important groups were industrialists, workers, professionals, students, and traders. But each was at war with the regime. The PNDC frequently lashed out at workers and threatened to withdraw their right to strike. Nor was any attempt made to associate the Trade Union Congress with the economic recovery program. One senior TUC official complained: "The impression given is that the TUC is part of the planning process but it is not. Since 1983 the TUC has not been consulted. We are not in a position to participate" (Herbst, 1993, 34). That the professional bodies (especially lawyers) and the student population had been thoroughly alienated from the program was already well known. Ghanaian industrialists did not openly embraced ERP because they feared stiff competition from increased imports while market traders did not easily forget the brutal harassment by city officials, and confiscation of their wares in the early 1980s.

The rural population was the natural constituency for the PNDC to cultivate for support of ERP. Castigated as "backward," this sector traditionally had been marginalized or ignored by Ghana's political elite. Its fate worsened in the initial phases of the Rawlings' revolution, but after 1983 cocoa prices were increased, rural roads were repaired, and electricity extended to them. An attempt was made to give them a real voice with the institution of the District Assemblies. But the rural folks remained skeptical -- justifiably so.

The PNDC made no effort to form peasant organizations. The People Defense Committees (PDCs), which were supposed to do that, proved to be ineffective and a failure. Through their terroristic activities in 1983, the PDCs quickly earned the scorn of the rural population. Many chiefs condemned the activities of the PDCs in their areas. Rather unwisely, the regime tried to use these same organizations to rally the peasants for a program that the PDCs themselves had rejected earlier.

Nor did the PNDC establish the environment conducive to investment. A well-functioning legal system is crucial for the success of any economic adjustment program. Both domestic and foreign investors needed to be assured that there would not be arbitrary government actions against business people. Such a legal system establishes an environment that promotes business confidence because it ensures that the economic rights of individuals would not capriciously violated and their commercial properties arbitrarily seized without due process of law. Strangely, the PNDC made no progress whatsoever in instituting real legal reform. Its frosty contempt for the legal profession was well known.

The absence of a well-functioning legal system and the PNDC's own policy blunders, reversals, and inconsistent rhetoric partly explain why the regime has had extreme difficulty in persuading foreigners to invest in Ghana. According to Goosie Tanoh, a member of the NDC Reform Movement, "Even though President Rawlings is aware of the level of corruption in the country and has spoken about it, the mechanisms that the government has put in place to fight corruption is weak.  At a time when people are being told that the international economic environment does not favor Ghana, that the problems of the Ghanaian economy does not come from within, and people are being asked to tighten their belts a little bit, we see others widening their belts. If it becomes difficult for the NDC Reform Movement to have changes we are calling for in the NDC Party, we will form a new party to carry our messages across" (The African Observer, 5-18 October 1998, 5).

Elsewhere in Africa, the commitment to reform was demonstrably been weak. Nigeria's privatization program was implemented half-heartedly with little conviction. Hamza Zayyad, chairman of the Technical Committee on Privatization and Commerce, excoriated many state governments for "not doing as much as they should to interest indigenes of their areas in the privatization program. He disclosed that some state governments were even refusing to air advertisements concerning the scheme unless they were paid in advance by the TCPC, adding that some state governments were reluctant to grant loans to their employees to enable them to participate in the program (West Africa, 19-25 February 1990, 284). The TCPC was established by an Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC) Decree No. 25 of 1988, with a mandate to privatize 127 state enterprises. Two years later, only 17 had been privatized.  In January 1997 privatization was nixed altogether when Nigeria's military rulers sought to defy what they perceived to be Western free-market orthodoxy.

Little progress was also made in Tanzania -- Africa's last haven for state-owned enterprises. In 1985, Tanzania was offering ideological asylum to 460 state enterprises - the largest collection of such "refugee" enterprises on the continent. Two years later, only 3 had been privatized in spite of the Structural Adjustment agreement signed with the IMF.  

In the public arena, there was much talk but little else. In July, 1988, for example, the Tanzanian government under Mwinyi licensed six private companies to set up breweries. Here too, private sector participation was to be allowed to break the decades-old state monopoly on breweries in a restructuring program. But after some of the companies had conducted feasibility studies and arranged financing, the industry and trade minister suddenly abrogated the licenses, claiming that the private breweries would falsify output data and evade taxes.

In 1996 George Mbowe became the head of Tanzania's commission to dismantle government-owned entities. But Mbowe was the same man who played a key role in the nationalization drive launched by President Nyerere in the 1960s, under the failed socialist program of "Ujamaa." Most industries were nationalized and agriculture collectivized. But within a decade, more than half of the 330 state-run enterprises were broke and many people were hungry. Was Mbowe now convinced that "Ujamaa" was a failure and privatization was the right policy? "I would not say Ujamaa was a failure," he offered. "It's just that the government spread itself too thin, building schools and roads" (The Wall Street Journal, 10 December 1996, A6).

At the Pan-African Investment Summit on Privatization in Pratice, Ishmael Yamson, chairman of Unilever Ghana, dismissed the government’s privatization program as “being too slowly implemented. The divestment (privatization) program has already accrued some financial benefit to government, but where has the money gone?” (The African Observer, Sept 13-26, 1999; p.18).

In many cases, public confidence in the program was shattered by government dishonesty and tomfoolery. For example, "land grabbing has become a common phenomenon in Kenya. Under the guise of privatization, people close to the president, often, like him from the Kalenjin ethnic group, are suddenly awarded title deeds to state land, a school soccer pitch or a site designated for a clinic (which happens to be a prime development plot)" (The Economist, 18 April 1998, 42).  And believing that economic development occurs in a vacuum, the government of Angola drew up a grandiose Investment Code (Law 13/1988) to attract foreign investors. Even the West Africa magazine was perplexed:

"Why should the foreign investor put money into agriculture, trade or manufacturing in war-torn Angola (or much less Ethiopia, Mozambique, Somalia, Sudan or Uganda) when a host of apparently stable, structurally-adjusting African countries (or better yet, Asian and now Eastern European countries) offer opportunities in the same sector and more?" (March 13-19, 1989; p.407).

In Benin, reformist Nicephore Soglo railed against nepotism, lack of accountability, and transparency. Yet he was perpetrating the same malpractice: "His wife, a member of parliament, is accused of political tinkering. His brother-in-law is minister of state, the country's second-most powerful position. One of his sons is a special adviser. One of his brothers is an ambassador. Even his bodyguards are said to be relatives" (The Washington Post, March 18, 1996, A11).

Hopeless inability of reforming African governments to control their own budgetary expenditures did not help matters. For ten years, there was no audit of public accounts in both The Gambia and Ghana. An audit in 1994 revealed an embezzlement of 535,940 dalasis at the Ministry of Agriculture and misuse of 60 million dalasis by the Gambian Farmers' Cooperative Union. In Ghana, the 1993 Auditor-General's Report detailed a catalog of corrupt practices, administrative ineptitude, and the squandering of over $200 million in public funds. A 27 September 1994 audit in Nigeria revealed that a total of $12.4 billion -- more than a third of the country's foreign debt -- was squandered by its military coconut-heads between 1988 and 1994. “The Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Dr. Olorunnimbe Mamora, revealed that the Lagos government account since 1994 has not been audited” (P.M. News, 26 July 1999). The former minister of finance, Dr. Kwesi Botchwey, himself admitted of chaotic public expenditure management with the treasury and spending agencies operating at cross purposes (Ghana Drum, January 1995, 14).

Politically insecure reforming governments -- even military ones -- too easily capitulated to special elite interests. The Manufacturing Association of Nigeria opposed the closure of several inefficient industries and even demanded greater protection from the Babangida regime. Riots and demonstrations in 1988 prompted that regime to raise the minimum wage, unfreeze wages in the civil service, and remove the ban on civil service recruitment. The military was completely exempted from budgetary cuts, in fact, Babangida showered the officers of the armed forces with gifts of cars worth half a billion naira.

His military successor, General Sani Abacha, maintained the controversial dual exchange rate system, which allowed the government to buy foreign exchange at a quarter of its market price and suspended mass privatization of state-owned corporations. "Some say General Abacha bowed to the lobbying of those who gain from the phoney exchange rate and the patronage opportunities of state corporations" (The Economist, 25 January 1997, 41).

Elsewhere, top African government officials also exempted themselves from cuts. In 1995 in Zimbabwe, barely a month after Mugabe's government stipulated a 10 percent annual salary increases ceiling, top government officials awarded themselves increases exceeding 50 percent. In Tanzania, senior government officials and major politicians exempted themselves from taxes. In 1993 there were over 2,000 such exemptions, costing the treasury $113 million.

[ayittey1]

The Removal of Chiefs From Power

Most indigenous African societies applied various restrictions against the office of chieftaincy so that whoever occupied the "stool" would act "properly." Of course, the restrictions varied from ethnic group to tribe. In some tribes, the king was not to venture out of his palace into town except under the cover of darkness. The king was never to speak to his people directly, except through a linguist (okyeame as in the case of the Akan). The Akan chief or king was forbidden to meet with any foreigner except in the presence or company of a member of the council of elders. The paramount chief was forbidden to see the burial place of chiefs; two paramount chiefs could not shake hands nor should a chief exchange clothes with another man or eat from the same dish with him.

 Some of these injunctions were intended to enhance the sanctity of the office. But there were others which were clearly designed to check despotic tendencies and misuse of power. One that is of interest which was adopted by many indigenous West African societies was the prohibition against property holding.

 AAmoah (1988) explained,

In some societies, especially the Akans of Ghana, the danger of a ruler using his position to amass wealth for himself was obviated by the custom that the king could not, except in a few circumstances, own any personal property while he was in office. Everything that the ruler acquired while he was in office, unless the elders knew that he was acquiring it for himself and consented to it, automatically became stool property. That ruled applied to the wives of the ruler as well. To make the rule effective, the administration of stool funds and property was put in the hands of the Sanaahene (treasurer). The ruler was debarred from any close contact with the stool finances. He was neither permitted to hold the scale used for weighing out gold dust nor to open the leather bag in which the gold was kept (p.177).

 While this prohibition is fascinating and akin to requiring an American president to place his private holdings of stock in a "blind trust," it may have contributed to the myth of communal ownership. When the Akan said, "The chief does not own anything. Everything he owns belongs to the stool" it was easy for Europeans to take that practice to imply "communal ownership" rather than as an injunction against personal aggrandizement. Every gift to the chief will also belong to the stool.[1]

         Even in modern times, chiefs are still held accountable and corrupt chiefs are destooled :

An unspecified number of members of the `Oyoko' clan, King‑makers of the Okumaning stools, have been rounded up by Kade Police for allegedly beating up their chief, Nana Karikari Appau II. The King‑makers have preferred 13 destoolment charges against the chief. These include the alleged embezzlement of C50,000 ($18,182) land compensation belonging to the entire Oyoko family at Okumaning and the signing of a land agreement with an Italian firm, Greenwhich Chemicals Company, involving some 16,000 acres without the consent of the entire family (Daily Graphic, 28 October, 1981; p.8).

 The Cief of Akyem Osorase near Oda in the Eastern Region (of Ghana), Barima Adu-Baah Kyere and his supporters including the Gyaasehene have allegedly fled the village to unknown destination following assassination attempts on them.

A pick-up vehicle being used by the chief was said to have been burnt to ashes by the irate mob which besieged the palace.

A police source said there has been a dispute between Barima Adu-Baah and section of the people of Osorase over accountability on the village's revenue (Ghana Drum, June, 1994; p.12).

 Nana Sobin Kan II, the Chief of Asansi Dompuase traditional area in the Ashanti region, was destooled on Feb 7, 2012. The charge was

“continuously showing gross disrespect and disregard to kingmakers and elders of the stool. He had continuously sown seeds of confusion and litigation in the traditional area through the rampant sale of stool lands to private developers without plot numbers and site plans. He was also accused of having received huge sums of money as compensation on behalf of the Adansi-Dompuase traditional areas from AngloGold Ashanti last year but failed to disclose the amount involved to kingmakers.” (Daily Guide, Feb 10, 2012; p.17)

 THE PARAMOUNT Chief of the Nsawkaw Traditional Area in the Tain District of the Brong Ahafo Region, Nana Kutu Ayim Baffour II, has been destooled (removed from office).

Kingmakers of the traditional area yesterday performed customary rites to destool the Omanhene after they accused him of denigrating the Nsawkaw Stool.

As a result, a sheep was slaughtered followed by the pouring of libation to symbolize his destoolment.

The announcement of the Omanhene's destoolment was greeted with thunderous applause from a large crowd that emerged at the forecourt of the Krontihene's Palace, where the event took place.

Copies of the statement that heralded his destoolment have been sent to the Brong Ahafo Regional Minister, Regional Police Commander, Presidents of the National/Regional Houses of Chiefs, Minister of Chieftaincy Affairs, among other institutions.

The embattled chief is currently facing criminal charges at a Techiman Circuit Court for fraud and impersonation, after the Attorney General's Department found him culpable of forging documents to facilitate his enstoolment” (Daily Guide Aug 11, 2013)

  The traditional ruler and the paramount ruler of Mahin kingdom, in Ilaje Local government Area of Ondo State in Nigeria, Oba Lawrence Omowole, was removed from office for “ceding  Aboto community which is an important part of Mahin kingdom to another person either in the garb of a king or otherwise.” He denied the allegation (Nigerian Tribune, February 18, 2017).

 Consider the case of Oba Samuel Aderiyi Adara of the Ode-Ekiti community of Ekiti State in Nigeria, who was dethroned for non-performance:

The traditional ruler, who is a born again Christian, was accused of not contributing enough to the progress of the community and of frustrating the celebration of the yearly festival.

The monarch was equally blamed for the deaths of some notable  indigenes, including four professors, one of them a former don of the University of Ado-Ekiti.

The traditional ruler was invited to the community meeting where he was accused of failing in his duty of moving the town forward. But attempts by the monarch to extricate himself from the allegations failed when he was asked to mention his personal contribution to the growth of the town since he became the king. He was lambasted for not informing the state government of the pathetic socio-economic situation in his domain and asked to vacate the throne for a more progressive minded personality in the town.

While the meeting was still going on, some youths in the town invaded the venue, removed the dress of the traditional ruler, including his royal beads and crown, and chased him out of the town. Shortly after, traditional trees in strategic shrines were cut down, symbolizing the demise of the Oba.

The spokesman for the community said it was the collective decision of both the old and young to dethrone the monarch, saying his reign was "disastrous, woeful and sorrowful" (The Guardian, July 24, 2003; p.4).

 In Yoruba culture, removal of the royal beads and dress constituted destoolment. The "primitive peasants" of Africa had the sense to remove a king whose tenure was “disastrous” but not so the "educated" elites of modern Africa. The rule of so many post colonial African leaders has been more than “disastrous.”

 Togo's former Security Chief, Colonel Senyi Memene, accused of diverting a staggering $1.5 million into foreign bank accounts, has been compelled to regurgitate part of his loot from Switzerland.    

   In addition, a minister of state, Kawo Ehe, ex-minister of Commerce and Transport, and a prominent Trade Union leader, Nanbog Barnabo, have been forced to refund a total of CFA27.5 million (about $94,000) to the national exchequer (New African, Jan. 1990; p.19).

 Political Pressure from Various Groups And Associations

 In June, 1990, Kenya's President, Daniel arap Moi, threatened to hunt down "like rats" those who were calling for political reform (The Economist, June 23, 1990; p.39). The African chief never threatens his people. Nor does he talk thus to his people:

         Lusaka, Zambia. August 14, 1990 (Reuters) -- President Kenneth D. Kaunda of Zambia, under growing pressure from advocates of democratic change, mounted a campaign against the revival of multiparty system in his country.

 Mr. Kaunda, who abolished political pluralism in 1973, accused the democracy movement of receiving funds from outside the country and of abusing the freedom to campaign in a referendum on multiparty rule.

`I have bent backward in the spirit of patience and tolerance and have allowed multiparty supporters to behave as though they were a registered party in Zambia,' he said at a news conference. `I am now going to unleash UNIP forces,' he added, referring to the ruling United National Independence Party, `to go and explain the dangers' of multiparty government in Zambia.

  The 66-year-old President, who has ruled his country of 8 million since independence from Britain in 1964, said advocates of political pluralism are bent on destroying Zambia (The New York Times, Aug. 15, 1990; p.A6).

 First, it was not the role of the African chief to "unleash" his forces "to go and explain the dangers" of a particular political course. Rather, it was the governed who told the ruler how they wished to be ruled. Second, it was not the function of an African chief "to bend backward" and allow a political movement to exist. Freedom of association was a right in traditional Africa.

 In fact, freedom of association was so common feature of indigenous African systems that it was taken for granted. The commoners could form associations, religious, economic or political, with whom they wished and when. The chief or king had no power to ban these associations. Some of them brought political pressure to bear on despotic rulers and to check misrule or abuse of power.

 As noted earlier, the Akans had a commoners' association whose leader was called the Nkwankwaahene, which was not a hereditary position. Qualities for this position were eloquence and bravery. Through him, the commoners complained to the council of elders and forced the elders to consider any representation he made on behalf of the commoners. "In this way, the office of the Nkwankwaahene provided an effective channel for expressions of popular criticisms against the ruler and his government. It enabled the elders to take action against the ruler without being charged with disloyalty or jealousy" (Amoah, 1988; p.175).

 There were various other associations and commoner societies: for example, asafo companies, age-grades, and secret societies. The asafo companies of the Akans of Ghana were primarily warrior organizations of the common people or the youth. They were often organized in the face of external aggression to defend the chiefdom. But the asafo companies also performed a number of social services such as road work, sanitation and other duties that arose during annual festivals. They might refuse to perform these services to show their displeasure at a tyrannical chief. Moreover, they became an effective political force in the enstoolment and destoolment of chiefs. "No chief would remain on the stool for long if the asafo companies were united against him" (Amoah, 1988; p.176).

 The age-grade system of the Igbo provided a variety of checks against despotism. The age-grades were arranged in order of seniority. Members of each age-grade stood together and acted together as one body in public affairs. Each age-grade controlled the moral conduct of its members. "If a member stole, for example, the rest of the age-grade called on him to restore the stolen articles to the owner and to pay a fine in kind to the grade" (Amoah, 1988; p.176).[2]

 These age-grades were ranked in an order of seniority. There were the senior, intermediate and junior grades. Within the society as a whole, the power, authority, rights and duties of each person depended on the position of his age-grade in the hierarchy of the age-grade system. Thus, the senior age-grade of the elders constituted the governing class of the society, while a number of intermediate grades combined to act as the executive organ of the government.

 Members of each grade jealously safeguarded their own status and the correct relationship that should exist between their grade and those subordinate and superordinate to theirs. The age-grade system, therefore, provided an effective balance of power in the society especially in those societies which had no centralized machinery for political and administrative control like the pre-colonial Igbo societies (Amoah, 1988; p.177).

 Political checks were also applied against African chiefs by secret societies. The African continent in the pre-colonial days was the home of numerous such societies, many of which continued to exist even during the colonial period. "One writer enumerated about 150 of such societies in 1929" (Amoah, 1998; p.177). They were abolished in Nigeria in 1978.

 Some were mystic societies, some patriotic and a few others were subversive and criminal. For example,

 In order to gain admittance to the society of leopard-men of Cameroon and Central Africa (Manja and Banda), the applicant had to kill a close relative (mother, son, or first wife in preparation for a ritual festivity. The members of this society, citing the need for vengeance as their justification, abducted and murdered people who had been accused of witchcraft. For these rituals they disguised themselves as leopards, either wearing skins of that animal or tattooing their bodies with colored mixtures in imitation of leopard skins. They walked on all fours, touching the ground only with their toes, so as to make their footprints resemble the leopard's, and they voiced similar cries. The same atmosphere of tension and collective terror, leading to self-destruction, prevailed in Zaire among the amiotes and leopard-men of the northeast, by the Ubangui River, and, in the crisis of the 1930s, in the Wamba and Bunia regions (Coquery-Vidrovitch, 1988; p.191).

 Most secret societies, however, were founded to enforce, maintain and teach tribal tradition, the custom and beliefs of their respective ethnic groups. More importantly, they "could bring pressure to bear on the rulers and restrain them from pursuing unpopular measures" (Amoah, 1988; p.177).

 [1] This is similar to modern day practice in the United States. “The National Archives and Records Administration stores gifts to the president — many of which end up in their official libraries — as well as the vice president and member of their families. Under a 2006 rule, recipients may not keep gifts from foreign officials that are worth more than $305, for fear of the potential influence on U.S. policy. They are accepted, however, on behalf of the American people” (The Washington Times, Dec 8, 2007; p.A2).

     [2] This self-policing aspect of the age-grade system might be of interest to African Americans in combating the soaring crime rate in black neighborhoods.

[ayittey1]

Bloated African State Bureaucracies

Africa’s public sector is packed with cronies, relatives and party hacks in a multiplicity of parallel institutions and ministries with overlapping functions. Ghana, for example, has Ministry of Aviation, Ministry of Roads and Highways, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Roads and Transport, Ministry of Ports and Railways. Why not just one Ministry of Transportation?

Bloated bureaucracies are riddled with willful dissipation of public funds, financial irregularities and profligacy. Ghost workers abound:

 ·        In Ghana, there were over 6,000 ghost workers on government payrolls and their salaries collected by living workers in Ghana (Ghana Web, Dec 13, 2014).

·        In Nigeria, 62,893 ghost workers were nabbed and hopefully reburied (African Leadership, Feb 18, 2015).

·        Of the 1.2 million civil servants in Congo DR, an astonishing 500,000 were found to be ghost workers (Der Spiegel, June 5, 2017).

 In 2009, Kenya had 94 ministers and deputy ministers; Zimbabwe had 82. Angola checked in with 88. Ghana, with a population of 25 million, had 97 cabinet and regional ministers plus their deputies. By 2019, the number had grown to 126 -- the largest in Africa.

 In addition, there are ministers of state at the presidency, presidential staffers and advisors. At each ministry, there are a principal secretaries, deputy principal secretaries, assistant deputy principal secretaries, etc. The next batch comprise governors or regional ministers and their deputies. Then there is the legislature – Senators and MPs, all feeding off the government trough.

 Then each Minister must have a government bungalow (house), a Pajero (SUV), a saloon car for Madam, a garden boy, a cook, a day watchman, a night watchman and a security guard to accompany the official. Then each senior government officer is entitled to a house loan, furniture loan, fridge loan and even an education loan for the children. These perks were offered by the colonial masters to their subjects to entice them to serve in the colonies, but hardly made sense to retain them after independence. Nigerian legislators are highest paid in the world. Its Senators enjoy an obscene smorgasbord of perks and allowances that take their salaries to a cool $2 million each when 60% of the population earn less than $2 a day.[1] An outrageous perk is "hardship" allowance.[2] In Uganda, Parliament voted Shs68 million ($18,320) to cover the funeral expenses of each MP in 2016 (Daily Monitor, Sept 15, 2016).

 The huge government workforce consumes 70 percent of Ghana’s budget; 80% in Angola. In Zimbabwe “Treasury figures show that the public sector wage bill currently accounts for 90% of government income, starving other critical sectors of funding” (Zimbabwe Independent, Dec 15, 2017). . This means that the government has little savings left for capital expenditures for development. The government has no funds to fix roads or build new ones. Other forms of infrastructure – such as schools, hospitals, electricity and water supplies – deteriorate.

 Sure, Africa is furiously fighting corruption. In Feb 2014 when Lamidu Sanusi, the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, reported that some $20 billion in oil revenue was missing, it was he, the governor, who was immediately sacked by ex-Pres. Goodluck Jonathan for financial recklessness and misconduct! (BBC News, Feb 20, 2014). In Zimbabwe, the anti-corruption czar, Ngonidzashe Gumbo, was himself a bandit, jailed for 10 years for defrauding the commission of $435,000 (The Herald, March 12, 2015). Elsewhere, the bodies set up to fight corruption in Kenya and Tanzania were themselves also corrupt.[3]

 Africa needs to extricate itself from its veritable man-made conundrum. Poor people need basic social services and incentives to improve their lives and produce more. The gangster state provides them no such incentives. Instead, it saps their economic vitality. And the current crop of leaders is not interested in reform, period. The entry of China in Africa has aggravated the situation by removing the incentive to reform.

 [1] See the blogpost https://cattembam.wordpress.com/breakdown-of-nigerian-senator-earnings/

[2] A Nigerian dissident website, nairaland, published a breakdown of their salaries and allowances.in Dec 2014: * Basic Salary (B.S) - N2,484,245.50 * Hardship Allowance (50% of B.S) - N1,242,122.70 * Constituency Allowance (200% of B.S) - N4,968,509.00 * Newspapers Allowance (50% of B.S) - N1,242,122.70 * Wardrobe Allowance (25% of B.S) - N621,061.37 * Recess Allowance (10% of B.S) - N248,424.55 * Accommodation (200% of B.S) - N4,968,509.00 * Utilities (30% of B.S) - N828,081.83 * Domestic Staff (70% of B.S) - N1,863,184.12 * Entertainment (30% of B.S) - N828,081.83 * Personal Assistants (25% of B.S) - N621,061.12 * Vehicle Maintenance Allowance (75% of B.S) - N1,863,184.12 * Leave Allowance (10% of B.S) - N248,424.5 * Severance Gratuity (300% of B.S) - N7,452,736.50 * Car Allowance (400% of B.S) - N9,936,982.00 * TOTAL MONTHLY SALARY = N29,479,749.00 ($181,974.00) * TOTAL YEARLY SALARY = N29,479,749.00 x 12 = N353,756,988.00 ($2,183,685.00) * EXCHANGE RATE: $1 = N162

https://cattembam.wordpress.com/breakdown-of-nigerian-senator-earnings/

 [3] In Kenya, see the Daily Nation, March 10, 2015.http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/With-House-at-the-centre-of-corruption-claims/-/440808/2649036/-/pb4ky4/-/index.html). In Tanzania

The Citizen, Feb 7, 2015 http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/national/Anti-graft-watchdog-on-list-of-shame--says-study/-/1840392/2615764/-/hsxyd5z/-/index.html

[ayittey1]

ENOUGH TALK. TAKE BACK AFRICA FROM THEM!

They are stone-deaf, impervious to reason and allergic to reform, They amend Constitutions to stay in office for life. They have captured the state and transformed the presidency into their own family property. They have destroyed countries, looted the treasury to amass huge personal fortunes while their people wallow in abject poverty and squalor. They can’t even provide clean water and electricity to their people.

 In Nigeria, Lagos Hospital sometimes does surgical operations by candle light because quite often there is no electricity. And Lagos International Airport diverts planes to Cotonou, Benin because its runways lack landing lights due to lack of electricity. In Zimbabwe, hospitals have closed for lack of medical supplies. Electricity is available for only six hours a day.

 Africans are ANGRY!

 Their struggle for freedom has perfidiously been betrayed by a vile assortment of black neocolonialists, quack revolutionaries, briefcase bandits, Jaguar Marxists, crocodile liberators and military coconuts aided by a swarm of crowbar politicians and intellectual prostitutes, who have sold out their integrity and principles.

 Take back Africa from their grip!

 The time for talking is over! For a step-by-step instruction on how to topple a brutal dictator, reform dysfunctional state institutions and effect change without violence, become a Cheetah and join the team of the legendary Prof. George Ayittey, author of the highly acclaimed book, Defeating Dictators, sign up here and get a free e-book. https://bit.ly/391gBvq

 Make 2020 their last year in office!

Fed up with their tomfoolery and buffoonery!

[ayittey1]

Externalists Versus Internalists

HY AFRICA'S CRISES HAVE PERSISTED

Africa's crises have remained intractable not so much because of a dearth of solutions but rather because of the flawed approaches its leaders took to solve them. Scientifically, effective resolution of a problem requires taking five basic steps. The first is to expose the problem, which normally is done through the media (newspapers, magazines, radio, TV) and public fora (conferences, seminars, workshops, and speeches). That is the business of intellectuals, journalists, editors and writers. The second is to diagnose the causes of the problem. The third is to prescribe a solution. The fourth is to implement the solution, and the fifth is to monitor it to see if it is working. If not, the dosage may be increased or an entirely new remedy tried.

         The diagnosis may be considered the crucial step. A faulty analysis of the causes may lead to a wrong prescription, which may treat only the symptoms and not the fundamental causes, or worse, may aggravate the ailment. To avert such possible malpractice, a diagnosis must be subject to critical public review and debate to determine its validity and to ensure that important causative factors have not been overlooked.      Regrettably in most African countries, the process of crisis resolution rarely went beyond step two (the diagnostic stage). If step two was reached, a faulty diagnosis was invariably performed, leading to the prescription of a wrong solution. Worse, that solution was itself implemented poorly or not at all in many cases. Corruption scandals fall into this category. In 1993, for example, Ghana's auditor general released a report that detailed a catalogue of corruption and embezzlement by high government officials, costing a staggering 401 billion cedis (about $400 million) over a ten-year period (1983-1992). But not one single bandit was indicted.

         For six years, 1988 to 1994, Nigeria's military rulers squandered $12.4 billion in oil revenue, estimated by the September 1994 Pius Okigbo Commission to be a third of the nation's foreign debt. A Petroleum Trust Fund set up by former head of state, General Ibrahim Babangida "lost" $600 million. No one was prosecuted. Most Nigerians collapsed into hysterical laughter when they heard their late head of state, General Sani Abacha, had launched "a war on corruption," because they knew "several of his cronies, active or retired, are millionaires and no military men involved in the banking scandal [that cost the country $180 million] have been touched. `When the soldiers have eaten enough, he retires them,' said a civil-rights lawyer." (The Economist, June 8, 1996, 48).

Exposure

         "He who conceals his disease cannot expect to be cured," says an Ethiopian proverb. Yet, for much of the postcolonial period, exposing a problem in Africa has almost always been impossible because of censorship, brutal suppression of dissent, and state ownership or control of the media. “Journalists in the Angolan state media are subject to severe censorship and are unable to report on the civil war, corruption, abuse of power, human rights and maladministration” (Index on Censorship, Nov/Dec 1999; p.231). Corrupt and incompetent governments denied or concealed their embarassing failings (abuse of power, looting and atrocities) until the problems blew up in their faces. But by then it was too late to solve them. As Adam Feinstein, editor of the monthly publication of the International Press Institute, put it: "The press is always a first scapegoat of governments. They can't blame themselves, so they have to blame somebody else" (The Washington Post, April 6, 1995, A15).

         In Ivory Coast, police seized copies of the fifth issue of the monthly, Africa Golf Eco, on July 27, 1999. Copies of the paper, which specializes on economic issues, were taken from kiosks in Abidjan by security forces without a warrant. The issue contained a feature entitled “Disinformation, Manipulation, Corruption, Embezzlement. Is the Bedie System at death door”? (Index on Censorship, Sept/Oct 1999; p.128). Indeed, on Dec 24, 1999, President Bedie was overthrown in a coup d’etat.

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Coup Made Ivory Coast Elite Face the Music

 By Karl Vick

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, January 10, 2000; Page A14

 ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast—When the soldiers shot the lock off the door of Room 419 of the Golf Hotel on Dec. 24, Laurent Fologo was standing in front of the television, barefoot. The general secretary of the Democratic Party, which had ruled Ivory Coast for 40 years, was caught without shoes but not without warning: Five years earlier, a journalist had suggested that Fologo--who like other Ivorian politicians watched a lot of foreign TV--might do well to bend an ear to the music favored by the soldiers who were now dragging him outside.

 "I told him in 1994 that what the young people are saying in music reflects the popular discontent," said Joachim Beugre, political editor of the independent Le Jour newspaper. "But he didn't take it seriously."

 The result was a military coup backed by a reggae beat. As mutinying soldiers arrested Fologo--whom they later released--and sent President Henri Konan Bedie scurrying overseas, other troops seized the state radio station and put back on the air the recordings of Ivorian musicians whose banned music had inspired them.

 "They're the people who tell the truth," Sgt. Olivier Zadi declared of the musicians. "They say exactly what happens. It's because of them that we became conscious of what's going on and said, 'Enough is enough.' "

 Sgt. Alaid Kouame nodded toward the station he was helping to guard. "We take their songs, we go to the radio station, and we play them," he said.

 They played "Dictatorship," by Alpha Blondy and the Solar System, and "The Thieves of the Country (Kleptocracy)." They played Tiken Jah Fakoly singing "fight the powers that divide" and Serge Kassy's "Pay Your Taxes," aimed at members of the political elite who don't.

 Kouame's favorite is "Tattletale," about courtiers currying favor with a ruler. After hearing it, a retired general named Robert Guei telephoned Kassy, who wrote it. Guei said he recognized his fate in that song, having been dismissed as army chief of staff after refusing the president's order to send troops to an election boycott demonstration in 1995. Kassy was so impressed, he wrote "My General."

 Today, Guei is Ivory Coast's new leader, heading a transitional government he said will hold power only until free elections can be scheduled . . .

 "In weak democracies, musicians are like journalists," said Blondy, 46. "They talk about things that some journalists wouldn't dare to because all the papers are owned by political parties. We are the voice of the voiceless."

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         The freedom that is most critical to the existence of all other human freedoms is that of expression--the freedom to express one's thoughts, wishes, and criticisms by words and actions without fear of reprisal. For Africa to find solutions to its problems, Africans must have this freedom. They cannot solve their problems in a "culture of silence," characterized by intimidation, censorship, and intolerance of alternative viewpoints. To expose corruption, human rights violations, economic mismanagement, and abuse of political power, freedom of expression is crucial.

         Only in an atmosphere supporting the free exchange of ideas can the people find internal, self-reliant, native, and efficient solutions. The absence of intellectual freedom prevents the search for and development of internal solutions. This, in turn, has two pernicious ramifications. First, it perpetuates the offensive notion that Africans are incapable of devising their own solutions to their problems. Second, it forces the adoption of externally generated solutions, which do not always work.

         In Africa's own supposedly primitive and backward indigenous system, freedom of expression was recognized and respected. At council meetings and village assemblies, ordinary tribesmen participated in the decision-making process by voicing their opinions freely. Further, they took part in debating the various positions until a consensus was reached. Former Prime Minister of Ghana, Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia (1967) observed, "The traditions of free speech and interchange of views do not support any claim that the denial of free speech or the suppression of opposition is rooted in traditional African political systems" (29).

         Traditional African rulers did not arrest, detain, or "liquidate" those who disagreed with them. In fact, one of them, Chief Osagyefo Kuntukununku, stressed the need for freedom of expression to reach consensus: "Future governments would do well to encourage a dialogue between themselves and the populace, confront contrary views with well reasoned arguments rather than intimidation and detention. Suppression of dissent and the denial of the right to express contrary views can only encourage sycophancy and opportunism. There must be a free press to enhance dialogue, efficiency and accountability and to champion the cause of victims of governmental vindictiveness and arbitrariness (West Africa, 27 August - 2 September 1990, 2372).

         in modern Africa, private newspapers that were courageous enough to expose the problems were shut down and their editors either jailed or murdered. For example,

Although Zimbabwe is on paper a multi-party democracy, open debate -- let alone outright political dissent -- has been increasingly discouraged. At the University of Zimbabwe, students and staff have been swatted by riot police with tear gas and clubs for complaining about corruption, a growing scourge. [And] three senior journalists at the weekly Financial Gazette, the country's leading free voice, have been charged with "criminal defamation." [And] a new law enables Mugabe to sack outspoken board members of any independent charitable organization and replace them with government-blessed appointees" (The Economist, 19 August 1995, 38).

          The supreme irony of the vilification and repression campaign is that quite often it is counterproductive. It is a truism that persecution of a person by a brutally repressive regime never achieves its intended objective. Rather, it transforms the victim into a hero, because what is bad in the eyes of the devil must be good. Countless examples can be given: Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, and Kenneth Kaunda were all persecuted by repressive governments but they subsequently became presidents of their respective countries. Wole Soyinka, hounded and jailed by Nigeria’s military government, subsequently became a Nobel laureate. The military government of Ghana never learned from this. One K. Danso-Boafo wrote: "By preventing the Movement for Freedom and Justice (MFJ) from using the premises of the Teachers' Hall for a symposium, and holding and questioning its deputy national secretary Mr. Kwesi Pratt, [Ghana's] PNDC functionaries are making `political martyrs' out of the MFJ and its leadership -- something any astute politician would want to avoid. The political history of Africa is replete with such political miscalculations" (West Africa, 3-9 June 1991, 892).

         On 12 May 1994, persons believed to be agents of the PNDC sneaked into the premises of Free Press and littered it with human excrement. The result? The circulation the crusading Free Press soared and it became Ghana's most popular paper.

         Intolerance of alternative viewpoints is a disease that afflicts the the ruling elites of Africa. Until "educated" Africans learn to accept intellectual diversity among themselves, they are doomed as a race.

 The Diagnosis: Externalists Versus Internalists

Even when a problem was finally exposed in Africa, the second and crucial step of diagnosis was usually mishandled. On the causes of Africa's crisis, there have been two schools of thought: the externalists and the internalists. The externalists believe that Africa's woes are due to external factors. Disciples of the externalist school include most African leaders, scholars, and intellectual radicals. For decades the externalist position held sway, attributing the causes of almost every African problem to such external factors as Western colonialism and imperialism, the pernicious effects of the slave trade, racist conspiracy plots, exploitation by avaricious multinational corporations, an unjust international economic system, inadequate flows of foreign aid, and deteriorating terms of trade. “President Danial arap Moi accused the IMF and other development partners of denying Kenya development funds, thus triggering mass poverty” (The Washington Times, June 3, 1999; p.A12). "Marginalization" and “globalization” have now become the new complaints of African leaders. The West's abandonment of Africa for Eastern Europe, they warn, will vastly impede their efforts to alleviate crushing poverty and squalor.

         When the African crisis first emerged in the late 1970s, the causes and diagnoses most frequently offered by African intellectuals and government officials were external. Debates and public scrutiny were not permitted. In his book, The Africans, African scholar and historian Professor Ali Mazrui examined the African crisis, claiming that almost everything that went wrong in Africa was the fault of Western colonialism and imperialism. "The West harmed Africa's indigenous technological development in a number of ways" (164). He attributed Africa's collapsing infrastructure (roads, railways, and utilities) to the "shallowness of Western institutions," "the lopsided nature of colonial acculturation" and "the moral contradictions of Western political tutelage" (202). In fact, "the political decay is partly a consequence of colonial institutions without cultural roots in Africa" (199). Therefore, self‑congratulatory western assertions of contributing to Africa's modernization are shallow: "The West has contributed far less to Africa than Africa has contributed to the industrial civilization of the West" (164). Decay in law enforcement and mismanagement of funds were all the fault of Western colonialism too. "The pervasive atmosphere in much of the land is one of rust and dust, stagnation and decay, especially within those institutions which were originally bequeathed by the West" (210). They signal "the slow death of an alien civilization" (204) and Africa's rebellion "against westernization masquerading as modernity" (211). Western institutions are doomed "to grind to a standstill in Africa" or decay. "Where Islam is already established, the decay of western civilization is good for Islam since it helps to neutralize a major threat" (19).[1]

         Many African leaders also subscribed to and espoused similar views ‑‑ that the causes of Africa's crises were externally generated. In fact, since independence in the sixties, almost every African malaise was ascribed to the operation or conspiracy of extrinsic agents. The leadership was above reproach and could never be faulted.

         A problem with the educational system was, of course, the fault of colonialism. An electricity failure was unquestionably due to an imperialist plot. Commodity shortages were easily explained: the nefarious activities of neo‑colonial saboteurs. Even bribery and corruption, according to Mazrui (1986), was the fault of colonialism and the "coming of new institutions such as Western‑style banks, with their new rules and new values" (241). President Mobutu offered a more dramatic elucidation. Asked who introduced corruption into Zaire, he retorted: "European businessmen were the ones who said, 'I sell you this thing for $1,000, but $200 will be for your (Swiss bank) account'" (New African, July, 1988, 25).

          In his address to the third Congress of the Democratic Union of Malian People recently, President Moussa Traore observed that,

The world economy is passing through a period characterised by monetary disorder  and slow trade exchanges. The worsening crisis is affecting all countries, particularly developing countries.

 Due to the difficult situation, which is compounded by the serious drought, socio‑economic life has been affected by serious imbalances that have jeopardised our country's development growth. Debt servicing, characterised mainly by state‑to‑state debts are a heavy burden on the state budget. The drop in the price of cotton which accounts for much of the country's foreign earnings, has led to a great reduction in export earnings" (West Africa, 16 May 1988, 876).

   According to Zimbabwe Independent (April 27, 1999),

Given the government’s spendthrift ways, its steady refusal to slim down the bloated patronage state administration and the elite’s determination to steal everything that is not nailed down and quite a bit that is, the result has been to deliver Zimbabwe into the hands of the IMF/World Bank. Meanwhile, ministers bilk on whatever bills they can, the infrastructure falls to bits before one’s eyes and the state searches ever more desperately for revenue. School fees have been pushed up to the point where many parents are having to take their children out of school and illiteracy is increasing for the first time in a century.

Mugabe angrily rejects the criticism of those who blame the government for the economic crisis. It is, he says, the fault of greedy Western powers, the IMF, the Asian financial crisis and the drought. The latter explanation causes a quizzical raising of eyebrows as the daily torrent continues to bucket down” (p. 25)

 High‑ranking African government officials, needless to say, toe their leaders' lines. According to C. M. Nyirabu, governor of the Bank of Tanzania in 1985, "Africa's ills are the result of severe exogenous shocks, such as steep oil‑price escalations in the last decade, persistent drought, prolonged recession in the industrial countries and their resort to increased protectionism, continued policies of strict monetarism, and reduction in real terms of external assistance" (Lancaster and Williamson, 1986). David Phri, the governor of the Bank of Zambia in 1986, was quite explicit: "The hostile world economic environment has been the dominant factor in the problems now confronting developing African countries" (Helleiner, 1986, 93).

         According to the Chairman of Ghana’s ruling NDC, Issifu Ali, whatever economic crisis the nation is going through has been caused by external factors. “He said the NDC has since 1982 adopted  pragmatic policies for the progress of Ghana, adding that the macro-economic environment of 1999 has been undermined by global economic developments" (The Independent, Nov 18, 1999; p.3)

          The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) echoed the same "external" dirge. In July 1989 it launched its document, "The African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programmes for Socio‑Economic Recovery and Transformation." In a review, West Africa magazine (17-23 July 1989) noted:

The framework is not just another plan. By starting with a structural analysis of Africa's economy, it is able to identify the real impediments to development. In the process, it formulates a critique of the legacy of colonialism, the borders which render 14 countries landlocked, bequeathed 13 with a land area of less than 50,000 hectares each, and have left 23 with a current population of less than 5 million each. It addresses engendered dependence on commodity exports, infrastructural inadequacy, and the dominance of commerce over production. (1160)

          The ECA has not changed its tune, still maintaining that “The prospects for African economies continue to be shaped by the outcome of its most important determinants, the weather and the external economic environment. `African economies remain vulnerable to exogenous economic and non-economic shocks, such as movements in international commodity prices and erratic weather conditions,’ notes K.Y. Amoako, executive secretary of the ECA” (The African Observer, June 7 – 20, 1999; page 23).    

         The constant wailing over colonial legacies was at best disingenous and attributing much of Africa's crisis to external factors alone was intellectually deficient. In fact, they became standard excuses that many African leaders conveniently employed to conceal their own failures and incompetence. Finally in March 1986, at the Special United Nations Conference on Africa, the African delegates themselves, in a refreshing breath of candor, admitted that "past policy mistakes", especially the neglect of agriculture, had contributed to the African crisis. An earlier report by the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which served as the core of the African sermon at the United Nations, urged African nations "to take measures to strengthen incentive schemes, review public investment policies, and improve economic management, including greater discipline and efficiency in the use of resources." Most notably, the OAU Report pledged that "the positive role of the private sector is to be encouraged."

         Even a year before that, the African Development Bank and the Economic Commission for Africa produced reports that were adopted at the OAU meeting in July 1985. A review of these reports by West Africa was quite revealing:

The African region is described as suffering from a long‑standing crisis rooted in low productivity, limited capacity for adjustment, government policies which have long over‑emphasized intervention and control and overlooked incentives, and an international economy characterised by weak demand for Africa's exports, high interest rates, and stagnating resource flows.

 But while external factors have played a determining role in present difficulties, the report says that African policymakers are accepting that internal policy failures are also to blame and that there must be change. The overall direction of change is seen to be towards more market freedom, more emphasis on producer incentives, as well as reform of the public sector to ensure greater profitability (West Africa, 21 April 1986, 817). (Emphasis added).

          That was back in 1985. Since then, the OAU or African governments have made little effort to draw up internal solutions. As it turned out, the "admission" of the role of internal factors lacked sincerity and a committment to address them. It was more of a ruse to extract greater foreign assistance. But such tricks are not helpful in solving a crisis. If internal factors played a role, they ought to be tackled.

The Colonial Legacies

Of all the external factors used to explain Africa's crisis, perhaps the most frequently used has been that of the legacy of European colonialism. The same litany of baneful colonial legacies has been trotted out again and again since independence in the 1960s. African intellectuals have not realized that African government officials often use these legacies as excuses to conceal their own mismanagement and incompetence. It is true that colonialism did not bequeath much to Africa. When Tanzania gained its independence in 1961, it only had 16 university graduates to run the country. Said Julius Nyerere, former head of state in a speech at the University of Edinburgh on 9 October, 1997:

Tanzania or Tanganyika then had approximately 200 miles of tarmac road, and its "industrial sector" consisted of 6 factories ‑ including one which employed 50 persons. And despite the Education and Health services provided by some Christian Missionaries and later begun by colonial governments, at independence less than 50% of Tanzanians children went to school ‑ and then for only four years or less; 85% of its adults were illiterate in any language. The country had only 2 African Engineers, 12 Doctors, and perhaps 30 Arts graduates, I was one of them.

          Zambia was a little luckier: It had 100 university graduates, l,500 school‑leavers with full secondary education and 6,000 with two years at secondary schools in a country of 4 million.[2]  What the Portuguese in Guinea‑Bissau left after 300 years of colonial rule was pitiful: "14 university graduates, an illiteracy rate of 97 percent and 267 miles of paved roads in an area twice the size of New Jersey. There was only one modern plant in Guinea‑Bissau in 1974 ‑‑ it produced beer for the Portuguese troops ‑‑ and as a final gesture before leaving, the Portuguese destroyed the national archieves" (Lamb, 1983, 5).

         But in many African countries, the leadership could not maintain, let alone augment, the little that was inherited from colonialism. In fact, they destroyed it. The inherited infrastructure -- roads, bridges, schools, universities, hospitals, telephones, and even the civil service machinery -- are now in shambles. For example, when Zaire obtained its independence in 1960, it had 31,000 miles of macadamized roads. Today less than 3,500 miles remain usable. In Ghana, where the "colonial" roads are strewn with yawning potholes, officials insist that it is rather the vehicle owners who must obtain "road-worthiness certificates" for their vehicles and not the roads that must be made "vehicle worthy."

         In the 1950s Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, used to be proudly called "the Harvard of Africa." Today it is in a state of dilapidation. Universities in Ghana, Nigeria and other African countries are in similar states of decrepitude. The University of Ghana, for instance, has not seen a new coat of paint since the colonialists departed in the 1950s. Bridges built by the colonialists are now falling apart for want of repairs. Railways and other infrastructural facilities are in various stages of decay. Who is to blame for all this? The colonialists or incompetent African leaders?

         It is true that the past must be studied to provide guidance for the future. But a mind deeply obsessed with the past is captured by it. Such a captive mind is incapable of cogent analysis of present day and future issues. Nor can it take advantage of auspicious opportunities that are currently available. World conditions are certainly not what they were 50 or 100 years ago. There are new technologies, new commodities, new tastes, new attitudes, and new opportunities. But all these remain invisible to the mind that is deeply engrossed in colonialism. When a new market opportunity arises, many African presidents captured by the past analyzed it with woefully outmoded mental constructs.

         There has been a constant whimpering over Africa's artificial colonial borders as the source of many of the crises plaguing the continent. Says Denis Sassou-Nguesso, former president of the Republic of Congo and former chairman of the OAU:

Africans were placed within colonial boundaries. Today, the agitation, the periodic outbursts of rage, the procession of displaced populations, and the trail of refugees, reminds us how arbitrary these national borders really are. World powers pressure African nations to work toward democracy and economic reform, but they seem unconcerned about helping us to solve the crisis of displaced people: a crisis which stems from artificial colonial boundaries (The Washington Times, 5 December 1996, A17).

          This, however, could not be further from the truth. While it is true that several ethnic groups, such as the Somali and Ewe of Ghana, found themselves sliced up and allotted to different countries, the people of Africa traditionally have paid little attention to borders. They move when the need arises, border or no border, as attested to by movement of refugees. The best realization of this traditional reality would be one black African nation south of the Sahara, in which people of various tribes could move freely without harassment from the border police -- at least the political equivalent of a free trade zone, in which people and goods could move freely.

         Somalia proves that the artificial borders are not the real cause of the crises. It is ethnically homogenous, yet it collapsed. And when the Republic of Somaliland seceded, it broke away along colonial lines. During the colonial era, the Italians occupied the northern part of Somalia and the British the southern part. As Richard Dowden, Africa correspondent for The Economist, noted: "Almost no protagonists in Africa's current wars are calling for changes to boundaries and none of these wars would be solved by them. In these wars, rebels are fighting for power -- or a slice of power -- at the center; that is, in the capital, where the trappings of a unified state are" (Prospect, July 1996, 61). And, "By creating artificial countries, the argument goes, yesterday's map-makers are responsible for today's Africa's wars. It sounds plausible, but it is not true. There is not a significant movement in Africa today that wants secession or a change in borders. no ethnic group divided by a frontier is demanding reunification; on the contrary, most such groups have learnt to exploit their situation commercially and politically" (The Economist, 25 January 1997, 17).

         Furthermore, the practicality of redrawing boundaries to conform to ethnicity is questionable. There are more than 2,000 ethnic groups in Africa; nationalism given full vent, might result in more than a thousand little "Djiboutis," each with its own currency, flag, national airline with a one-plane fleet, and Swiss bank account for the president. In 1993, Eritrea broke off from Ethiopia to become an independent country. Five years later, they were at war in a dispute over their boundaries. Moreover, why the lament over artificial colonial borders when the OAU recognizes the "territorial integrity of each member nation" in its charter? Only African governments -- the same members of the OAU -- pay much attention to borders for the collection of import "duties" by official and unofficial personnel.

         Travel today in independent Africa has been rendered far more difficult than even during the colonial days. Travelers have to contend with not only numerous border checkpoints but also roadblocks within a country itself. It is no secret that these roadblocks serve only as points where uniformed vagabonds extort money from innocent passengers. In an irate letter to West Africa (17-23 July 1989, 1184), Mr. R.A. Dawson, headmaster of St. Bartholomew's Boarding School, Zaria, Nigeria, wrote:

In June 1989, I arrived at the Murtala International Airport, Ikeja, on a Ghana Airways flight No. GH502. After clearing customs and immigration, I boarded an airport taxi for Iddo motor park where I hoped to find another vehicle to the north where I reside and work.

 At Illupeju roadblock, our taxi was stopped by three policemen who checked my luggage and papers, an act outside their jurisdiction. Then to the astonishment of the driver and myself, police corporal No. 64539 took all the money I had on me. When I protested, he threatened to shoot me dead, and later defended his action by claiming that I was an armed robber caught in the act because as a Ghanaian I had no right to decent employment in Nigeria. (1184)

           This occurred in a sub-region the leaders of which pompously affirm the ECOWAS protocol of free movement.

The New And Angry Generation of African Internalists

Internalists are those who believe Africa's woes are due more to internal than external factors. This school of thought maintains that while it is true that colonialism and Western imperialism did not leave Africa in good shape, Africa's condition has been made immeasurably worse by internal factors: misguided leadership, systemic corruption, capital flight, economic mismanagement, senseless civil wars, political tyranny, flagrant violations of human rights, and military vandalism.

         Internalists argue that the attribution of Africa's crises solely to external forces is intellectually deficient for several reasons. First, pragmatism and scientific scholarship demand, at the very least, an unerring scrutiny of all causative factors, both external and internal. Common sense dictates looking both ways before crossing a street, or risk being hit by a truck. Africa is in bandages because its leaders looked only one way -- at the external.

         Second, external factors are beyond the control or manipulation of most African countries on an individual basis. Even if possible, any effort to alter the external environment is likely to be protracted, taking decades. For example, the basic structure of the international economic system has not changed much in the past 50 years, although there have been improvements in payment mechanisms, transportation of goods, and information delivery systems. This international economic system is likely to remain so for a long time to come.

         Third, internal factors are mostly man‑made or artificial and are therefore more amenable to change or correction by African governments than the external factors. No matter how much colonialism is abhorred, that artifact of history cannot be undone or rewritten; it must be seen as a given.

         In the internalist school of thought may be found Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, Kwesi Armah, the author of The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Gilchrist Olympio, an opposition leader in Togo, South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, the present author, and the silent peasant majority.

         At the 35th OAU Summit in Algiers (July 15, 1999), Thabo Mbeki shocked the delegates by stating that African leaders who took power by force would be banned from future OAU Summits. And, rather than waste time bemoaning the effects of globalization, “African leaders should take steps to integrate the continent’s economies,” he told them.

         “Mere moral appeals from the have-nots to the haves are not likely to take us very far,” he said, encouraging his OAU colleagues “to gain a profound understanding of economics, so that we can intervene in an informed manner.” He expressed impatience with those leaders who simply complain that globalization is passing Africa by. He reminded them that little has been done to implement the 1991 Treaty of Abuja that established an African Economic Community (The Washington Times, July 15, 1999; p.A14).

          When soldiers seized power in Africa, they almost always cited corruption, economic mismanagement and high cost of living as justification. And the average person on the streets does not blame colonialism and American imperialism for his hardships.

         Because of censorship, repression, intolerance of diversity of opinion, and persecution -- even in the broader African intellectual community -- the number of internalists in the public arena is small. Incompetent African leaders naturally reject the internalist position and place blame on external factors. The state-controlled media carries their position. They are aided, directly and indirectly, by vocal leftist radicals who denounce internalists as "Uncle Toms," accusing them of "letting the white man off the hook" and "providing ammunition to the racists." This is a reflection of the insidious intolerance of intellectual diversity among black elites that we noted earlier. But internalists are fighting back against this invective. A growing number of African intellectuals are now deemphasizing historical and external factors and looking inside Africa itself for the true causes of the crises and solutions.

         In a paper presented to the Committee on African Studies at Harvard University on 28 April 1981, Gilchrist S. Olympio, a Togolese opposition leader and the son of Togo's first president who was killed in the 1967 coup that brought Gnassingbe Eyadema to power, wrote:

Economic thought and action over the last few years in Black Africa have tended to emphasize factors external to the continent (exogenous factors) as opposed to internal institution and structure, as the main explanation for stagnation or regression in the economic standards of the continent. Deteriorating terms of trade between rich and poor countries, widening parities between agricultural and industrial prices, volatile commodity prices, oil prices movements since 1973 and natural calamaties such as drought and desertification of the continent are considered the key to [an explanation of] the poverty. The fascination for this kind of reasoning in Black Africa is not difficult to fathom, as the non-performance of our economies can be attributed, not to internal structures and policies, but to external considerations.

 This paper contends that such factors, if true, are marginal to the central problem of underdevelopment in Black Africa, compared with the absence or malfunctioning of indigenous institutions, factors which for many reasons are relegated to backstage of the debate.

 That economic thought should tend to concentrate on external factors is not difficult to explain. Blame is easier to apportion without any serious domestic implications. Since independence in 1960, carefully tailored constitutions by erstwhile colonial powers such as France and Britain, have collapsed under the onslaught of energies unleashed by our newly-found freedom. Representative government, including Bill of Rights, protection of minorities, built-in mechanisms to ensure orderly change, have given way to autocracies of various types, civilian or military. In many cases, these new regimes have been buttressed by one-party systems which, far from unifying fairly heterogenous countries, as intended by their creators, have now as their sole raison d'etre, the keeping in power of a particular regime . . . What the new constitutional changes have done, however, is to move our countries further on the road to becoming closed societies. In a West African country, for instance, wiht the notable exception of Nigeria and Senegal, only one daily newspaper appears and that is produced by the Ministry of Information. Radio, television and other media of communication are tightly controlled by the government. It is therefore not surprising that, as our societies become politically less open, public discussion of internal institutions and structures shold be given scanty treatment. In some cases, it may even be dangerous to debate subjects that have become a taboo. On the other hand, public airing of external variables, especially if it can include a swipe of the old whipping-boy, necolonialism, is all the more welcome . . .

 Rational fiscal and monetary policies, combined with the creation of healthy institutions in Black African countries, happen to be a pre-condition for economic development. International effort, if it is to be meaningful, must first help our countries to achieve sound domestic management.

         Said Akobeng Eric, a Ghanaian, in a letter to the Free Press (29 March - 11 April 1996): "A big obstacle to economic growth in Africa is the tendency to put all blame, failures and shortcomings on outside forces. Progress might have been achieved if we had always tried first to remove the mote in our own eyes" (2).

         Angry at deteriorating economic conditions in Ghana, thousands of Ghanaians marched through the streets of the capital city, Accra, to denounce the ruling regime of President Rawlings. “If Jerry Rawlings says the current economic crisis is due to external forces and therefore, beyond his control, then he should step aside and allow a competent person who can manage the crisis to take over," Atta Frimpong demanded (The Ghanaian Chronicle, Nov 29, 1999; p.1). Appiah Dankwah, another protestor blamed the NDC government for mismanaging the resources of the nation.

         A strange thing happened at an international conference on Africa's Imperative Agenda, held in Nairobi in January 1995. The conference document, prepared by Philip Ndegwa, former chairman of Kenya's Central Bank, and Reginald Green, of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, stated in stark terms: "Africa is now a continent which cannot feed itself, meet its external financial obligations or the bill for its essential imports, protect its increasing population, prevent environmental degradation, or exert any meaningful influence in the international decsion-making process. A substantial number of African countries are now in danger of national disintegration, including some which, as recently as the late 1980s, were held up as success stories" (Africa Recovery, June 1995, 8).

         It is striking that the document devoted only three of its 18 sections to the external dimension of Africa's multiple crises and focused more on Africa's own responsibility and initiatives.

         Internalist influence was also evident at "Africa 2000" Conference organized by the Hofstra Cultural Center of Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York on 12 October 1995. In its "Call for Papers" flyer, part of the instructions read: "All papers should focus on, or at least prominently discuss, the immediate future faced by Africa. Thus papers dealing with historical events, for example, would not be appropriate, unless the thrust of the discussion related the historical context to an understanding of the present or immediate future." Traditionally, conferences on Africa have featured speaker upon speaker who perorated passionately about the iniquities of colonialism, the slave trade and Western imperialism. The Hofstra conference sounded a call for a paradigm shift, making it clear that papers dealing with such historical factors would not be welcome.

         On 12 August 1995, various Nigerian groups and organizations held the Nigerian National Leadership Forum in Nashville, Tennessee, to find out exactly what the "problem" was with Nigeria. As African News Weekly (26 August 1995) reported:

Professor David Murauko, the chairman of the forum, was sure he knew what Nigeria's biggest problem is. Tribalism. After all, this is what motivated him to organize the conference. So he opened his presentation by asking the audience what they felt was Nigeria's greatest problem.

 One participant got up and said Nigeria's greatest problem was corruption. Another person said Nigeria's biggest problem was poor economic conditions, explaining that if everyone had something to eat, no one would be complaining. Another person said lack of democracy; another said lack of rule of law; and yet another said personalized politics (2).

           No one at the forum blamed colonialism, imperialism, slavery, exploitation by an unjust international economic system, or other external factors. The report continued: "One participant summed it up this way: Asking people to define Nigeria's problem is like sending twelve blind men to feel an elephant and then describe it. They would all have different but accurate descriptions of the animal depending on what part they touched." (2)

         Metaphorically speaking, the "elephant" is the alien, all-powerful, gargantuan, predatory state that was established by African leaders and elites after independence.[3] This "elephant" has been the source of most of Africa's "environmental problems." Invested with tremendous powers to which there have been no countervailing checks and balances, the marauding state pillages, rapes, and loots, trampling upon human rights, and leaving human debris and carcasses in its wake. This abominable political monstrosity was created by African leaders themselves and, therefore, cannot be blamed on colonialism.

         Bad and Corrupt Leadership

The leadership in much of Africa has not only been a hopeless failure but also a disgrace to black people. At a press conference in London in April, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, “lambasted African leaders who he says have subverted democracy and lined their pockets with public funds, although he stopped short of naming names” (The African-American Observer, April 25 – May 1, 2000; p.10). President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire was a prime example. Zaire should be a properous country; it is blessed with vast mineral deposits and rich agricultural lands in the fertile Congo basin. But arrant misrule and plunder have reduced it to tatters.

         More and more Africans now blame their leaders for the mess they find themselves in. Said Chinua Achebe (1985):

The fear that should nightly haunt our leaders (but does not) is that they may already have betrayed irretrievably Nigeria's high destiny. The countless billions that a generous Providence poured into our national coffers in the last ten years (1972-1982) would have been enough to launch this nation into the middle-rank of developed nations and transformed the lives of our poor and needy. But what have we done with it? Stolen and salted away by people in power and their accomplices. Squandered in uncontrollable importation of all kinds of useless consumer merchandise from every corner of the globe. Embezzled through inflated contracts to an increasing army of party loyalists who have neither the desire nor the competence to execute their contracts. (3)

           Said John Hayford in New African (April, 1994): "Africa's biggest problem today lies with the leadership. They are so removed from the people that they are looked upon as foreigners. They are driven by self-interest, so excessive that their peoples' interests are forgotten -- hardly different from the colonial masters" (7). A Ghanaian university student, Kwesi Obeng, added this view:

In all hue and cry, what is both infuriating and irritating is the speed with which African countries together with their leaders are quick to blame all that go wrong on the continent on our supposed "Enemy" - the West. This sad culture is what has propelled me to protest with all the venom that I can muster . . . Why can't we accept our responsibilities as a race (black race), face the music for our deeds and always tend to pass the buck? (The Ghanaian Chronicle, 21 January 1996, 4).

           More tragic has been the failure of Africa's intellectuals. One Nigerian scholar, Linus U. J. Thomas-Ogboji, excoriated members of his own profession:

 We Nigerian [intellectuals] bear the mark of Cain. Ours is the incredible stigma of the man who whimpers and averts his gaze while thugs rape his wife and daughters. We have acquiesced in the unmitigated horror that smothers Nigeria. Many of us bite our tongues because we nurse secret hopes of a chance at the feeding trough. A few, with expectations of reward, even go so far as to defend the Nigerian army. But most of us are just plain scared, paralyzed by fear and chagrin. Is it fear of death that holds us emasculated? There comes a time to die and in death gain redemption. When a people give up the desire for freedom, they are better off dead (African News Weekly, 26 May 1995, 6).

           By attributing Africa's ills to external factors, many of Africa's intellectuals, wittingly in expectation of reward or unwittingly, absolved the leadership of responsibility. Additionally, the stress on external factors presupposed that the solutions had to come from external sources; hence the repeated appeals to the international community. Unfortunately, this approach has proven disastrous. Foreign solutions have not worked well in Africa because they do not fit into its unique sociocultural milieu. The continent is a graveyard littered with a multitude of failed imported schemes and systems. Name a foreign system and a collapsed replica can be found -- from basilicas to congresses and even combine harvesters.

       [1] Mazrui, of course, was guilty of the same ethnocentric charges he leveled against Westerners. Islam was not indigenous to Africa. Mazrui devoted several pages to the iniquities of the Western slave trade. "A substantial part of Africa's population was dragged off, kicking and screaming and shipped to the new

plantations of the Americas" (100). Curiously, Mazrui never mentioned the atrocities of the East African slave trade that brought suffering or death to at least 2 million black Africans in the nineteenth century. The East African slave trade was largely controlled by Arabs. Mazrui, a Muslim, devoted only one sentence in his entire book to this Arab slave trade (160).

     [2] Rather foolishly, both Tanzania and Zambia after independence opted for state planning and development ‑‑ an economic system that made heavy demands on skilled bureaucrats, the very inputs they lacked.

     [3] The word "alien" is chosen deliberately because of the basic antinomy of the modern systems with indigenous African institutions. This is important in order to avoid sterile ideological debates that inevitably result from the assessment of systems. The standard being used to evaluate them is African, not foreign.

[ayittey1]

Gambia 2019 Draft Constitution Needs A Rewrite

 Gambia unceremoniously unveiled its 2019 Draft Constitution. It will be presented to the people for approval in a referendum in 2020. The Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) must be commended for crafting a Constitution within such a short time after the former president, Yahya Jammeh, was ousted in January 2017. But the draft Constitution Is 185 pages long – way too long. Rhetorically, it careens from one extreme to another. If Gambia with a population of 2.35 million people needs a 185-page Constitution how long should be the Constitution of Nigeria with a population of over 200 million?

 The chapter outline of the draft Constitution specifying freedoms, rights, responsibilities of public officers alone take up 12 pages. Then it goes into mind-numbing detail on the following topics:

·       Leadership and integrity,”

·       Responsibilities of leadership

·       Restrictions on the activities of public officers;

·       Restrictions on persons dealing with public officers in the service of this date

·       Legislation on leadership

·       The national assembly

·       The judiciary

·       Human rights commission

·       Anticorruption commission

·       State owned enterprises

·       National Council for civic education

 Are you still awake?

 Well, one must give the CRC some credit for being original. At least, they did not try to copy and blend the America and the French constitutions together as Ghana did in 1992. A: Constitution reflects the political history experience and aspirations of the people and, therefore, has a cultural imprint. For example, if a people have labored under a despotic monarch for a long time, they may want to craft a Constitution that avoids another form of despotism. One simply cannot copy such a Constitution if one has never had such an experience, let alone blend two dissimilar experiences together.

 Should Ghana copy the Japanese Constitution whose head of state has historically been an Emperor? So why copy and blend the American and the French? Rather interestingly, the American and the French constitutions approach the issue of liberty from two diametrically opposed angles. The American people see the date as a necessarily evil monster that will gobble up all trample on the rights of the people. They have alienable rights which must never be breached by the state. These are Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which are enshrined in the Constitution. In the American political scheme of things, the Constitution serves as a shield against a marauding state. The more power that state has, the less free its people.

 By contrast, the French Constitution sees the state as a guarantor or protector of the rights of the people .The French Revolution of 1789 overthrew the despotic monarchy of Louis XIV, who famously declared that, “L’etat cest moi” (the state is mine). When the people rose up in the 1789 Revolution, they wanted to make it clear to the ruler that the state belonged to the people and they have the rights that must be protected and guaranteed by the state. It is difficult to see how the two views of the state can be reconciled or blended.

 Now how do Gambians see their state? Obviously, the answer must reflect their postcolonial experience with government, which is not different from other Africans ’experiences. In postcolonial Africa, government ceased to exist and failed to provide basic levels of security, freedom, human rights and social services for its people. In many countries, including Gambia, the government was at war with its own people, repressing and brutalizing them. Worse, the government was hijacked by a phalanx of bandits, crooks and vagabonds who used the machinery of the state to enrich themselves, cronies and tribesmen, excluding everybody else. Jammeh plundered the state treasury of nearly $1 billion. Obviously in a new constitution, this monstrosity should not begin more powers. Instead, every effort must be made to clip its wings so that it does not abuse its powers in the future. The draft Constitution gives the state too much power.

 It is understandable why the CRC produced a voluminous Constitution that .long because they wanted to nail everything down. You see, the former president -, ahem, a military coconut - insisted on being addressed as His Excellency President Professor Dr. Al-Haji Yahya Abdul-Azziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh. He governed on the fly – from the seat of his pants, making up rules as he went along. He vowed to rule for 40 years and claimed to have discovered the cure for HIV/AIDS. He also claimed he had mystic powers and would turn Gambia into an oil-producing nation. He threatened to behead gays. But despite his bluster, he was terrified of witches and evil sorcerers. He was booted out of office by ECOWAS troops in January 217. He is being sheltered in Equatorial Guinea by another scrofulous dictator. He must be expelled and sent to the ICC for crimes against humanity.

 Not wanting to take any chances, the CRC tried to put everything down. It would have said this to Jammeh, “Hey, it says here that you cannot rule for 40 years; only two terms in office.” But then, in so doing, the CRC went overboard and it is not alone. You see, in Africa, the art of Constitution making is not well understood.

 A Constitution is a social contract between the people (the governed) and the rulers, regarding how they shall be ruled. It should not be a document codifying how the president would like to rule the country – as was the case in Ghana in 1992 when Ft./Lte. Jerry Rawlings created a very powerful executive. Nor should it be a phantom document favoring one political candidate – as was the case in Nigeria in 1999. Under pressure to return the country to civilian rule, Nigeria’s military brass produced two constitutions in 1999 hidden from sight and held closely to its chest. Which one to release to the public depended upon who won the March 1999 elections. So Nigerians went to vote without seeing their Constitution, nor knowing their contents. Imagine.

 More than half of Gambia’s draft Constitution is unnecessary or somewhere else and can be cut. For example, a Constitution should never attempt to define leadership qualifications for the president as one can to draw up more than 100 traits of leadership – from bravery and diligence to honesty and trustworthiness. Even then, should the lack of a redeeming trait disqualify one from becoming president? Nor should the Constitution wade into normative subject areas such as integrity. How does one determine if a person has integrity or not if they have not been tested as president?

 A Constitution should not be the place to specify duties and restrictions on the activities of public officers. These are best placed in the Civil Service Code. The Constitution may specify broadly the functions of the National Assembly and the Judiciary but should stay away from detailed exposition of how they should be run. For example, the Constitution may say that they shall be a Speaker, chosen from the party that wins the most seats in the National Assembly. How they select the Speaker or what their function should be ought to be left out of the Constitution.

 The duties of the president should also be left out of the Constitution. For example, the Constitution may say that the president should act in cases of national emergency to protect the people and safeguard the security of the nation. It should not specify what is a national emergency, nor what actions the president should take. Naturally, what constitutes an emergency may change over time. The U.S. Constitution was promulgated in 1789 and what was an emergency back then is no longer today because of technological advancements in dealing with hurricanes, fires and flooding. The Constitution may also assign foreign policy to the president but should not go into specifics how foreign policy should be conducted as circumstances would change over time depending upon the nature of the foreign government.

 On rights, the draft Constitution goes into incredible detail about the rights of women, minorities, the youth, the elderly, the disabled, children, etc. it should as well have included the rights of cockroaches! All that was needed to say was to enshrine the dignity and rights of persons. For example, the Constitution may recognize a person’s right to a dwelling or home. It should not attempt to define a home as what constitutes a dwelling will change over time.

 A Constitution for an African country should not exceed 20 pages. One thing we should understand in Africa is that the more power the state has, the less free its people. Our ancestors in some ethnic groups very well understood this axiom and abolished the state altogether. They are called stateless societies – such as the Igbo, Somali and Gikuyu. By contrast, we write Constitutions in modern Africa by assuming that head of state is a Messiah, bestowing powers upon powers on dictators such as General Samuel Doe of Liberia, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, etc. Then when they started abusing those powers, we found to our chagrin that we had no countervailing powers to check them.

 A good Constitution should start from this premise: No offence is intended and your academic credentials notwithstanding, we regard you – the president – as a potential bandit and tyrant. Then the Constitution proceeds to put in place measures and safeguards to prevent him from becoming a tyrant and a bandit. For example, you cannot dictate or take decisions alone by yourself. You must take decisions by consensus with your Council of Elders or Village Assembly. Fantasy? This is exactly how or illiterate peasants govern themselves in the traditional system.

 In line with indigenous African philosophy, the state should be regarded as necessarily tyrannous that should be chastened, not over-empowered. This is akin to the American ethos. This does not mean the state must necessarily be abolished but rather finding ways of reining in a state which is out of control. In many African countries The American way of dealing with an out of control state is to create three equal branches of government – the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, with each checking the others. Africa may devise a different system. For example, Africa may establish a Supreme Council of Elders, given the reverence Africans confer on the elderly. Such a Council, given their collective wisdom, may veto legislation, cause the removal of the president or judges.

 Another innovative feature for on Africa Constitution is to exempt the president from the appointment of the heads of those institutions designed to check him. The president should Not be allowed to appoint the Atty. Gen., Supreme Court Justices, electoral commissioner, Speaker of Parliament, Governor of the Central Bank, etc. A conflict of interest situation is involved. It is difficult to have free and fair elections when electoral commissioner is appointed by the president.

 It must be noted that the inviolability of the Constitution is not assured by inserting into the Constitution a clause saying that “military coups are illegal” – as Nigeria did with its 1979 Constitution. In 1983, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (the current president) tpssed the Constitution aside after seizing power in a military coup. Clearly, that constitutional clause did not stop him. A better deterrent must be devised.

 Gambia’s National Assembly may lodge a copy of the Constitution with the African Union or the United Nations with the express instructions that the international community shall recognize only the civilian government that upholds this Constitution. It Cannot be a tended, abridged or abrogated without the approval of supra=majority (at least 66%) of the National Assembly/this is to prevent a situation where some military coconut, waving a bazooka, seizes power, suspends the Constitution, plays martial music and declares himself president. To succeed, he must also suspend the Constitution lodged with the African Union or the United Nations.

 Even more important, , if Africa needs a Constitution, it should go back to its roots and hold a constitutional convention on the Manden Charter, promulgated at Kurukan Fuga. According to UNESCO, the Charter is one of the world's oldest constitutions, predating the U.S. Constitution. Proclaimed in 1236, following a major military victory, by the founder of the Mandingo Empire and the assembly of his wise men, the Manden Charter, was named after the territory situated above the upper Niger River basin, between present-day Guinea and Mali. The Charter, though mainly in oral form, contains a preamble of seven chapters advocating,

 “”Social peace in diversity, the inviolability of the human being, education, the integrity of the motherland, food security, the abolition of slavery by razzia (or raid), and freedom of expression and trade.

 The Empire disintegrated when Mahmud Keita IV died around 1610. According to oral tradition, he had three sons who never agreed about succession and this sibling rivalry contributed to the end of the Mali Empire. But he words of the Charter and the rituals associated with it are still transmitted orally by griots from father to son in a codified way within the Malinke clans.

 To keep the tradition alive, commemorative annual ceremonies of the historic assembly are organized in the village of Kangaba (adjacent to the vast clearing of Kurukan Fuga, which now lies in Mali, (close to the Guinean border). The ceremonies are backed by the local and national authorities of Mali and, in particular, the traditional authorities, who see it as a source of law and as promoting a message of love, peace and fraternity, which has survived through the ages. The Manden Charter continues to underlie the basis of the values and identity of the populations concerned.

The Charter was transcribed, translated and republished. It divided the empire into ruling clans (lineages) that were represented at a great assembly called the Gbara. There were 16 clans known as the Djon-Tan-Nor-Woro (quiver carriers) responsible for leading and defending the empire. There were also 4 clans known as the Mori-Kanda-Lolou (guardians of the faith) who guided the ruling clans in matters of Islamic law. There were 4 nyamakala clans (people of caste) who had the monopoly on certain trades, which included but was not limited to smelting, woodworking, and tanners. Lastly, there were 4 clans of djeli (masters of speech) who recorded the history of the empire through song and story-telling.

 Apparently, there was clan specialization or division of labor – just as we saw about sexual division of labor. Certain tasks such as defending the Empire and recording its history were reserved for certain clans. The Constitution contained 44 edicts, divided into four sections relating to Social Organization (edicts 1-30), Property Rights (edicts 31-36), Environmental Protection (edicts 37-39) and Personal Responsibilities (edicts 40-44). The constitution also required women to be represented at all levels of government (edict 16) [The Kingdom of Benin and the Swazi Kingdom also required government ministers to be balanced with female counterparts or advisers].

The Charter also guaranteed and upheld, among others, the following edicts,

 Edict 5. Everybody has a right to life and to the preservation of its physical integrity

Accordingly, any attempt to deprive one’s fellow being of life is punished with death

Edict 9. The children’s education behooves the entire society .The paternal authority in consequence falls to everyone.

Edict 14.Do never offend women, our mothers.

Edict 16: Women, apart from their everyday occupations, should be associated with all

our managements.

Edict 20: Do not ill-treat the slaves. We are the master of the slave but not the bag he

         carries.

Edict 23: Never betray one another. Respect your word of honor.

Edict 24: In Manden, do not maltreat the foreigners.[Tell that to black South Africans.]

Edict 31: We should help those who are in need.

Edict 32: There are five ways to acquire property: buying, donation, exchange, work and

inheriting. Any other form without convincing testimony is doubtful. [Tell that to those who preach communal ownership.]

Edict 40: Respect kinship, marriage and the neighborhood.

Edict 41: You can kill the enemy, but not humiliate him.

Edict 44: All those who will transgress these rules will be punished. Everyone is bound to make effective their implementation.

(It is noteworthy that the Charter affirmed the equality of women, freedom of expression, freedom of trade and frowned upon laziness and idleness. From Edict 9 may be traced the African saying, "it takes a village to raise a child." The laws were binding on all, including the ruler (the rule of law). In those earlier times, the most common type of political configuration was the Confederation of clans, which could constitute a state. The Ga Kingdom in Ghana, for example, is a Confederation of six extended families or clans.

It may be noted that the Charter forbade wronging foreigners. Africa has always been hospitable to foreigners. Africa's traditional system of governance has always been open and inclusive, which helped achieve stability. The Mali/Madinke Empire was a confederacy – like all other ancient African empires – and lasted for 400 years. (The Ghana Empire also lasted for 800 years).

 Stability, to a large extent, owed its origin primarily to the design and operation of the indigenous political system in which anybody -- even including slaves -- could participate in the decision-making process, the essence of which was achieving consensus. Note that dictatorship and consensus building are never compatible.

 There was representation of slaves, the freeborn and the nobility at the royal court in most African states. There was even foreign representation. The kings and chiefs of Angola and Asante, for example, allowed European merchants to send their representatives to their courts. No one was "locked out" of the decision-making process, to use modern phraseology. "The Dutch dispatched an embassy to the Asantehene's court as early as 1701" (Boahen, 1986; p.58). In Angola, King Alfonso allowed the Portuguese merchants to send their spokesman, Dom Rodrigo, to his court. Europeans could even be selected chiefs. For example, in 1873, Zulu king Cetshwayo made an English hunter/trader, John Dunn, chief of an isifunda, or district. "Dunn, not content to hover on the periphery of Zulu society, became fully integrated into the social system. He married 48 Zulu women, accumulated a large following of clients, and even rose to the rank of isikhulu" (Ballard, 1988; p.55). Also, the case of Englishman Jimmy Maxen may be cited,  who in 1968 became the odikro of Anyaisi at Aburi in Ghana, shown below. in fact, foreigners can be Chiefs and there are white chiefs in Ghana and Nigeria.

 Africans should be proud of and celebrate this constitutional heritage. First, the Framers of that Constitution may have been backward and illiterate but displayed astonishing sophistication in regards to the rights of women, environmental protection and even compassion. Evidently, African women were liberated centuries before their Western counterparts.

 The political entity – structured on the Confederacy principle in decision-making by consensus – lasted for 400 years. By contrast, modern African leaders and elites, who sport a string of Ph.D.s, including Agricometriiology (the application of nuclear technology to the cultivation of cassava or manioc) could not write a Constitution that would last even 40 years after independence. Why did the primitive Empire built on the Confederacy principle lasted for centuries whereas the modern state built on the unitary state system barely lasted for 50 years after independence? Did our ancestors know something about governance that modern African leaders and elites do not know? It would take a great deal of humility on the part of Africa's ruling elites to answer those questions.

 The peasants could afford to make a white man chief – not so much because they were in awe of white people – but because in their system, real power lay with the people and they could remove bad Chiefs at any time   – not after any specified number of years, such as four years.

 This author has always decried the foolish aping foreign systems and paraphernalia to impose upon the African people after independence in the 1960s. There is s nothing wrong with Africa's own indigenous economic system. All the leadership had to do is to go back and build upon the native traditions of free markets, free enterprise and free trade. But they never did this on the economic front; nor on the political and constitutional front. This was why things went so awry in postcolonial Africa.

In Mali, this betrayal was most perfidious. Instead of decentralized governance – as in a Confederacy – the ruling elites established a highly centralized one in Bamako, the capital. The one-party state system was adopted as well as collectivist agriculture under the banner of socialism. And get this: The one who supervised the destruction and desecration of Mali's heritage was the country's first president, Modibo Keita, who was honored by a number of local griots (a semi-endogamous group of professional bards) in celebratory songs in which the political leader was depicted as the direct descendent of Sunjata Keita, the founder of the Mali empire. The Keita government progressively lost its popularity among various strata of the population. An alliance between the dissatisfied segments of the Malian population—the peasants, the merchants, and the army —led to the success of the military coup d'état of 1968 that ousted Keita. But then the next "rat" -- Moussa Traore -- came to do the same thing: reintroduced the socialist one-party state system, collectivist agriculture, among others,/

 On March 18, 1991, angry Malians took to the streets to demand democratic freedom from the despotic rule of Moussa Traore. He unleashed his security forces on them, killing scores, including women and children. But pro-democracy forces were not deterred and kept up the pressure. Asked to resign on March 25, he retorted: "I will not resign, my government will not resign, because I was elected not by the opposition but by all the people of Mali!!!! But two days later when he tried to flee the country, he was grabbed by his own security agents and sent to jail. From there, he lamented: "My fate is now in God's hands."

 The lesson in all this can be gleaned from this African  proverb: "He who does not know where he came from does not know where he is going." Africa is lost because its ruling elites do not know where they came from. China has Confucius; so they have built 54 Confucius Institutes. Go figure.

Let’s hope the Gambian Constitution Review Commissioners know where they came from.

-------------------------------------------

 The writer, a native of Ghana, and President of the Free Africa Foundation, both in Washington, DC. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The African Take-Off

[ayittey1]

COCONUT CLASSICS

Fed up with the buffoonery and tomfoolery coming out of Africa. So I compiled a litany of the eccentricities and flat-out acts of buffoonery that I have come across in my research and work on Africa. Let me know which one you like the best. Enjoy.

In March 2017, Emmanuel Elibariki, a hip-hop artist, released a song in which he asked “is there still freedom of expression in Tanzania?” He was promptly arrested and his song banned from the airwaves. (The Economist, Oct 19, 2017; p.43).

The late president, Gen. Samuel Doe of Liberia summoned his finance minister – “only to be reminded by aides that he had already executed him” (The New York Times, Sept 13, 2003; p.A4).

In 2016, Uganda’s Parliament voted Shs68 million ($18,320) to cover the funeral expenses of each MP (Daily Monitor, Sept 15, 2016). Hand them over. I will bury them for FREE – with the Cutlass!

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda wants to ban oral sex “the mouth is for eating” https://bit.ly/2ILs3RV

"Corruption is everywhere -- in the villages, wherever", Zambia's Lands Minister Gladys Nyirango acknowledged at a major conference on graft in Africa. Hours later she was SACKED. (Sapa-AFP, March 4, 2007).

A former minister of finance was found hiding – where else? -- in a coconut tree: “Zambia’s former finance minister, Katele Kalumba, was arrested and charged with theft after the police found him hiding in a tree near his rural home. Mr. Kalumba, who had been on the run for four months, is being charged in connection with some $33 million that vanished while he was in office (The New York Times, Jan 16, 2003; p.A8).

In Zimbabwe, the anti-corruption czar, Ngonidzashe Gumbo, was himself a bandit, jailed for 10 years for defrauding the commission of $435,000 (The Herald, March 12, 2015). https://bit.ly/2UCre4b

Zambia President Edgar Lungu is buying a new Presidential Jet fitted with a cutting edge military grade anti-missile defense system which fires lasers at incoming heat-seeking missiles (Zambia Observer, Oct 12, 2018). https://bit.ly/2UyS9ho

In Feb 2019, “The First Lady of Zambia, Esther Lungu, travelled to the US with a 25-man delegation to receive four fire trucks, which the Los Angeles Fire Department, had RETIRED from service” (Punch, Feb 7, 2019). Hopefully they did not fly back with the trucks!

When two coconuts fight . . . https://on.wsj.com/2PlEVzd

RWANDA: “I have caught you supporting rebels to destabilize my government. Take that! The border is closed!” (Delivers a sharp left hook). UGANDA: “Wui! . . . No, it is you who is destabilizing my government. Take that!” (Delivers a stiff upper cut). AU (the referee) is snoring zzzzzzzzzz and awakes: “I APPEAL to both of you to end hostilities!”  And goes back to sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzz https://bit.ly/2SO3Agh   https://bit.ly/2UzW39K

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Two journalists were arrested and charged with publishing false information for reporting that President Bingu wa Mutharika, had moved out of a new 300-room palace because he believed it was haunted. The two, Raphael Tenthani, who works for the BBC, and Mabvuto Banda of the newspaper The Nation, were reportedly taken in raids at their homes. Malawi newspapers and radio stations carried the ghost report over the weekend, quoting a senior official. Mr. Mutharika has angrily denied the reports, saying, "I have never feared ghosts in my life." (Agence France-Presse, March 16, 2005)

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Insecurity challenges heightened in Bayelsa State following separate incidents of kidnapping of four policemen and six other persons along Nembe waterways by gunmen suspected to be sea pirates. Sunday Independent gathered that the gunmen also seized a gunboat belonging to the Nigeria Police in an incident that occurred on Friday. Sources said the gunboat was escorting a barge owned by the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) when the bandits struck (Daily Independent, October 26, 2014).

Coconut Eccentricities

Sudan

“Colonel Ibrahim Chamsadine was Sudan’s defense minister but was arrested and imprisoned in 1995 by Omar al-Bashir for opposing him. Later, the state claimed that he died in a plane crash on June 11, 2008. But he was found in a secret prison under a mosque in the Sudanese city of Omdurmanprison https://bit.ly/2YbKT9c

Mali

In March 1991, angry Malians took to the streets to demand democratic freedom from the despotic rule of Gen. Moussa Traore. He unleashed his security forces on them, killing scores, including women and children. But pro-democracy forces were not deterred and kept up the pressure. Asked to resign on March 25, he retorted: "I will not resign, my government will not resign, because I was elected not by the opposition but by all the people of Mali." Two days later, when he tried to flee the country, he was grabbed by his own security agents and sent to jail. From there, he lamented: "My fate is now in God’s hands."

Kenya

“President Daniel arap Moi has urged Kenyans to abstain from sex for at least two years to try to curb the spread of AIDS. . .Moi was speaking after the government announced plans to  import 300 million condoms to fight AIDS” (The Telegraph, July 13, 2001)

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Uganda

Uganda’s Agriculture Minister, Kibirige Ssebunya, declared that: “All the poor should be arrested because they hinder us from performing our development duties. It is hard to lead the poor, and the poor cannot lead the rich. They should be eliminated" (New Vision, Kampala, Dec 15, 2004). He advised local leaders to arrest poor people in their areas of jurisdiction.

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Soldiers teach wealth creation

BUSHENYI- Soldiers implementing the newly established operational Wealth Creation program have urged farmers to stop being afraid of working with them, saying they are not a colonial army that used to force people to do community tasks. The appeal was made at a meeting for the program’s southwestern army coordinators in Bushenyi District last week. The project replaced Naads last year. The meeting was organized by the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) aimed at harmonizing collaboration between UCDA and coordinators to improve the quality and production of coffee (Daily Monitor, Feb 24,   2015)

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No fewer than 300 Nigerian soldiers FLED to Cameroon when Boko Haram insurgents overran Mubi, the second largest city in Borno State from security forces on Oct 30, 2014 (SUNDAY PUNCH, Nov 2, 2014).

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Kibaki

In May 2005, Lucy Kibaki, one of the two wives of President Mwai Kibaki, was hopping mad. She stormed into the Nairobi office of The Daily Nation, confiscated notebooks, tape recorders and pens. Brandishing a copy of the newspaper, Mrs. Kibaki, flanked by several security officers and the Nairobi police chief, Kingori Mwangi, demanded to know the whereabouts of a reporter who had written a story headlined “Shame of First Lady” that offended her. “I am here to protest, and I’m not leaving until I find the reporter who has been writing all these lies,” a witness said. Mrs. Kibaki then camped herself for much of the night at the desk of the newspaper's editor, unleashing a fury of broadsides at the staff. When a local television crew arrived, she slapped a cameraman. The problem was that she chose the wrong newspaper to unleash her full fury. It was the rival Standard newspaper that had printed the offending article, not the Daily Nation. (The Daily Nation, May 9, 2005). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Nigeria

The Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC) has proposed to spend N5 billion on the procurement of anti-terrorism, chemical, bio-radiation and NUCLEAR weapon equipment and other new projects. Breakdown of the budget by Daily Trust reveals that N254.2m was proposed for the procurement of NUCLEAR weapon equipment, as well as N196.6m for the purchase of two BMW 900 RT, 374 Sinoki motorcycles, 200 bikes and 30 rider kits. Daily Trust, Feb 21, 2018 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Zimbabwe

Three people have appeared in court in Zimbabwe, accused of stealing a suitcase containing $150,000 (£117,600) of cash from the country's ousted president, Robert Mugabe. The suspected thieves allegedly spent the money on cars, homes and animals. A relative of the ex-president, Constantia Mugabe, is among the accused, government-owned media report. She allegedly had keys to Mr Mugabe's rural home in Zvimba, near the capital Harare, and gave the others access. The other suspects were employed as cleaners at the time of the theft, which allegedly happened some time between 1 December and early January (BBC Jan 10, 2019) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-46830960 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kenya

In January 2000,Kenya’s ruling party’s (KANU’s) gang of thugs known as Jeshi la Mzee (“the old man’s army”), attacked a group of opposition leaders outside parliament who were protesting against the resumption of IMF assistance. When the police were called to restore order, “It was the protesters, not the thugs, who were arrested” (The Economist, Feb 5, 2000; p.42). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Zimbabwe

"In Zimbabwe, the thieves are in charge and their victims face prosecution" (The Economist, March 16, 2002; p.18). In 2000, Zimbabwe's Supreme Court ruled that invasions of white commercial farmlands by "war veterans" did not constitute a workable form of land redistribution -- a position, which was affirmed by a Commonwealth agreement struck in Abuja, Nigeria in Sept 2001. But President Robert Mugabe tossed the agreement aside, reconstituted the Supreme Court by packing it with pliant judges who then ruled on Dec 6 2001 that the violent land invasions were legal (The Economist, Dec 8, 2001; p.45).

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President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, was miffed in December 2017 when two Ugandan musicians suggested in a song that he should retire. The two were promptly arrested and charged with disturbing the peace of the president. “Singer David Mugema and music producer John Muwanguzi were accused of having composed and disseminated via the internet a tune titled “Wumula”, meaning “retire”, their lawyer Abdallah Kiwanuka told AFP” (Mail &Guardian, Dec 6, 2017).

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DR Congo frees goats from prison

A minister in the Democratic Republic of Congo has ordered a Kinshasa jail to release a dozen goats, which he said were being held there illegally. Deputy Justice Minister Claude Nyamugabo said he found the goats just in time during a routine jail visit. The beasts were due to appear in court, charged with being sold illegally by the roadside. The minister said many police had serious gaps in their knowledge and they would be sent for retraining. Mr Nyamugabo was conducting a routine visit to the prison when, he said, he was astonished to discover not only humans, but a herd of goats crammed into a prison cell in the capital. He has blamed the police for the incident.(Thank God, he didn’t blame the colonialists). It is not clear what will happen to the owners of the goats, who have also been imprisoned. BBC Africa analyst Mary Harper says that given the grim state of prisons in Congo, the goats will doubtless be relieved about being spared a trial. There was no word on what their punishment would have been, had they been found guilty.

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Traffic Drives Nigerians Nuts, but a Trip to a Shrink May Go Too Far Enforcement of One-Way Rules in Lagos Tests Motorists' Sanity; 'A Lot of Cannabis'

LAGOS, Nigeria—You'd have to be crazy to drive the wrong way down a one-way street here. At least, that's what cops in the local Anti-One-Way Squad say.

Seeking to stem an epidemic of wrong-way driving, Lagos authorities have ratcheted up the standard $160 fine. Scofflaws now also face psychiatric evaluations. Contesting the charge can jack up the fine to $1,600—and you still get sent to a shrink. The legal logic is simple, says Sina Thorpe, spokesman for the Lagos state ministry of transportation: If you violate one-way rules, "you should have your head examined." Threatening errant drivers with psychiatric exams, which locals deem more bureaucratic than medical, is a twist in the rough road of Nigerian traffic. Lagos bigwigs have long paid on-duty local cops to speed them through jams by riding shotgun with machine guns and menacing other drivers with bullwhips. Cut-price motorcycle taxis use thunderous horns that sound like 18-wheelers to frighten others out of the way. (The Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2011; p.A1

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Zambia: Zambia's Transport Minister, Nkandu Luo, acting to "improve sanity in the transportation industry" ordered all buses and taxis to be painted in same uniform color: Blue and white. The United Transport and Taxi Association (UTTA) who were not consulted on the move, claimed that the imposition of the colors "amounted to the worst form of dictatorship." "If they think it is such a good idea to have a uniform color, why don't they paint all government vehicles in the same blue and white so that they lead by example," UTTA member Mr. Bwalya Chupa complained. Passengers were not impressed either. "The buses should have been repaired before being smeared with a coat of paint," commuter Juliet Sefu opined. Rather than bring sanity to the transportation industry, most Zambians believe the Transport Minister has brought even further insanity to their already beleaguered transportation infrastructure (African Business, May 2001; p.13).

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Sierra Leone: The Sierra Leone Government is urging people to stop jeering and throwing stones at former military leader, Captain Valentine Strasser. A government statement said Captain Strasser had been embarrassed by people throwing stones at him and booing him when he ventured out on the streets of the capital, Freetown. "It is a great concern to the nation," the statement said (Daily Graphic, Accra, August 18, 2001; p.5).

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Uganda

Minister seeks to attract tourists: Uganda has sexy and curvy women   . .     . And coconuts too https://goo.gl/FXWsgi

Chad

The president built a moat around the capital to ward off rebel insurgency led by his relatives: “The government is digging a 10-foot-deep trench around the capital, Ndjamena, to prevent a repeat of an attack last month, when rebels in pickup trucks rolled in and fought two days of heavy battles. The ditch will all but encircle the city, slicing through neighborhoods and forcing vehicles to pass through fortified gateways, a security official said. The remaining trees that line the avenues of central Ndjamena are being felled. Residents say the rebels used trees knocked down by rocket-propelled grenades and cannon fire to block roads during the fighting” (Reuters reprinted in The New York Times, March 8, 2008). And who are the rebels? His own nephews and relatives. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa has launched a space agency, hailing it a "milestone" as he campaigns ahead of elections at the end of the month. The Zimbabwe National Geospatial and Space Agency will deploy earth observation satellites, global navigation satellite systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, geospatial and space technologies for better farming, mineral exploration, wildlife conservation, infrastructure management and disease surveillance, he said in Harare https://bit.ly/2GZCq3w

Coconut Combat on Corruption

In Feb 2014 when Lamidu Sanusi, the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, reported that some $20 billion in oil revenue was missing, it was he, the governor, who was immediately sacked by ex-Pres. Goodluck Jonathan for financial recklessness and misconduct! (BBC News, Feb 20, 2014) https://bbc.in/2Kb8rsE

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Paul Biya Fights Corruption? Don’t snicker; my head it splitting already! The man is holed up in Switzerland watching over his Swiss bank accounts! Holds a cabinet meeting every 4 years. In Oct 2018 he won a 7th 7-year term without even campaigning. He has already been in power for 41 years  https://bit.ly/2XWI4cG

Life in a coconut Republic

Liberia under Pres. Charles Taylor

“Wheel barrows serve as ambulances for the people. The public schools do not function; more than 70 percent of the population is illiterate. Yet, all government ministers have Ph.D.s – some even three or four – all purchased. At the University of Liberia, Charles Taylor offered 11,000 scholarships to his friends in 1997 but did not pay their tuition bills. Nor did his government pay the salaries of university professors and public school teacher . . . Liberia had a judicial system but Taylor named his friends who could not read or write to be judges and attorneys, and sentences were handed down on his orders . . . The capital has a fire building, painted bright red but its only fire truck has no tires, headlamps, or even a hose. Wires dangle from the engine. With no running water in the city, firefighters must jog or hitchhike to a creek three miles away to fetch water in buckets to put out a fire” (The Washington Post, Sep 9, 2003; p.A18). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nigeria

The late General Sani Abacha’s family thought they were smart. They hired Usman Mohammed Bello – a Sudanese from Karsala -- to look after their three children attending school in Amman, Jordan. Usman became a close confidante of Abacha with access to several coded foreign bank accounts opened by the late General. The family so trusted him that Abacha gave him diplomatic status in the Nigerian foreign office in Amman. He was also issued with both diplomatic passport number F317567 and a standard passport number A104786. Subsequently, Abacha was poisoned or died in 1998 from exhaustion from a Viagra-fueled sex orgy – depending on upon which version one believes. A short transitional government led to the election of President Olusegun Obasanjo in March 1999, who vowed to recover Abacha’s loot of about $5 billion from abroad. On October 1, 1999, Usman Bello vanished. A hysterical Abacha family appealed to Nigeria’s police and government for help in catching him! “Nigeria’s State Security Service from from (SSS) established that the Sudanese might have salted away millions of dollars entrusted to him by the Abacha family and may also be privy to other financial transactions of the family overseas, especially in the Arab world” (Weekly Insight, July 19-25, 2000; p.1). Only in a coconut republic would thieves appeal to the police to apprehend a thief! Even then, part of the Abacha loot that was recovered, was quickly re-looted! About $709 million and another ₤144 million were recovered from the loot the Abachas and his henchmen stashed abroad. But the Senate Public Accounts Committee found only $6.8 million and ₤2.8 million of the recovered booty in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) (The Post Express (July 10, 2000).

Coconut Elections

Tanzania

The losing candidate lambasted voters, not his own incompetence, for losing an election: “The candidate of the Tanzania Labour Party (TLP), Augustine Mrema, did well in 1995 with another party, NCCR-Mageuzi, and less well with TLP in 2000. This time, he blamed the voters for betraying him. Mrema, a former home affairs minister who contested the 1995 elections as leader of his own party, chastised the voters for not choosing him previously. "I wonder why you have not given me votes to become president despite my impressive record as home affairs minister," he told a rally in Dar es Salaam broadcast live on radio and television. "I worked as deputy prime minister, which means I was boss to Mkapa and Sumaye, still you chose not to elect me president. Why? Some voters are hypocrites. They proclaim to support you but vote for other people. If you do not vote for me this time, you will have to explain." (Southen African News, Dec 16, 2005) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nigeria

To return Nigeria to civilian rule, the late military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, allowed only 5 political parties to be registered in 1996 and participate in the forthcoming elections. They all promptly chose HIM as their presidential candidate!

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Rwanda: On August 25, 2003, Paul Kagame, leader of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), won 95.05 percent of the vote. His challenger, Faustin Twagiramungu, found his campaign stymied at every turn by government security forces. His rallies were canceled, his workers arrested and his brochures seized. On the eve of the voting, “police arrested 12 of Twagiramungu’s provincial organizers, saying they were preparing election day violence” (The Washington Times, Aug 28, 2003; p.A19). “In Twagiramungu’s home town, soldiers reportedly looked at ballot papers and ordered those who voted the wrong way to try again” (The Economist, Aug 30, 2003; p.32). Faustin Twagiramungu, won 3.62 percent and a third candidate, Jean Nepomuscene Nayinzira, had 1.33 percent (The New York Times, Aug 26, 2003; p.A6). In the 2010 elections Kagame won 93% of the vote and in the 2017 elections he won 99.98% of the vote! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ethiopia: May 2015 election the opposition did not win a single parliamentary seat. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In Ghana’s 1996 presidential election, opposition candidate, Col. Erskine did not win a single vote in his own constituency. In other words, he did not would vote for himself and neither did his wife and four children. He was livid. When he complained bitterly on a radio program, the electoral commissioner tossed six votes his way. Marriage breaker election. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Egypt

In Egypt’s March 2018 elections all of those who expressed an interest to contest either  disappeared or were thrown into jail. The main challenger was arrested and his campaign manager beaten up. The only candidate allowed to run was Mousa Mostafa Mousa. He was a strong supporter of the president. In fact, his own party previously endorsed the incumbent, Abdel Fattahh al-Sisi, who won 97% of the vote. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Zimbabwe

In Zimbabwe’s July 2018 election bore all the hallmarks of the long-ruling ZANU-PF party’s usual machinations. Voters included more than 1,000 people about 100 years old and older; four were even born in the 1880s. Emmerson Mnangagwa (the incumbent) won 50.8% of votes to 44.3% for opposition leader Nelson Chamisa. He scraped through by the skin of his teeth to avoid a runoff! Yeah right! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Congo DR The Mother of all Coconut elections took place in Congo DR on Dec 30, 2018 after being twice postponed. Vote in 3 opposition areas were postponed to March 2019. Rest of the country voted on Dec 30. The Electoral Commissioner declared Felix Tshisekedi, an opposition candidate, as the winner on Jan 15. There was widespread speculation that the incumbent, Joseph Kabila, had made a secret pact with Tshisekedi. The Catholic Church disagreed with the results, giving the nod to another opposition candidate, Martin Fayulu, who declared himself president. A nasty political crisis erupted which wend its way to the Constitutional Court. Awoken out of its slumber, the African Union with indecent haste ordered the Court to hold off and wait for its high level and high profile delegation to come to Kinshasa to resolve the crisis. And the Chairman of the AU seeking to resolve an election dispute? Prez PAUL KAGAME of Rwanda who in Aug 2017 tossed his political rival, Diane Rwigara, into jail and won 99.98% of vote in presidential election https://goo.gl/URjASb The Court told the AU to butt out and mind his own business. It went ahead and confirmed Tshisekedi as the winner. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Coconut Security Forces Mauritania

State news: Mauritania's president mistakenly shot by his nation's troops

(CNN) -- Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who came under fire from his own troops just hours before, took to his country's airwaves Sunday, saying the shooting incident was an accident. "I want to reassure all citizens of my well-being after the accident committed by an army unit on an unpaved road around Touela. ... Everything is fine," he said in an interview broadcast on official Mauritanian television. Troops shot the president late Saturday in what the government is calling a case of "friendly fire" -- though others believe it may have been an assassination attempt. Aziz's convoy mistakenly came under fire as it was heading back toward the capital of Nouakchott, the official AMI news agency reported. The gunshots came from a military unit stationed alongside the road in the west African country. http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/13/world/africa/mauritania-president-shot/index.html By Amir Ahmed, CNN, October 14, 2012 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kenya

In Africa, most of the police are highway robbers and judges, crooks. Tell a police officer that you saw a minister stealing the people’s money and it is you he will arrest! Asked to investigate the brutal murders of Robert Ouko and British tourist, Julie Ward, Kenya police issued this report: “Foreign Minister Robert Ouko was presumed to have broken his own leg, shot himself in the head and set himself afire. Two years earlier, Kenyan officials suggested that a British tourist, Julie Ward, lopped off her own head and one of her legs before setting herself aflame” (The Washington Post, April 20, 2001; p. A19). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ghana

The security forces can unleash the full force of their fury on unarmed civilians with batons, tear gas, water canons and rubber bullets. But how really brave are the security forces? On 16 December 1998, Corporal C. Darko and Constable K. A. Boateng at a Police Station in Accra, Ghana, were instructed to go and arrest Samuel Quartey, who was reported to police for being involved in a theft case. "When the suspect came out brandishing a cutlass (a machete), the police officers took to their heels with the speed of lightning that could have made an enviable record had they been timed" (The Mirror, 2 Jan 1999, 1). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Soldiers on guard duties at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation no longer guard an observation post behind the TV studios because of a ghost who slaps officers who go on duty there at night. In September, 1994, an officer on guard at that sentry came running to the head of security complaining of an invincible hand which had on two occasions pulled his helmet from his head and slapped him. The senior officer, unmoved by the soldier's story, decided to prove him wrong by manning the post himself. Within an hour, the senior officer fled to the office telling a similar tale, this time the ghost allegedly smacked him four times on the face (Ghana Drum, Feb 1995; p.33). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nigeria

On July 23, 1998, Colonel Anthony Obi, Osun State's military administrator, strutted pompously to deliver a speech at a state function  at Osogbo in the southwestern part of Lagos, Nigeria.  As the Daily Champion (24 July 1998) reported: "Panic stricken Nigerian officials ran for safety when first a rat and then a python, apparently drawn by the smell of the rat, made a sudden appearance. The officials leapt up from their seats when the rat, described as having a "long snout and offensive smell," appeared from beneath the carpet by the high table. Colonel Anthony Obi, Osun State's military administrator, and his entourage nervously returned after security agents intervened and killed the beast. (p.1) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kenya

Ambushed by bunch of rag-tag cattle rustlers, Kenya’s elite presidential guards quickly surrendered. Johann Wandetto, a reporter for the People Daily, a newspaper in Kitale, Rift Valley province, submitted a story in the March 6, 1999 edition with the title: “Militia men rout 8 crack unit officers: Shock as Moi’s men surrender meekly.” Wandetto was immediately arrested and sentenced to 18 months in prison on what the court described as an “alarmist report” (Index on Censorship, 3/2000; p.99). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Congo DR

Nor can the security forces shoot straight. When civil war broke out in the DR Congo in 1997, Chad sent in troops to help the regime of Laurent Kabila stave off rebel attacks. What happened? “Congo rebels said 93 Chadian soldiers were killed in an ambush by Kabila government troops who mistook their identities. Chad, one of the nations allied with the Kabila regime, insisted the toll was lower” (The Wall Street Journal, Nov 12, 1998, A1). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sudan

And the mother of all security forces? When the African Union (AU) peacekeepers' base on the edge of Haskanita, a small town in southern Darfur, came under sustained rebel assault on Sept 29, 2007, they fled into the bush. “Ten were killed; at least 40 fled into the bush. The attackers looted the compound before Sudanese troops arrived to rescue the surviving peacekeepers” (The Economist, Oct 11, 2007; p.48) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hoisted by own petard

Ousted Mauritania leader in shock  

The former president of the West African state of Mauritania has said he was stunned by the coup that ousted him from power. Army officers overthrew President Maaouiya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya in a bloodless revolt on Wednesday. Speaking for the first time since the coup, Mr Taya said he had been shocked to find out who was behind it. He was toppled by the former security chief and close colleague, Colonel Ely Ould Mohammed Vall. "My situation reminds me of the old adage: 'God, save me from my friends, I'll take care of my enemies'," President Taya told Radio France Internationale from Niger. "I was stunned by the coup d'etat [...] and even more so when I heard who were the authors," Mr Taya said. President Taya, who survived a number of coup attempts in his 21-year rule, was returning from the funeral of King Fahd in Saudi Arabia when the coup took place. Col Vall, 55, has been director of national security since 1987 and, after played a key role in the 1984 coup which brought Mr Taya to power. Critics accuse the government of using the US-led war on terror to crack down on his opponents. Mr Taya had also prompted widespread opposition by establishing links with Israel, making Mauritania one of only three Arab states to have done so. The following presidents were removed by members of their own security forces: Ben Ali of Tunisia in 2011, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in 2011,  Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria in April 2019 and Omar al-Bashir of Sudan in April 2019. They never learn and keep spending more and more on security forces. In the end they are booted out by members of their own security forces.  Guinea

GUINEA: PRESIDENT ESCAPES ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT Guinea's leader, Lansana Conté,  survived an assassination attempt, his security minister said, after unidentified men in military uniforms fired on his convoy. Mr. Conté, 70, a diabetic chain-smoker who has no obvious successor and is rarely seen in public, later appeared on state television. Military officials said his bodyguards returned fire and foiled the attack. Security Minister Moussa Sampil said that an unspecified number of people had been detained. In his television address, Mr. Conté spoke of "external manipulations" against him but added, "Personally, I only fear my close aides, who pretend they are with me while they are not sincere." (Reuters, Jan 20, 2005). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hundreds of marauding soldiers fired guns in the air in the streets of Conakry and other towns around the country on Friday, further threatening the ability of Guinea's beleaguered president Lansana Conte to govern. Banks, schools, markets and shops all closed at around 11.30am as news spread that heavily armed soldiers were marching into town, after talks between senior military officials and soldiers at a military base near the airport collapsed. "We want the leaders who stole our wages and betrayed us to step down," one of the soldiers marching in central Conakry close to the presidential palace, told IRIN on Friday afternoon. In the morning IRIN also saw presidential guards, distinguished by their red berets, in the center of the city. They were shooting in the air in what appeared to be an attempt to scare off the mutinous soldiers, but the presidential guards were outnumbered and eventually FLED! UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS   11 May 2007

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http://www.punchng.com/news/mubi-battle-300-nigerian-soldiers-flee-to-cameroon-again/

Boko Haram has seized control of a Nigerian town after hundreds of soldiers stationed there reportedly FLED across the border to Cameroon, a police source said. "Boko Haram fighters moved into Ashigashya" overnight on Monday, where they slaughtered three people in front of a church, a Cameroon police source told the AFP news agency on Tuesday on condition of anonymity. “Almost 500 Nigerian soldiers FLED the Nigerian border towns of Ashigashyia and Kerawa to take refuge from Boko Haram fighters on Cameroonian territory” (Al-Jazeera, Aug 26, 2014) www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/08/boko-haram-seizes-town-after-soldiers-flee-2014826181311739107.html

Islamist extremist group Boko Haram seized control of a Nigerian town of Malam Fatori, near the Niger border, after soldiers FLED, an official told the AFP. . . The fighting killed dozens and wounded about 30 people in the a commercial hub known for fishing and farming, the Anfani radio station in Diffa reported. “The town of Malam Fatori was taken by Boko Haram after violent fighting with the Nigerian army overnight,” said the official in Diffa. According to the official, 315 Nigerian soldiers FLED over the border to Diffa. Thirteen who were wounded were treated in a Diffa hospital, while the others have been repatriated (Today, Nov 10, 2014) HTTP://WWW.TODAY.NG/NEWS/315-NIGERIAN-SOLDIERS-FLEE-TO-NIGER-AS-BOKO-HARAM-RAIDS-TAKES-CONTROL-OF-ANOTHER-TOWN-IN-BORNO/

“NO fewer than 480 Nigerian soldiers have FLED into Cameroon following fierce fighting with Boko Haram insurgents. The Cameroonian Army Spokesman, Lt Col Didier Badjek, who confirmed this, said the troops had already been disarmed. (Cameroon Daily, Jan 20, 2015).

HTTP://WWW.CAMEROONDAILY.NET/2014/08/480-NIGERIAN-SOLDIERS-FLEE-TO-CAMEROON.HTML

Mercifully there is the Coconut Cure

In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, there is a place called "the magic corner," where all and sundry, including politicians, come to be relieved or cured of their problems. "Even those top leaders of the government come to that tree," said Shabuni Haruni, a private security guard. "Yes, during the election." Upon the payment of a small fee, a traditional healer ("witch doctor") would take a patient to a huge baobab tree, reputed to be the abode of ancestral spirits. Patients remove their shoes, kneel in front of the tree with their eyes closed. At one session described by The Washington Post correspondent, Karl Vick, "Rykia Selengia, a traditional healer, passed a coconut around and around the head of her kneeling client. The coconut went around the man's left arm, then the right, then each leg. When she handed the coconut to the client, Mussa Norris, he hurled it onto a stone. It shattered, releasing his problems to the winds." (The Washington Post, Nov 12, 2001; p. A21).

[ayittey1]

African Participation in the Slave Trade -- The Myths

History can be written from three perspectives: from that of the victor, a neutral observer and that of the vanquished. Much of Africa’s history was written by the colonialists (the victors) and obviously the victims of colonialism see things differently. For example, seeing no boxes with “ballots” written on them or a building with “Parliament” written on it, many European colonialists jumped to the conclusion that Africans were laboring under horrible and despot chiefs. Therefore, colonialism was good for the Africans because it liberated them from their terrible rulers. This was one monumental nonsense.

True, there were no boxes with ballots written on them and no building with Parliament written on it but that did not mean the essence of democratic governance was unknown. That mythology was as nonsensical as the claim that since there were no hamburgers in the village, Africans did not eat.

 That mythology originated from their failure to make a distinction between the existence of an institution and different forms of the same institution. There are different types of food. The absence of one type – hamburgers – does not mean a complete absence of other types of food. Similarly, there are different types of democracy. Democratic decisions can be taken by majority vote or by consensus. In traditional Africa, decision-making is by consensus. The absence of voting did not mean Africans were living under terrible despotic Chiefs.

 There are many other myths about Africa – in particular, African participation in the slave trade. Written from the African perspective, we seek to demolish the following myths.

 MYTH No. 1: Africans were selling themselves off into slavery before the Europeans arrived on the continent. African chiefs were selling off their own kind into slavery.

 It is true there was slavery in Africa but not the inhumane chattel variety. Slaves in Africa enjoyed certain rights and privileges. Generally, there were no slave markets in black Africa because of the value black Africans place on humanity. More importantly, Africans generally did not have demands for large amounts of labor. Even if they did, they could turn to their clans or extended families.The slave markets that were in Africa, according to historians, were in North Africa (or Arab North Africa) - in such places as Fez and Tripoli.

 Slaves generally were principally war captives from inter-tribal warfare. Say there was a war between two neighboring tribes – the Ashanti and the Fante – and 5,000 Fantes were taken prisoner. The Ashanti King had the following options:

 1.     Keep the 5,000 Fantes in prison, which meant he would have to feed, clothe and shelter them - an expensive economic proposition;

2.     Execute them, a very inhumane prospect; or

3.     Sell them off as slaves and use the proceeds to purchase weapons to defend his Ashanti people;

4.     Absorb and integrate the war captives into Ashanti society, a long, arduous and dangerous process since safeguards must be put in place to ensure that former combatants would pledge allegiance to a new society and authority.

 Which option do you think the Ashanti King would take? If you said the third option, you are right because it was the most humane and economically expedient. The Ashanti also chose option 4, absorbed former war captives (slaves) into their society. To make their integration into Ashanti society as smooth as possible, even the Ashanti King was forbidden to disclose the slave origins of any of his subjects. He would be DETHRONED or removed from office if he did so.

 Now, the more important issue is this. YES, the Ashanti King did sell Fante prisoners of war as SLAVES and therefore participated in the slave trade. BUT the Ashanti King did NOT sell his own kind/people - an important distinction. It was the Europeans who failed to make this distinction, which has been the source of much mythology about the slave trade.

 The Europeans made no distinction between the Ashanti King and the Fante slaves. To the Europeans, it was a BLACK African King selling BLACK Africans. Therefore, Black kings and chiefs were selling their own kind or people. Nonsense. To the Ashanti King, the Fantes were NOT his people but rather the Ashanti.

 Recall that about that time in history, medieval Europe was also fighting tribal wars - between the Flemish, French and the Germans. They were also enslaving one another. But you don’t hear the expression, “The Europeans were enslaving their own kind?” do you? Rather, you read of Germans taking French slaves and vice versa.  So make the same distinctions in Africa - The Ashanti King taking Fante slaves, etc.

The real purpose of that mythology was to whitewash European participation in the slave trade. After all, African chiefs and kings were enslaving their own kind, so it wasn’t that bad for Europeans to do so.

 MYTH NO.2. “African chiefs just went to the market and just grabbed their people to sell off as slaves.”

 You often hear this from African Americans but it is not true for four reasons. First, no African chief can do this and expect to remain chief. He would be removed. As chief, his prerogative is the survival of his tribe. Second, he would be committing an ethnic suicide if he were to sell off his own Ashanti people into slavery. Third, it did not make military sense. He would be depopulating and weakening his own tribe to the benefit of a stronger neighboring tribe. Fourth, their clans would rise up to protect the victims. More importantly, there were traditional injunctions against that. To test this, go to Onitsha market, grab and beat up .Hausa market trader. The entire Hausa ethnic group would go to his/her defense. In fact, many tribal wars started precisely this way – from a dispute or conflict between two individuals. Furthermore, the Ashanti King’s or chief’s role is to minimize any external threat to his people. And if this means depopulating or selling off the entire Fante tribe into slavery he would do so and the better off his Ashanti people would be as that would mean less competition for resources. Yes, he would sell Fantes into slavery but not his own Ashanti people – an important distinction.

 MYTH No. 3. “Africans are brothers and sisters and it is treacherous for them to participate in the slave trade.”

 Again, tribal or ethnic distinctions are important in Africa. To think that Africans consider members of another tribe as “brothers and sisters” is totally ridiculous – an exercise in grand delusion. Why would a Hutus in Rwanda slaughter more than 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994? Or tell the Igbo that the Hausa are their brothers and sisters in 1967.

 Before the twentieth century, many societies in the world practiced some form of slavery. Prisoners of war, political opponents and religious dissidents were often enslaved in Old England. For example, in 1530, in England, under the reign of Henry VIII, a vagrant picked up for the second time was whipped and had half an ear cut off; taken for a third time, he was “to be executed as a hardened criminal and enemy of the common weal” (Marx, 1915; p.806). Seventy-two thousand vagrants were thus executed during that reign. In the time of Edward VI (1547), “if anyone refused to work, he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who denounced him as an idler” (Marx, 1915; p.806). The owner of such a slave might whip him, chain him, and brand him on the cheek and forehead with a letter “S” (for Slave), if he disappeared for two weeks. If he ran away a third time he was executed. An idler vagabond caught on the highway was branded on the chest with a “V” (for vagrant). The same laws were in effect during the reigns of Elizabeth (1572) and of Louis XVI in France. The supporters of Monmouth’s rebellion in England were sold by the Queen.   Cromwell’s Irish and Scottish prisoners were sold to the West Indies and non Muslims who opposed the Sokoto jihad were sold to North Africa.

 Criminals in Europe and Africa could be executed, transported or sold. Europeans favored execution; Africans favored sale.

“In the eighteenth century there were 300 different offences in Britain for which one could be executed. In Dahomey, there were only two, for the king preferred to sell rather than execute his troublemakers. Those who could not pay their debts were sold for life or until the debt was paid. Among the Yoruba, debt slaves (pawns) were called Iwofa, among the Asante Awowa, and among the Europeans indentured servants. About a quarter of a million white debt slaves entered America before the nineteenth century” (Boahen and Webster, 1970; p.69).

 In pre colonial Africa, social conditions were such that,

 “All the white minorities living in Africa might own Black slaves, but slaves and white masters alike were all subjects of a Black Emperor: they were all under the same African political power. No historian worth his salt can permit the obscuring of this politico social context, so that only the one fact of Black slavery emerges from it” (Diop, 1987; p.92).

 There was, however, an important distinction between the slave/master relationship in Africa and that in Europe between serf/lord, which is often overlooked. In Africa, slavery was more of a social distinction without economic consequence than fact. The African slave, “instead of being deprived of the fruits of his labor, as was the case with the artisan or the serf of the Middle Ages, could, on the contrary, add to it wealth given him by the `lord’” (Diop, 1987: p.2). Slaves of the kings of Mali and the Askias of Gao “enjoyed complete liberty of movement. Thus an ordinary slave of Askia Daud, a native of Kanta, was able to carry out a pilgrimage to Mecca without his master’s knowledge” (Diop, 1987; p.153).

 To avoid the ugly connotations associated with commercial slaving, Vaughan (1986) suggested the use of limbry: “Existing data, albeit tenuous, suggest that about 80 percent of African societies had limbry” (p.174). In contrast to commercial slavery, African “limbries” “were not on the whole mistreated, dehumanized or exploited” (Vaughan, 1986; p.174).

 The privileges accorded them, however, varied from tribe to tribe. In Nigeria, the treatment of slaves was by no means harsh; nor was their lot deplorable. The majority were integrated into the society and the respective families of their owners in order to retain their loyalty, prevent rebellion and get the best out of them (Falola, 1985; p.99). The slaves were free to some extent; they could intermarry among themselves, own property and redeem themselves if they had the means.

 Among the Lobi of Gabon, slaves were considered as “new children.” The Massangou of the Chaillou Hills in Gabon, incorporated slaves (war captives) into the entire community to replace those lost in war. In Dahomey, the children of slaves were free people incorporated into the master’s family with all the rights except the right to inherit political leadership (Simiyu, 1988; p.59). But in Senegal, slaves (djem) were closely associated to power. They were represented in royal courts and many became de facto ministers (Diop, 1987:2).

 More importantly, Boahen and Webster (1970) pointed out that:

 “Slaves had many privileges in African kingdoms. In Asante, Oyo and Bornu, they held important offices in the bureaucracy, serving as the Alafin’s Ilari in the subject towns of Oyo, as controller of the treasury in Asante, and as Waziri and army commanders in Bornu. Al Hajj Umar made a slave emir of Nioro, one of the most important of the emirates of the Tokolor empire, and in the Niger Delta states slaves rose to become heads of Houses, positions next in rank to the king. Jaja, who had once been the lowest kind of slave, became the most respected king in the delta, and was no exception; one of the Alaketus of Ketu, and Rabeh of Bornu, rose from slave to king (p.69).

 Since slaves faced few barriers to occupational mobility or economic advancement, there was hardly any need for a tumultuous social revolution, such as the French Revolution in which the exploited overthrew their lords. Slavery, of course, was never under any circumstances an ideal institution and there were cases of slave revolts. One example was the revolt under Afonja in the Oyo empire. Another was the Koranko revolt in 1838 against the Susu of Sierra Leone. Led by Bilale, the Koranko ex slaves built a fortified town to offer freedom to runaway slaves. In Calabar, the slaves united in an organization called the Blood Men, and forced the freeborn to respect their human rights (Boahen and Webster, 1970; p.70).

 MYTH NO. 4: The Europeans were the ones who introduced chattel slavery into Africa.

 In pre-colonial Africa, the Europeans and Arabs were battling each other to subjugate Africa. By the 17th century, North Africa, inhabited by the Berbers, was already under Islamic conquest. For centuries, the Berbers have fought – and are still today – fighting Arab imperialism in Morocco and Algeria, where Arab names, religion and culture are being forced upon them. The Berbers had their own language, music and culture until the region was effectively Arabized as Islam spread hundreds of years ago. According to the Amazigh (Berber) Cultural Association in America, a Moroccan law, enacted in Nov 1996 and referred to as Dahir No. 1.96.97, “imposes Arabic names on an entire citizenry more than half of which is not Arabic”. The Berbers in Algeria, too, are up in arms. Fed up with years of discrimination and persecution at the hands of the Arab majority, Berbers, who make up 20 percent of Algeria’s 32 million people, seek more autonomy in the eastern region of Kabylie. They were the original inhabitants of North Africa when invading Arabs introduced Islam. Old tensions erupted into violence after a Berber schoolboy died in police custody in April 2001. Street clashes in Kabylia between the police and Berber militants left more than 100 protesters dead. "The Berbers also want the government’s police force, which they accuse of being partisan, to withdraw from Kabylie, and they want their language, Tamazight, to be recognized as an official language” (The New York Times, June 30, 2003; p.A4).

 West Africa was saved from Islamic conquest by the Sahara, which served as an effective bulwark against Islamic expansionism. In East Africa, Islam made inroads in the 17th century – peacefully at first but with diabolical intentions at a later state. While the Europeans organized the West African slave trade, the Arabs managed the East African and trans-Saharan counterparts.  For the trans-Saharan slave trade, an estimated 9 million captives were shipped to slave markets in Fez, Marrakesh (Morocco); Constantine (Algeria); Tunis (Tunisia), Fezzan, Tripoli (Libya); and Cairo (Egypt). No black African will ever forget that in the 19th century, over 2 million black slaves were shipped from East Africa to Arabia, a slave trade operated by Arabs.

The Zanzibar slave trade, with an annual sale that increased according to some estimates from 10,000 slaves in the early 19th century to between 40,000 and 45,000 in the mid‑19th century, was at its height during the rule of Sayyid Said (1804‑1856 ‑ born 1794), sultan of Muscat and Oman…  

Enslaving and slave trading in East Africa were peculiarly savage in a traffic notable for its barbarity. Villages were burnt, the unfit villagers massacred. The enslaved were yoked together, several hundreds in a caravan, and on their journey to the coast, which could be as long as 1280 kilometres…It is estimated that only one in five of those captured in the interior reached Zanzibar. The slave trade seems to have been more catastrophic in East Africa than in West Africa (Wickins, 1981; p.184).

 Diseases such as smallpox and cholera, introduced by marauding Arab caravans penetrating the interior in search of slaves, decimated entire local populations and were far more devastating than the actual export of slaves to Indian Ocean markets.  According to Gordon (1989),

“One particularly brutal practice was the mutilation of young African boys, sometimes no more than 9 or ten years old, to create eunuchs, who brought a higher price in the slave markets of the Middle East. Slave traders often created “eunuch stations” along the major African slave routes where the necessary surgery was performed in unsanitary conditions. Only one out of every 10 boys subjected to the mutilation actually survived the surgery.

The taking of slaves – in razzias, or raids, on peaceful African villages – also had a high casualty rate. The typical practice was to conduct a pre-dawn raid on an unsuspecting village and kill off as many of the men and older women as possible. Young women and children were then abducted as the preferred “booty” for the raiders. 

Young women were targeted because of their value as concubines or sex slaves in markets. “The most common and enduring purpose for acquiring slaves in the Arab world was to exploit them for sexual purposes. These women were nothing less than sexual objects who, with some limitations, were expected to make themselves available to their owners…Islamic law catered to the sexual interests of a man by allowing him to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as his purse allowed. Young women and girls were often inspected before purchase in private areas of the slave market by the prospective buyer (p.35).

 Some of the African slaves were shipped to Iraq, where they were inhumanely treated. In the latter part of the 19th century, they revolted and were subsequently placed in the Iraqi army. According to Walusako Mwalilino, a Malawian historian, “From 1859 to 1872, between 20,000 and 25,000 slaves were shipped to southwest Asian ports” (The Washington Times, Sept 21, 1995; p.A14). But the Arab slave trade continued well into the 20th century. According to Thomas Cantwell, an American reporter, “the last interdicted slave ship was in 1947, a dhow from Mombasa” (The Washington Post, June 4, 1994; p.A18).  American reporter, Timothy Williams, claimed that,

 “Officially, Iraq is a colorblind society that in the tradition of Prophet Muhammad treats black people with equality and respect. But on the packed dirt streets of Zubayr, Iraq’s scaled-down version of Harlem, African-Iraqis talk of discrimination so steeped in Iraqi culture that they are commonly referred to as “abd” — slave in Arabic — prohibited from interracial marriage and denied even menial jobs.

Historians say that most African-Iraqis arrived as slaves from East Africa as part of the Arab slave trade starting about 1,400 years ago. They worked in southern Iraq’s salt marshes and sugar cane fields.

Though slavery — which in Iraq included Arabs as well as Africans — was banned in the 1920s, it continued until the 1950s, African-Iraqis say.

 Recently, they have begun to campaign for recognition as a minority population, which would grant them the same benefits as Christians, including reserved seats in Parliament.

“Black people here are living in fear,” said Jalal Dhiyab Thijeel, an advocate for the country’s estimated 1.2 million African-Iraqis. “We want to end that” (The New York Times, Dec 2, 2009; p.A22).

 The official Libyan and Arab line on slavery is that: “The Arab countries are a natural extension to the African continent. The African Arabs, or those who carried the indulgent message of Islam, were the first to effectively oppose slavery as inhumane and unnatural. The claim that Arabs were involved in the trade at all is a mischievous invention of the West, made in order to divide the Arabs from their brothers and sisters who live in the African continent” (New Africa, Nov 1984; p.12). Nonsense.

 During the black struggle for civil rights in the United States and independence in Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, Afro-Arab differences and ill-feelings were buried. Black leaders, seduced by the fallacious premise that “the enemy of my enemy must be my friend”, made common cause with the Arabs. In the United States, many blacks dropped their "European” or “slave” names and adopted Islamic ones. In Africa, black leaders entered into alliances and sought support from Arab states for the liberation struggle against Western colonialism. Grand Afro-Arab solidarity accords were pompously announced. Drooling, grandiloquent speeches announced meretricious Afro-Arab summits. Little came out of them, and since independence, black Africans have gradually realized that the Arabs regard them “expendable”. The Arabs are just as ready as the French to use them as pawns to achieve their chimerical geopolitical schemes and global religious imperialism/domination.

Today Africa has found new suitors – Chinese.

 REFERENCES

Ayittey, George B.N. (2006). Indigenous African Institutions. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational Publishers.

 Boahen, A.A. and J.B. Webster. History of West Africa. New York: Praeger, 1970.

Diop Cheikh Anta. Pre‑colonial Black Africa. Westport: Lawrence Hill & Company, 1987.

Falola, Toyin. "Nigeria’s Indigenous Economy.” in Nigerian History and Culture. ed. Olaniyan, 1985.

 Gordon, Murray (1989).  Slavery in the Arab World. New York, NY: New Amsterdam Books.

Martin, Phyllis M and Partrick O'Meara eds. Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.

 Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Chicago: Kerr, 1915.

 Simiyu, V.G. “The Democratic Myth in The African Traditional Societies,” in Democratic Theory and Practice in Africa. eds. Walter O. Oyugi et. al. Portsmouth, NH: 1988.

 Vaughan, James H. “Population and Social Organization,” in Martin and O'Meara, 1986.

 Wickins, Peter (1981). An Economic History of Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  George B.N. Ayittey, PhD

Retired Distinguished Economist at American University and President of the Free Africa Foundation, both in Washington DC, USA.

Free Africa Foundation website www.freeafrica.org

[ayittey1]

How Socialism Destroyed Africa

How Socialism Destroyed Africa George B N Ayittey, PhD

(Presentation at the Heritage Foundation on March 11, 2019 in Washington DC).

A. Introduction

I would like to thank David Burton for the invitation to speak at the Heritage Foundation and I would also like to thank you for finding some time to come and listen to this lecture.

It may interest to know that exactly 30 years ago I was a Bradley Scholar here at the Heritage Foundation. I was on loan from Bloomsburg University, Bloomsburg, PA and was supposed to return after a year. I chose not to return. I am sure you would like to know why but let me just say that it was because the intellectual environment was extremely hostile. Even today, I still meet a hostile reaction when I say African leaders failed and betrayed their people.

One must always make a distinction between African leaders and the African people. The two are not synonymous. The leaders have been the problem, not the people. There have been exactly 309 African heads of state since independence in 1960. I will challenge anyone to name me just 20 good leaders out of the lot. Nobody has been able to do so, meaning that the vast majority – over 90% – were utter failures.

Africans are angry – angry at the condition of Africa. When Africans fought for independence, they expected to have freedom and development. But true freedom never came to much of Africa after independence. All we did was to trade one set of masters (white colonialists) for another set of masters (black neo-colonialists) and the oppression and exploitation of the African people continued unabated.

In 1990, only 4 African countries – Botswana, Gambia, Mauritius and Senegal – were democratic.  In January 2017, only 17 out of 54 countries are democratic –  Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde Islands, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Seychelles Islands, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. At this rate – 12 democracies in 27 years – it will take Africa exactly 94.5 years to become fully democratic, other things being equal.

Where is our freedom? The truth about postcolonial Africa is ugly, embarrassing and not politically correct, which is why some people in the West do not want to hear it. But we can’t sweep it under the rug.

“Free at last!” was the euphoric freedom chant that rang across Africa in the 1960s. Africa had won its independence from white colonial rule. New national flags were unfurled to the sounds of new national anthems. Leaders who fought gallantly and won independence were hailed as heroes and deified. Their pictures were hung in every government building. Currencies bore their portraits. Statues were erected for them. Then they settled down to develop Africa in its own image, not to satisfy the dictates of European metropolitan centers. But with what model? The challenge was daunting.

After independence, the first generation of African leaders launched a frontal assault on what they perceive to be Western institutions. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, for example, rejected democracy as an “imperialist dogma” while others dismissed it as “luxury Africa could not afford.” Capitalism was rejected as a Western colonial ideology in one monumental syllogistic error. Colonialism was evil and since the colonialists were capitalists, it too was evil. Socialism, the antithesis of capitalism, was adopted by nearly every African leader and was advocated as the only road to Africa's prosperity. Nkrumah surmised that "socialist transformation would eradicate completely the colonial structure of our economy" (Nkrumah 1973; p.189). Additionally, Nkrumah believed "Capitalism is too complicated for a newly independent state; hence, the need for a socialist society" (Nkrumah,1957; p.9).

A wave of socialist ideologies swept across the continent as almost all the new African leaders succumbed to the contagious ideology, copied from the East. The proliferation of socialist ideologies that emerged in Africa, ranged from the "Ujamaa" (familyhood or socialism in Swahili) of Julius Nyerere of Tanzania; the vague amalgam of Marxism, Christian socialism, humanitarianism and "Negritude" of Leopold Senghor of Senegal; humanism of Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia; scientific socialism of Marien N'Gouabi of Congo (Brazzaville); Arab Islamic socialism of Ghaddafi of Libya; "Nkrumaism" (consciencism) of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana; and "Mobutuism" of Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. Only a few African countries such as Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Kenya were pragmatic enough to eschew doctrinaire socialism.

Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, generally regarded as the "father of African socialism," was convinced that "only the socialist form of society can assure Ghana of a rapid rate of economic progress without destroying that social justice, that freedom and equality, which are a central feature of our traditional way of life" (Seven Year Development Plan. Accra: Government of Ghana, 1963; p.1).

Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, on the other hand, misread the communalism of African traditional society as readiness for socialism, which he was first exposed to during his schooling in Scotland. He castigated capitalism or the money economy, which in his view, "encourages individual acquisitiveness and economic competition." The money economy was, in his purview, foreign to Africa and it "can be catastrophic as regards the African family social unit." As an alternative to "the relentless pursuit of individual advancement", Nyerere insisted that Tanzania be transformed into a nation of small scale communalists ("Ujamaa") (Nyerere, 1962).

Accordingly, the Tanzania African National Union Constitution acknowledged as the first socialist principle "that all human beings are equal" and pledged that the government would give "equal opportunity to all men and women”, and would eradicate "all types of exploitation" so as to "prevent the accumulation of wealth which is inconsistent with the existence of a classless society" (Republic of Tanzania, 1967, p.1). Tanzania’s Second Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development laid emphasis on the fact that "considerable benefit will accrue in the long run from the expansion of public ownership because (a) it will be possible to create a genuine Tanzanian industrial know-how faster than under conditions of unrestricted private enterprise; (b) it will be possible to pursue a more effective industrial strategy than is possible under private enterprise; (c) the profits made in industry will be re-invested in United Republic of Tanzania". Thus, the Government as the representative of the people regarded ownership of the means of production by Tanzanians as an "antidote to capitalist exploitation" (Second Five-Year Development Plan 1964-69; p.iix).

B. The Socialist Transformation

Under Nkrumah, socialism as a domestic policy in his Seven-Year Development Plan was to be pursued toward "a complete ownership of the economy by the state." A bewildering array of legislative controls and regulations were imposed on imports, capital transfers, industry, minimum wages, the rights and powers of trade unions, prices, rents, and interest rates. Some of the controls were introduced by the colonialists but they were retained and expanded by Nkrumah. By 1970, nearly 6,000 prices, relating to more than 700 product groups, were controlled in Ghana (World Bank, 1989; p.114). Private businesses were taken over by the Nkrumah government and nationalized. Numerous state enterprises were established.

In 1967, Tanzania's ruling party’s Arusha Declaration established a socialist state where the workers and peasants controlled and owned the means of production. The Arusha Declaration sought to encourage self reliance primarily through an expansion of agricultural production for domestic consumption.

Banks, insurance companies, and foreign trading companies were nationalized. A "villagization" program was adopted to encourage the communal production, marketing, and distribution of farm crops. In 1973, Tanzania undertook massive resettlement programs under "Operation Dodoma", "Operation Sogeza", "Operation Kigoma" and many others. Peasants were loaded into trucks, often forcibly, and moved to new locations. Many lost their lives in the process and to prevent a return to their old habitats, abandoned buildings were destroyed by bulldozers. By 1976, some 13 million peasants had been forced into 8,000 cooperative villages and by the end of the 1970s, about 91 percent of the entire rural population had been moved into government villages (Zinsmeister, 1987). All crops were to be bought and distributed by the government. It was illegal for the peasants to sell their own produce.

Ethiopia adopted a similar program  forced resettlements on government farms. In Mozambique, the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO) sought to establish a socialist state replete with collectivized agriculture, crop growing schemes and village political committees. According to Libby (1987):

The centerpiece of Frelimo's rural social program for Mozambique was the collectivization of agriculture into communal villages and cooperative farms. Agricultural cooperatives were intended to provide an integrated production base for the communal villages. Hence, villagization was designed to increase food and cash crop production and to make available common facilities for farming as well as provide social services such as education and health comparable with Ujamaa villages in Tanzania (p.216).

In the rest of Africa, planned socialist transformation of Africa meant the institution of a battery of legislative instruments and controls. All unoccupied land was appropriated by the government. Roadblocks, passbook systems were employed to control the movement of Africans. Marketing Boards and export regulations were tightened to fleece the cash crop producers. Price controls were imposed on peasant farmers and traders to render food cheap for the urban elites. Under Sekou Toure of Guinea's program of "Marxism in African Clothes,"

"Unauthorized trading became a crime. Police roadblocks were set up around the country to control internal trade. The state set up a monopoly on foreign trade and smuggling became punishable by death. Currency trafficking was punishable by 15 to 20 years in prison. Many farms were collectivized. Food prices were fixed at low levels. Private farmers were forced to deliver annual harvest quotas to `Local Revolutionary Powers.' State Companies monopolized industrial production" (The New York Times, Dec 28, 1987; p.28).

In Francophone Africa, industries were nationalized, tariff barriers erected and the state assumed near-total control of the national economy (Africa Analysis, Oct 2000). Rather interestingly, the World Bank, US AID, the State Department and even development experts from Harvard University supported these policies and channeled much aid resources to African governments (Bandow, 1986).

In Guinea, a state dominated socialist economy was set up beginning with independence in 1958, in Congo Brazzaville, a similar decision was taken in 1967, and in Benin, a socialist state was proclaimed in 1975. Even in avowedly capitalist countries like Ivory Coast, Kenya and Nigeria, the result became the same: government ownership of most enterprises, and a distrust of private-sector initiative and foreign investment, state controls as well as increasing state intervention in the economy.

In Nigeria, the state, in April 1971, acquired 40 percent of the largest commercial banks, and the Nigerian National Oil Company (NNOC) was established, with the government keeping a majority participation. Four years later the government acquired 55 percent of the petroleum industry and 40 percent of National Insurance Company of Nigeria (NICON). The following year the acquisition was extended to other insurance companies when the government took 49 percent of their shares.

Nigeria's Second Development Plan (1970 74) was unequivocal, declaring that: The interests of foreign private investors in the Nigerian economy cannot be expected to coincide at all times and in every respect with national aspirations. A truly independent nation cannot allow its objectives and priorities to be distorted or frustrated by the manipulation of powerful foreign investors. It is vital therefore for Government to acquire and control on behalf of the Nigerian society the greater proportion of the productive assets of the country. To this end, the Government will seek to acquire, by law if necessary, equity participation in a number of strategic industries that will be specified from time to time" (The Second National Development Plan, 1970 74: Program of Post War Reconstruction and Development, 1970, p.289).

C. The Results

Problems emerged soon after independence. State controls created artificial shortages and black markets. State-owned enterprises could not deliver, achieving very low rates of capacity utilization. Most of them were inefficiently run and unprofitable. At the time of the coup in Ghana in 1966, which overthrew Nkrumah, only 3 or 4 of the 64 state enterprises were paying their way (Garlick 1971; p.141). Consider the performance of these enterprises taken over by the state:

• In 1972, the government took over the African Timber and Plywood Company. Before the take over, "production was 75 percent of installed capacity but this has fallen to a woeful 13 percent" (West Africa Oct 12, 1981; p.2422).

• In 1976, the government of Ghana took over R. T. Briscoe, a foreign company. "Before the take over, the company was producing 241 buses in 1974. After the take over, production was 12 buses in 1977 and only 6 buses in 1978" (Daily Graphic, Jan 18, 1979; p.1).

In 1982, the Kenyan Government estimated the annual average rate of return on the $1.4 billion (1981 dollars) invested in SOEs since independence, in 1963, to be 0.2 percent——a return greatly less than what could have been obtained by depositing the sum in an interest-bearing account (World Bank, 2005).

In Tunisia, the government ran the airline, the steel mill, the phosphate mines, and 150 factories, employing a third of Tunisian workers. After 1990, the government sold off 35 companies and, Private businessman Afif Kilani bought one such company called Comfort, a featherbed for 1,200 workers who built 15,000 refrigerators a year. Mr. Kilani paid $3.3 million for the place in 1990. Five years later, he had whittled the workforce down to 600 workers who made 200,000 refrigerators a year. "Like all state companies, its point had been to support the maximum number of jobs”, he said. "It was social work. A sort of welfare”. (The Wall Street Journal June 22, 1995; p.A11).

In 1958, when Guinea gained its independence from France, it was considered to have the richest potential of Francophone Africa. It had one quarter of the world's bauxite as well as copious reserves of gold and diamonds. Prior to independence, Guinea was exporting food to neighboring French colonies, thanks largely to its fertile land. In addition, thousands of tons of bananas, pineapples, and coffee were shipped to Europe.

Proclaiming a doctrine of "Marxism in African clothes”, the first president, Ahmed Sekou Toure, set the country on a rigid course of state planning and controls. Recall that unauthorized trading became a crime. Private farmers were forced to deliver annual harvest quotas to "Local Revolutionary Powers”. Thousands of Guineans, who protested Toure's dictatorial rule, were imprisoned or executed. By 1984, at the time of Toure's death after 26 years of tyrannical rule, Guinea, once a food exporter, was spending a third of its foreign exchange earnings from bauxite on food. Further, saying “Nyet!” to Toure’s crass revolution, as many as two million Guineans fled to neighboring countries and Europe to live as voluntary exiles.

Study after study produced a damning indictment of SOE performance continent-wide. For example, in twelve West African countries, 62 percent of surveyed SOEs showed net losses, and 36 percent were in a state of negative net worth. By the end of the 1970s, cumulative SOE losses in Mali amounted to 6 percent of GDP. A 1980 study of eight Togolese SOEs revealed that losses in this group alone equaled 4 percent of GDP. In Benin, more than 60 percent of SOEs had net losses; more than three-fourths had debt/equity ratios greater than 5 to 1; close to half had negative net worth, and more than half had negative net working capital (World Bank, 2005).

In Tanzania, the agricultural economy was left devastated by state controls. Production of most crops showed a steady decline after 1974. Overall output of food crops rose only 2.1 percent between 1970 and 1982, well below the population growth of 3.5 percent. By 1981, a food crisis had gripped the nation, turning it into a net importer of basic foodstuffs. The country had to import one million tons of grain to avert population starvation. The towns and cities had to be supplied with imports of grain costing as estimated 2,000 million shillings (Libby 1987; p.254). In 1971/72, grain imports were 135,000 tons, including 90,000 tons of maize. In 1972—73, grain imports dropped to 90,000 tons, of which 80,000 tons were maize. However, during the next year from August 1973 to July 1974, Tanzania was forced to import over 500,000 tons of maize alone (African Business 1979; p.21). For eight years (1974-1982), Tanzania’s income per capita had remained stagnant at $210 (World Bank 2000; p.35). Exports of agricultural produce were similarly affected Exports of cotton have fallen to pre independent volumes and sisal output is less than a third of its 1961 total. In the last ten years, the annual cashew exports fell from 140,000 to 30,000 tons. The total tonnage of all export crops was 20 percent less in 1984 than it had been in 1970. Production of basic food crops, such as maize, rice and wheat, have also declined to half their 1972 levels. And, as could be expected, food imports have doubled" (Zinsmeister, 1987; p.33).

In Zimbabwe, the devastation was almost total. Upon independence in 1980, President Robert Mugabe openly stated his determination to make Zimbabwe a one party nation and his Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) party "a truly Marxist Leninist party to ensure the charting of an irreversible social course and create a socialist ideology”. Indeed, in December 1982 all 57 ministers and deputy ministers in Mugabe's cabinet arrived at the Harare airport to greet visiting Ethiopian leader Mengistu Haile Mariam—black Africa's arch-apostle of Marxism-Leninism. Inheriting an economy that was hobbled by racial inequalities under the former white-minority regime, there was a strong need for statism, to correct injustices committed by white colonialists.

The country was the bread basket of the region. But state controls, state regulations and forcible seizures of white commercial farmlands without compensation destroyed agriculture and turned the country into a net food importer.

The economy declined progressively. Corn production dropped sharply from 2 million tons in 1981 to 620,000 in 1983. Shortages of commodities and foreign exchange were rampant. The cost of living rose astronomically.  By 2008, things had gotten progressively worse. Inflation was raging at 2 million% and unemployment was at 80%. In 2009, the currency collapsed and the US dollar was adopted. About 4 million fled to neighboring countries. In October 2017, Mugabe was driven out of office and was succeeded by Emmerson Mnangagwa, his former security chief.

D. Reasons for Failure

1. Exploitation and Oppression

Many governments not only nationalized European companies, ostensibly to prevent "foreign exploitation", but also vented their rage against the natives. In many other countries, the natives were squeezed out of industry, trade, and commerce, and the state emerged as the domineering, if not the only, player. Indigenous operators were not tolerated. Indeed, there was a time when the director of the Club du Sahel, Anne de Lattre, would begin her meetings with the frightening remark, "Well, there is one thing we all agree on: that private traders should be shot" (West Africa, Jan 26, 1987; p.154).

Unbelievable brutalities were heaped upon peasant farmers and traders under Ghana inane price controls (1982-1983). Ghanaian cocoa farmers in 1983 were paid less than 10 percent of the world market price for their produce. In Gambia, peanut producers received about 20 percent for their produce in the same year. According to West Africa (Feb 15, 1989):

“On the average, between 1964/65 and 1984/85, the peasants of Gambia were robbed of 60 percent of the international price of their groundnuts! For 20 years, the Jawara Government `officially' took, free of charge, 3 out of every 5 bags, leaving the peasant with a gross of 2. With deductions for subsistence credit fertilizer, seeds, etc., the peasant would end up with a net one bag out of five . . . With these facts, it is simply wrong to say that the poverty of the peasant derives from the defects of nature   drought, over population, laziness, and so on (p.250).  

In 1981, the Government of Tanzania paid peasant maize farmers only 20 percent of the free market price for their produce. "Studies by the International Labor Organization have indicated that taxation levels in the agricultural sector in Sierra Leone averaged between 30 and 60 percent of gross income" (West Africa, 15 Feb 1982; p. 446).

In Zambia, when traders refused to sell their produce at government dictated prices, authorities raided markets in May 1988. They arrested hundreds of people, took their money, and tore down market stalls, seizing sugar, detergents, salt, maize meal, soft drinks, candles, flour, and clothing. Back in 1984 in Ghana, “some unidentified soldiers who made brief stopovers at Swedru to check prices, robbed innocent traders” (West Africa, July 23, 1984; p.1511).

In this way, the peasantry was systematically robbed of considerable resources. For example, in a January 1989 New Year's address, President Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast admitted that, over the years, peasant cash crop producers "have over the years parted with four-fifths of the value of what they produced to enable the government to finance development" (West Africa, May 1-7, 1989; p.677). But development for whom? About 70% of Ivory Coast’s development was concentrated around Abidjan, capital, for the elite -- not the farmers.

Eventually, the peasantry rebelled. Farmers decided that they would no longer produce surpluses for the state to expropriate. Beginning in the 1980s, production of food and cash crops began to decline across Africa.

2. Administrative Ineptitude

State owned enterprises were acquired haphazardly with little planning, resulting in grotesque blunders and mismanagement. There is extensive evidence for these, but suffice it here to give a few dramatic examples. • In Ghana, two tomato canneries were built in different parts of the country. The capacity of either one of them would have met the total domestic demand (Killick 1978; p.229).

• It took six years to complete Ghana's state footwear corporation factory and by the time it was ready to go into production much of its equipment was obsolete (Killick 1978; p.231).

• The Ghana government owned sugar factory at Komenda, after completion, stood idle for more than a year because it lacked a water supply system (Killick 1978; p.231).

• In Uganda and Angola, some high rises lacked glass panes and running water. In Mali, a Soviet built cement factory at Diamou was designed for a capacity of 50,000 tons a year. Beset by regular breakdowns, it produced only 5 tons in 1983 (Time, Jan 16, 1984; p.27).

• Ghana's State Meat Factory at Bolgatanga, which produces the VOLTA corned beef, was closed for 9 months. Yet, employees received full pay (West Africa, Nov 30 1981; p.2884).

• A Yugoslav company built a mango processing plant in Ghana with a capacity exceeding the entire world's trade in canned mangoes. When the factory was commissioned in 1964, it was discovered that the supply of mangoes came from a few trees scattered in the bush (Killick 1978; p.229).

Western governments and development agencies failed to exercise prudence in granting aid and loans to African governments. Much Western aid to Africa was used to finance grandiose projects of little economic value and to underwrite economically ruinous policies. There are many horrifying blunders. In the 1980s, Canada funded a fully-automated modern bakery in Tanzania but there was no flour to bake bread. In Somalia, the Italian funded a banana-boxing plant but the production capacity needed to make the plant break even exceeded the country’s entire output of bananas. And in northern Kenya, Norwegian aid officials built fish-freezing plant to help the Turkana people in 1971 at a cost $21 million. The only problem was the Turkana people do not fish; they raise goats (The Associated Press, Dec 23, 2007). According to The Wall Street Journal (July 29, 1985): The U.S. built 50 crop storage depots in 1983 in Senegal and placed them in locations the peasants never visited. In Uganda, a railroad expert discovered to his amazement that a repair shop built with foreign aid was seven times as large as the one he ran in Germany. A fifth of Ivory Coast's foreign borrowing went to build two sugar mills that started production just four years ago and now are closed. In Sudan, the Soviets built a milk bottling plant at Babanusa. Babanusa's Baggara tribesmen drink their milk straight from the cow and there aren't any facilities to ship milk out of Babanusa. The 20 year old plant hasn't produced a single bottle of milk. (p.18)

But the mother of all state-owned enterprises can be found in Nigeria – the Ajaokuta Steel Mill. In 1975, Nigeria purchased a Russian made steel-making furnace. But it was built on a site so remote from iron and coal mines as to render it useless. Subsequently, Russian, German and French technicians spent billions of naira to make it operational. They did not work. Known as the Ajaokuta steel mill, the government made fruitless efforts over the decades to resurrect it. By 2017, “The Ajaokuta steel that had reached 98 per cent completion as far back as 1994 had not produced a single steel till date . . . The federal government had spent over $10 billion over 34 years and would require another $2 billion to complete the remaining two per cent of the plant” (Premium Times, Dec 26, 2017).

By 2019, it had attracted $8 billion in additional government subsidies without producing a single beam of steel. Yet, over 100,000 workers were on the payroll drawing pension (The Economist, Feb 8, 2019).

3. Venal Tendencies/Corruption

State controls created artificial shortages, providing rich opportunities for rent-seeking activities and illicit enrichment. Import and exchange controls were the most lucrative. Ministers demanded 10 percent commission before issuing an import license. Everyone was chasing scarce commodities to buy at government-controlled prices and resell on the black market to make a profit – a process known in Ghana as “kalabule.”

More perniciously, the ruling elites discovered that they could not only use state controls to enrich themselves but also to punish the political rivals. For example, they would deny import license to import newsprint to newspapers that were critical of them.

More annoying was the out and out betrayal and theft by many of the first generation of leaders.  “Only socialism will save Africa!” they chanted in the 1960s. But the socialism they practiced was a peculiar type of “Swiss-bank socialism,” which allowed the head of state and a cohort of ministers to rape and plunder state treasuries for private accounts in Swiss and other foreign banks. Askeed to define socialism, a Zimbabwean official said, “Here in Zimbabwe, socialism means what’s mine is mine, but what’s yours we share!”

Indeed, in Zimbabwe, $15 billion of revenue from the Marange diamond fields was plundered by the ruling elite in 2015 (New Zimbabwe, March 5, 2015). In Mozambique, $2 billion in loan proceeds simply vanished in 2018. Ndambi Guebuza, “he oldest son of former president Armando Guebuza was arrested on that debt scandal” (Daily Nation, Jan 17, 2019). A 2011 report commissioned by the United Nations Development Fund “said that between 1990 and 2008, $34 billion disappeared from Angola’s public coffers” (The Wall Street Journal, Oct 15-16, 2011; p.A10). Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of former president, Eduardo, who ruled for 38 years, is the richest woman in Africa with a net worth of $2.2 billion (Forbes, March 8, 2019). Her father, Jose Eduardo, was worth $20 billion (The Citizen, Oct 4, 2017). Meanwhile, some 65% of Angolans remain poor and lack access to clean water, electricity and sanitation.

If you want to understand why America is rich in Africa is poor, ask yourself this question: H            ow do the rich in both places make their wealth? Here in America, the richest person is Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com. He created it and has something to show for it. In fact, 80% of US billionaires are problem-solvers. Now let’s go to Africa. Who are the richest? The richest in Africa heads of state and ministers. Quite often, the chief bandit is the head of state himself. How did they make their money? By raking it off the backs of their suffering people. What did they create? Nothing. In fact, none of Africa’s billionaire presidents made their wealth in the private sector. So, how do they teach the youth about wealth creation?

Here is a list of Africa’s billionaire presidents:

NAME                                 LOOT

Mobutu Sese Seko             $1 - $5 billion (Forbes, Nov 8, 2011) (Zaire, now Congo DR)

Charles Taylor  (Liberia)      $5 billion (BBC News, May 2, 2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7379536.stm)

The late Gen Sani Abacha (Nigeria) $5 billion (Sunday Times, Dec 17, 2000. and $1 - $5 billion (Forbes, Nov 8, 2011)

Omar al-Bashir (Sudan)       $9 Billion (BBC News Africa, Dec 18, 2010)

Gen Ibrahim Babangida (Nigeria) $12 billion (Forbes, Nov 8, 2011)

Ben Ali (Tunisia) $13 billion  (The Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2011)

Hosni Mubarak (Egypt)         $40 billion (The Sun, Jan 11, 2011)

Muammar Khaddafi (Libya)i  $200 billion (Los Angeles Times. Oct 21, 2011: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/21/world/la-fg-kadafi-money-20111022\

“Every military regime is a fraud. Anybody who heads a military regime subverts the wishes of the people” – said General I.B. Babangida (rtd), former head of state of Nigeria (The African Observer, Jan 18-31, 1999; p.6). He should know; he stole $12 billion.

The Atlantic Monthly (May 20, 2010) provided an analysis of the net worth of all 43 U.S. presidents – from Washington to Obama – and found the combined net worth to be $2.7 billion in 2010 dollars. Evidently, Abacha, Babangida, Bashir, Houphouet-Boigny, and Mobutu each [stole more than the net worth of all U.S. presidents combined!  

4. Alien ideology

Socialism can never be justified upon the basis of African tradition. The basic economic and social unit in the West is the individual. The American says “I am because I am and I can do anything I want at any time.” The emphasis is on the “I,“ the individual. In Africa, a person says ”I am because we are.” The “we” connotes the extended family, group or community. Land, for example, is owned by the extended family, so the African would say that “the land belongs to us.” The early Europeans misinterpreted that to mean land belonging to every Tom Dick and Harry in the village, which gave rise to the myth of communal ownership. The extended family pools is resources together and may share them among its members but the extended family is a private entity, not the tribal government. Many of the leaders and scholars mistook these aspects of African cultural heritage – helping one another, community awareness, sharing of resources, and so on – as a justification for African socialism. They were wrong.

In traditional Africa, one does not have to line up before a chief‘s palace to seek permission to engage in trade or some occupation. There were free markets, free enterprise and free-trade in Africa before the colonialists arrived. Perhaps, this was the most singular reason why socialism failed miserably in Africa because it is an alien ideology.

E. Aftermath

Nkrumah was overthrown in a military coup in 1966. But his statist experiment did not end then. Successive Ghanaian governments retained, and in some cases expanded, the state interventionist behemoth Nkrumah had erected. Foreign mining companies were subsequently nationalized. More state enterprises were set up and a denser maze of controls were placed on prices, rents, interest, foreign exchange exports, and imports. “The Ghana government owns nearly 90 percent of the companies doing business in the country. There are nearly 340 plus state-owned enterprises. Out of this number, only 17 have posted improved figures to date” (Ghana Drum Oct 1992; p.17).

The socialist ideology has left two pernicious legacies that will hold Africa back for some time to come. The first is socialist mentality – the tendency to look up to the government or the belief that government must solve every problem. This can be discerned from the following instances:

• Ask them to trim their bloated bureaucracies and cut government spending and they will establish a “Ministry of Less Government Spending” (Mali). • Ask them to establish a market-based economy and place more emphasis on the private sector and they will create a “Ministry of Private Enterprise,” as Ghana did in 2002. • Ask them to establish good governance and they will set up a “Ministry of Good Governance” (Tanzania). Don’t ask them to improve transparency!

Second, the state machinery and infrastructure that were erected in the 1960s to give effect to socialism were not dismantled. This has led to a phenomenal growth in the public sector that is now packed with cronies, relatives and party hacks in a multiplicity of parallel institutions and ministries with overlapping functions. Ghana, for example, has Ministry of Aviation, Ministry of Roads and Highways, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Roads and Transport, Ministry of Ports and Railways. Why not just one Ministry of Transportation?

Bloated bureaucracies are riddled with willful dissipation of public funds, financial irregularities and profligacy. Ghost workers abound:

• In Ghana, there were over 6,000 ghost workers on government payrolls and their salaries collected by living workers in Ghana (Ghana Web, Dec 13, 2014). • In Nigeria, 62,893 ghost workers were nabbed and hopefully reburied (African Leadership, Feb 18, 2015). • Of the 1.2 million civil servants in Congo DR, an astonishing 500,000 were found to be ghost workers (Der Spiegel, June 5, 2017).

In 2009, Kenya had 94 ministers and deputy ministers; Zimbabwe had 82. Angola checked in with 88. Ghana, with a population of 25 million, had 97 cabinet and regional ministers plus their deputies in 2009. By 2017, the number had grown to 110 -- the largest in Africa.

In addition, there are ministers of state at the presidency, presidential staffers and advisors. At each ministry, there are a principal secretaries, deputy principal secretaries, assistant deputy principal secretaries, etc. The next batch comprise governors or regional ministers and their deputies. Then there is the legislature – Senators and MPs, all feeding off the government trough.

Then each Minister must have a government bungalow (house), a Pajero (SUV), a saloon car for Madam, a garden boy, a cook, a day watchman, a night watchman and a security guard to accompany the official. Then each senior government officer is entitled to a house loan, furniture loan, fridge loan and even an education loan for the children. These perks were offered by the colonial masters to their subjects to entice them to serve in the colonies, but hardly made sense to retain them after independence. Nigerian legislators are highest paid in the world. Its Senators enjoy an obscene smorgasbord of perks and allowances that take their salaries to a cool $2 million each when 60% of the population earn less than $2 a day.  An outrageous perk is "hardship" allowance.  

The huge government workforce consumes 70 percent of Ghana’s budget; 80% in Zimbabwe. This means that the government has little savings left for capital expenditures for development.

South Africa

Strange as it might sound, the ruling elites in South Africa are poised to repeat the catastrophic mistakes we made in sub-Saharan Africa. Some senior members of the ruling ANC seek constitutional amendment to seize white-owned land without compensation and a breakaway faction, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) seek to nationalize the central bank and all new discoveries of oil and gas – all this in the teeth of the disastrous socialist experiment right next door in Zimbabwe.

It needs to be emphasized that one of the cruelest jokes perpetrated on a gullible world was the misconception that the South African economy under apartheid was a "capitalist and free market”.

Under apartheid, the South African economy was characterized by severe state interventionism: where blacks could live and work, and what type of jobs they could take, were all determined by the state. The fictional link of apartheid to capitalism remained well into the 1990s, even though the National Party government operated a horrendous array of programs to maintain a heavy presence in the economy.

Apartheid must be repudiated but it was not capitalism. Colonialism needed to be repudiated but it was not capitalism. Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. Lunacy may be defined as doing the same stupid thing again and again and expecting the same stupid results.

Thank you.

REFERENCES

Government Publications

Seven Year Development Plan, 1963 -1970. Accra: Government of Ghana, 1963.

"African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya”. Sessional Paper No. 10. Nairobi: Republic of Kenya, 1965.

Tanzania’s Second Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development. Dar-es-Salaam: Republic of Tanzania, 1967.

The Five-Year Development Plan, 1990-1995. Harare, Zimbabwe. Government Printer.

Other Sources

Ayittey, George B.N. Africa Betrayed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.

___________ (2005) Africa Unchained. New York, NY: Palgrave/McMillan.

___________ (2018) Applied Economics for Africa. Washington, DC: Atlas Network.

Bandow, Doug (1986). "The First World's Misbegotten Economic Legacy to the Third World", Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. l, No.4: l7.

Garlick, Peter (1971). African Traders and Economic Development. Oxford: Clarendon.

Killick, Tony (1978). Development Economics In Action: A Study of Economic Policies in Ghana. London: Heinemann.

Libby, Ronald T. (1987). The Politics of Economic Power in Southern Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Manning, Patrick (1988). Francophone Sub Saharan Africa l880 1985. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Nkrumah, Kwame (1957). Ghana; An Autobiography. London: Nelson.

_____ _________ (1973). Revolutionary Path. New York: International Publishers.

Nyerere, Julius K. (1962). Ujamaa: The Basis Of African Socialism. Dar es Salaam: Government Printer.

World Bank (1989). Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Self-Sustainable Growth. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

___________ (2000). Can Africa Claim the 21st Century? Washington, DC: World Bank publication.

World Bank, 2005. The Evolution of Enterprise Reform in Africa: From State-Owned Enterprises to Private Participation in Infrastructure—and Back. Technical Paper Series; No.84. Washington, DC.

Zinsmeister, Karl (1987). "East African Experiment: Kenyan Prosperity and Tanzanian Decline," Journal of Economic Growth, Vol.2. No.2:28.

[ayittey1]

The African King

 Beyond villages and chiefdoms, indigenous people also organized themselves into kingdoms and empires. Kingdoms, ruled by a monarchs, may comprise of chiefdoms of people of the same ethnic stock. Several kingdoms are confederations of independent republics of chiefdoms – the Ashanti and Ga Kingdoms, for example. And kingdoms may have vassal states.

Although different tribal societies may have different conceptions of their kings, African natives accepted their king as a necessary evil. He was necessary for the preservation of the social order. But he was a potential danger; he could abuse his powers and be all intrusive, expending the independence and freedom of his people. To resolve this dilemma, many African ethnic groups created, with various degrees of success, a “person” hidden from public view but whose awe-inspiring authority could be invoked to maintain order and harmony. This is akin to the “tooth fairy” or “Santa Claus” in Western culture which awe Western children. The equivalent in traditional African political systems was the divine king. He was secluded and his every day life planned to the minutest detail and loaded with socially useful burdens.

 The outward signs of his sacredness were onerous personal taboos, which he had to keep in the interests of the polity. His sex life, symbolically fused with his fertility and vigor, might be severely restricted. His most elementary physical functions, such as crying, eating, drinking, or defecating, were ritually controlled. And his movements were hemmed in by taboos, such as those against touching the soil in fields or seeing a corpse. And sometimes he might not even be allowed to reach the frailty of old age or, when at the point of death, to expire naturally by himself. Taboos of this sort applied, it should be noted, not only to secluded and unmistakably “sacred” kings but to all African chiefs and kings (Kopytoff, 1989; p.66).

Most of these restrictions were designed to reduce the king to an executive nonentity, curtail the discretionary use of political power and confine him to his palace where he would be safely out of people’s private lives. They served primarily to take the gold out of royal glitter. The king was a remote, secluded, and utterly ritual figure, who could also serve as a convenient scapegoat if things went wrong. As long as the king was prepared to obey these restrictions, some ethnic groups in fact did not care who the king was or from where he came. To the Goba of Namainga (Central Africa), their “kings, qua rootless immigrants, were useful `slaves’” (Kopytoff, 1989; p.66). Along the Nile-Zaire divide, some small states requested the Alur people to furnish them with chiefs and kings. In Benin, “the Edo elders were said to have requested the One of Ife to send them a king” (Kopytoff, 1989; p.65).

 If he failed to perform, he was disposed of. Regicide was imbedded in divine kingship although it has been outlawed in most traditional societies since the beginning of the twentieth century.

In its classic form, divine kingship sanctioned killing the king when he became infirm or when things were going badly in the kingdom. The custom stems directly from the belief in the unity of the king and kingdom, in that the prosperity or failure of either may be regarded as that of both, and a king can thus be held responsible for conditions in the kingdom. Should he be ill or weak, the kingdom will be in danger; or should conditions in the kingdom be bad, there must also be something wrong with the king. Further, it follows that a change in the person of the king will change conditions in the kingdom (Vaughan, 1986; p.177).

An understanding of the role of the king necessitates a brief discourse on the traditional concept of the universe. Indigenes believed their universe is composed of three elements: the sky, the world and the earth. The sky is the domain of spirits of both the living and the yet to be born as well as powerful forces: lightning, thunder, rain, drought, etc. The earth is the domain of the dead ancestors, other dead tribesmen as well as the activities of the living: agriculture, fishing, hunting, etc. The world is peopled by the living – the ethnic group and other tribesmen as well and therefore the domain of war, peace, trade and relations with other tribes.

 In most traditional African societies, each of the three orders is represented by a god, which must be in perfect harmony with each other.  The king had precise function to play: Appease or propitiate the three gods in order to achieve harmony among them and thereby assure prosperity for his kingdom. If the sky god is “angry,” there would be thunder, heavy downpours and flooding. If the earth god is “angry,” there would be poor harvest, famine and barren women.  For comparative purposes, the kings of medieval Western Europe also had three fundamental duties: to ensure the spiritual welfare of their people by acts of piety and the protection given by the true faith; to defend their people against outside enemies; and at home, to safeguard justice and peace. “The forms of kingship might be different: the content in Africa and Europe was essentially the same” (Davidson, 1970; p.193).

To perform his functions, the king must be the only one with the greatest vital force in the whole kingdom. Only in this way can he serve as mediator with the superior universe, without creating any break, any catastrophic upheaval within the ontological forces. His powers are expected to be enhanced by those of the dead ancestors as well as his people because he sits on a sacred stool (throne), the repository of the powers of the kingdom.

The king thus has two roles to play: political, as head of the kingdom, and spiritual, as the link to the universe. The political role, however, is subservient. Most traditional constitutions require the king to delegate almost all of his political authority to other leaders and officials. For this reason, most kingdoms are characterized by decentralization of power and delegation of authority. Custom and tradition set limits to the authority of the king, his cabinet, and advisors. Thus, the king’s role in governance is small: he is the representative or symbol of the kingdom and may have some religious duties, but his participation in the political decision making process is insignificant. He hardly makes policy or spoke. He has a spokesperson, called a linguist, through whom he communicates. He rarely decides policy. His advisers and chiefs would determine policies and present them for royal accent. His role in legislation and execution of policy is nearly zero. [This role may be compared to that of the Queen of England.] His role is not political but to maintain cosmological, and therefore, social order. If the king were to die suddenly, there would be social upheaval, chaos and calamities. To drive home this point to the population, acts of vandalism (markets razed, traders beaten and homes sacked) are committed during an inter-regnum.

 More emphasis was laid on the spiritual function of the king. This emphasis on the spiritual means a separation of kingship and political leadership. In modern times, this tradition – the separation of the spiritual role from politics – has been maintained most European kingdoms in Norway, Netherlands and Britain.  The exceptions are two African kings: King Mohammed VI of Morocco and King Mswati III of Swaziland.

Ideally, the king should be strong, generous of mind, humble, bold in warfare and devout in everyday life. Descendancy from the founding ancestors is desirable. “He should epitomize a people at home with its moral order, at peace with itself, at every point in harmony with the ancestors "who brought us into our land and gave us life” (Davidson, 1970; p.193). His life is strictly regulated by custom to fit this role. He may be forbidden to leave the capital. The less public exposure of the king, the better. His primary function is to deal with the universe and ancestors. He is not expected to perform terrestrial functions, except the ceremonial. Most tribal societies locked up their kings in their palaces to keep their royal fingers out of people’s business.

 The Yoruba king (Oni) can only leave his palace under cover of darkness and he appears in public only once a year. Smart people, the Yoruba. His coronation and installation are performed with solemn and lengthy rites which set him apart. He lives a life thereafter of ordered ceremonial, secluded in his palace, subject to many ritual taboos and approached only with infinite respect and by designated persons of the Court.

 In some tribal systems, no one can see the king eat; he could not walk in cultivated fields, lest the fertility of the soil might be affected. He could not see a corpse nor cry over the dead. He must not be allowed to die a natural death, for that would affect the power of his sacred “medicines.” Among the Suku of Congo, it has been claimed: “When the king drank, those present had to cover their faces while one of the attendants recited proverbs and sayings recapitulating historic events, praising the king for his good deeds and also hinting at those where he had shown himself to be unjust” (Gibbs, 1965; p.460).

In many ethnic societies, however, the king is the physical symbol of his kingdom, a personification of sacred ancestry and the religious head of his ethnic group as well as the link to the universe. As such, the vital force of the king must never decline; nor must the king die, since he embodies the spiritual and therefore material well‑being of his people. The consequences would be calamitous: droughts would occur, women would no longer be able to bear children, epidemics would strike the people. Great care, therefore, must be taken to prevent a break in the line of transmitted power.

 Despite the puffed-up image of divinity, African kings, however, were really scapegoat kings. They had little or no political function or role; only spiritual – to maintain social order, protect his people from such calamities as droughts and famine, as well as ensure the prosperity of the kingdom.  If any of the three gods is “angry,” and there is famine, it means the king has not ruled well. He is also blamed for any other misfortune that befalls his people. He is a useful scapegoat to vent frustrations and anger at. Among the Kerebe of northwest Tanzania,

 Kings were expected to regulate rainfall and that the inability to conform to these expectations over an extended period of time was a major reason for deposing an omukama. Two kings are said to have been deposed in this manner at the beginning of the nineteenth century: Ruhinda, who was unable to prevent an excessive amount of rain from falling, and his successor, Ibanda, who fell victim to an extended period of drought (Packard, 1981; p.6).

The Junkun of Nigeria however believed “kings were supposed to be killed if they broke any of the royal taboos on personal behavior, fell seriously ill, or ruled in time of famine or severe drought: whenever they could no longer be regarded as fit guardians of the `right and natural’” (Davidson, 1970; p.201).[1]

 The king was also put to death when the level of his vital force was perceived to have declined. For example, among the Serer, “A Bur (king) who reached old age was subject to ritual murder because it was believed he could no longer guarantee that cattle and women would remain fertile” (Klein, 1968:13). Similarly, among the Shilluk of the Nilotic Sudan, a sick or old king was to be killed. In the Kingdom of Cayor, the king could not rule when he was wounded. In other societies, an old king was not killed but revitalized when old. He would symbolically die, be born again, regain the vigor of his youth and be fit once again to rule. This ritual was found among the Yoruba, Dagomba, Tchamba, Djukon, Igara, Songhai, Wuadai, Hausa of the Gobi, Katsena, and Daoura, the Shillucks, among the Mbum, in Uganda‑Rwanda, and in what was ancient Meroe (Diop, 1987; p.61). Although regicide has been abolished, the belief in the practice generally reflects the existence of an ideological relationship between political authority and the problem of ecological control (Packard, 1981; p.6).

 In other tribes, if the king failed to provide the vital link to the universe, he was dethroned. There were various procedures for divestiture. While the Serer ethnic group of Senegal adopted a distinctive drumbeat to signal the end of a king’s reign, the Yoruba of Nigeria demanded the king’s suicide “by a symbolic gift of parrot’s eggs” (Isichei, 1977; p.71).

 In the case of the Ga Kingdom, the king (mantse) traditionally had no political role; only military. In times of war, he was supposed to use his magical powers to help his people win. At the battlefield, he never took part in the hand-to-hand combat. He sat on his stool by the sidelines and watched the action. If his people were defeated, off went his head (beheaded).

Institutional Checks Against Tyranny

African kings played insignificant political role in government. Their traditional role was spiritual: To provide a vital link to the universe for his people by maintaining harmony or balance among the three cosmological forces: the sky, the world and the earth. Each was represented by a god and if the sky god was “angry,” there would be thunder, heavy downpour and flooding. That would mean the king failed to perform his function and the punishment could be regicide. To enable him to perform his function, he was secluded in his palace – to keep his royal fingers out of people‘s business.

Second, he was not only enclosed in his palace but also cocooned in web of taboos and injunction against the office of kingship. His daily life and conduct was planned to the minutest detail. For example, he could not eat before strangers; he could not speak directly to his people; or could not venture out of his palace except under the cover of darkness.

Third, most of his powers were delegated to subordinate chiefs under him. Even then, most of the political organizations which had a king surrounded him with councils and with courts. "Almost all have institutionalized means to keep him from abusing his power" (Bohannan, 1964; p.191).

 Though Africans delighted in telling foreigners how "powerful" their kings were to ward off foreign aggressive intentions, the kings were severely restrained in the exercise of those powers against their people. The Asante king appeared absolute. "Yet, he had to procure the consent of the chiefs, and the chiefs the consent of the elders, in order to bring about group action" (Carlston, 1968:127). "Akan kings had no right to make peace or war, make laws, or be directly involved in important negotiations such as treaties without the consent of their elders and/or elected representatives" (Boamah-Wiafe, 1993; p.169). Even in the rigidly-controlled Kingdom of Dahomey. Boahen and Webster (1970) found that,

 Although the king's word was the law of the land yet he was not above the law. Dahomeans like to recount how king Glele was fined for breaking the law. When gangs of men were working co‑operatively on state roads, it was a law that a passer‑by must offer a credible as to why he could not break his journey to assist in the work. Permission was always given, the law being largely designed to reinforce courtesy. King Glele's procession passed one such group without asking to be excused. He was stopped and fined many cases of rum and pieces of cloth for breaking the law...The fact that the kings of Dahomey (now Benin) were prepared to obey the laws they themselves created was the difference between arbitrary despotism and despotism which realized that its power and position rested ultimately, no matter how indirectly, upon the will of the people (p.108).

 Vaughan (1986) also noted:  “In many instances, the dependence upon the rule of law and a respect for law seems to have inhibited ambitious rulers. Nor should it be forgotten that regicide itself was an ultimate check upon the excesses of a king” (p.178).

 Regicide has been abolished, so kings are simply dethroned. Several Asantehene (Ashanti kings) were deposed in the course of history. Among them were Kofi Kakari, who was deposed in 1874, and Mensa Bonsu, removed in February 1883 for his avarice and refusal to raise an army and re-conquer Gyaman (Boahen and Webster, 1970; p.128). Itwika, the Gikuyu equivalent of the French revolution may also be recalled at this juncture. Today, kings are still being dethroned. Consider the case of Oba Samuel Aderiyi Adara of the Ode-Ekiti community of Ekiti State in Nigeria, who was dethroned for non-performance:

 The traditional ruler was accused of not contributing enough to the progress of the community and of frustrating the celebration of the yearly festival. He was invited to the community meeting where he was accused of failing in his duty of moving the town forward. But attempts by the monarch to extricate himself from the allegations failed. He was lambasted for not informing the state government of the pathetic socio-economic situation in his domain and asked to vacate the throne for a more progressive minded personality in the town.

While the meeting was still going on, some youths in the town invaded the venue, removed the dress of the traditional ruler, including his royal beads and crown, and chased him out of the town. Shortly after, traditional trees in strategic shrines were cut down, symbolizing the demise of the Oba.

The spokesman for the community said it was the collective decision of both the old and young to dethrone the monarch, saying his reign was "disastrous, woeful and sorrowful" (The Guardian, July 24, 2003; p.4).

 References

 Ayittey, George B N (2006). Indigenous African Institutions. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.

 Boahen, A.A. and J.B. Webster (1970). History of West Africa. New York: Praeger.

Boamah-Wiafe, Daniel (1993). Africa: The Land, People, and Cultural

Institutions. Omaha, NB: Wisdom Publications.

Bohannan, Paul (1964). Africa and Africans. New York: The Natural History Press.

Carlston, Kenneth S. (1968). Social Theory and African Tribal Organization. Urbana: University of Chicago

             Press.

Davidson, Basil (1970). African Kingdoms. Chicago: Time/Life Books, Inc.

 Diop Cheikh Anta (1987). Pre‑colonial Black Africa. Westport: Lawrence Hill & Company.

 Gibbs, James L. Jr. ed. (1965). Peoples of Africa. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.

 Isichei, Elizabeth (1977). History of West Africa Since 1800. New York: Africana Publishing Company.

 Kopytoff, Igor, ed. (1989). The African Frontier. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

 Martin, Phyllis M and Partrick O'Meara eds. (1986). Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Packard, Randall M. (1981). Chiefship and Cosmology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

 Vaughan, James H.  (1986). “Population and Social Organization,” in Martin and O'Meara (1986).

 [1] Wish they would bring back regicide! Modern despots never had it so easy. Even kings who had little political role were held accountable. Who said there was no accountability in the trial systems?

[ayittey1]

Is Democracy Necessary for Africa’s Development?

The Asian experience suggests that democracy is not necessary to engineer an economic miracle. However, the Africa’s postcolonial experience suggests ineluctably that democracy is vital to sustain economic success.

 During the Cold War, the World Bank, the IMF and the West so did not pay much attention to democracy, focusing only on economic liberalization. It was argued that if only the leaders in the Third World could get their economies right, it would unleash powerful forces of change. As people grew wealthier, they would demand greater say in how to spend their money and how their country is run, which would force political change. But this did not happen in Africa and many parts of the Third World. China in particular became wealthy but remained politically oppressive and non-democratic.

 Economics liberalization can indeed produce prosperity but all successful economic liberalization under dictatorships eventually hits a political ceiling. This stage is often reached or triggered by a crisis: falling copper prices in Chile in the late 1980s, falling cocoa prices in the case of Ivory Coast in the late 1990s, the Asian financial crisis in the case of Indonesia in 1998, among others. Investors or people who lost money during these crises demanded explanations or accountability. When the leadership was “sanguine” enough to flee or open up the political space and addressed the grievances of the people, the economic prosperity continued without any political tumult. Such was the case in Chile under Augusto Pinochet in the 1980s. By contrast, Suharto, who ruled Indonesia for 32 years with an iron fist, did not open up the political space. Indonesia imploded in 1999.

 Like Indonesia, Ivory Coast was for decades held up as an “economic success story” and a bastion of stability by the World Bank, the IMF and international donors. From independence in 1960 to 1993, the country was ruled by the autocratic Felix Houphouet-Boigny. It imploded and descended into civil war in 2005 and 2010 for election shenanigans and lack of democracy. Ditto for Madagascar – an economic success story in 2004 descended into civil war for lack of democracy.

 In summary, two facts must be noted. First, no dictator has brought lasting prosperity to any postcolonial African country. There is no such thing as a benevolent dictator. The only good dictator is a dead one! Rwanda is often trotted out as an exception to the rule in Africa but exceptions don’t make the rule. More importantly, Rwanda’s economic miracle is not sustainable. See this link http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jms/article/view/68539

 Second, democracy does not guarantee prosperity but the lack of democracy can destroy a country. So many African countries would have been saved had they been democratic: Liberia, 1990; Somalia, 1991; Rwanda, 1994; Zaire, 1996 ; Serra Leone, 1997; Ivory Coast, 2005 and 2010; Libya, 2011, etc.

 After more than two decade of "democratization," the process has stalled through vexatious chicanery, vaunted acrobatics and strong-arm tactics. In 1990, three decades after independence, only 4 African countries were democratic: Botswana, The Gambia, Mauritius and Senegal. After the collapse of communism in 1989, the number grew to 15 in 1995, it has rocked back and forth since. It slid back to 13 in 1998 and inched back to 16 in 2003 and has remained there: In 2005, the 16 out of the 54 African countries were: Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde Islands, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Seychelles Island, South Africa and Zambia. By January 2017, this pitiful number of democracies had increased to 17 out of 54 countries. Two countries – Madagascar and Mali – were plucked off the list and three new ones added –Gambia, Mozambique and Tanzania. At this rate – 13 democracies in 27 years – it will take Africa exactly 76.84 years to become fully democratic, other things being equal.

 Political tyranny is still the order of the day. In most countries, the parties that ruled under the old system are still in power and the opposition groups, lacking the ruling parties' fund-raising powers and patronage, seem powerless to dislodge them. According to Delphine Djiraibe, president of the Chadian Association for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights: "With few exceptions, the problems are the same across Africa: leaders are not committed to genuine democracy. They organize electoral masquerades to stay in power. They oppress the African people" (The New York Times, July 12, 2001; p.A3).

 The prognosis is not very good. MORE African countries will implode because they are not democratic. Watch CAR, Cameroon, Sudan, Sudan and other countries as well. We have already lost Zimbabwe. The prognosis for Zimbabwe is bleak.

 Protests started over steep hikes in fuel prices. This is how revolutions start, innocently beginning with protests over increases in food prices, fuel prices, high cost of living, etc. These are ECONOMIC, non-political issues but paranoid and autocratic governments see them as threats to their legitimacy or to destabilize their grip on power and brutally clamp down. People are killed, provoking more protests, which then morph into POLITICAL demands for the president to resign. That was how the Arab Spring started in 2010 – over lack of jobs, dignity, etc. – non-political issues.

 Currently, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Sudan and Zimbabwe appear to be following this trajectory. But rah-rah street protests, chanting “Maduro Must Go!” alone are not enough to remove an entrenched dictator from power. Protesters must also have control of at least one or more of the following key state institutions – the media, the judiciary, the civil service, security forces or Parliament. The revolution in Georgia was called the Rose Revolution because protesters charmed the security forces with roses. Shut down the civil service and any military regime will collapse – don’t have enough soldiers to run the civil service. I wrote about these and modalities of revolutions in my book, Defeating Dictators. Now and then, street protests may produce a free and democratic society – South Africa in 1994; Ghana in 2000; Tunisia in 2011. [I was one of the architects of the revolution in Ghana in 2000.] But more often than not, street protests, uprisings or revolutions do not produce desired outcomes. They may:

1.     Degenerate into Civil War – Libya in 2011; Syria in 2011.

2.     Produce a Stillborn Revolution. The protests may initially oust the dictator from power but would eventually claw his way back to power again – Kerekou in Benin in 1996; Sassou-Nguesso in Congo (Brazzaville) in 2002.

3.     Egyptian Scenario -- Revolution Reversed. Protests initially ousted Egyptian military dictator, Hosni Mubarak from power in 2011 but eventually another military strongman, Abdel al-Sisi retook power in 2013. Military still in charge; it runs a third of Egypt’s economy.

4.     Liberian Scenario -- Revolution Hijacked by Crocodile Liberator. Protests initially oust the dictator but is replaced by another despot worse than the one ousted – Ethiopia in 1977; Uganda in 1986; Liberia in 1990; Ethiopia in 1991; Congo DR in 1996; Sierra Leone in 1997; Ivory Coast in 2005. This scenario has been a frequent occurrence in Africa and elsewhere. I wrote about this eventuality. Check this link https://goo.gl/bL9ne4

5.     South African Scenario. Here an autocrat is replaced with some thug from the same corrupt cabal that ruined the country in the first place -- Angola (replacing dos Santos with Lourencos), South Africa (Zuma with Ramaphosa) and Zimbabwe (Mugabe with Mnangagwa).

The South African scenario has become all too frequent since in Africa government has metastasized into a criminal enterprise. Anyone chosen from the ruling elites to succeed a failed president would himself be a crook. Such was the case in Zimbabwe, where the anti-corruption czar, Ngonidzashe Gumbo, was himself a bandit, jailed for 10 years for defrauding the commission of $435,000.

 In Zimbabwe, there is an additional obstacle that dims the country’s future. That is the military generals who installed Mnangagwa. Mugabe used them to militarize his regime and strengthen his grip on power. He inserted them in the administration of strategic ministries, corporations and agencies. They came to be known as “securitocrats.” Mugabe gave them free reign and cast a blind eye to their naked plunder of Zimbabwe’s mineral wealth – for example, they are alleged to have looted $15 billion of revenue from Marange diamond fields. Eventually they found themselves in an untenable situation. Mugabe was 91 years old and his younger wife Grace, was rearing to succeed him. Finding that unacceptable, the Generals eased Mugabe aside and installed Mnangagwa – Mugabe’s right-hand man and former security chief who was responsible for the slaughter of at least 20,000 Ndebele in Matabeleland (opposition stronghold) in 1982.

 So genuine reform in Zimbabwe is impossible. The military generals won’t let that happen because they know what they have done. Their hands are dripping with blood and their pockets full of booty. Even if the protests force them to act, they would replace Mnangagwa with another crocodile – revolution hijacked.

 To have a brighter future, Zimbabwe needs to make a clean break with the past but the military generals won’t let that happen. So the country will muddle through or spin its wheels in a quicksand. Other countries – such as Angola, Mozambique, Nigeria and South Africa – are also stuck in a state of perpetual reform without accomplishing much. Only Aby Ahmed of Ethiopia may provide an exception to the rule that a despotic Marxist regime cannot reform itself but the jury still out on that one.

[ayittey1]

Why the Asian Tiger Model Will Never Work In Africa

"We want to learn a lot from Singapore that has been very successful, that has turned a lot of challenges historically into a lot of opportunities," Kagame told National Public Radio’s correspondent, Frank Langfitt, on September 16, 2012.[i] While Rwanda has done well economically, the Asian Tiger Model -- development under authoritarianism – is not one African countries should emulate. As Chu (2009) explains,

 “In 2007, Kagame took a team to Singapore to study how the country turned itself from a regional trading post into a global business capital. But while there are parallels between the two nations — both are run by strong, postcolonial governments whose democratic credentials are widely questioned — Singapore has advantages that Rwanda does not, from its outstanding education system to its geography to its fastidious reputation. (It annoys President Kagame that foreigners often don’t know that Rwanda, too, is tidy. At a speech in Boston last year [2008], an American rose during the Q&A time and praised Kigali for being surprisingly safe and clean. Those in the audience recall that the president called the guy out. “What did you expect?” he said. “Did you expect us to be violent and dirty?”)”

 Nevertheless, this Asian Tiger model has never worked in postcolonial Africa. In fact, no dictator has brought lasting prosperity to any African country because the situations of the two continents are vastly different. First, the Asian Tigers have relatively more ethnically homogeneous populations than in Africa. Nigeria for example has more than 250 ethnic groups; Congo DR has over 400. Economic prosperity that benefits one group at the expense of the others is a recipe for social unrest and political upheaval. Even Somalia which is ethnically homogeneous imploded into chaos and has been without a government since 1991. The politics of exclusion was largely responsible for the implosion of Rwanda in 1994.

 Second, most of the Asian Tigers are insular. Those unwilling to tolerate authoritarian rule had few options but to grin and bear it in the 1970s. By contrast, borders are porous in Africa and those unwilling to live under authoritarian rule will always vote with their feet to go and settle somewhere else. In fact, the continent is crawling with economic and political refugees, as well as those fleeing wars and humanitarian catastrophes. As pointed out earlier, Africans from Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia and South Sudan were among those who perished in vain attempts to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe in 2015.Third, several Asian Tigers - Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea in particular -- faced an external communist threat and, as a result, their people were willing to accept curbs on their civil liberties to fight that external enemy. Africa has had no such enemy after the 1960s. In fact, for most Africans, the enemy has been within – the state.

  “Most African regimes have been so alienated and so violently repressive that their citizens see the state and its development agents as enemies to be evaded, cheated and defeated if possible, but never as partners. The leaders have been so engrossed in coping with the hostilities which their misrule and repression has unleashed that they are unable to take much interest in anything else including the pursuit of development.” Ake (1991).

Olusegun Obasanjo, former president of Nigeria dismissed Nigeria’s National Assembly as “a den of thieves and looters.”[ii]

 Fourth, because of the external communist threat, the Asian Tigers received large amounts of Western aid, something Africa cannot count on. Even then, Africa really does not need foreign aid since the aid resources it desperately needs can be found in Africa itself. Each year, Africa receives about $35 billion in foreign aid from all sources but corruption alone costs Africa $150 billion a year.[iii] Obviously Africa would not need any foreign aid if it is half as successful in stanching out corruption. Fifth, and more importantly, Africa needs to devise its own economic development model. For much of the postcolonial period, Africa leaders copied many foreign models, system and paraphernalia, transplanting them into Africa. Virtually every foreign model has and some meretricious replica somewhere in Africa. Rome has a Basilica, so one was built in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast. France once had an emperor; so in 1975, President Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic spent $25 million crown himself one.[iv] The US has a space center; so Nigeria spent $89 million to build the Obasanjo Space Center in 2010 at the time when Nigeria cannot feed itself. The list of such unimaginative copying is endless. The continent is littered with the rancid carcasses of failed imported systems. It would be the height of insanity to suggest that Africa needs yet another foreign model to copy -- from Singapore.

 The economic model that Rwanda and other African countries need to copy can be found in Africa itself – in Botswana. It is black Africa’s best-kept secret.  It has consistently averaged an economic rate of growth above 7% since the 1980s. Although various analysts have attributed its success to mineral wealth in diamonds, a combination of factors have contributed immensely. Foremost has been the absence of civil war and political strife in its postcolonial history.  Second, Botswana enjoys political stability – not engineered by some dictator declaring the country a one-party state. Botswana is a parliamentary democracy. Third, the government has pursued strikingly prudent economic policies, allowing pragmatism, rather than emotional rhetoric, to prevail. It did not squander export windfall from diamonds like Nigeria did of its oil boom.  Fourth, Botswana has a lively free press and freedom of expression.   Commenting on the political process in Botswana, Professor Patrick Mulotsi, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Botswana, was quite pithy:

 “If you look at the prerequisites of liberal democracy, the rule of law has been highly respected. A lot of people can say a lot of things with relatively little fear. There has been a lot of response by the ruling party to debates with the opposition.”[v]

  Botswana can find solutions to its economic problems because it permits free debate and freedom of expression. By contrast, much of black Africa is mired in intellectual darkness and economic quagmire, for want of ideas and solutions to extricate itself. Intellectual repression prevents those with ideas from coming forward, even though Article 9 of the African Union’s Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights guarantees freedom of expression.. As we shall see below, intellectual freedom does not exist in Rwanda.  Fifth, Botswana did not ignore its indigenous roots. It built upon its native system of kgotlas, whereby chiefs and councilors meet “under a tree” to reach a consensus on important matters. In fact, cabinet ministers are required to attend weekly kgotla meetings. As Fred Dira, an African journalist, explained:

 “When they were initiated, kgotla meetings were meant to be totally apolitical.  They were to be meetings at which government ministers and members of parliament would brief local communities about official policies and programs, or about issues discussed or to be discussed in parliament. It was also part of the tradition of kgotla meetings that if they were convened by the president or any of his ministers, the respective members of parliament would not only be present, but would also be given some role to play at the meeting. This was in recognition of the fact that at such meetings, MPs shared the role of host with the chiefs.”[vi]

  Such was the case in 1991, when the government tried to explain a $25 million Okavango River irrigation project to the villagers at a kgotla in the northern town of Maun. Irate villagers let loose their opposition: “You will dry the delta! We will have no more fish to eat! No more reeds to build our houses!” a village elder screamed.”[vii] For six hours, they excoriated government officials for conceiving of such a dastardly project. Buckling under the wrath of the people, the government quietly canceled the project. Only in Botswana could this happen, giving true meaning to such terms as “participatory development," “bottom-up development approach,” "grassroots development,” and "popular participation in development.” One cannot envisage this happening in Kagame’s Rwanda. Furthermore, in Botswana, "Chiefs still exercise considerable local authority and influence which can act as a check on too precipitate action by the government and can even swing local elections” (Colclough and McCarthy, 1980; p.38). Asked why Botswana has had better leaders than the rest of Africa, Zibani Maundeni of the University of Botswana replied that indigenous Tswana culture has helped: “Before any big decision [Tswana leaders] consulted the general population. There was a strong culture of hearing the views of ordinary people.”[viii] In much of black Africa, including pre-and post-1994 genocide Rwanda, chiefs saw their powers and authority stripped: The indigenous system of participatory democracy and the tradition of reaching a consensus “under a tree” were spurned, and, in their place, African elites and intellectuals erected alien systems (one-man dictatorships and de facto apartheid regimes).

 Of course, Botswana has had its share of problems with income distribution and AIDS. But its economic success demonstrates that Africa does not have to reject its indigenous culture to advance economically. The Japanese did not. “Japan’s postwar success has demonstrated that modernization does not mean Westernization. Japan has modernized spectacularly, yet remains utterly different from the West. Economic success in Japan has nothing to do with individualism. It is the fruit of sheer discipline --the ability to work in groups and to conform.”[ix]

Africa's salvation does not lie in blindly copying foreign systems but in returning to its own roots and heritage and building upon them. As Williams (1987) advised: "When, if ever, black people actually organize as a race in their various population centers, they will find that the basic and guiding ideology they now seek and so much need is embedded in their own traditional philosophy and constitutional system, simply waiting to be extracted and set forth" (p.161). Says Robert Guest, editor of the Africa region for The Economist magazine,

 “When Japan’s rulers decided in the nineteenth-century, that they had to modernize to avoid being colonized they sent their brightest officials to Germany, Britain and America to find out how industrial societies worked. They then copied the ideas that seemed most useful, rejected the Western habits that seemed unhelpful or distasteful, and within a few decades Japan advanced enough to win a war with Russia – the first non-white nation to defeat a European power in modern times.

Japan’s example should be important for Africa, because it shows that modernization need not mean Westernization. Developing countries need to learn from developed ones, but they do not have to abandon their culture and traditions in the process. Africans face the same challenge now that Japan faced in the nineteenth century: how to harness other people’s ideas and technology to help them build the kind of society that they, the Africans, want” (Guest, 2004; p.23).

 After a long series of experiments with or blind imitation of foreign models and ideologies – such as socialism – it is beginning to dawn on Africa’s elites that they do not have to reject their traditional heritage in order for Africa to develop. The Swahili word for this concept is majimbo. It stands for the idea of local initiative and trust in traditional wisdoms. The same idea is conveyed by the mantra, African renaissance.

 In the late 1990s, stymied by the dizzying economic growth of China, economists were at a loss groping for an explanation.  It was a communist dictatorship and the standard tenets of economic development theory were of little help. It increasingly dawned on economists the critical importance of the role of institutions in providing the correct incentives for economic growth. Nobel laureate, Douglass North, noted that there are many paths to development and institutions are important but not just any institutions. According to North, “the key is creating an institutional structure from your particular cultural institutions that provide the proper incentives – not slavishly imitating Western institutions” (The Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2005; p.A14). In addition, the institutional structure must readily adapt to changing circumstances in the global economy. He noted that:

 “After a disastrous era of promoting collective organization, in which approximately 40 million people died of starvation, China gradually fumbled its way out of the economic disaster it had created by instituting the Household Responsibility System, which provided peasants with incentives to produce more. This system in turn led to the TVEs (town-village enterprises) and sequential development build on their cultural background” (The Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2005; p.A14).

 Institutions are established rules, codes and norms by which human behavior or interaction (political, economic and social) are governed, as well as the incentive structure of society. They are made up of formal rules, (constitutions, laws, and rules), informal constraints (norms, conventions and codes of conduct), and their enforcement characteristics. Together, they define the way the game is played, whether as a society or an athletic game. Take professional football. They are formal rules defining the way the game is supposed to be played; informal norms – such as not deliberately injuring the quarterback of the opposing team; and enforcement characteristics –umpires, referees – designed to see that the game is played according to the intentions underlying the rules. But enforcement is always imperfect and it frequently pays for a team to violate rules. Therefore the way a game is actually played is a function of the underlying intentions embodied in the rules, the strength of informal codes of conduct, the perception of the umpires, and the severity of punishment for violating rules.

 It is the same way with societies. Poorly performing societies have rules that do not provide the proper incentives, lack effective informal norms that would encourage productivity, and/or have poor enforcement. Underlying institutions are belief systems that provide our understanding of the world around us and, therefore, the incentives that we face. Creating institutions that will perform effectively, is thus, a difficult task” (The Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2005; p.A14).

 So the big question is why Rwanda copying a foreign economic model and not modernizing its own indigenous system, like Botswana?

 References

 Ake, Claude (1991). "How Politics Underdevelops Africa," in The Challenge of African Economic

Recovery and Development, ed. Adebayo Adedeji, Owodumi Teriba, and Patrick Bugembe. Portland, OR: Cass, 1991.

 Chu, Jeff, 2009, “‘Rwanda Rising: A New Model of Economic Development, "Fast Company,

April 1, 2009 https://www.fastcompany.com/1208900/rwanda-rising-new-model-economic-development giving me some biscuits please

 Colclough, C. and McCarthy, S., 1980. The political economy of Botswana.

                                   Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980, 298 pp.

 Guest, Robert (2004). The Shackled Continent. London: MacMillan.

 Williams, Chancellor (1987). The Destruction of Black Civilization. Chicago: Third World Press.

 [i] Morning Edition (Web http://www.npr.org/2012/09/17/161222794/rwandan-economy-makes-unlikely-climb-in-rank)

[ii] See Premiere Times, Josh – -- Nov 24, 2014.

[iii] See BBC News, Sept 18, 2002.

[iv] It did not help any. He was overthrown in a coup and chased out of the country 1979. Successive military regimes were no better, plunging the country into civil war, pitting Christians against Muslims beginning in 2012. So total has been the devastation that a country must be rebuilt from scratch, meaning 50 years of independence wasted.

[v] See The New York Times, May 16, 1990; p.A6.

[vi] See Mmegi/The Reporter, May 12-18, 1995; p.7.

[vii] See The Washington Post, Mar 21, 1991; p.A3.

[viii][viii] See The Economist, Nov 6, 2004; p.50.

[ix] See Editorial in the Bangkok Post quoted in The Washington Times, Nov 9, 1996; p.A8.

[ayittey1]

Waiting for an African Messiah?

 There are hundreds of millions of Africans, who overburdened by their countries’ mundane multifarious problems yearn for and eagerly await some Messiah to come and solve all their problems in one fell swoop. Currently President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia, John Magufuli of Tanzania are being hailed as such in their respective countries. While this predilection is understandable, it is not only dangerous and misguided but also a complete waste of time, Five reasons for this pushback.

 First, when former US Pres. Barack Obama addressed Ghana’s Parliament in July 2009, he said this, “Africa doesn’t need strong men; it needs strong institutions.” Our focus should be on building strong institutions, not rooting for strong leaders. Africa has had too many strongmen since independence and no dictator – civilian or military – has brought lasting prosperity to any African nation.

 Second, leaders come and go but institutions endure. For example, a Constitution that establishes a democratic country with checks and balances and free elections can last for more than a century. The judiciary too can last for centuries. No human being can live that long.

 Third, the postcolonial list of good leaders has been appalling. There have been exactly 243 Africa heads of state since independence in 1960. Fewer than 20 can be said to have been good leaders. That means the vast majority – over 90% – were bad leaders. That in turn means that if we wait it would take an awfully long time – if ever – for a good leader to emerge

 Fourth, the postcolonial record of so-called reformers was often treacherous. They often implemented those types of reforms that benefited them, their families, tribesmen, cronies and political parties. One classic example was Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. Back in 1986, he declared ebulliently that, “No African head of state should be in power for more than 10 years!” He was hailed across Africa as a new kind of leadership Africa needed. But 32 years later, he is still president of Uganda. Another example was Flt./Lte. John Jerry Rawlings of Ghana in the early 1980s. When he declared a holy war against corruption, his initials, “J J” was translated as “Junior Jesus.” In the case of the two leaders public adulation went to their heads and they soon began to see themselves as infallible. Then they started drifting towards authoritarianism and the rest of the story is known. Charles Taylor of Liberia, Yahya Jammeh of Gambia, Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast, Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea, Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe and General Abdel al-Sisi of Egypt are among this list of crocodile reformers.

Fifth, the development scenario most African countries face can be described thus, “Bad driver, Bad vehicle, Bad roads and ANGRY passengers fed up with lack of progress. Too often in Africa, we change the driver without fixing the vehicle. But a vehicle with no brakes will land in the ditch regardless of who the driver is.

 There needs to be a paradigm shift from leaders to INSTITUTIONS. Mandela was a great leader but it is pointless to wait for another Mandela. There was one and only one Nelson Mandela and there will never be another one. Those waiting for one will wait forever. But does that mean our problems shouldn’t be solved? Of course not. It is better for Africans to place their faith, not in what their leaders say but in institutions.

There are seven institutions that are critical for good governance:

1.     An independent and free media – for free flow of information;

2.     An independent judiciary – for the of law;

3.     An independent electoral commission – for free and fair elections;

4.     An independent Central Bank – for monetary stability;

5.     An efficient civil service – for the provision of social services;

6.     A neutral and professional security forces – for security of persons and property; and

7.     An autonomous Parliament – to serve as a check on the executive.

 It is not the president who guarantees the rule of law; it is an independent judiciary. Nor is it the president who guarantees free and fair elections; it is an independent electoral commission. Independence means free from influence by the executive. For this reason, the president should NOT be allowed to appoint the Electoral Commissioner, Supreme Court justices, and so on. You can’t have a situation where the president appoints the heads of the very institutions that are supposed to check him. For example, the president appointing the speaker of Parliament , as was the case in Ghana in 2006.

 Lastly, the president should NEVER be allowed to come anywhere near the reform of any of these institutions. If you ask him to reform the judiciary, he would pack the bench with his cronies. Let the Judiciary Services Commission reform the judiciary. Similarly with Police Services Commission.

[ayittey1]

Myths about African Participation in the Slave Trade

 History can be written from three perspectives: from that of the victor, a neutral observer and that of the vanquished. Much of Africa’s history was written by the colonialists (the victors) and obviously the victims of colonialism see things differently. For example, seeing no boxes with “ballots” written on them or a building with “Parliament” written on it, many European colonialists jumped to the conclusion that Africans were laboring under horrible and despot chiefs. Therefore, colonialism was good for the Africans because it liberated them from their terrible rulers. This was one monumental nonsense.

 True, there were no boxes with ballots written on them and no building with Parliament written on it but that did not mean the essence of democratic governance was unknown. That mythology was as nonsensical as the claim that since there were no hamburgers in the village, so Africans did not eat.

 That mythology originated from their failure to make a distinction between the existence of an institution and different forms of the same institution. There are different types of food. The absence of one type – hamburgers – does not mean a complete absence of other types of food. Similarly, there are different types of democracy. Democratic decisions are taken by majority vote or by consensus. In traditional Africa, decision-making is by consensus. The absence of voting did not mean Africans were living under terrible despotic Chiefs.

 There are many other myths about Africa – in particular, African participation in the slave trade. Written from the African perspective, the following seeks to demolish these myths.

 MYTH No. 1: Africans were selling themselves off into slavery before the Europeans on the continent.

 It is true there was slavery in Africa but not the inhumane chattel variety. Slaves in Africa enjoyed certain rights and privileges. Generally, there were no slave markets in black Africa because of the value black Africans place on humanity. The slave markets that were in Africa, according to historians, were in North Africa (or Arab North Africa) - in such places as Fez and Tripoli.

 Slaves generally were principally war captives from inter-tribal warfare. Say there was a war between two neighboring tribes – the Ashanti and the Fante -- and 5,000 Fantes were taken prisoner. The Ashanti King had the following options:

 1.     To keep the 5,000 Fantes in prison, which means he would have to feed, clothe and shelter them - an expensive economic proposition;

2.     To kill them, a very inhumane prospect; or

3.     Sell them off as slaves and use the proceeds to purchase weapons to defend his Ashanti people;

4.     Absorb and integrate the war captives into Ashanti society, a long, arduous and dangerous process since safeguards must be put in place to ensure that former combatants would pledge allegiance to a new society and authority.

 Which option do you think the Ashanti King would take? If you said the third option, you are right because it was the most humane and economically expedient. The Ashanti also chose option 4, absorbed former war captives (slaves) into their society. To make their

integration into Ashanti society as smooth as possible, even the Ashanti King was forbidden to disclose the slave origins of any of his subjects.

 Now, the more important issue is this. YES, the Ashanti King did sell Fante prisoners of war as SLAVES and therefore participated in the slave trade. BUT the Ashanti King did NOT sell his own people - an important distinction. It was the Europeans who failed to make this distinction, which has been the source of much mythology about the slave trade.

 The Europeans made no distinction between the Ashanti King and the Fante slaves. To the Europeans, it was a BLACK African King selling BLACK Africans. Therefore, Black kings and chiefs were selling their own kind or people. Nonsense. To the Ashanti King, the Fantes were NOT his people but rather the Ashanti.

 Recall that about that time in history, medieval Europe was also fighting tribal wars -  between the Flemish, French and the Germans. They were also enslaving one another. But you don't hear the expression, "The Europeans were enslaving their own kind?" do you? Rather, you read of Germans taking French slaves and vice versa.  So make the same distinctions in Africa - The Ashanti King taking Fante slaves, etc.

 MYTH NO.2. "African chiefs just went to the market and just grabbed their people to sell off as slaves."

 You often hear this from African Americans but it is not true for four reasons. First, no African chief can do this and expect to remain chief. He would be removed. As chief, his prerogative is the survival of his tribe. Second, he would be committing an ethnic suicide if he were to sell off his own Ashanti people into slavery. Third, it did not make military sense. He would be depopulating and weakening his own tribe to the benefit of a stronger neighboring tribe. Fourth, their clans would rise up to protect the victim. More importantly, there were traditional injunctions against that. To test this, go to Onitsha market, grab and beat up .Hausa market trader. The entire Hausa ethnic group would go to his/her defense. In fact, many tribal wars started precisely this way -- from a dispute or conflict between two individuals. Furthermore, as Ashanti King or chief, one of his role is to minimize any external threat to his people. And if this means depopulating or selling off the entire Fante tribe into slavery the better off his Ashanti people would be. It would mean less competition for resources.

 MYTH No. 3. "Africans are brothers and sisters and it is treacherous for them to participate in the slave trade."

 Again, tribal or ethnic distinctions are important in Africa. To think that Africans consider members of another tribe as "brothers and sisters" is totally ridiculous -- an exercise in grand delusion. Why would a Hutu government in Rwanda slaughter more than 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994? Or tell the Igbo that the Hausa are their brothers and sisters in 1967.

 Before the twentieth century, many societies in the world practiced some form of slavery. Prisoners of war, political opponents and religious dissidents were often enslaved in Old England. For example, in 1530, in England, under the reign of Henry VIII, a vagrant picked up for the second time was whipped and had half an ear cut off; taken for a third time, he was "to be executed as a hardened criminal and enemy of the common weal" (Marx, 1915; p.806). Seventy-two thousand vagrants were thus executed during that reign. In the time of Edward VI (1547), "if anyone refused to work, he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who denounced him as an idler" (Marx, 1915; p.806). The owner of such a slave might whip him, chain him, and brand him on the cheek and forehead with a letter "S" (for Slave), if he disappeared for two weeks. If he ran away a third time he was executed. An idler vagabond caught on the highway was branded on the chest with a "V" (for vagrant). The same laws were in effect during the reigns of Elizabeth (1572) and of Louis XVI in France. The supporters of Monmouth's rebellion in England were sold by the Queen.   Cromwell's Irish and Scottish prisoners were sold to the West Indies and non Muslims who opposed the Sokoto jihad were sold to North Africa.

 Criminals in Europe and Africa could be executed, transported or sold. Europeans favored execution; Africans favored sale.

 “In the eighteenth century there were 300 different offences in Britain for which one could be executed. In Dahomey, there were only two, for the king preferred to sell rather than execute his troublemakers. Those who could not pay their debts were sold for life or until the debt was paid. Among the Yoruba, debt slaves (pawns) were called Iwofa, among the Asante Awowa, and among the Europeans indentured servants. About a quarter of a million white debt slaves entered America before the nineteenth century” (Boahen and Webster, 1970; p.69).

 In pre colonial Africa, social conditions were such that,

 “All the white minorities living in Africa might own Black slaves, but slaves and white masters alike were all subjects of a Black Emperor: they were all under the same African political power. No historian worth his salt can permit the obscuring of this politico social context, so that only the one fact of Black slavery emerges from it” (Diop, 1987; p.92).

 There was, however, an important distinction between the slave/master relationship in Africa and that in Europe between serf/lord, which is often overlooked. In Africa, slavery was more of a social distinction without economic consequence than fact. The African slave, "instead of being deprived of the fruits of his labor, as was the case with the artisan or the serf of the Middle Ages, could, on the contrary, add to it wealth given him by the `lord'" (Diop, 1987: p.2). Slaves of the kings of Mali and the Askias of Gao "enjoyed complete liberty of movement. Thus an ordinary slave of Askia Daud, a native of Kanta, was able to carry out a pilgrimage to Mecca without his master's knowledge" (Diop, 1987; p.153).

 To avoid the ugly connotations associated with commercial slaving, Vaughan (1986) suggested the use of limbry: "Existing data, albeit tenuous, suggest that about 80 percent of African societies had limbry" (p.174). In contrast to commercial slavery, African "limbries" "were not on the whole mistreated, dehumanized or exploited" (Vaughan, 1986; p.174).

 The privileges accorded them, however, varied from tribe to tribe. In Nigeria, the treatment of slaves was by no means harsh; nor was their lot deplorable. The majority were integrated into the society and the respective families of their owners in order to retain their loyalty, prevent rebellion and get the best out of them (Falola, 1985; p.99). The slaves were free to some extent; they could intermarry among themselves, own property and redeem themselves if they had the means.

 Among the Lobi of Gabon, slaves were considered as "new children." The Massangou of the Chaillou Hills in Gabon, incorporated slaves (war captives) into the entire community to replace those lost in war. In Dahomey, the children of slaves were free people incorporated into the master's family with all the rights except the right to inherit political leadership (Simiyu, 1988; p.59). But in Senegal, slaves (djem) were closely associated to power. They were represented in royal courts and many became de facto ministers (Diop, 1987:2).

 More importantly, Boahen and Webster (1970) pointed out that:

 “Slaves had many privileges in African kingdoms. In Asante, Oyo and Bornu, they held important offices in the bureaucracy, serving as the Alafin's Ilari in the subject towns of Oyo, as controller of the treasury in Asante, and as Waziri and army commanders in Bornu. Al Hajj Umar made a slave emir of Nioro, one of the most important of the emirates of the Tokolor empire, and in the Niger Delta states slaves rose to become heads of Houses, positions next in rank to the king. Jaja, who had once been the lowest kind of slave, became the most respected king in the delta, and was no exception; one of the Alaketus of Ketu, and Rabeh of Bornu, rose from slave to king (p.69).

 Since slaves faced few barriers to occupational mobility or economic advancement, there was hardly any need for a tumultuous social revolution, such as the French Revolution in which the exploited overthrew their lords. Slavery, of course, was never under any circumstances an ideal institution and there were cases of slave revolts. One example was the revolt under Afonja in the Oyo empire. Another was the Koranko revolt in 1838 against the Susu of Sierra Leone. Led by Bilale, the Koranko ex slaves built a fortified town to offer freedom to runaway slaves. In Calabar, the slaves united in an organization called the Blood Men, and forced the freeborn to respect their human rights (Boahen and Webster, 1970; p.70).

 MYTH NO. 4: The Europeans were the ones who introduced chattel slavery into Africa.

 In pre-colonial Africa, the Europeans and Arabs were battling each other to subjugate Africa. By the 17th century, North Africa, inhabited by the Berbers, was already under Islamic conquest. For centuries, the Berbers have fought – and are still today -- fighting Arab imperialism in Morocco and Algeria, where Arab names, religion and culture are being forced upon them. The Berbers had their own language, music and culture until the region was effectively Arabized as Islam spread a thousand years ago. According to the Amazigh (Berber) Cultural Association in America, a Moroccan law, enacted in Nov 1996 and referred to as Dahir No. 1.96.97, "imposes Arabic names on an entire citizenry more than half of which is not Arabic”. The Berbers in Algeria, too, are up in arms. Fed up with years of discrimination and persecution at the hands of the Arab majority, Berbers, who make up 20 percent of Algeria's 32 million people, seek more autonomy in the eastern region of Kabylie. They were the original inhabitants of North Africa when invading Arabs introduced Islam. Old tensions erupted into violence after a Berber schoolboy died in police custody in April 2001. Street clashes in Kabylia between the police and Berber militants left more than 100 protesters dead. "The Berbers also want the government's police force, which they accuse of being partisan, to withdraw from Kabylie, and they want their language, Tamazight, to be recognized as an official language" (The New York Times, June 30, 2003; p.A4).

 West Africa was saved from Islamic conquest by the Sahara, which served as an effective bulwark against Islamic expansionism. In East Africa, Islam made inroads in the 17th century – peacefully at first but with diabolical intentions at a later state. While the Europeans organized the West African slave trade, the Arabs managed the East African and trans-Saharan counterparts.  For the trans-Saharan slave trade, an estimated 9 million captives were shipped to slave markets in Fez, Marrakesh (Morocco); Constantine (Algeria); Tunis (Tunisia), Fezzan, Tripoli (Libya); and Cairo (Egypt). No black African will ever forget that in the 19th century, over 2 million black slaves were shipped from East Africa to Arabia, a slave trade operated by Arabs.

 The Zanzibar slave trade, with an annual sale that increased according to some estimates from 10,000 slaves in the early 19th century to between 40,000 and 45,000 in the mid‑19th century, was at its height during the rule of Sayyid Said (1804‑1856 ‑ born 1794), sultan of Muscat and Oman...  

 Enslaving and slave trading in East Africa were peculiarly savage in a traffic notable for its barbarity. Villages were burnt, the unfit villagers massacred. The enslaved were yoked together, several hundreds in a caravan, and on their journey to the coast, which could be as long as 1280 kilometres...It is estimated that only one in five of those captured in the interior reached Zanzibar. The slave trade seems to have been more catastrophic in East Africa than in West Africa (Wickins, 1981; p.184).

 Diseases such as smallpox and cholera, introduced by marauding Arab caravans penetrating the interior in search of slaves, decimated entire local populations and were far more devastating than the actual export of slaves to Indian Ocean markets.  According to Gordon (1989),

 “One particularly brutal practice was the mutilation of young African boys, sometimes no more than 9 or    ten years old, to create eunuchs, who brought a higher price in the slave markets of the Middle East. Slave traders often created “eunuch stations” along the major African slave routes where the necessary surgery was performed in unsanitary conditions. Only one out of every 10 boys subjected to the mutilation actually survived the surgery.

The taking of slaves – in razzias, or raids, on peaceful African villages – also had a high casualty rate. The typical practice was to conduct a pre-dawn raid on an unsuspecting village and kill off as many of the men and older women as possible. Young women and children were then abducted as the preferred “booty” for the raiders. 

Young women were targeted because of their value as concubines or sex slaves in markets. “The most common and enduring purpose for acquiring slaves in the Arab world was to exploit them for sexual purposes. These women were nothing less than sexual objects who, with some limitations, were expected to make themselves available to their owners. . .Islamic law catered to the sexual interests of a man by allowing him to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as his purse allowed. Young women and girls were often inspected before purchase in private areas of the slave market by the prospective buyer (p.35).

 Some of the African slaves were shipped to Iraq, where they were inhumanely treated. In the latter part of the 19th century, they revolted and were subsequently placed in the Iraqi army. According to Walusako Mwalilino, a Malawian historian, "From 1859 to 1872, between 20,000 and 25,000 slaves were shipped to southwest Asian ports" (The Washington Times, Sept 21, 1995; p.A14). But the Arab slave trade continued well into the 20th century. According to Thomas Cantwell, an American reporter, "the last interdicted slave ship was in 1947, a dhow from Mombasa" (The Washington Post, June 4, 1994; p.A18).  American reporter, Timothy Williams, claimed that,

 “Officially, Iraq is a colorblind society that in the tradition of Prophet Muhammad treats black people with equality and respect. But on the packed dirt streets of Zubayr, Iraq’s scaled-down version of Harlem, African-Iraqis talk of discrimination so steeped in Iraqi culture that they are commonly referred to as “abd” — slave in Arabic — prohibited from interracial marriage and denied even menial jobs.

Historians say that most African-Iraqis arrived as slaves from East Africa as part of the Arab slave trade starting about 1,400 years ago. They worked in southern Iraq’s salt marshes and sugar cane fields.

Though slavery — which in Iraq included Arabs as well as Africans — was banned in the 1920s, it continued until the 1950s, African-Iraqis say.

 Recently, they have begun to campaign for recognition as a minority population, which would grant them the same benefits as Christians, including reserved seats in Parliament.

“Black people here are living in fear,” said Jalal Dhiyab Thijeel, an advocate for the country’s estimated 1.2 million African-Iraqis. “We want to end that” (The New York Times, Dec 2, 2009; p.A22).

 The official Libyan and Arab line on slavery is that: "The Arab countries are a natural extension to the African continent. The African Arabs, or those who carried the indulgent message of Islam, were the first to effectively oppose slavery as inhumane and unnatural. The claim that Arabs were involved in the trade at all is a mischievous invention of the West, made in order to divide the Arabs from their brothers and sisters who live in the African continent" (New Africa, Nov 1984; p.12). Nonsense.

 During the black struggle for civil rights in the United States and independence in Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, Afro-Arab differences and ill-feelings were buried. Black leaders, seduced by the fallacious premise that "the enemy of my enemy must be my friend”, made common cause with the Arabs. In the United States, many blacks dropped their "European" or "slave" names and adopted Islamic ones. In Africa, black leaders entered into alliances and sought support from Arab states for the liberation struggle against Western colonialism. Grand Afro-Arab solidarity accords were pompously announced. Drooling, grandiloquent speeches announced meretricious Afro-Arab summits. Little came out of them, and since independence, black Africans have gradually realized that the Arabs regard them "expendable”. The Arabs are just as ready as the French to use them as pawns to achieve their chimerical geopolitical schemes and global religious imperialism/domination.

 REFERENCES

Ayittey, George B.N. (2006). Indigenous African Institutions. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational Publishers.

 Boahen, A.A. and J.B. Webster. History of West Africa. New York: Praeger, 1970.

Diop Cheikh Anta. Pre‑colonial Black Africa. Westport: Lawrence Hill & Company, 1987.

Falola, Toyin. "Nigeria's Indigenous Economy." in Nigerian History and Culture. ed. Olaniyan, 1985.

 Gordon, Murray (1989).  Slavery in the Arab World. New York, NY: New Amsterdam Books.

Martin, Phyllis M and Partrick O'Meara eds. Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.

 Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Chicago: Kerr, 1915.

 Simiyu, V.G. "The Democratic Myth in The African Traditional Societies," in Democratic Theory and Practice in Africa. eds. Walter O. Oyugi et. al. Portsmouth, NH: 1988.

 Vaughan, James H. "Population and Social Organization," in Martin and O'Meara, 1986.

 Wickins, Peter (1981). An Economic History of Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 George B.N. Ayittey, PhD

Washington, DC