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Minister Kasukuwere recently vowed to open the bowels of alleged diamond looters

Reason Wafawarova on Monday

We are equally aware that many Western “experts” have written and suggested that the root cause of poverty in Africa lies in government failure and corruption, not exactly in the colonial legacy and its imperialistic aftermath.

I am a professional fundraiser for aid organisations that specialise in international humanitarian work, and it is sometimes disturbing to balance between the dire need for humanitarian intervention and the issue of continental identity, pride, and sovereignty. There are telling exaggerations that are sometimes convenient for fundraising, but also humiliatingly misleading on the part of African dignity.

Dambisa Moyo writes much about the adverse effects of aid in the book “Dead Aid”, and of course she has courted significant controversy, and attracted a lot of criticism, not only from the charity sector, but also from the intellectual community. While Moyo dwells on the economic effect of international aid, there are others who have raised the moral argument around the politics of humanitarianism, mainly arguing that the image of Africa has been unjustly and unfairly damaged through the magnification of misery as a selling point in fundraising efforts. Images of crying, mucous drooling dirty looking little children used as an expression of dire poverty have been criticised as a wrong portrayal of the continent. As a fundraiser myself, I know very well the strong feelings people have in regards to this matter.

The exaggerations are not necessarily intentional, and they are hardly ever made with the intention to demean the people of Africa, but they inadvertently depict hopelessness — giving the targeted donor the impression that the destiny of their donation is the land that carries the definition of hopeless hunger and poverty, and sometimes the impression is created that the beneficiary will never know better than extending the begging hand.

Politically Africa is normally perceived in the negative, particularly by the West, but also from the emerging Asian economic giants. No doubt the Western politician genuinely often sees himself as a saviour of a dark continent marred by an assortment of heinous problems, and this mentality reigns supreme in Western intelligentsia too, among the philanthropists as well, within the mainstream white community in the West, and even within the framework of missionary work from various churches. It is sad when even faith reinforces hopelessness — it being meant to be the fountain of hope.

A friend recently told me that he and his girlfriend had to walk out of an American church in protest after the church leader announced that his church was so tolerant that “even gays, lesbians, and blacks are welcome.” The classification was too telling to tolerate, and my friend and his better half could not stomach it.

We are generally viewed as a marginal people deserving a special sense of sympathy and tolerance at our best, and extreme caution at our worst. We know how our kith and kin in the United States are viewed as a highly dangerous species that can only be tamed by bullets and brute force, and other forms of tranquillisers, like jails. That has become the prevailing mentality within the white dominated law and order establishment in the United States, but I digress.

Africa dominates news stories in the Western media through its miserable image of hunger, disease, refugees, wars, dictators, and debt. Lately, the issue of bad governance has also become topical, and not without cause or justification.

David Cameron recently described Nigerian leaders as “fantastically corrupt,” and again that is not without some reasonable measure of justification. The fact that British politicians are similarly corrupt does not exactly make the assertion any less accurate.

We often bombard the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation with criticism for imperialistic behaviour each time we hear demands for “anti-corruption measures” as a prerequisite for getting assistance. We believe the demands are bullish, patronising, selective, unjust, and that they smack of supremacist tendencies. Often this is true, but not entirely.

It is true that the issue of corruption has been politicised to further hidden agendas aimed at the greater goal of imperialistic hegemony, and any international relations scholar with self-respect will readily accept this reality. However, this mischief does not make our corruption as a people any holier or lighter, it does not exonerate our leadership of its many crimes, and certainly it does not mean the issue of corruption becomes irrelevant.

The complicity of the West in the Rwanda genocide of 1994, does not take away the fact we played the role of massacring our own people in six figure digits. The ruinous effect of the illegally imposed Western sanctions does not take away the effect of bad governance by our politicians in Zimbabwe.

The Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa has lately been canvassing for financial support from some of these Western controlled institutions, and many times the issue of reforms as a prerequisite for assistance has been raised.

Again we are abundantly aware that the issue of bad governance is an excellent Western pretext to implement “reforms” that create favourable conditions for rich Western governments and their multinationals to provide strategic aid and investment, and to sanction crippling loans for poor African countries.

We are equally aware that many Western “experts” have written and suggested that the root cause of poverty in Africa lies in government failure and corruption, not exactly in the colonial legacy and its imperialistic aftermath.

There is no denial that we have rampant corruption across the continent, and it is beyond dispute that corruption presents an enormous problem for millions of our people who continue to languish in abject poverty — often within the vicinity of obscenely wealthy suburbs occupied by their corrupt leadership. Soweto in South Africa, Hatcliffe in Zimbabwe, and Kibera in Kenya are good examples of extreme poverty neighbouring obscene wealth.

Nothing is spared of corruption in Africa. Our natural resources, foreign investment funds, aid money and associated resources in kind, as well as loans extended to our governments by international lending institutions have all been looted by a greedy political leadership.

Most of our economic problems are a direct result of African leaders that enrich themselves corruptly from donor funds and the natural resources of Africa.

In Zimbabwe, both the opposition and the ruling party mourn over the looting of Chiadzwa diamonds by players that are hardly ever mentioned by their identity. Minister Saviour Kasukuwere recently vowed to open the bowels of the alleged looters in search of the missing diamonds. A very impressive call apparently targeted at nobody. Until carried out, the threat turns out to be a vacuous call pregnant with popularity.

There has been no official inquiry or investigation to help find the diamond looters, and amounts have been mentioned in billions as having disappeared from proceeds of the precious stone.

In Africa, it is fashionable to masquerade in anger over matters of corruption, vowing to do ruthless justice on anonymous offenders. That is part of the election culture in what we believe to be emerging democracies across the continent.

Our politicians are fond of this behaviour, and this is how the Chiadzwa villagers have been consoled and pacified over the missing diamonds from their area.

Of course, it is a massive distortion to view the problem of corruption and leadership ineptness as simply an African matter. These corrupt leaders often have partners in the West, and in most cases they have stashed their stolen loot in Western cash havens.

It is wrong to view corruption as a genetic characteristic of African leaders, or of Africans in general, tempting as the assertion might be, even among us Africans. Corruption and bad governance in Africa is in fact, an extension of the widespread problem of the greedy — an underlying feature of the capitalist society. It is part of the colonial legacy — an inherited problem from our former masters.

Corruption is not a monopoly of Africa. It is not restricted to African leadership. In the Middle East we have the murderously repressive regimes that egregiously oppress the Arab people with the complicity of powerful Western backers. The sectarian conflicts featuring the generality of Arabs against ISIL is in fact, a creation from corrupt deals between the West and rogue political players from the Arab world.

We are aware that Western multinationals are far from the models of success that they are often portrayed to be. We know they are in fact, the epitome of corruption.

The examples of BP-Shell and the Nigerian political leadership, Halliburton and Iraq, or the Nestle saga may be among the most publicised, but they are merely the tip of an iceberg.

We know that any illusion in the West as an example of flourishing democracy is greatly undermined by the West’s double standards, like its alliance with dictatorial regimes like Saudi Arabia — the chief sponsor of the ISIS doctrine.

However, it is important that we start taking responsibility for our own actions. The Nkandla scandal in South Africa was not an act of imperialism planned in Western capitals. The corrupt land deals that have resulted in numerous demolitions of illegally constructed houses in Harare are not part of the regime change agenda by the West.

Just how did big mouth Acie Lumumba end up a businessman after being roped into the high echelons of Zanu-PF power corridors overnight? The foul-mouthed political novice has the temerity to confess and admit that millions of dollars were thrown at his disposal with neither an expenditure plan nor any accountability guideline. That defines the level of corruption within our system, does it not? Those accused by Lumumba have not made any public denials to any of the assertions. It is not surprising.

The West bemoans the embezzlement of their money by the poodle politicians they created in the MDC, and clearly the opposition has been hard hit by the backlash of Western donor fatigue.

Corruption is an indictment on our collective conscience across the political divide.

How do we acquit ourselves when our police officers openly engage in corrupt conduct? We cannot defend a political system that breeds a dead conscience in our accountability institutions.

We cannot be proud of a political system that allows a coterie of elites to continue to enrich itself when everything it is presiding over is collapsing like a deck of cards.

We cannot continue to shun the principles of good governance simply because the concept has been used in the past as a Western pretext for political meddling.

If we truly want to be sovereign, then we must aspire for accountability. We cannot be sovereign when we allow ourselves to rely solely on foreign aid even for such basics as payment of wages for our own civil servants.

There is no such thing as sovereign poverty — only sovereign wealth.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome! It is homeland or death!!

 REASON WAFAWAROVA is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.