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The first winner of the Mo Ibrahim’s Prize for Good Governance has just
recently been announced as Joaquim Chissano, former President of
Mozambique. The announcement was received by Issa Shivji, a Tanzanian
academic, with a no holds barred critique ( “The Mo Ibrahim Prize:
Robbing Peter to pay Paul”) which led me to this comment that can be taken as a ‘deconstruction exercise’ attempting to establish a middle ground between the rationale for the prize and Shivji’s critique of it.
Starting with what is perhaps his most damning charge, Shivji states
that “Mo Ibrahim’s prize for a retired African president which was
awarded to Joachim Chissano of Mozambique was in my view an insult to
the African people. First, it is belittling African people. Dictators
and undemocratic rulers exist all over the world, including the West
which has arrogated to itself the right to judge others as “good man” or
punish them for being dictators (Saddam Hussein).” While generally
agreeing with the last sentence, I am afraid I cannot say the same about
the first two.
He further states that “Our dictators were not simply made in Kinshasa
(Mobutu) or Central African Republic (Bokassa) or Entebbe (Idi Amin) but
also in Washington, or Paris, or London, and Tel Aviv. The vicious war
in Mozambique was not simply waged by RENAMO but fully supported and
instigated by apartheid South Africa backed by the US and western
powers. Apartheid South Africa also claimed the life of the liberation
leader, Samora Machel, and his leading comrades.” Again, I couldn’t
agree more. However, I fail to see why the acknowledgement of these
historical facts should prevent all of us, Africans, from looking
forward to a better future and trying to devise the best possible ways
to prevent the past from repeating itself.
Further down his critique Shivji asserts that “Issues of democracy and
dictatorship, of war and peace, of governance and state administration,
do not fall within the realm of a system of punishment and rewards.” I
dare say they do. The issue to me is that the “society that matters” in
most African countries, i.e. that which is empowered enough to enforce a
system of punishment and rewards according to its dominant values,
generally excludes the “peasants, workers, youth, and wamachinga” he
rightly mentions as the real interest groups for democracy.
He then states that “Good leaders are as much a product of our societies
as are the bad ones. It is for the people to decide who is a good or a
bad leader and how to award a good one and punish a bad one.” Again, to
me the ‘societies’ producing these ‘good or bad’ leaders in Africa do
not include the people that really value, if nothing else out of sheer
need for their survival as human beings, good governance, i.e. civil
society and the poor, and among them the vast majority of women, who are
in general simply disenfranchised and socially excluded.
More to the point: there are not democratic systems in most of our
countries that will enable the latter group of “the people” to enforce
their own systems of punishment and rewards according to their own
values. Hence, in my view, the importance and relevance of the
constitutive criteria for the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, namely:
Safety and Security
Rule of Law, Transparency and Corruption
Participation and Human Rights
Sustainable Economic Development
Human Development
The question then becomes whether, over and above the issue of having or
not brought peace (‘Safety and Security’) to his country, Chissano met
each one of these criteria during his mandate, taking the Ibrahim index,
as presented, as a “holistic definition of good governance.” Judging
from Shivji’s arguments, and setting aside for the moment my own
questions about whether he really met the criteria for ‘Sustainable
Economic Development’ and ‘Human Development’, it would appear that the former Mozambican President failed to meet at least two of the criteria, namely ‘Rule of Law, Transparency and Corruption’ and ‘Participation and Human Rights’.
I quote from him: “(…) Chissano’s son, Nyimpine, a businessman, was
implicated in the murder of a journalist, Carlos Cardoso, who was
investigating the fraudulent disappearance of 14 million dollars from
the Commercial Bank of Mozambique in 1996.” To the extent that this
might be true, having thus failed those two crucial criteria, I would
then agree with Shivji that Chissano did not deserve the prize because,
as I understand it, a ‘holistic approach’ requires that all the criteria
are met.
I would also agree with him that “(…) the issues of war and peace are
contentious issues and can only be understood in their historical and
social context.” I cannot agree, however, with the sentence that
follows: “And so are the issues of democracy and dictatorship.” Again, I
dare say they are not, at least in the context of ‘good governance’, as
the Ibrahim Index has it and as common sense would have it: to me, there
is no “historical and social context” that can legitimately justify,
except precisely in periods of generalised war and instability, i.e. of
total lack of ‘Safety and Security’, the failure by the state, any
state, to guarantee ‘Participation and Human Rights’ to its citizens,
just to mention this criterion – and here, without trying to minimize
its wider effects in society, it might be worth noting that, although of
a comparatively smaller scale, the post-independence conflict in
Mozambique shares with that occurred in Angola (where President Eduardo
dos Santos is also hailed among significant sectors of society as the
“architect of peace”) the particularity that, except in its initial
stages when Apartheid South Africa’s army was directly involved, it was
hardly a full blown war affecting most of the country’s territory
(certainly not its main cities), but a constrained guerrilla activity
creating focuses of instability in localised regions, particularly along
the borders.
But perhaps my most fundamental disagreement with Shivji stems from his
affirmation that “It is even worse to cite “good governance” as an
achievement for awarding an individual president of a country. What is “good governance”? Who determines what is good and bad governance? What yardsticks are applied? and why are these yardsticks applied only to
Africa? Why doesn’t any one award a Norwegian prime minister for good
governance or include “good governance” conditionality to lend Mr. Bush
assistance or fund Martin Athissari to advise Bush on good governance?
(Remember Martin Athissari, funded by the World Bank, came to Tanzania
to advise President Mkapa on good governance.)”
While sharing his concerns about how exactly ‘good governance’ in Africa
is measured (indeed, the Mo Ibrahim Index does not say much about the
yardsticks against which each of its criteria is measured), I can think
of a number of very good reasons for applying whatever reasonable
yardsticks there are for ‘good governance’ in Africa, of which being the
continent with the highest percentages of its population living on under
one dollar a day, while their undemocratic rulers and government
officials live as largely as, if not better in some cases than, Bush and
without the checks and balances that might unsettle and ultimately
‘dethrone’ Bush’s or any American administration within any four-year
period for that matter, is just one.
Furthermore, the question of “Why doesn’t any one award a Norwegian
prime minister for good governance” appears to me as a particularly
interesting one, for this simple reason: unlike the oil producing
countries in Africa, including my dear native Angola, Norway has managed
along the years to create something as crucial for one of the index’s
criteria for ‘good governance’, namely that of ‘Sustainable Economic
Development’, as the Petroleum Fund of Norway. Currently worth more than
USD 250 billion, it was instituted by the Norwegian government to shield
its country and citizens from exogenous shocks from the global markets
and to ensure an equitable distribution of the income from its oil
industry across generations.
Presenting her country’s oil resources as ‘collective property’, Kristin
Halvorsen, Norway Finance Minister, said last year that “This is revenue
from a natural resource and we are not allowed to spend this in a
generation or two.” So, on the face of such a sensible approach to ‘good
governance’ I wouldn’t see the need to establish a system of ‘rewards
and punishments’ to a country like Norway. Using Shivji’s own
introductory statement, “Punishment is to deter; often to take revenge.
Reward is to encourage. Rewards can also be a recognition for
outstanding, usually, individual achievements. Which acts are liable to
punishment and which are rewarded depends on the dominant values of
society.” I would suggest that Norwegian prime ministers would hardly
need any further encouragement, precisely because the values that compel
them to practice good governance are embedded in their society.
Finally, of course, no one else but the addressee himself should respond
to Shivji’s final message: “Mr. Mo Ibrahim, you have made millions of
dollars from the sweat and blood of the African people. If you want to
return a few million to the people, build schools, dispensaries, and
water wells in the south of your own country rather than giving them to
the Chisasanos of this world. Do not add insult to injury by robbing
(poor) Peter to pay (rich) Paul.” On my part, I would just say that,
since its creation last year, I had always questioned Mo Ibrahim’s Prize
as an effective deterrent for African incumbents from practicing
‘daylight robbery’ and turning a blind eye to widespread corruption for
the simple reason that, at least in those abundantly resource-endowed
countries, specially the oil rich, the evidence suggests that, on top of
all the lust fed by their characteristic power-addiction, they reap much
more wealth from their ‘lifelong’ tenures than the “USD 5 million over
10 years, plus USD 200.000 for life and any further USD 200.000 for any
additional good causes” they might get from Mo Ibrahim’s Foundation
“lottery”. And, if by any extraordinary fluke they all start ‘behaving’
at once, will the Foundation have enough funds to reward all of them?
www.africanpath.com
Koluki hails from Angola and has been working extensively in Southern
Africa. She holds an MSc in Economic History and is a writer, former
journalist and regular contributor with articles for Angolan and
international publications. She airs her views on “life, the universe
and everything” http://koluki.blogspot.com
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