By Joseph Diescho
The spectre of corruption is one of the cannibals that eat away at the cohesion of body politics in Africa. Post-independence Namibia has had her fair share of controversy with corruption, some legitimate concerns and the rest smokescreens when people computed corruption on the part of the government when there was very little or none at all. Hence, in his inaugural address as second President of the Republic, President Pohamba made a personal declaration of war against corruption. Whether he has lived up to this declaration is neither here nor there. One has reason to believe that when President Pohamba made the declaration, something must have driven him to see corruption as a cancer eating away at the nation’s well-being. He must have known of something that had gone on in the first 15 years of self-rule when he was a minister holding various portfolios. The context was that several presidential commissions were tasked to investigate matters of corruption yet they yielded no fruit: there was a series of presidential commissions of enquiry which produced reports and so far only one such report, the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MOHSS), was published.
The first conundrum with this vexing and complex subject is to understand what corruption is: its meaning, origin, manifestations and how to manage it. Human nature is such that corruption can never be eradicated, no matter how well intentioned we are. It might even help to begin with a consideration of what corruption is not. Most of the consternation in our debates about corruption has nothing to do with corruption as such. As most of the things that cause unhappiness in the public and private sectors are mere issues of incompetence, mismanagement, maladministration, malpractice, and simply theft.
One must also hasten to put the record straight that corruption is not an exclusive province of African leaders or Africans. It is a disease that is part of the human experience as humans scramble for resources and power to feel safe, secure, protected, and admittedly in power over others. Other civilizations have managed to manage corruption better than most African nations, yet corruption is all over the planet or wherever human beings compete for power, influence and resources. The levels of poverty and lack of ethics in the administrations of African economies execrate the situation more than it is the situation where there is more social cohesion due to either religion or culture.
What is corruption? First, there must be clarity that most of the time when people speak of corruption, there is a tendency to conflate all ills in the public service with corruption or graft, which is the use of public office for private gain. There are many instances of bad practices that are not part of the fibre of corruption, but are official conducts of malfeasance, maladministration, malpractice and sheer theft – all of which could be part of a dysfunctioning system. Malfeasance is the wrongdoing when an official who handles public affairs takes graft or violates trust. Misfeasance is the wrongdoing when an official does a lawful act in an unlawful manner so that there is an infringement on the rights of others. Maladministration is the wrongdoing of administering public affairs in a manner that violates the original intention of the process at hand. Malpractice is the wrongdoing when unprofessional conduct leads to injury of others, like when a medical doctor is guilty of wrong prescriptions or neglect of patients, which leads to misconduct. Theft is the illegal taking of something that is not offered.
The word corruption derives from the Latin word corruptus (verb: corrumpere), meaning the degeneration of something from the original state of well-being to where it is no longer as good as it used to be, the deterioration of something from a sound condition to an unsound condition. A fruit gets corrupted when left to decay in the scorching sun, and its looks and shape will show that it is no longer what/ how it was before it got to the state of corruptedness. It means therefore that something, in order to be corrupt, must have been in a purer and more perfect state before.
In the context of the ongoing discussions on the subject, corruption has been defined invariably as the use of public office for personal gain in one way or the other, directly or indirectly. It is a 2-way activity – one offers and the other accepts. One demands and another complies, even with the use of agencies as intermediaries. It is the practice of offering, giving, receiving, obtaining or collecting of a bribe or any advantage to influence action for the benefit of one’s own or related parties. It is also the abuse of public office or entrusted power for private gain. Examples are:
– Bribery
– Fraud, including tax evasion
– Embezzlement of resources, public or other
– Extortion from or of coercion of vulnerable persons to pay
– Influence peddling such as party financing during national elections in exchange for influence or protection
– Abuse of position or authority for personal benefit
– Facilitation of payments or services with kickbacks for the facilitator
– Intervening to influence tender or prosecutorial processes on behalf of a person who is induced to pay a token of appreciation in return
– Formal stopping or concealing of statutory investigations when findings are seen not to favour a particular outcome
– Changing of rules in aid of advancing a particular outcome or preferred result from a process.
– Using access to information and using it to influence outcomes of deals in order to derive benefit or cause to benefit, such as under-invoicing using insider information for personal gain
What causes corruption? People generally mean well, yet when left unchecked, human nature contains in itself seeds of degeneration. No one is born corrupt, even though wherever there are people who can counter-state the truth to suit their circumstances of survival or power, corruption is part of the human condition, especially when left unfettered. In certain circumstances, corruption can be seen and even preferred as a good manner of doing business. It may even be the only way to receive good service, or be accepted in society. Following are some of the situations wherein corruption is seen as a better route than the normal running of a political or bureaucratic system:
1. Too much inefficiency: When there is too much efficiency leading to long queues as people wait for services, the result of which bureaucratic frustration is the order of the day, so much so that it is better to pay someone to avoid long hours of waiting.
2. Chronic Bottlenecks: When there are too much administrative bottlenecks and inefficiency so much so that to get s service, like to obtain a passport in time for an international trip to take up a scholarship, it is better to pay someone to get it in time.
3. Resource Scarcity: When there is scarcity of resources resulting in unavoidable staff competition to be in the good books of the decision-makers or appointing officers so much so that people find justification in paying bribes or offer sexual services in exchange for promotion or simply to get somewhere.
4. Lack of Transparency: When there is constant and routine lack of transparency and accountability so much so that there is just no information about how to get services where, when and how, and things begin to happen only when one knows someone or can recommend someone and there is a fee that goes with such common practices.
5. Crushing Poverty: When the levels of poverty are high so much so that scrambling for any position in government and the private sector turns people into beasts who believe in the survival of the fastest.
6. Lack of Ethics: When there is a chronic lack of ethics, integrity and professionalism in the organization so much so that in the end all that matters is personal gain and power, and the role models are those who are at the top not because they represent any values, but because they are either the nastiest or the quietest.
7. Ineffective Laws and Regulations: When there are ineffective laws to regulate and govern human follies, and to prosecute wrongdoing, protect do-gooders such as whistle-blowers and informants so much so that the only game in town is self-aggrandizement by any means necessary, and laws turn the other way.
8. Unpredictability: When the system is totally unpredictable or unaccountable, either for wrongdoers or law-abiding citizens, so much so that there is no benchmarking of best and/or worst practices in the system.
9. Systemic Patronage: When senior government servants such as cabinet ministers are appointed not on merit, but patronage when they know that they cannot do the job, as a result of which they use meagre resources to pay people to do their work for them or cover up for their inefficiency so much so that confidence in the system erodes in no time.
10. Glorification of Banal Politics: When politics becomes stronger than the laws of the country, so much so that role players are more concerned about their own safety than the general well-being of the state and personality cults dictate the direction of the affairs of the nation.
11. Politics of the Strongmen: When people who are expected to deliver essential services impartially, such as the police, the nurses and magistrates are forced to pander to the whims of the political elite, or and are undervalued and underpaid so much that they have to resort to extra means to make a decent living whereas those who make the laws live above their levels of work.
12. Mediocrity: When those who are expected to champion the business of the state are not sufficiently educated to understand the rules of the game, never mind appreciating the parts that make up the system and how the parts that relate to one another make up the whole. To be continued next week