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From Africa Recovery, Vol.13#4 (December 1999), page 8

Africa mounts drive against graft

International Anti-Corruption Conference spotlights global malady

By Ernest Harsch in Durban

Welcoming delegates from Africa and other parts of the world, South African President Thabo Mbeki hoped that the 9th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) would give "an added impetus to all of us as Africans further to intensify our own offensive against the scourge of corruption." Judging from the pervasive African participation throughout the 10-15 October deliberations, it likely will have just that effect, as the delegates return home to press for more concerted action against graft in their own countries and internationally.

Held every two years since 1983, and now organized by Transparency International, a Berlin-based advocacy group devoted to combating corruption worldwide (see box, below), this was the first IACC convened in Africa. It also was the largest so far, with some 1,600 registered participants from 134 countries, significantly higher than the 1,000 delegates who traveled to Lima, Peru, for the previous conference. As a result, African concerns and perspectives on corruption have been injected much more intensively into the global discussions on how best to tackle the problem.
"Meeting here on the African continent for the first time, we were moved by the special contributions made by our African colleagues, as they shared their own insights into a malaise which they share with all regions of the world," the delegates noted in their concluding declaration, the "Durban Commitment to Effective Action Against Corruption."

While the conference participants included many government officials, representatives of international donor agencies, corporate executives, prosecutors, judges, and other professionals, some of the most forceful contributions came from civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Ms. Wangari Maathai, leader of Kenya's environmental Greenbelt Movement, prompted a standing ovation during the opening plenary session after she vehemently criticized both government officials and multinational corporations for their involvement in corrupt practices across Africa, and emphasized the central role of non-governmental and citizens groups in combating the affliction. She also urged anti-corruption campaigners to not address the issue in an abstract, general way, but to "give corruption a face," that is, identify both its perpetrators and its victims.

Despite some Western portrayals of Africa as a continent particularly prone to corruption, many conference speakers drew attention to the global nature of the phenomenon, citing recent scandals in the European Commission, the laundering of ill-gotten Russian funds through US banks, the contribution of corruption and cronyism to the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, and numerous other examples of large-scale malfeasance. They urged corporations to stop bribing foreign officials, and called on Northern banks to return the "blood money" stolen from developing countries and deposited in secret accounts.

While corruption's scope is worldwide, "it is especially destructive in developing countries, with their delicate economic situations. It has critically hobbled and skewed Africa's development," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan affirmed in a message presented by Under- Secretary-General Pino Arlacchi.

"African governments in particular must get tough on this issue, and make the fight against corruption a genuine priority," Mr. Annan's message continued. "The costs of not doing so are very high -- in lost resources, lost foreign investment, distorted decision making, and failing public confidence."

A drain on development

Since the main purpose of the conference was to discuss strategies for combating corruption, few participants looked in detail at specific instances of corruption or its concrete effects. But virtually all shared a common appreciation of the very serious impact corruption can have on a country's development prospects.

Hardly any country in Africa has been free of the malady. Over the past two-three years alone, exposures of corrupt allocations of land or housing have hit Botswana, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Gambia, Kenya, and São Tomé and Princípe. Algeria, Benin and Egypt have been rocked by major state banking scandals, while cabinet ministers accused of financial misdeeds have been sacked or jailed in Ghana, Ethiopia, Mozambique and South Africa, among other countries.

In a few of Africa's larger economies, the losses have been staggering. A single fraudulent gold exporting scheme in Kenya cost the state treasury more than $150 mn. Under former dictatorships in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo (then called Zaire), literally billions of dollars were estimated to have been siphoned off into foreign bank accounts. But even smaller economies sometimes have been hit by big losses. In Benin, managing directors of four state enterprises have been accused of misappropriating up to $62 mn, while the prime minister of São Tomé and Princípe has reported to parliament that corruption in that tiny island nation seriously threatened fiscal management, in turn jeopardizing assistance from multilateral financial institutions.

"Corruption," President Festus Mogae of Botswana told the conference, "exacerbates poverty in that it effectively transfers real resources from official state coffers to the few rich and powerful." Corruption also distorts factor prices, he added, in that those who benefit from corruption "are rewarded for little or no work done and the cost of projects turns out higher than it would be." It likewise distorts economic decision-making, sometimes giving priority to development projects that may have little or no national benefit, President Mogae observed.

Studies by the World Bank estimate that countries with widespread corruption may have economic growth rates of between 0.5 per cent and 1 per cent less than would otherwise be the case. Corruption's impact, World Bank President James Wolfensohn told the conference, is felt most "by the poorest levels of society," for example in the distribution of seeds or medicines, in street and market trading, at police checkpoints and in many other areas of activity.

While corruption "bears with special cruelty upon the world's most poor," noted the conference's Durban Commitment, it also "debases human rights" and "destroys confidence in democracy and the legitimacy of governments."

In this way, widespread corruption has been seen as a contributing factor to war and civil strife, notably in Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Even on a less severe scale, it has added to political instability. Burkina Faso has been swept over the past year by major protests and strikes over the assassination of a newspaper editor investigating high-level corruption, while municipal workers in Malawi have struck to demand the ouster of corrupt city officials and conservationists in Kenya demonstrated in early 1999 to block the sale of state forest land to politically connected individuals.

Corruption, maladministration and poor governance do more than just undermine economic stability, South African Minister of Education Kader Asmal told the conference. "They undermine government in the eyes of the people. They lead to a pervasive cynicism about politics and politicians, which is disastrous for democracy."

Varied perspectives

Only limited attention was paid during the conference to assessing corruption's complex causes, but many of the participants came to the discussions with strong views about what facilitates its spread. Mr. Joseph Warioba, Chairman of Tanzania's Presidential Commission on Corruption, attributed its prevalence mainly to "greed and poverty" -- the greed of those with wealth and power, leading to "grand corruption," and the poverty of ordinary civil servants, policemen and other public employees who feel driven to supplement their meagre incomes through bribes and extortion, known as "petty corruption."

Among other human rights advocates, Mr. Koigi wa Wamwere, head of the National Democratic and Human Rights Organization of Kenya, drew a strong link between corruption and undemocratic methods of rule. He noted that he himself had spent 13 years in prison for his political activities, including efforts to expose corruption.

Defining corruption primarily as a public sector problem, some speakers saw economic liberalization as the best long-term solution. Mr. Alassane Ouattara, former deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund and currently seeking to become a candidate for the presidency of Côte d'Ivoire, argued that "corrupt behaviour increases often with the size of the public sector." Consequently, he urged African countries to "try to diminish the role of the state." Chad's Minister of Finance Bichera Cherif Daoussa claimed that structural adjustment programmes reduce the scope for corruption.

Others differed sharply. Mr. John Makumbe, chairman of Transparency International-Zimbabwe, maintained that adjustment programmes and economic globalization in fact tend to worsen corruption, by promoting the interests of Western powers and opening up African economies to "vultures from the outside."

Mr. Richard Holloway, a senior analyst of PACT-Zambia, a non-governmental organization, told Africa Recovery that in the various African countries where he has worked, economic liberalization and privatization have widened the gap between the rich and poor, because those with power have used it to corruptly enrich themselves. "I think corruption is the flip side of privatization," he said. Ms. Maathai, from Kenya, encouraged participants to view corruption itself as a business -- a "business extraordinary" -- that must be checked through coordinated and forceful action.

Mr. Mark Malloch Brown, Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), observed that corruption appears actually to have increased in recent years. Citing the former Soviet bloc in particular, where there has been an abrupt shift from state-controlled economies to market economies, he said that "jungle capitalism" and the corruption that accompanies it are mainly short-term, transitional problems. Over the long run, he said, the competitiveness of global capital "rewards the good and punishes the bad."

Speaking directly after him, Mr. J.H. Mensah, Chairman of Ghana's Parliamentary Accounts Committee, worried about the "the ethical implications of the capitalist paradigm" and urged anti-corruption fighters not to ignore its side effects. In this system, he said, the bottom line is profits, and "the moral aspect of how the bottom line is realized becomes secondary."

In a similar vein, President Mbeki, in his opening address, warned about the market economy's "deification of material values" and insisted that democratic governments play a role "in evolving the social norms that militate against a perverted, anti-social individualism."

Arsenal of measures

Whatever the views about the causes of corruption, there was wide agreement that greater effort and determination is needed, in Africa and internationally, to combat the problem. Over the years, numerous anti-corruption strategies have been announced, South African Minister of Justice Penuell Maduna observed, but many have been marked by a "lack of political will." For them to succeed, "there must be a clear commitment on the part of political leadership to combat corruption and to take decisive action against corrupt officials. The leaders themselves must be prepared to submit to scrutiny." To back up such commitment, a wide range of enforcement institutions, independent agencies and watchdog bodies are essential, many speakers emphasized.

President Mogae of Botswana explained that his country, which often has been cited internationally for its rigourous anti-corruption approach, employs an "arsenal of measures," including an autonomous Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime, a parliamentary accounts committee to ensure transparency in public spending, an ombudsman's office to hear citizens' complaints and various education and training programmes for civil servants and the general public. Thanks to a policy of "zero tolerance," officials caught in fraudulent activities have been fired, imprisoned and obliged to pay restitution. In 1997, the former chairman of the Botswana Stock Exchange was convicted and jailed for corruption.

The inauguration in May of Nigeria's first democratically elected government in 15 years has opened the way for a major process of "ethical re-engineering" in that country, Minister of Police Affairs Maj. Gen. David Jemibewon told the conference, speaking on behalf of President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was unable to attend the closing ceremony. "To sustain democracy," Gen. Jemibewon said, "we have to keep itching fingers and greedy eyes off the public till. Those in power must be accountable to the people." Amidst widespread poverty and suffering, it would amount to "criminal insensitivity for any government official to live in opulence and luxury," especially if the wealth has been "stolen from the people."

Since coming into office, the new Nigerian government has launched numerous investigations of corruption, cancelled dubious contracts, forced scores of senior military officers into retirement and seized plots of land and other properties acquired illicitly by high-level former officials. It announced that it already has recovered more than $120 mn stolen under the previous military regimes and has convinced foreign banks to freeze another $600 mn in such officials' overseas accounts. The government has introduced an Anti-Corruption Bill into parliament to provide a more effective legal framework against corruption and misappropriation of public resources.

Namibia held a national consultative conference to forge an "integrity strategy" in late 1998, reported Mr. Louis du Pisani, the country's acting deputy prosecutor. Following up on its recommendations, in March 1999 the cabinet approved the creation of an anti-corruption unit within the prosecutor-general's office, with powers to both investigate and take preventive action.

Uganda, which has had its share of high-level corruption in recent times, has declared "open war" against the affliction, declared Minister for Ethics and Integrity Miria Matembe. This included the establishment in June 1998 of a Directorate of Ethics and Integrity within the president's office, with its head (Ms. Matembe) enjoying cabinet rank, to coordinate all anti-corruption efforts. There also are a variety of other monitoring, auditing and inspection bodies, and the government is considering an extension of its existing "leadership code" to oblige the spouses and other family members of high-level officials to declare their assets in order to make it harder to hide illicitly acquired wealth. Finally, she added, since "the private sector also is corrupt," the government is working with professional bodies to strengthen ethical codes of conduct for businesses and non-governmental organizations.

Some African countries have been discussing the possibility of a regional convention against corruption. Europe and Latin America have such conventions, but so far Africa and Asia do not. In 1998, the Southern African Development Community held a regional roundtable on anti-corruption strategies, followed by a second one just a month before the IACC in Durban. In February 1999, representatives of 11 African countries (Benin, Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda) met in Washington under the auspices of the Global Coalition for Africa and adopted a set of principles to combat corruption in Africa. In light of such initiatives, President Mogae of Botswana told Africa Recovery that the "atmosphere is conducive" in Africa now for drawing up an anti-corruption convention.

Public watchdogs

Frustration over the frequent ineffectiveness of strictly legalistic approaches broke out during a well-attended Africa regional workshop, as several speakers from both the stage and the floor argued for reversing the "onus of proof" in corruption cases, that is, to presume a defendant guilty until proven innocent. This brought a chorus of protests, with many worrying that it could open the door to rights abuses. Mr. Willie Hofmeyr, a prosecutor heading South Africa's Assets Forfeiture Unit, agreed that a sweeping reversal would be wrong, but suggested it could be considered for purposes of seizing civil servants' unexplained assets, though not for prosecuting them.

Skepticism about the willingness of governments and public officials to police themselves also brought wide agreement on the need for independent watchdog bodies. A number of African countries have or are considering establishing an ombudsman's office. Many of Africa's newly elected parliaments lack the ability or confidence to effectively question the actions of public officials, but an African Parliamentary Network Against Corruption has been formed to help share experiences and devise proposals for how to strengthen parliaments' oversight capacities.

A workshop on political corruption recommended legislation to limit the influence of money in election campaigns and party affairs, while another on the media highlighted the central role of the press in helping expose corruption. Whether in the media, civil service or private business, "whistleblowers" must be protected, many agreed.

Time and again, speakers returned to the indispensable role of civil society organizations in providing backbone to the struggle against corruption. They can draw attention to cases of corruption and put pressure on political leaders to follow through on their commitments. They also can help shape public reactions, emphasized Ms. Maathai, by "empowering citizens through civic education so that they can demand accountable and transparent governance from their governments and local authorities."

Global remedies

Since corruption often crosses national borders, the international community as a whole has an important role to play in combating it, the conference agreed. As the UN Secretary-General put it, "Only a global effort is capable of meeting global challenges."

The UN itself is involved in a variety of ways, he pointed out. The UN Centre for International Crime Prevention has launched a global programme against corruption which seeks to help countries build their own institutional capacities, and is working out an agreement with South Africa to aid anti-corruption efforts in its justice system. UNDP now devotes about one-third of its funding to governance issues. At the conference, Mr. Malloch Brown announced a joint UNDP-Transparency International "partnership fund for transparency," specifically to help non-governmental organizations involved in "corruption busting."

With numerous other donor institutions now also involved in corruption issues -- and sometimes linking development assistance levels to progress in combating graft -- some conference participants, including Ms. Maathai, raised concerns that Africa will be saddled with yet more "conditionalities." Mr. Wolfensohn reassured the meeting that the World Bank believed that a successful struggle against corruption could only be waged from within a country. "The Bank and other organizations can help, but the real motive, the real engine, has to come from inside."

Beyond welcoming external assistance for national anti-corruption efforts, many delegates from Africa and other developing regions emphasized that industrialized countries must do more to clean up their own act, to prevent their officials and private sectors from exporting corruption to the South. So far, noted President Mogae, Northern governments have failed to take "stern action" against their own nationals involved in foreign bribery. "The corrupter and the corrupted must all face the due process of the law," he affirmed.

There was wide appreciation for the enactment by the industrialized countries' Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) of a convention outlawing the bribery of foreign public officials. The convention, which came into effect in 1999, seeks to close some of the legal loopholes in OECD countries which had permitted foreign bribery, and in some cases even allowed the cost of bribes to be deducted from corporate taxes. Mr. Mark Pieth, chair of the OECD's Working Group on Bribery, said the convention aims to tackle the "supply side" of corruption, thereby contributing more generally to fair trading practices and good governance.

Numerous delegates suggested further action: that public tendering and procurement procedures be made more transparent, that corporations not only stop paying bribes but expose government officials who ask for them, and that the names of multinational corporations that continue to bribe be widely publicized.

Mr. Roger Batty, deputy head of Botswana's Directorate on Corruption, urged better sharing of information and other forms of cooperation by law enforcement agencies in the North, pointing out that it is now often very difficult to investigate corruption cases with international links. Repeatedly, delegates criticized bank secrecy laws in the North which make it very difficult to locate -- and recover -- the vast sums that have been stashed abroad by corrupt officials. Recent investigations of Swiss and US banks have revealed that billions of dollars in illicit funds from Russia, Mexico, Nigeria and other countries are sitting in those banks' "private" accounts.

The final Durban Commitment called very strongly for international curbs on money-laundering and steps to facilitate the return of looted funds. "We find it wholly unacceptable that the moneys should be invested in institutions in the developed world for the benefit of a corrupt few when they are desperately needed by their rightful owners in the South for the benefit of all," the Commitment said.

The Commitment also supported cancellation of the external debt of poor countries, as advocated by the Jubilee 2000 international anti-debt coalition, coupled with mechanisms to eliminate high-level corruption so that the benefits of debt cancellation "flow to the poor and not to corrupt elites."

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