{UAH} Pojim/WBK: Only clever men and women will save Africa’s rulers, not tear gas and guns - Opinion - nation.co.ke

http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Africa-Leadership-Technology-Government/-/440808/2613324/-/jeyvq3z/-/index.html

Only clever men and women will save Africa's rulers, not tear gas and guns - Opinion

By CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO
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Former South African President Thabo Mbeki got himself into a lot of trouble while he was in office, because he was too brainy.

As a result, he intended to be dismissive of people he thought were not clever enough, which earned him the reputation of being arrogant.

And his penchant to be coldly rational cast him as aloof.

It cost him his job, when all the people he made to look foolish ganged up behind Jacob Zuma and ousted him as president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in September 2008, leaving him no choice but to resign.

However, Zuma and his crowd were just keen on getting rid of Mbeki with the vote without following every letter of the law. Mbeki worried that if that happened, it would set a precedent for lawlessness and threaten South Africa's democracy.

So, according to a fascinating book by his senior aide, Frank Chicane, Eight Days in September, Mbeki helped the guys who had plotted against him do it properly by showing and working with them through every step that they needed according to the law and constitution of South Africa, to oust him.

Now he has found his true calling. He has been leading a UN and African Union panel on "Illicit Financial Flows" out of Africa, and just delivered a typically wonkish report.

The report estimates that at least $1 trillion has been drained out of Africa over the last 50 years in illicit flows. That is equivalent to all the official aid received by Africa over the same period.

But the beauty of the latest Mbeki report is, it argues that while we should focus on money taken out through criminal activities like corruption, poaching, trafficking, and so on, the real killer is the money lost "legally" through the activities of respectable international and local firms in what you might call "white crime" — no guns, no bribes, just tricks.

Thus in Kenya "SIM box fraud", where international calls are billed at local rates, costs the country $440,000 monthly.

In Guinea, an ore mine estimated to be worth $140 billion over two years, was concessioned for the same period to a multinational firm for a miserly $165 million — the result of a small valuation problem.

African countries lost up to $407 billion between 2001 and 2010 from trade misplacing — the misrepresentation of data about imports or exports.

These illicit activities cost Africa $30 billion and $50 billion every year, which tells us that the continent is a net creditor, rather than debtor, to the world.

The matter, however, raises a wider issue that the Mbeki panel did not speak to — the ability of the African state.

It suggests to us that the discussion about African states being either weak (e.g. Somalia) or too strong (e.g. Ethiopia) is limited.

The idea is that a strong state has near total control of its territory, and is able to impose law and order. Many African states see law and order capability as the ability to disperse protesters, to muzzle the Press, and beat the Opposition into line.

However, stopping the activities that bleed Africa through illicit flows requires smart states, not muscular police and soldiers.

In turn, it means hiring tech-savvy people, and those who know numbers and the way the new global economy works.

The problem is that such people will not have been former campaign managers, relatives of the minister, or from the president's clan.

So the current emphasis on loyalty and lineage as the basis of appointment to office in Africa must end if we are to have smart states.

'NATIONAL SECURITY SECRETS'

In one of my many past lives as a newspaper editor, I remember an incident when we got into trouble for publishing "national security secrets". It was a photograph and the price of a helicopter gunship that the government had bought.

When the government revealed it had bought helicopters, and only partially gave the make and refused to divulge anything else, we went to work — on the Internet.

The make led us to the supplier, and the supplier had a website, with photos, price, and an animated demo.

The officers who came to the office to investigate were baffled when we showed them the site. We escaped that one, but happily the government learnt its lesson. It decided to understand the Internet.

The author is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa

Only clever men and women will save Africa's rulers, not tear gas and guns - Opinion - nation.co.ke

http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Africa-Leadership-Technology-Government/-/440808/2613324/-/jeyvq3z/-/index.html

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