{UAH} Pojim/WBK/Gook: Why big people in Africa continue to do whatever they please - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke
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Why big people in Africa continue to do whatever they please - Comment
One of the most enduring preoccupations in Africa is "accountability." The term has been part of popular political lexicon since international efforts to "normalise" politics in Africa began in the 1980s.
In ordinary conversation, people use it loosely in the same way they use other types of jargon popularised by the numerous attempts to cure Africa's many ills.
Experts, however, use it to describe an aspect of the relationship between wielders of power and ordinary citizens in whose interest they act or purport to act.
It defines whether the powerful act in line with the expectations or wishes of citizens and whether there are mechanisms to compel them to do so should they be inclined to act otherwise.
Where the "big people" take the views or interests of "small people" into account in whatever they do, and where mechanisms exist to compel them to do so when necessary, they are accountable. Where nothing of the sort happens, where they do as they please regardless of popular feeling, they are not accountable.
Experts contend that every society must have effective public institutions or mechanisms to guarantee the safety, freedom, and general wellbeing of its members. The role of institutions is to ensure that governments are transparent, accountable, and inclusive. This, they contend, guarantees fairness and equity.
The trouble with Africa is that, thanks to weak public institutions, countries suffer from what experts call accountability deficits. All over the continent this has spawned a veritable industry purveying solutions or tools to address the problem.
There was a time when "governance experts" recommended regular changes of government as the key antidote to the self-interested conduct of wielders of power.
Soon enough, however, it became clear that this idea was, to a significant degree, the product of wishful thinking driven by experiences in contexts far removed from the African reality. And so the search began for more focused and presumably more realistic approaches.
Over the years, attempts to build institutions have targeted the justice, law and order sectors: institutions responsible for administering justice, maintaining law and order, and ensuring respect for human rights. Corruption-busting organs such as ombudsman's offices have also received ample attention.
Meanwhile, vast resources have gone into funding anti-corruption activism by civil society groups, mainly local and international advocacy NGOs.
Other efforts have gone into promoting "social accountability," entailing funding local NGOs to train ordinary citizens in the science or art of monitoring what teachers, health workers, and other public servants do and how they do it.
What have these efforts produced? Lots of improvement, but not quite enough. Which is why we continue to hear so much lamentation across the continent, about corruption scandals involving egregious theft of taxpayers' money. Which is why we witness wilfully shoddy execution of infrastructure projects and suffer the effects of far-reaching failures in service delivery.
Indeed, it is because these efforts have fallen short that "accountability" remains a key preoccupation. But why have they fallen short? Analysts contend that problems such as lack of accountability have political roots and can therefore not be tackled successfully using only externally generated "technical fixes." Consequently, technical solutions must be supplemented by internally generated "political action." What does this mean? I do not pretend to know the full answer.
However, once again tiny, unconventional Rwanda seems to provide some pointers. At the end of February, its government held the Annual Leadership Retreat.
The event brings together top leaders belonging to several of its political parties and senior technical officers. They go away to somewhere secluded for a few days, to think and talk about the government, the country, and their collective ambitions. They review what they have done during the previous year and how well or badly they have done it.
At the most recent retreat, attention was given to discussing seemingly isolated stories of individuals engaging in "primitive accumulation" of assets and promoting their own interests ahead of those of the people they are supposed to serve.
Concerns about misconduct and failures were expressed with striking frankness. Equally striking was the announcement after the retreat, that the government would "go after" corrupt officials via courts of law and set strict deadlines for executing stalled projects.
Here, it seems, is what is meant by internally generated political action without which technical tools can only go so far in ensuring that the powerful do what is in the public interest and not what personal interest inclines them to do.
Certainly, Rwanda too has been the recipient of generous technical assistance designed to strengthen its public institutions and promote accountability.
If Rwanda is the least corrupt country in the region and if its government delivers services effectively for the most part, the reason, it seems, lies in creative combinations of and interaction between technical and political tools.
Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: fgmutebi@yahoo.com
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