[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Cdely crit of Shivji's disgust for Ibrahim's gift to Chissano

[Patrick Bond]

(I'm not sure if this is by the Angolan blogger Koluki - bio at end - 
but am guessing so.)

http://www.africanpath.com/p_blogEntry.cfm?blogEntryID=2584

A COMMENT ON ISSA SHIVJI’S CRITIQUE OF MO IBRAHIM’S PRIZE

November 05, 2007 02:20 PM

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?

***

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” @ Koluki (http://koluki.blogspot.com