The Genesis of a potential African KleptocracyBy Kabwe Ziritto Kabwe and Hamdani Haruna NassibMoi University, Nairobi, Kenya.MULTI-party politics in Africa has produced a unique opportunity for politicians, crooks, corrupt government officials and misguided foreign government leaders to team up together in an unholy trinity to misgovern, misdirect, plunder and rape our nations.This is a natural development in a situation where you have outdated constitutions, half-baked democracy and a too powerful presidency vis-à-vis the judiciary and legislature-internally, while internationally you get unconditional aid from those who use you for their self-interest and preservation.The crook businessmen needs politicians so they can advance their personal and business interests(including cleaning their dirty money) on one hand; and on the other the politicians need the crooks money to fight in the national elections.At the same time, government officials' future hangs on their choice of crooks and politicians to support whoever comes to power.What happens in this cabal of malfeasance is that rich and famous sanitized crooks (businessmen) team up with corrupt politicians and public officials to create an unofficial organization to put someone into power, often, a president or prime minister of an African nation. Naturally, such a president or prime minister becomes a president or prime minister by remote control. He takes orders from people not elected by the people of his country.Most leaders of this type come from some of the highly impoverished communities in their societies. Coming from poverty, they cannot think above it and can never see the seas of wealth weaving and heaving all around them except the deadly purses of the crooks and international donors. The first thing that the politicians-cum-businessmen (PCB) do is to build a palace for the fakir and then ensure he gets the best cars from Japan or USA if not France or Germany. After which the wife, children and all close relatives are economically empowered (new companies started and some made directors and shareholders of both locally owned and foreign owned businesses) and their children school fees in Europe and elsewhere abroad paid by the PCB, and even their sick relatives treated free abroad by the very gorup. All these entrapments lead finally to total trust of the PCB by the sitting president or prime minister. Believing that he or she is in good hands he relaxes even his common sense. And it is here that the looting of the state coffers begins. Now a signature of the president or prime minister on the back of an old envelope will be accepted as a genuine authority by the Central Bank Governor to release billions of money for an unknown commitment of the state or the presidency.To intensify the looting of the nation's riches all the key posts in the nation are given to relatives, sycophants and cronies of the PCB (A government in a government by itself now).Top Ministers including Finance, Mining, Energy, Home Affairs and Defense are most likely chosen by the cabal; and so too are permanent secretaries, Central Bank governor, provincial and district commissioners; heads of Tax Collection, Pension or Security Funds, National army, Judiciary, National audits, Police, Security services and the likes. At the state house the cabal will put its people who ensure that only the kind of information they want reaches the incumbent. The rest of information is waylaid. Democratization and LiberalizationDemocratization has come along in Africa with her sister called Liberalization. Where only ten years ago few Africans had access to a land phone, today majority of urbanized Africans have access to a phone that is capable of facilitating communication with others wherever they have it and wherever they are at a reasonable price.At the same time, when few African countries had private radio and television stations, today few African countries don't have these facilities.The mobile phone, radio and television stations have become a boon to many crooks and corrupt politicians. By launching games, promotions and sales that use the combined features of television and mobile phones, they can now generate billions of cash overnight. This rapid income generation of money with very little investment has given more power to the African PCBs that it is unthinkable for an incumbent president or prime minister to break their relationships with the de jute national Mafioso. In addition, the incumbents cannot allow the tax-collector to tax them out of this money which part of it belongs to him or her.How the money is made? Easy. Offer cheap reward cars from China or South Korea and have a prolonged campaign that gives out to supposed winners a car each day and you will have at least 100,000 people gambling daily. With each of these people paying let us say, a dollar a day, you generate the equivalent of $100,000 per day and $ 3,000,000 per month. For a total of three months you get no less than $9,000,000. Hardly can their total expenditure ever be more than 1 million dollars in this kind of event. The politicians and their party hardly get 2 million dollars the rest is pocketed by the eminent and trusted PCB. Mark you, however, the money given to the politicians are not considered charity. They have to repay it somehow later, even if some of it is personal borrowings that have gone into their expensive palaces, ranches, hotels or other businesses. It is no secret most African politicians and statesmen know nothing about making money. The only thing in their vocabulary is spending tax payers money. Hence, PCB is filling the vacuum left by having governments that have very few people who are clever enough amd have ideas of making money or generating income in one way or another.Since politicians normally fail the income generation examination each time they attempt it, and they have no magic of their own to make their own money the PCB's magic becomes handy thus leading to the debt that keeps on growing day after day, just like the mountain of the dung ant.Come the next elections and the cycle repeats itself. Politicians continue to be more and more indebted while the PCB gets filthy rich. This is when one or two people from the PCB steps forward believing that now is time for them to take over the reigning of the country-whether bonafide politicians want it or not. It is not the businessmen who will come forward though but the dirtiest of the politicians who belongs to their cabal of national pillaging and raping. Every effort will be made to cleanse him or her starting with using the incumbent to do the dirty work of cleansing the untouchables. Since the incumbent is hungry to retain power he or she will do anything to please his or her masters.Most of the PCB have shares or direct ownership of media houses, mining firms, mobile phone companies, vast income generation corporate holdings as well as mafioso international business connections waiting for the day that the PCB shall come to power to unleash their ruthless and uncheked exploitation and degradation of the unwary African politicians, workers, millitary leaders, clergy and general public.In some countries, the very institutions are now being used to sabotage democracy in one way or another, including blocking of emails and blogs not favorable to the power that be.The following precautions have to be taken in order not to let a country become a kleptocracy:. Making immediately a new national constitution that takes cognisance of the changing times and challenges that we face as well as cheeking continuously the unholy marriage of businessmen, crooks, politicians and public officials for the good of the majority;. Hypocrisy in keeping businessmen out of politics should not be tolerated;. Religious bodies have to ostracize their members implicated as members of PCB;. Give more powers to the legislature and less to the executive. One-man show in modern day Africa governance can be extremely costly and destabilizing;. The armed forces task besides that of maintaining peace, law, order and defending our borders should also be to ensure that crooks, thieves, sexually sick persons, liars, conment and hooligans don't become leaders of our people;. Create institutions that train and coaches leaders, members of parliament, public officials and politicians in wealth creation,entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and income generation activities;. Ensure that the heads of police; corruption teams; army; provinces; judiciary; national broadcasting bodies; state run newspapers and other critical offices are appointed by the legislature and not the executive;. Ensure that there is really separation of duties between the executive and judiciary; and between executive and the legislature and so forth. Currently, often it appears what should have been the prerogative of the others is being usurped by an individual or some other uncontested body ;. The head of the Central Bank must be appointed by the parliament and only dismissed by it and not the president;. Clergymen of all religions and denominations should ostracize those of their members associated with PCBs;. All government busness transactions must be computerized and audit trails of all them kept in store for years to come;. All those implicated in scandals relating to stealing from the Central Bank, Treasury, public companies or any government or public office (whether found guilty or not) should not be appointed as ministers after planned elections;. All committees that investigate ministers, members of parliament and other national leaders should not have members from the parliament only but also members of the public, Civic Organizations, religious bodies and the likes.If the above measures are carefully and unanimously adopted the chances of Africa seeing its initial kleptocracy shall greatly be minimized. Africa has nothing to lose by ditching crooked businessmen and corrupt politicians and public officials, but has everything to lose if these very hypocrite, untrustworthy and dishonest people become leaders of their nations.All in all, if African governments were to weigh among a number of great sins that can befell their people there is no question that of turning their countries into kleptocracies will rank number one. Unfortunately, this is what could just be the lot of a number of East and Central African countries unless the academics, military, honest civil servants, clergy from various religions and the public at large play their positive deterrent role to forestall the rise of a Kleptocracy in their respective nations. ends. Source: Ubuntu and Africa Reawakening Forum