FREE ENTERPRISE, PRIVATIZATION, CORRUPTION, ALL THAT

Sam Mchombo

On October 29, the people of the East African nation of Tanzania went to the polls to elect a new government. The elections returned the incumbent, Benjamin Mkapa, of the ruling party of Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) to a second term in office. The elections proceeded peacefully, with problems confined to the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, where the supporters of CCM and of the Civic United Front, apparently predominated by Muslim and Arab supporters, have had and did have some clashes. In some districts in the islands polling had to be postponed to the following weekend.

The success of Benjamin Mkapa was anticipated and the results did not bring in any real surprises. In itself, this should be something of a surprise in that Tanzania, like many other African countries, has had to shift to democratic practice, loosely translated as the acceptance of multi-party politics. Chama cha Mapinduzi is the party that has ruled Tanzania since independence when the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere was president. It was the only party throughout the period that Mwalimu Julius Nyerere experimented with a socialist political economy, and has remained the dominant party even after liberalization, practically overshadowing the opposition parties that have emerged. It would thus be expected to foster the impression that nothing had changed in Tanzania. However, its continued dominance shows that it is a party that has adapted to the times, converting the alleged failures of the socialist ideology to what The Economist of October 21st, 2000, has termed "a modest success story."

The success of Tanzania is claimed by The Economist to derive from Benjamin Mkapas maintenance of "tight fiscal and monetary policies." In this, the current president's toughness has "helped Tanzania to wake up from the socialist torpor into which the late President Julius Nyerere lulled it." The Economist goes on to criticize Nyerere's political and economic program, stating that "Nyerere, who ruled the country from independence in 1961 to 1985, was a good man but a bad economist." The success of Mkapa, who was elected in 1995, rests on the fact that, unlike his predecessors, Nyerere and, later, Ali Hassan Mwinyi, he "has privatised and liberalised with gusto."

In brief, Mkapa has accepted the prescriptions of the capitalist ideology of free enterprise, privatization, and so on. However, the "modest success story" that is Tanzania is not entirely rosy because, according to The Economist again, "corruption is widespread and blatant." If such widespread and blatant corruption had been as rife and been the order of the day during the period that Nyerere experimented with his brand of African socialism, known by the Kiswahili word of Ujamaa, critics would have most likely linked that to socialist practice. Its prevalence under current economic and political practice is, according to conventional wisdom, an independent development, merely detracting from the virtues of the system that is the basis of the economic success, however modest. Still, corruption has become more pronounced in this era of global capitalism.

Across the southern border of Tanzania, in Malawi, corruption has been so rampant that, as Tanzania was holding general elections, the president of Malawi, Bakili Muluzi, was sacking his ministers and dissolving his cabinet. This was in the wake of reports from the Anti-Corruption Bureau, which highlighted the involvement of high-ranking officials or government ministers in corruption. In Malawi corruption has, over the past few years, worked itself into the fabric of general living. In August, a former college-mate, now a medical doctor, Dr. Chakakala Chaziya, remarked, during a chance meeting in a Bank, that while the country had made strides in the restoration of freedom of speech as well as accommodation of other political parties, in other words, restoration of democratic practice, impossible during our college years under the dictatorial regime of Kamuzu Banda, the downside came by way of incredible rise of corruption. "Corruption is just too much; things are not done according to merit," remarked Dr. Chaziya.

Malawi has certainly witnessed politicians being influenced by bribes to award lucrative contracts to specific individuals and/or companies. The nadir, however, was attained recently when high school examinations had to be cancelled. High school examinations, used for admission into university colleges, are prepared and distributed by the Malawi Certificate Examinations and Testing Board (MCETB). Kept confidential until when they have to be taken, they have traditionally been viewed as a reliable index of the candidates academic suitability for college admission. Recently there was a leakage in the MCETB, resulting in copies of the exams landing in public hands long before the examination dates. "Such practice has, in recent years become widespread and, virtually, commonplace, in countries such as Kenya, a country whose history has significant parallels with that of Malawi," noted Wanjala Khisa, a Kenyan citizen resident in California. According to Ms. Esnath Phiri of Blantyre, Malawi, one local paper, The Malawi News, was able to publish an examination paper a week before it was to be taken, triggering widespread rumors, apparently exaggerations, that even street vendors were selling them alongside their wares of wood carvings, bananas, cutlery, etc. The exam schedule was instantly postponed, rescheduled for January 2001, but the president demanded that the exams be ready by December.

As the scandal unfolded it led to the revelation of other corrupt practices, such as individuals collecting revenue for running non-existent private schools, again not unheard of in Kenya. Al Mtenje of Zomba, remarked that the most creative had to be the official who had funds released to him to hold an international conference at a lake resort. No conference was held, none had been planned, and the international delegates listed were pure fiction. Amidst all these revelations of corruption the government had to run into yet another embarrassment, that of having ordered, and received, a fleet of the latest and top of the line model of Mercedes Benz limousines, for use by the government ministers. With a price tag of around US$2.5m, the 13 limos constituted nothing short of unconscionable expenditure in a country whose per capita, as noted by Mark Weisbrot in a recent commentary, is less than $200 per year, where 60% of the population, estimated at 10 million, lives below the poverty line, where health services require massive support where they exist, more so in the wake of the strain placed on them by the AIDS pandemic, and where the country's university has had to operate on periodic subventions from the government.

This is even more pronounced given that the government of President Muluzi has made "poverty alleviation" its catch-phrase or central doctrine. This clearly belies or undermines any pretension to commitment to that agenda. Even the British High Commissioner to Malawi, George Finlayson, could not desist from expressing his (governments) disapproval of such expenditure on luxuries for the privileged few. President Muluzi immediately reacted to the criticism of the purchase with the order that the limos be sold to re-coup the expenses, and get them re-directed to the poverty alleviation program. But, noted Kunjilika Chaima of Montreal, Canada, the individuals who may purchase them will, most likely, be the same ones for whom the vehicles were ordered in the first place.

In the aftermath of these revelations, exacerbated by a report from the Anti-Corruption Bureau, President Muluzi dissolved his cabinet during the final week of October. It has since been reconstituted, with some ministers who, by implication, may have been at the center of some of those allegations about corruption, dropped from the new cabinet. Notable omissions from the new cabinet were Chilumpha, Minister of Education, Chupa, Minister of Labor, and Mpinganjira, Minister of Transport. This may ward off new headlines focusing on corruption and try to appease donors but it does not tackle the root of the problem. What does merit consideration, probably imprudent given current political realities, is critical evaluation of the political economy that appears to sustain the steady growth and development of corruption in such countries as, inter alia, Malawi, Kenya and Tanzania.