After participating as a representative of civil society in the Africa Forum on Corruption and the Global Forum on Corruption, both of which were hosted in recent months by the South African government, I was reminded of that moment in English history captured in the book by John Wade first published in 1820 with the title, The Extraordinary Black Book: Corruption Unmasked.
While the title is not politically correct, it was in many other ways a thoroughly modern book. It listed in formidable detail ”places, pensions, reversions, sinecures, nepotism and pluralism in the court, the Church, the Privy Council, government departments, colonial establishments, municipal corporations, guilds, fraternities, the judiciary, the military and so on”. It went on to name names, expose unearned incomes, abuses of patronage and generally to pillory the corrupt English elite of the time.
Such was the tide of outrage it unleashed that the book is held to have helped force the passing of the Great Reform Bill of 1832. This legislation brought an end to what bordered on a culture of impunity in which, as in Sani Abacha’s Nigeria or Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire, the law and public morality applied only to the poor and powerless.
South African President Thabo Mbeki’s opening address at the Global Forum gave one hope that Africa is experiencing an ”Extraordinary Black Book” moment. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly sources, including Thomas Hobbe’s The Leviathan, he bemoaned the fact that on account of the scourge of corruption too many of Africa’s people experience life as ”nasty, brutish and short”.
The two fora signalled a concerted effort on the part of Africans and the global community to tackle a serious obstacle to realising the Millennium Development Goals. They also underlined how important it is to find the political will in each country to respect the international legal instruments drawn up to fight corruption.
Sadly, Britain is not setting a strong example to the stragglers. The prime minister’s ending of the Serious Fraud Office investigation into British arms manufacturer BAE Systems for allegedly bribing members of the Saudi royal family was frequently raised by African participants as evidence that corruption is not only an African phenomenon. They held the decision, taken after the Saudis threatened to pull out of a new arms deal estimated to be worth £10-billionÂÂ, to be a blatant infringement of the OECD Convention on Bribery.
One speaker pointed out that Britain’s action left little incentive for major non-OECD trading partners, such as China, India and Brazil, to sign up to the Convention. The same speaker also noted that Britain had initially failed to support the international anti-money laundering initiative, the Financial Action Task Force, and had dragged its heels on introducing anti-money laundering legislation, even after the Sani Abacha scandal, which saw £4-billion of Nigeria’s stolen public funds laundered through the City of London.
Mbeki made an oblique reference to the Al Yamanah affair in his opening address. However, in a rare display of anger at the World Economic Forum in January, he accused Tony Blair of double standards for ending the investigation into the Saudis but allowing the investigation into BAE Systems’ involvement in the South African arms’ scandal to continue. He denounced the decision for once again painting Africa into the black.
BAE Systems is, of course, not the only British company that the Serious Fraud Office should be investigating for having bribed African public officials. A fuller picture emerges in the 2006 Report of the Africa All Party Parliamentary Group, The Other Side of the Coin: the UK and Corruption in Africa. With expert advisers, such as John Githongo, the former Kenyan permanent secretary for governance and ethics, and Richard Dowden, president of the Royal African Society, the light it shines on British corruption is uncomfortably bright.
In hindsight, the report seems prophetic: among its detailed recommendations, published before Blair called time on the Al-Yamanah probe, was the removal of the power of politicians to halt criminal investigations. Civil society would do well to support all its recommendations.
Charles Yeats is secretary of a network of governance specialists founded in the City of London in response to the Commission for Africa, and an honorary associate of the Wits department of philosophy and centre for ethics