Evidence of a frankly inventive approach to reporting has chipped away at the reputation of the late Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski. But when it came to the big picture, in Africa and elsewhere, the author of The Emperor, among other books, tended to get things right.
Take the subject of crude oil, for example, and the invariably damaging consequences for poor countries where large deposits are discovered.
“The concept of oil expresses perfectly the eternal human dream of wealth achieved through lucky accident, through a kiss of fortune and not by sweat, anguish, hard work.” This is Kapuscinski’s assessment, quoted in Nicholas Shaxson’s atmospheric and highly readable new book about African oil, Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil (Palgrave Macmillan).
The citizens of Nigeria, Angola and the other booming producers in the Gulf of Guinea, who will jointly account for a quarter of United States oil imports over the next decade, have never had it so bad, Shaxton tells us.
In Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony, the ruling family hogs fabulous oil revenue and spends it on mansions in California and Cape Town while its goons cut off the tops of political opponents’ ears. Outside of President Obiang Nguema’s circle of Los Intocables (the untouchables), trickle-down economics do not appear to be working. “It now has the dubious distinction of being the country with the greatest negative difference — 93 places — between its ranking in terms of human welfare and its income per capita,” Shaxson writes.
Things are not much better in Angola, where the boom in oil output and rise in prices have provided the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) leadership with a way to circumvent those nosy local and foreign activists demanding elections and budgetary transparency.
Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil exporter and has the scars to prove it.
The latest were inflicted by last month’s deliberately shambolic elections, the gravest outcome of which will be the further postponement of any serious national development for the benefit of 140-million Nigerians.
Shaxson notes that Indonesia and Nigeria had comparable average earnings in the 1960s but that, while Indonesia’s economy has quadrupled in size since then, Nigeria’s has shrunk.
Most African oil is found offshore, out of sight if not out of mind, but much of Nigeria’s reserves are on land. Villagers in the Delta region are eyewitnesses to the oil industry’s vile pollution, which has destroyed their environment and enriched the elite, spawning the rise of armed militias.
“It is here, in the delta’s malarial landscapes, that I have probably learned most about how oil corrupts and subverts the very essence of what it means to be a human in society,” Shaxson’s writes about the disaster.
So what does he think should be done? After spending most of the past 15 years as a specialist oil reporter, the author has developed a loathing for the stuff. Everyone knows it is helping to mess up the planet, but Shaxson wants us to understand the extent to which unaccounted oil money — specifically African oil money — is corrupting the global financial system.
One chapter is devoted to Eva Joly, a Paris magistrate whose investigation in the 1990s uncovered how Elf Gabon was used to illegally finance French politicians and their shadowy African activities. In another chapter the Russian billionaire Arcadi Gaydamak, who certainly wouldn’t be where he is today without Angolan oil, explains some financial transactions that I had to read twice to even begin to understand.
It’s a shame Shaxson doesn’t try to unravel why nobody in London or Zurich has gone to prison for banking the colossal sums stolen by the late Nigerian leader Sani Abacha.
Shaxson suggests that two helpful ways to stem the negative influence of the oil industry would be to control our appetite for oil and to seriously police the international banking system. Agreed.
He also reckons that the best and most democratic way of distributing national oil income would be to give it to the people, in direct payments to households. It’s a nice idea and Shaxson sets out some mechanisms that could actually make it work. But unless the IMF takes over sovereign responsibility for one of Africa’s emirates, something tells me it won’t happen.
There is another option for the just distribution of oil revenue, of course. Good governance, I believe it’s called.
Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil will be available in bookshops from July and will retail at about R245