Here’s how to get rid of bad governance system

When asked what came to their minds when they heard the word Africa, Curtis Keim and Carolyn Somerville in ‘Mistaking Africa’, say their students came up with coup, poverty, ignorance, drought, famine, tragedy and tribalism.

These professors of history and political science argue that Africa has mistakenly been thought of as a primitive place “full of trouble, wild animals and in need of help.” This state of horror alternates occasionally with images of a wild safari, a spear-wielding warrior and a grass-thatched, mud-walled hut.

The book is an attempt to change Africa’s account as a poster child of mediocrity, misrule and hopelessness. Yet they don’t succeed much despite acknowledging the big strides the continent has taken to emancipate the people, economically, socially and politically.

Yes, elections are held in most places and at a higher frequency than before. Yet elections have not been sufficient to cause the desired changes. In fact, elections are no more than rigged referendums where cliques of cronies fight for power: those who have it fight to keep it while those who don’t, fight tooth and nail to get it.

“Will Africa ever get it right?” screamed The Economist in 2007. That year, Nigeria elected Umaru Yar’Adua as president in elections that were generally dismissed as a sham. The newspapers indignation was justified when President Yar’Adua proved woefully incapable of fixing Nigeria’s intractable problems- poverty, disease, corruption and an ineffective government.

Generally, the African backdrop remains bleak. Cynical citizens view politics with a jaundiced eye. The World Bank says real income per head in 48 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa between 1960-2005 rose on average by 25 per cent. Income leapt 34 times faster in East Asia. South Korea and China were once as poor as Ghana and Kenya.

Oxford professor Paul Collier in Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places says; “On their own, unless held in the context of a functioning democracy, elections can retard rather than advance a country’s progress.”

The circus around the BBI does little to discount the caricature of the African as self-centred and generally short-termist. We have been here before; we sang Yote yawezekana bila Moi and Bado mapambano only to end up a little better off, but mostly disappointed. The thing is, why does it look like we are incapable – unlike the Chinese and the Koreans and Singaporeans- of agreeing to create an acceptable formula that will get us out of the rut? Why the determined effort to do things the same way expecting different results?

Assuming that the BBI will do better than what the proponents of the 2010 Constitution told us, why the push and pull? Our hunter-gatherer ancestors had a better sense of need, mobilisation and execution. Planning a hunting mission in the vast wilderness needed a lot more then in the absence of technology and whatsApp groups. But they did it.  

So what happened that the most learned, most sophisticated and the most exposed will not agree on these basics? Former President Daniel Moi’s often quoted statement was siasa mbaya, maisha mbaya. It remains true today as it was 20 years ago.

“Politics,” say Daron Acemoglu  and James Robinson “is the process by which a society chooses the rules that will govern it.” Politics, therefore, matters. Politics determines the system of education a country adopts; the politicians will determine which country we trade with; the politicians will determine the monetary and the economic policy a country implements, the national health system in place and so much more, including property rights, transparency, political rights and the rule of law. “Political institutions determine who has power in society and to what ends that power can be used,” it is said in ‘Why Nations Fail’.

Tragic story

In a nutshell, the gullible masses don’t seem to understand why they are beset by political gangsterism; the epitome of bad politics. Bad politics is the reason all around us are dark hints of crumbled beliefs, dashed hopes and a real potential for disaster. On the whole, Africa, and to a large extent Kenya, could be described as a tragic story of bad governance, corruption and a citizenry inured to the bad state of things.

Though a lot of them are trying to make the best out of a bad situation, most of the time, those attempts amount to nothing largely because the people haven’t yet mastered cause and effect. Why, for example, is it that despite regular elections, wretched injustices and misdeeds continue? Why do the people exist in conditions – probably worse- than those they fought to escape under the colonialists?

It is not that the people have refused to be masters of their destiny. “Those who mounted the revolutions (for independence) simply took over the reins from those they’d deposed and created a similar system.” Acemoglu and Robinson aptly conclude.

Yet the sure antidote to this is public spiritedness, independent and speedy courts, an active civil society that will not be cowed and a media that barks loudly and bites really hard. These are way far-off for us; we have BBI to deal with first.

Mr Kipkemboi is The Standard’s associate editor for Partnerships and Projects. akipkemboi@standardmedia.co.ke