Opinion / Columnist
African politics: Why corruption grows more than reduce in nations developing? (part one)
23 May 2018 at 14:02hrs | Views
International Transparency defines corruption as… the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. It can be classified as grand, petty and political, depending on the amounts of money lost and the sector where it occurs.
Life experience has taught me that corruption is a subtle by pass by those given responsibility over safeguarding of moral and societal procedures. Often time's corruption does not always augur well for order, development, accountability and transparency. The human nature tend to support that corruption can only grow from bad to worst or can remain bad which implies that it can be accountable, controlled and punished (ACP). The assumptions are that the leaders have to be a leadership by example than by mere talks and zero action on ACP. Corruption normally grows than reduce assumptions being that humans have a tendency to want favour over others or give favours as a sign of power, control and ownership. That is why the good governance practices work from rule of law founded on the culture of checks and balances of the Executive, Judiciary and the Legislature. Any short cut predisposes a system into a community of corruption. Companies operate on the basis that owners of the company are honorable persons who will respect rule of law and work transparently. Often it is in the interest of company owners to uphold rule of law if they have to get their earned income lawfully and enjoy the peace of harmony with all other stakeholders that are the citizens and the government.
Given the above theory leadership breaks or makes corruption to thrive or reduce. African leaders are sometimes blackmailed into corrupt practices; hence most of them after independence opened accounts in former colonial masters' countries or used third parties to secure foreign accounts for them so as to deposit funds secretly. Secret banking in foreign countries by African leadership post-independence, underscores the foundation and the rampant growth of corruption. The countries that up to this day encourage the large sums of concealed funds deposited in their countries without questions are active facilitators of corrupt practices. If they had a worldwide banking system scrupulously examining any funds deposited in foreign account by any leadership of other countries corruption would be controllable. No doubt the countries which clandestinely cover African leadership to siphoning funds from their countries they are the ugly hands of corruption grown out of the system of cultural imperialism. Subsequently corruption is one crime the world is lenient on worldwide.
Very few African leaders have come strong against corruption except being diplomatic just as President Emmerson Mnagagwa the successor to Robert Mugabe has done talk to pave his way into staying in power. Unlike the late President Sata of Zambia Emmerson Mnagawa of Zimbabwe only talks of corruption from a distance, supposedly he knows how entrenched Zanu-Pf is in corrupt practices. It is easy to notice that Zanu-Pf political party has classes of social status in civilians, military, and the secret agents who are untouchable and are privileged to condemn others without anyone pronounce judgement on them. To these if you talk of Robert Mugabe they act like he was a devil. Corruption makes people double faced, hypocrites and the simple common persons are contrite therefore easy to deceive hence always gullible for manipulation by tyrants. Max Weber in his treaties on Protestant Capitalism shows the ugly hand of classism. The High priests collected so much from the poor and lived flamboyantly while their members were living in abject poor. It gave Max Weber in the1890s a perception that Christianity was the mother of capitalism. Zimbabwe today has suddenly excessively rich upshots of so-called prophets collecting in huge sums of money in a poverty stricken country, driving extremely luxurious vehicles without an apology. The experience of this period in Zimbabwe fit well comparatively to that of Max Weber's age.
Careful studies of Zimbabwe and many other countries of Africa today testify that high level corruption begun with the advent and the rise of cultural imperialism. In these unsavory periods of history we notice corruption existed on political emissaries of the Empire and others who plundered the countries' wealth and slaughtered the natives in order to build their comfort in their countries of origin. In the then Europe corruption was rampant just as it is rampant today in Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Uganda, Burundi and parallel to corruption growing is also the fastest growing of strange churches that milk people poverty into building powerful and wealth priest and so-called prophets. In Karl Marx perception religion becomes the opium of people because they keep going to make someone rich and richer in the name of ‘God'. While this is no place for religious studies, I have grown to know that the church not churches belongs to God and she strives to make people accept faith and work together towards good standard of living hence the building of schools, hospitals and self- sustaining crop growing institutions apart from strengthening each other spiritually, narturing. Ministers are meant to be just ordinary people with ordinary standards of living. After all Jesus the son of God said he had neither ownership of a house, nor a sleeping place, while foxes have holes to live in: (Luke 9:58, Matthew 8;20). The Jesus I know expressed modest not flamboyance among the poverty. He had a one fit all garment and put up with people on his father's errand. He was considered revolutionary talking on the kingdom of God when he was intentionally mistaken for having an ambition to over throw the earthly kings. What a contrast then between the author and finisher of our faith and those who claim representing him while focusing on the accumulation of material wealth, power and control as private gain. Wealth we all need, and wealth we have to get; but doing so at the expense of running others down is unchristian. Why not adopt the-teach those who work with you to catch fish methods so they are able to stand on their own feet and feed their families. Any other way is a way of corruption. The men of the cloth are corrupt just as their political counterparts who incidentally it is from whom they copied and are in agreement to plunder and oppress the common man, the fatherless and the windows.
When leadership siphons funds from a country leaving it less developed and then opt to go abroad and receive medication leaving the rest of the people in a plight of poverty without medicines, such behaviors should be denied because its abuse of authority and inducement of a corruption culture as example of leadership advantages over others. Why reward someone who takes the country money for personal gains without considering priorities of a country for the benefit of all citizens? Yet sometimes you will find surprising sympathy from the masses to such abusive leadership due to lack of knowledge. There is evil blindness which induces pit from the ordinary people to the well to do who are sometimes the tyrants that oppress them without realizing they are being taken advantage of. This is one proven area in the theory on Dialectical Materialism by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with respect to class conflict theory is proven real, correct, and effective in their book The Communist Manifesto (1848). Truth be told, if African leadership continues flip flopping into circles of military coups and tyranny inevitably there will come an alliance of workers, peasants, and intellectuals to stage a serious revolution whose boundaries of pain the struggle will bring to overcome cruelty cannot be predicted. African leadership has to accept democracy with all its tenets as the means for a civilized way forward as people vote rather than use corruption and the guns to rule the legacy sustenance of suffering on the continent.
Take the case of Zimbabwe where on funeral and burial ceremonies the likes of General Constantino Chiwenga invoke the name of God and associate it with endorsement of suffering of the people under Zanu-PF. The danger of not reading and claiming spirituality for personal gains is corruption in its highest form. Chiwenga has farms and cars innumerable. He wants people to be gullible and accept he and Zanu-pf are ordained by God to abuse others using the gun and pretexting the liberation struggle as his weapon to pacify people? Africa needs true leadership who value and understand the meaning of sacrifice not those who sacrifice people to buy their comfort. Such is corruption and needs to stop. Consider 124 political parties that wish to contest in the forthcoming presidential elections in Zimbabwe and contrast it to the studies of class struggle and conflict theory and the picture begins falling in place what the amount of corruption has helped induce the wild thinking of self-preservation in Zimbabwe, in fact in Africa through taking advantage and privilege of political decay and corruption. Africa has to stop and think, and the western countries have to take a good consideration of their roles. No wonder why China and Russia increase their influence on the continent at the expense of European so called civilization because none is a better devil. Africa, when she comes out of the slumber, could be the salvation of the world if by then God has not decided on intervening.
Life experience has taught me that corruption is a subtle by pass by those given responsibility over safeguarding of moral and societal procedures. Often time's corruption does not always augur well for order, development, accountability and transparency. The human nature tend to support that corruption can only grow from bad to worst or can remain bad which implies that it can be accountable, controlled and punished (ACP). The assumptions are that the leaders have to be a leadership by example than by mere talks and zero action on ACP. Corruption normally grows than reduce assumptions being that humans have a tendency to want favour over others or give favours as a sign of power, control and ownership. That is why the good governance practices work from rule of law founded on the culture of checks and balances of the Executive, Judiciary and the Legislature. Any short cut predisposes a system into a community of corruption. Companies operate on the basis that owners of the company are honorable persons who will respect rule of law and work transparently. Often it is in the interest of company owners to uphold rule of law if they have to get their earned income lawfully and enjoy the peace of harmony with all other stakeholders that are the citizens and the government.
Given the above theory leadership breaks or makes corruption to thrive or reduce. African leaders are sometimes blackmailed into corrupt practices; hence most of them after independence opened accounts in former colonial masters' countries or used third parties to secure foreign accounts for them so as to deposit funds secretly. Secret banking in foreign countries by African leadership post-independence, underscores the foundation and the rampant growth of corruption. The countries that up to this day encourage the large sums of concealed funds deposited in their countries without questions are active facilitators of corrupt practices. If they had a worldwide banking system scrupulously examining any funds deposited in foreign account by any leadership of other countries corruption would be controllable. No doubt the countries which clandestinely cover African leadership to siphoning funds from their countries they are the ugly hands of corruption grown out of the system of cultural imperialism. Subsequently corruption is one crime the world is lenient on worldwide.
Very few African leaders have come strong against corruption except being diplomatic just as President Emmerson Mnagagwa the successor to Robert Mugabe has done talk to pave his way into staying in power. Unlike the late President Sata of Zambia Emmerson Mnagawa of Zimbabwe only talks of corruption from a distance, supposedly he knows how entrenched Zanu-Pf is in corrupt practices. It is easy to notice that Zanu-Pf political party has classes of social status in civilians, military, and the secret agents who are untouchable and are privileged to condemn others without anyone pronounce judgement on them. To these if you talk of Robert Mugabe they act like he was a devil. Corruption makes people double faced, hypocrites and the simple common persons are contrite therefore easy to deceive hence always gullible for manipulation by tyrants. Max Weber in his treaties on Protestant Capitalism shows the ugly hand of classism. The High priests collected so much from the poor and lived flamboyantly while their members were living in abject poor. It gave Max Weber in the1890s a perception that Christianity was the mother of capitalism. Zimbabwe today has suddenly excessively rich upshots of so-called prophets collecting in huge sums of money in a poverty stricken country, driving extremely luxurious vehicles without an apology. The experience of this period in Zimbabwe fit well comparatively to that of Max Weber's age.
Careful studies of Zimbabwe and many other countries of Africa today testify that high level corruption begun with the advent and the rise of cultural imperialism. In these unsavory periods of history we notice corruption existed on political emissaries of the Empire and others who plundered the countries' wealth and slaughtered the natives in order to build their comfort in their countries of origin. In the then Europe corruption was rampant just as it is rampant today in Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Uganda, Burundi and parallel to corruption growing is also the fastest growing of strange churches that milk people poverty into building powerful and wealth priest and so-called prophets. In Karl Marx perception religion becomes the opium of people because they keep going to make someone rich and richer in the name of ‘God'. While this is no place for religious studies, I have grown to know that the church not churches belongs to God and she strives to make people accept faith and work together towards good standard of living hence the building of schools, hospitals and self- sustaining crop growing institutions apart from strengthening each other spiritually, narturing. Ministers are meant to be just ordinary people with ordinary standards of living. After all Jesus the son of God said he had neither ownership of a house, nor a sleeping place, while foxes have holes to live in: (Luke 9:58, Matthew 8;20). The Jesus I know expressed modest not flamboyance among the poverty. He had a one fit all garment and put up with people on his father's errand. He was considered revolutionary talking on the kingdom of God when he was intentionally mistaken for having an ambition to over throw the earthly kings. What a contrast then between the author and finisher of our faith and those who claim representing him while focusing on the accumulation of material wealth, power and control as private gain. Wealth we all need, and wealth we have to get; but doing so at the expense of running others down is unchristian. Why not adopt the-teach those who work with you to catch fish methods so they are able to stand on their own feet and feed their families. Any other way is a way of corruption. The men of the cloth are corrupt just as their political counterparts who incidentally it is from whom they copied and are in agreement to plunder and oppress the common man, the fatherless and the windows.
When leadership siphons funds from a country leaving it less developed and then opt to go abroad and receive medication leaving the rest of the people in a plight of poverty without medicines, such behaviors should be denied because its abuse of authority and inducement of a corruption culture as example of leadership advantages over others. Why reward someone who takes the country money for personal gains without considering priorities of a country for the benefit of all citizens? Yet sometimes you will find surprising sympathy from the masses to such abusive leadership due to lack of knowledge. There is evil blindness which induces pit from the ordinary people to the well to do who are sometimes the tyrants that oppress them without realizing they are being taken advantage of. This is one proven area in the theory on Dialectical Materialism by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with respect to class conflict theory is proven real, correct, and effective in their book The Communist Manifesto (1848). Truth be told, if African leadership continues flip flopping into circles of military coups and tyranny inevitably there will come an alliance of workers, peasants, and intellectuals to stage a serious revolution whose boundaries of pain the struggle will bring to overcome cruelty cannot be predicted. African leadership has to accept democracy with all its tenets as the means for a civilized way forward as people vote rather than use corruption and the guns to rule the legacy sustenance of suffering on the continent.
Take the case of Zimbabwe where on funeral and burial ceremonies the likes of General Constantino Chiwenga invoke the name of God and associate it with endorsement of suffering of the people under Zanu-PF. The danger of not reading and claiming spirituality for personal gains is corruption in its highest form. Chiwenga has farms and cars innumerable. He wants people to be gullible and accept he and Zanu-pf are ordained by God to abuse others using the gun and pretexting the liberation struggle as his weapon to pacify people? Africa needs true leadership who value and understand the meaning of sacrifice not those who sacrifice people to buy their comfort. Such is corruption and needs to stop. Consider 124 political parties that wish to contest in the forthcoming presidential elections in Zimbabwe and contrast it to the studies of class struggle and conflict theory and the picture begins falling in place what the amount of corruption has helped induce the wild thinking of self-preservation in Zimbabwe, in fact in Africa through taking advantage and privilege of political decay and corruption. Africa has to stop and think, and the western countries have to take a good consideration of their roles. No wonder why China and Russia increase their influence on the continent at the expense of European so called civilization because none is a better devil. Africa, when she comes out of the slumber, could be the salvation of the world if by then God has not decided on intervening.
Source - Andrew Manyevere
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