Commentary (Charles Onyango-Obbo) - How we lost our money on Kenya and Chad

Ref: http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=25&newsid=116256

WHAT OTHERS SAY: How we lost our money on Kenya and Chad

Story by CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO
Publication Date: 2/7/2008

As rebels laid siege to Chad President Idriss Deby’s palace in N’djamena on the weekend, the BBC introduced the story with the words; “another African country is in turmoil”.

The “other” African country whose crisis has been in international media headlines for the last month is Kenya, which has been shaken to the bone by the worst violence in it’s post-independence history, following the disputed December 27, 2007 polls.

The BBC’s expression “Another Africa country is in turmoil” implies that political chaos is the order of the day on this fair continent. However, one also reads in it a tone of despair, a resignation that Africa is incomprehensible.

THE BBC WON’T BE THE LAST TO BE confounded by Africa. Many of us too thought we had Africa figured. How wrong we were.

Kenya in 2002 seemed to validate an analytical point of view that I subscribed to. There are many ways you can divide African countries.

One, between those that are aid-dependent and would bleed badly if the donors tapped off all the taps (like Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda) and those that are resource-poor, but nevertheless almost self-sufficient and can pay their way (like Kenya).

The thinking went that leaders of aid-dependent could afford to be more undemocratic because they did not have to make political deals with other political actors to rule. All they had to do was follow donor conditionalties, get enough aid to run their countries, and all other local interests could go and hang.

For that reason, in these countries, elections were more likely to be stolen than in self-sufficient nations.

Countries like Kenya, on the other hand, which financed most of their budgets from own revenues, had to be more sensitive to various local interests. They needed to have a minimum level of elite consensus and support from the business community for them to continue paying the taxes that kept the State afloat.

In these countries, therefore, the presidents are more likely to accommodate wider interests into government; to hold more honest polls; and therefore the long-term prospects for democracy and stability were much better. Kenya in the last years of Daniel arap Moi, seemed to confirm a lot of this, with the very significant Inter-Parliamentary Parties Group reforms of 1997; and East Africa’s freest election in 2002 that resulted in the first loss of a ruling party to an opposition in the region.

The second view in thinking about African politics is that resource-rich countries like Angola, Nigeria, Libya, Gabon, DR Congo, were more prone to instability because the governments didn’t have to grant democracy to govern. They got all the money they needed from selling the natural resources, and did not need to have local support.

Also, the pickings from selling oil, diamonds, and gold were so rich, the rulers would die to cling on to the power, and rivals would take the most extreme measures to kick them out so that they also get to “eat”.

However, by the same token, the resource-rich countries had the potential to be very stable because the rulers could bribe the country with goodies from the natural resource wealth (build roads, housing, electricity and water for all, and large university student allowances). Thus, you have your Botswanas, Libyas, South Africas, and so on.

The third view was limited to what determines victory or loss for incumbents in elections. I was sold firmly to the view that a president, like Mwai Kibaki, who took over a collapsed economy and was presiding over high growth rates, even if as in Kenya it didn’t percolate enough down to the majority of the people, is unlikely to lose an election.

A year ago, going by that projection, I thought Kibaki’s re-election would be a walk in the park. Whether you believe that Kibaki won the December poll or that the victory was rigged for him, his return to State House was definitely not a walk in the park.

IN DIRT POOR CHAD, MEANWHILE, two years ago after it completed its new pipeline, the country posted the highest growth in the world. Over 50 per cent!

Here we are, in Kenya a president presiding over a growing economy and brought his country the dignity of not living on donor handouts, faced electoral revolt from nearly half the voters in the country. In Chad, the government has been unable to buy stability with its newfound oil health. Why?

The answer lies in the political discourse in the 1970s. The Marxist called it the “nationality question”.

In recent years, the men and women who dissect third world politics have called it “identity politics”.

Put inelegantly, for the African representation is so critical, he will revolt against a government that is presiding over a growing economy if there are not enough people from his tribe represented in high enough positions in it, and support a regime that has done absolutely nothing for him as long as it is dominated by people from his ethnic group.

Honestly, I don’t understand it