Kenneth Good
30 October 2008
analysis
Johannesburg — THERE are few reasons to be delighted by the award of the Mo Ibrahim prize for achievement in African leadership to former president Festus Mogae of Botswana.
The prize is a huge amount and the recipient is chosen by a committee that includes such luminaries as Kofi Annan, Marti Ahtisaari and Mary Robinson.
It was first awarded, last year, to Joaquim Chissano, who indeed helped bring peace to Mozambique but who was also tainted by corruption and possible association with the assassination of journalist Carlos Cardoso.
Mogae checked the spread of HIV/AIDS and offered life-saving antiretroviral medication to many sufferers. But his success here tends to call into question why so much else was gravely neglected under his decade-long presidency.
In awarding the prize, it was noted he gave "stability and prosperity" to Botswana. This stability embraces the obvious absence of the tribalism that has afflicted countries such as Kenya, but otherwise might be better understood as autocracy and inactive democracy. Parliamentary elections run on time and are adjudged free on the day, but they are substantively unfair given the advantages accorded the incumbent over a weak and divided opposition.
No change of government has taken place in more than 40 years. The president is constitutionally empowered to do as he pleases, and periodically does so, such as in exercising the prerogative powers of the Immigration Act, extending privileges to confreres such as the vice-president, threatening to dissolve an elected parliament and in amending the constitution for short-term advantage.
Supposed stability was seen again on April 1, when vice-president Ian Khama succeeded Mogae. Freedom of speech is enjoyed by those who have nothing serious to say, while the media is instructed, under pain of the loss of job or promotion, to produce "patriotic journalism", ignoring pressing problems such as diamond dependency, the deep subordination of the San/Bushmen and presidentialism.
The latter two are closely conjoined. In 2003, about 38000 poor San and other "remote area people" existed in a gulag of 64 settlements across the country, there by presidential directive. Mogae did nothing to correct what his predecessors had constructed, and instead carried through the forced removal of San from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. When the high court found in December 2006 that the relocations in 1997 and 2002 were unjust and illegal, the government's subsequent refusal to reopen vital water sources and permit hunting in the reserve made return to a viable life in their homeland impossible.
Botswana is an upper middle income country, but the good growth it enjoyed under Mogae was accompanied by a falling Human Development Index. Wealth is based on acute diamond dependency accompanied by an absence of economic diversification. Diamonds are produced in a close partnership between the government and De Beers. Secrecy rules. Decisions are made by the very few, written contracts are eschewed and prevarication commonplace. With the recent establishment of the Diamond Trading Company in Gaborone, Botswana has become "responsible for the integrity of the gems". This was the unique role of the monopolistic private corporation but it is an invidious role for a democracy. The oil industry in Nigeria and Angola is notorious for corruption, and it is difficult to accept that Botswana's gems are free of contagion. The country has no freedom of information act and there is no register of the assets and incomes of ministers and parliamentarians. There is an anticorruption agency that lacks prosecutorial powers independent of the president.
Prosperity remains elusive for at least half of the people. The United Nations Development Programme reported in 2007-08, that in 1990-2005, 55,5% of the population subsisted on $2 a day. Earlier, the gap between the top and bottom 10% of income earners was 43 to one. International comparisons indicate the extremity of this disparity. Recent data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development show that for 24 countries in 1985-2005, inequalities between top and bottom deciles averaged nine times, with Mexico having the biggest gap of 25 to one. Botswana's huge inequalities are causally connected to its diamond wealth and the frailties of its democracy. If the subordination of the San is added , the real situation between rich and poor is less one of stability than of deep and enduring division.
Mogae is to receive his prize in Alexandria, Egypt, on November 15. But if the Mo Ibrahim Foundation cannot look below the superficialities and outside the established perceptions, it would be better to suspend such awards for a time. They reinforce complacency, offer misinformation and raise the barriers to democratisation ever higher.
Prof Good is from the School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
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