How graft has deformed our politics

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015 in a heady wave of optimism, a glorious moment for the country’s democracy, and a muscular anti-corruption programme.

Quite a bit of that has evaporated. Sidelined partly by illness, general incompetence, and some old fashioned ideas about the economy, Buhari is a lame duck.

With the general election approaching next year, his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is in turmoil, roiled by defections.

“Monumental disaster”

APC parliamentarians have lambasted Buhari’s three years as a “a monumental disaster”, and dozens have run for the rat-holes as the ship sinks and joining the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and smaller parties.

The Buhari promise has turned into a cropper. Though his government beat back the brutal Boko Haram militants, the jihadist group is resurgent and bloody clashes between farmers and Fulani cattle herders have flared up dramatically.

The economy remains in the doldrums, and unemployment remains sky high.

Though Buhari is wounded, he probably won’t face political death at next year’s election – unless things get considerably worse. One reason for that is that while he has not stamped out corruption, and it remains a problem, Buhari himself is not seen as a thief, the way some corrupt African leaders are viewed.

First two years

And the crackdown on corruption he launched in the first two years of his administration, won him some political capital that has not worn off.

And it’s not just Buhari who might profit from his early effort to fight corruption. All around Africa, we are seeing an important shift around the subject of graft. The political pay-off for taking a tough anti-corruption is bigger than it has ever been.

Fighting corruption is allowing presidents, whose political hold is shaky or who face internal threats to their power, to build up their power.

Longtime ruler

In Angola, last year President João Lourenço succeeded longtime ruler and autocrat Eduardo Jose dos Santos. Dos Santos’ 38-year-rule, especially its last two decades, was marked by unimaginable levels of corruption fuelled by oil revenues.

Lourenço was seen as a poodle, but he has surprised everyone and taken the hammer to Dos Santos’ family and its corrupt cronies. Isabel dos Santos, the former president’s daughter, rose to Africa’s richest woman worth billions of dollars, on the back of her father’s love. In one his boldest moves, Lourenço has knocked the long spoon out of her hand, and reversed her lucrative contracts, having fired her as head of the country’s state oil company Sonangol shortly after he took office.

Lourenco has ridden the anti-corruption mule to the top of the political mountain and strengthened his hand.

In South Africa, when Cyril Ramaphosa took over from the scandal-tarred Jacob Zuma in February, he got a leg up quickly by casting himself as Mr Clean, and making anti-corruption noises.

In Tanzania, we saw President John Magufuli do the same thing when he won the presidency three years ago. And though he is facing criticism for becoming ever more authoritarian and pulling fingernails, he is not in electoral trouble. The ordinary people in Tanzania seem to be content that he went against the corrupt and cut government waste.

But perhaps the one country where a combination of anti-corruption fundamentalism and state efficiency have produced the biggest political dividend is in Rwanda, where President Paul Kagame has been at it longer.

Even in Kenya, where there is entrenched cynicism whenever politicians talk of fighting corruption, President Uhuru Kenyatta’s push to have lifestyle audits of leaders and public officials, and a round-up of a handful of crooks in recent weeks, still managed to cause quite some excitement.

It is now clear that the global caricature – and reality - of African governments and leaders as robbers, which was the dominant characterisation for nearly 30 years, was demoralising to the average African in ways that had not been fully appreciated. The acknowledgement of a country’s leadership as honest, therefore brings with it a lot of pride.

Biggest enemy

The sense that corruption is probably the biggest enemy of progress on the continent seems to be far more pervasive than previously imagined, and therefore meaningful anti-corruption action makes the leader look like a worthy caring provider.

We are probably close to a point where fighting corruption is the biggest bargain an autocrat can make with African voters. A leader who fights graft, and can show even a modest positive result by investing the “savings” well, will be unbeatable at elections.

He can arrest all the journalists in his country, ban half the NGOs, and still win handily. That’s how much decades of corruption have deformed our politics.