5 Comments

I hope they can get the terrorist situation under control. With the European\Russia situation being what it is there should be a good market for natural gas. Also the resort picture was great. There seems to be tourism potential.

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Why is corruption so flagrant and self-defeating in Africa?

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author
Jan 10Author

That's a very good and complex question. But if I speak in broad strokes, its a combination of patronage culture to use public funds to support "your people" and also state owned enterprises are black boxes of corruption in general.

After independence, socialist-leaning African countries (e.g., Mozambique, Congo-Brazzaville, Angola, Ghana, Egypt, Tanzania) sought government control of key industries for rapid development, mimicking Soviet practices (1920-1970s). However, government-run enterprises facilitate easier financial manipulation, leading to misrepresentation and theft without consequences for government ministers, unlike private firms that face bankruptcy for false profitability claims.

Consequently, African governments resent the IMF's push to privatize state-owned enterprises, deliberately delaying the process. Mismanagement and looting public funds have made state owned enterprises bring African countries to sovereign defaults and bankruptcies many times.

Corruption in America is different. Private firms lobby to make the government give them tariffs, subsidies, tax breaks or dictate the regulation. In Africa corruption is government ministers looting from state owned firms or government officials using state owned firms to get kick backs from foreign multinationals.

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I'm glad you mentioned the patronage culture at the start. That's the divide between black and white here. Sure, the caveat is colonialism and neoliberalism fucking with us, but I'm not talking about that. The uncomfortable part, and it's ridiculous that it is when compared to the caveat, is that black and white culture are immensely different. I say that as a White English-speaking male born in Durban who has no culture (unlike the Afrikaners). Black culture loves chiefs, and to be chief you have to dish out things you shouldn't. I have the long-held feeling that when people are angry at the Chief for doing wrong, it's more that they wish they were the Chief. One result is that Africa is very susceptible to foreign persuasion.

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I think that it's not a racial thing, in so much more that any form of chiefdom is fundamentally incompatible with a modern economy, which is why Gauteng is super successful, despite being mostly African, as it has no chiefs.

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