SOCIAL anthropologists swarm all over Africa, studying everything from kinship patterns to communal attitudes towards corruption. In the light of the uproar over Westminster expense scams, I wonder how many African anthropologists are currently examining British systems of social advancement or tolerance of dishonesty among elites.
What the crisis exposes is exactly what Western observers usually attribute to Africa: that abuse is not restricted to individual acts of dishonesty, but is indicative of a deeply implanted and complex system. In other words, it reveals an entire network of acceptable social relations.
The Westminster fiasco is perfectly summarised in Everyday Corruption and The State: Citizens and Public Officials in Africa (Zed Books, 2006). “Corruption has two faces”, conclude authors G Blundo and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan. “The first overtly illegal one is broadly condemned and the second, which is legitimised by social practices, is tolerated and sometimes even encouraged – albeit ‘unofficially’.”
This description also sums up a similar, largely covered up, scandal in the South African Parliament, dubbed “Travelgate”. MPs were ripping off their travel allowance. There were so many involved – some of whom have just been returned to Parliament – that it can’t simply be explained as sheer greed. The swindle was regarded as a perk.
Such behaviour thrives when not regarded as strictly illegitimate, but is tacitly accepted as a side-benefit of the job. In Everyday Corruption and The State, the authors state: “It is not possible to dissociate corruption analytically from a regime of ‘favours’, ‘preferential treatment’, ‘recommendations’, ‘string-pulling’, nepotism and the various and myriad advantages bestowed in the name of family, neighbourly relations, friendship, school, university and professional relationships and professional protectionism.”
Ironically, this accurately depicts the clubby atmosphere of Westminster. Our fledging South African parliament has only had 15 years to establish such practices. The House of Commons, in all its pomp, has had a great longer to develop an old boys’ network, thus ensnaring both Labour and Tory MPs.
Hypocritically, what can pass as socially acceptable in the West may be seen as corrupt in Africa. My most financially successful English friend once detailed the lavish entertainments planned for his firm’s clients. This was to “thank” them for their business over the past year and to cement “future relationships”.
He was fed up with taking middle-aged blokes to risibly expensive nightclubs and pouring rivers of over-priced champagne down their throats. Instead, my friend planned a series of swanky dinners, to include wives, followed by the priciest seats at the opera. He told me how much this would cost. “You could get away with half that by just giving everyone a lump sum”, I pointed out, “and you’d still get their business next year.” “But that”, he replied aghast, “would be corrupt”.
Disguised inducements at a corporate level are seen as laudable, even essential. So one has to laugh at some of the outrage emanating from British newspapers. When I first started working on Fleet Street, I had to be taught how to fiddle my expenses.
This was a perk, usually set by the editor. At the time, I was also writing plays, so I regularly re-cycled characters from my dramas, backed up with a bona fide receipt from a nice restaurant – to which, frequently, I’d taken my wife. Then you’d add some phoney reason; say, “background to Thatcher story”. Or, “info on MPs’ expenses scandal”.
That was, quite simply, a scam. It was never regarded as dishonest, but as fair game: a delightful perk of the trade. In journalistic lore, there are legendary practioners of this minor art form. Heroic tales are re-told in bars of the most daring expenses dodges.
What’s clear from the MPs’ rip-offs, both at Westminster and in Cape Town, is that they adopted a similarly cavalier attitude. This was, within their club, an acceptable racket. The difference is that MPs were pocketing public money while demanding that members of the public who did the same be taken to court.
The authors of Everyday Corruption and The State say that, in the African countries they studied, only those who “overdo” extortion are condemned, while those who abide by unwritten rules are condoned. In others words, there’s a “moral economy of corruption”. Their conclusion? Merely prosecuting individuals will never get to the root of what is really a public crisis. The trick is to change socially “embedded” habits.
An old social anthropology joke asks: “What is a typical Navajo family?” The answer: “A husband, a wife, two children, and an anthropologist.” This joke begins an excellent recent book, Transforming Cape Town, where American academic Catherine Besterman says she discovered that, after 1994, the city appeared to be crawling with foreign anthropologists. Yet what are they doing investigating us? Frankly, these anthropologists would be better employed back in Washington or London, studying the even stranger social habits and incestuous kinship patterns of their own politicians.
