Sometime last week I struggled with sleep. This was not the first time in as many days that worry had come to take control of my life. I felt helpless, but hope carried me beyond my physical limits. But on that fateful night ÔÇô nothing and I mean nothing, including spiritual intervention could provide immediate remedy I much needed. It was a moment of pain and suffering for me. As is often the case under such situations, I decided to escape to the living room and watch television with the hope that soon my body would surrender to the forces of nature. I was wrong. By 3am I was still wide awake and started to worry about my eminent day at work. I doubted my productive levels would be acceptable to my superiors. At the end I had to make a decision. I did accept that work would be the victim before I glued my eyes on TV.
I switched channels until I decided BBC news would be appropriate for me in the wee hours of the morning. My attention would soon be consumed by news from Africa. Obviously, such news were unlikely to be anything positive, with the potential to even make my bad day even worse. This time around the reports were centred on acts of bribery in what promises to be the biggest scandal ever to hit Ghana’s Judiciary. The report suggested a massive mess in the nation’s judiciary in which more than 20 judges were implicated in bribery scandals. These were, however, conservative numbers. More members of the judicial service staff were suspected of taking part in such horrendous acts which were captured on video, for example, taking money, seeking sexual favours, or even accepting goats ÔÇô all these from litigants by members of the bench. This was shocking! I went to sleep with a heavy heart feeling sorry for our continent.
Although I was able to carry my body to the office in the morning, I made it my mission to better understand what was behind the judicial crisis in Ghana and, by extension, the rest of our continent. My mission did not take long. I came across informative insights from Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, a founder member of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), who argued that, “This is symptomatic of the entire Ghanaian society. Once you are in Ghana and you do not take care, this disease will catch up with you. Bribery and corruption is everywhere in Ghana. Students are ready to pay for examination questions, people steal church offertory; health professionals take something to do their regular work; lawyers cheat, bank officials collude with customers to take loans to share and not pay back.” He did not end there observing further that, “business officials took kickbacks to do their regular jobs at the ports, and various workplaces. Voters have been conditioned by politicians to take money, pans, TV sets, etc before they vote” (www.graphic.com.gh). This is the Africa which has come to dominate news across the globe. A result of bad politics!
Such a picture of a lost continent was a remote possibility for us this side of the moon. Yes, I tried in vain to accept that such development was not an isolated concern for Ghana to grapple with. It is a widespread subject for many other countries in the sub-Saharan Africa, including our own Botswana. But as a people, we have been lucky in that good governance has been a hallmark of how we conduct public affairs. Hence, corruption and mismanagement was under control for far too long. And frankly speaking, we have had robust systems and processes to effectively deal with that cancer eating at the core of black Africa. We should also be considerate that the positive image that we achieved over the past couple of decades was not only explained by adherence to bureaucratic system, but so too was the crucial role played by our leadership. This would include leaders in various stations in life: Administrative, political and judiciary and related leadership were in the forefront of creating a relatively governable Botswana.
Unfortunately, the new Botswana doesn’t offer any hope to many of our people anymore on governance front. The spark that used to define this place amongst others in the continent has faded. Good governance is proving a big challenge with rising levels of corruption and mismanagement being the order of the day. Centralisation has taken hold and, in the process, suffocating efficient operations of other organs of the state. Indeed, the latest scandal to rock our judiciary talks more about the lack of independence of the various arms of government. This development does not sit well with enhancement of democratic rule, which, for far too long, defined us. Under the current set-up, the executive arm of government is the supreme organ that dominates others, including interfering in their course of duty. In the process much more crucial values such as accountability are made to suffer. The greatest loser in all this mess is we the lesser mortals.
Unless the current stock of leaders rise and provide direction, I feel for my homeland. In particular they need to focus on enhancing good governance. How can that be possible? Like I indicated above, decentralising authority will greatly improve on performance of key institutions that are meant to fight, for example, cancer that is corruption. But I am not convinced that those in charge of our republic do understand the implications of allowing our institutions to die, as is currently the case with many organs in our polity. Actually, I feel they want to paralyse everything so that nothing would function effectively to control rising graft and related acts. It would seem they would prefer a Somalia scenario. Why, for instance, would we attack the last standing institution that many of our people rested their hopes on in terms of administering justice? To me the judiciary occupies a central role in our public affairs that we should be concerned when they too are implicated on acts only understood by those in control of our country. I hope I am not the only citizen finding it hard nowadays to catch sleep.
Dr Molefle teaches Public Administration at the university of Botswana
