The week of

plunder the state

Audio 04:35

Jean-Baptiste Placca, editorial writer at RFI, in 2020. © RFI/Pierre René-Worms

By: Jean-Baptiste Placca

4 mins

You can't imagine how vulnerable a state can be when a politician allows himself to be "bought" by crooked businessmen, knowing how to sniff out the politician with potential, and even chances of accessing the judiciary. supreme!

A man (or a woman) who, once in business, will return the favor to them, letting them plunder, why not, state enterprises, the state… A bit like the Guptas, in South Africa, under Jacob Zuma.

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South Africa seems perplexed by

Mandela had wanted, at the end of apartheid, the emergence of a black economic elite.

Fortunes then emerged, akin to the oligarchs, in Russia.

Madiba implicitly asked ANC leaders to choose between being part of the country's political leadership and enriching themselves.

A shrewd trade unionist, Ramaphosa then preferred to make his fortune, and only returned to active political life later.

Zuma wanted both power and money.

This is what has so often led him to unsavory associations, which he drags around like so many cannonballs.

To cover his back, he will try, in vain, to position his ex-wife to succeed him.

Then he appointed this mediator, who never ceased to protect him.

It will certainly be necessary to clear up the affair of the burglars of the Ramaphosa farm.

But the Gupta affair is much more serious.

And, to be fair, Thabo Mbeki was not corrupt.

He had just tried, clumsily, to prevent Zuma, whom he considered corrupt, from sitting in a chair sanctified by Mandela, and which he himself had validly occupied.

This is what earned him to be forced to resign, but history has largely proven him right since.

Didn't Mandela unwittingly introduce the virus of greed into the country?

Not at all!

A leader, however enlightened, cannot foresee how the directions he gives may be perverted in the future.

In the aftermath of independence, Félix Houphouët-Boigny also wanted the political elite around him to grow rich, to generate a national bourgeoisie, which he asked to trickle down to the communities from which it came what it garnered. of his proximity to power.

Nevertheless, receiving the reports on the astronomical fortune of a boss of Customs, the "Old Man", with his characteristic calm, exclaimed: " 

 ".

To crack down on these scandalous abuses, the "Old" then relies on a French engineer, director of Great Works.

Without being in government, Antoine Césaréo, in the 1980s, was feared by ministers and everyone else.

But Caesareo was beginning to take on too much importance.

Also, the day of the reception of the keys of the basilica of Yamoussoukro, of which he supervised the construction, he is suddenly fired by Houphouët-Boigny.

Very quickly, the "Old" realizes that he needs someone else to temper the ambient gluttony.

He then instructed a certain Alassane Dramane Ouattara, governor of the BCEAO, to coordinate government action.

He had the advantage of being little known to Ivorians, having studied abroad and never having worked in the country.

He finally appoints him Prime Minister.

The rest, we know it…

Is what we see today on the continent only the continuation of what prevailed under Houphouët-Boigny?

We will say: less finesse.

Today, any crooked merchant, who has been able to bet on a more or less vulnerable politician, whom he finances during his career or in his conquest of power, feels he has the right to fatten himself on the backs of the people, a times his "colt" in business.

Margoulins, straw men and other Gupta then arise, not only to enrich themselves, but also to loot the state and influence its major decisions.

Often with the complicity of a few greedy senior officials.

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• South Africa

• Jacob Zuma

• Cyril Ramaphosa

• Africa

• Corruption