The current times are characterised by uncertainty. Yet development shibboleths, which for some time now have been drawn from the tenets of neoliberal capitalism and democracy, have proved remarkably unshakeable. By using the term ‘shibboleth’, we mean to indicate the set of core ideas that has come to be taken as axiomatic by a like-minded group of ‘development experts’. In Africa, the shibboleths of pro-poor growth and good governance have focused the attention of the development industry on fighting corruption and building civil society. Indeed, the two are understood to go hand in hand.
Until recently, much anti-corruption focused on grand corruption, getting governments to put in place the institutions to hold to account abusers of high office. While such efforts remain important, attention has now shifted towards ‘quiet corruption’, understood as the ‘various types of malpractice of frontline providers (teachers, doctors, inspectors, and other government representatives) that do not involve monetary exchange’ (World Bank 2010, p. xi). The solution to this problem, according to the World Bank, is threefold: better and more committed anti-corruption leadership, better and more effective sector-specific anti-corruption policies and institutions, and better demand for good governance from civil society.
In the bank's view, the poor, organised into familiar forms of ‘civil society’, should now be demanding better governance from domestic governments – but not from international institutions, donors, international or local non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Many international NGOs are now concerned with building the capacity of local organisations, recast as Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), to demand more accountability from government. The theory goes that poor social service delivery can be addressed through increased citizen engagement and domestic agitation. Bono's recent intervention in the New York Times, lauding the efforts of East African citizens' organisation Twaweza (Swahili for ‘we can make it happen’) (Bono 2010) aptly demonstrates the elevation of the ‘demand side’ for good governance to shibboleth status. According to Bono, who invokes a model of ‘people power’ as an upside-down pyramid:
[T]he masses are sitting at the top, and their weight, via cellphones, the Web and the civil society and democracy these technologies can promote, is being felt by those who have traditionally held power.
The articles in issue 124 of Review of African Political Economy are diverse, yet they all deal in one way or another with different aspects of these development shibboleths and the inconsistencies that they paper over. Jörg Wiegratz offers an analysis of ‘neoliberal moral restructuring’ in Uganda. Outlining a ‘cultural political economy of moral reform’ in greater Bugisu, Wiegratz demonstrates the ways in which the neoliberal project has dovetailed with the experience of increased malpractice in rural trade. The core argument here is that the removal of regulations – no matter how imperfect these are – does not necessarily mean improvement: liberalisation brings with it its own discernible instabilities, injustices, and indeed impoverishing effects. In the Ugandan context, liberalisation has recalibrated the moral underpinnings of trade in ways that have generated a veritable ‘fake’ development in which fast money, a co-mingling of economic and political power, and an eroding or narrowing sense of social obligation create economies of dishonesty.
In a second article, David McDonald addresses ubuntu 1 in South Africa, teasing out the ways in which ubuntu philosophy and language have been redeployed in post-apartheid South Africa in a number of ways, from a form of nation-building and national branding of South Africa to attract foreign direct investment, to its promotion by capitalists as an indigenous management philosophy, to a bolstering of ‘community’ on which neoliberal policy-makers can rely for the provision of social services. Various leaders from government, the private sector, and civil society have variously claimed ubuntu as fitting their needs. In asking whether there is anything progressive that can be reclaimed from ubuntu philosophy, McDonald acknowledges that the answer is far from clear-cut, yet he insists that it remains worth asking. This reminds us to remain vigilant in the face of apparently unshakeable development shibboleths that render Africa visible in ways that eschew complexity, as well as possible alternatives.
Alison Ayers' analysis of civil war and political violence in Sudan underscores the point that the persistent framing of development ‘problems’ in terms of development shibboleths matters profoundly, both for analysis and for intervention. In particular, the framing of Sudan's political violence in ‘civil’ – or domestic – terms represents what Ayers calls ‘the triumph of ideology over history’; in other words, the negation of the historical and globally constituted nature of conflict in Sudan. Ayers' paper identifies three of the most damaging aspects of Sudan's history which are central to an understanding of the contemporary conflict: the technologies of colonial rule which connected identity to the distribution of power and resources; the connection between regional conflict and Sudan's geopolitical position during the cold war and the ‘war on terror’; and the country's incorporation into the global capitalist economy.
Gunnar Sørbø connects such a macro-political economic reading of Sudan's conflict to recent research on the local political economic complexities of continuing violence. Sørbø writes against the shibboleths of African conflict which tend to dismiss the significance and agency of small local-level actors as ‘an inconvenience’, particularly in the context of peace-building. Instead, he highlights the importance of resources, particularly land, to an understanding of the ways in which local conflicts undergo continuous reconfiguration. Given the ‘politics of dispossession’ that has emerged in the country, Sørbø concludes that only peace-building efforts that deal directly with local conflicts, as well as with the national picture, stand a chance of steering the country away from fragmentation.
The final article in this issue deals directly with the question of corruption. Jérôme Bachelard focuses on grand corruption in post-Moi Kenya, focusing on the Anglo-Leasing scandal and its centrality to the unravelling of Kibaki's anti-corruption drive. Bachelard's analysis offers a useful counter-argument to the development shibboleth outlined at the outset of this editorial regarding ‘quiet corruption’ and the ‘demand side’ of good governance; for while the ‘demand’ for tough action against the key political figures involved in the Anglo-Leasing scandal was loud and clear from Kenyan civil society, Kibaki nevertheless later reneged on that action because of the need to shore up electoral support.