The Case of the Crooked Camrys

There is a great corruption scandal unfolding in Lesotho, which says just so much about the state of Government and democracy in this little country.

Senior politicians are under fire for a deal where they are permitted to buy the vehicles used by Government as soon as they are three years old, for the "residual value" of those vehicles. The residual value is perversely calculated to be 1% of the original value of the vehicle, so about R2,000 (USD 300) for a 2003 Camry, or R4,000 (USD 600) for a Mercedes Kompressor.

This is all part and parcel of the privatization of the Government's fleet services, which was encouraged as a cost-reducing measure by the World Bank and the IMF a few years ago. If you have lived in Africa for even a year, you should immediately recognize what is afoot - Imperial Fleet Services, the winner of the fleet contract, is giving gifts to senior Government officials in order to predispose them to renewing their contract when it expires, even though they are the most expensive fleet service provider in town.

It is not surprising to find such deals pervading almost every element of Government in a country like this one. What is shocking to me about the deal is that no effort has been made to hide or obfuscate what is such a blatant case of bribery and corruption. When engaged in a degenerate deal like this, public officials should at least have the respect to put on a stoic face and pretend to be honest or at a minimum, incompetent and confused. The failure to do so is as clear a Fuck You to the electorate as a ruling party can give.

A less egregious example may make clear what I am trying to say. Sticking to the subject of vehicles, there is a certain dealer in a certain border town, who is known to give great deals on cars, if you happen to work for a certain revenue agency. That agency, in turn, has the discretion to choose which businesses to audit. So if you happened to get a great deal on the car, maybe it was just the right day and the right time. If the dealer hasn't had his import and export data audited for sixteen years, it is surely just coincidence. This is how graft is supposed to work: all parties to the deal are benefiting, but the criminality of the affair is subtle, can never be quite pinned down.

Not so for our Ministerial car racket. This week, the Government web site, of all places, has a link to the various options for crooked transactions that were discussed in parliament. The document reads as plain and boring as any other statement of policy, discussing whether it is better to give Ministers the vehicles through Government-guaranteed bank loans (loans guaranteed to default, giving the officials the cars for free), or to sell the cars to Imperial, which would sell them back to officials at their so-called residual value. This is not a case of officials at football matches being passed sandwiches stuffed with dollar bills: there was actually a parliamentary committee established to decide between a set of equally fraudulent proposals, and the conclusion was presented to the representative body of the nation. In plain language, "This sixteen page document describes in detail how we are going to misappropriate a few million dollars from the people of this country." Moved, seconded, and approved by the sleeping majority.

The audacity of the scheme is unfathomable. Parliament is meant to be discussing a policy issue, in this case the privatization of the Government fleet, and they vote in an amendment transforming the public vehicles into the personal property of lead parliamentarians. The mentality of "a dollar for the people, a dollar for me" finds life not just in back rooms and behind closed doors, but in the most public of spaces, the parliament itself.

In a proper democracy, a ruling party that establishes a principle of giving itself handouts as a central component of every single policy issue soon finds itself voted out by the electorate that it is despoiling. In Lesotho, there is only one party with any prospect of forming a Government, and it wins elections on votes from remote communities where the citizens don't have the faintest idea of what democracy means, where development projects are targetted politically and labelled politically, where citizens are made to understand that they are only eligible for such things as health clinics and clean water because they vote for the LCD. Ironically, many of these goods and services are paid for by donors; project posters are published first in English and second in Sesotho - English-speaking donors rarely notice when a party logo gets affixed to the Sesotho version of a poster promoting the assistance.

In a small country ranking 149 out of 177 on UNDP's education index, with few secondary graduates from the highlands whence most parliamentarians hail, the possibility of proper debate over policy issues is non-existent. Discussion takes place in both English and Sesotho, and though most parliamentarians may speak English, many are not competent enough to engage in intricate policy discussions in a language of which they have the thinnest grasp. The statements that come out of parliament are often sadly indicative of the level of competence of elected officials.

The wages of sin

And yet, we meet all the global hit-or-miss indicators of democracy - there are free and fair elections, there is freedom of association and multiple political parties, a free media, and so on. On paper, Lesotho is a vibrant democracy, but in practice, the actions of head officials reveal that it may as well be a one party state - it is hard to imagine a level of corruption that would put at risk such a party as this.

The car deal was a small memo, which I am willing to bet was opened and closed quickly, a memo which was not even looked at by the majority of parliamentarians, and certainly not understood. The official opposition made no stink of the affair when the deal was made some three years ago. The process was so completely transparent, it was almost even legal.

But not quite. The Law Society of Lesotho has issued a beautifully melodramatic challenge which has been taken up by the local weeklies, and the issue has dominated the headlines for over a month now. If the Government manages to bury this, it will be clear that there is no act of corruption too blatant to get away with.

But it looks now like this story is heading toward as good an ending as we can reasonably hope for. Some cars will be returned, maybe a minister or two will be shuffled onto the backbench after the 2007 election. Imperial Fleet Services will get the new contract, and the shameless jobbery will continue, but the scheming at least will move into the back room where it belongs.