INSIDE AFRICA Situational Corruption By Tarty Teh Special to USAfrica The Newspaper Liberia is more than one and a half centuries old; but we still have not found our moral bearing, and this failure has a bearing on everything else we try to do as a nation. We had a promising beginning, but the opportunity to connect with our common heritage was blown when the system of morality that was already in place was condemned in favor of something that was deemed more civilized than tribal culture. So after 150 years of nation-statehood, we have only now begun to examine the relative merits of our African-ness and what set of moral principles that may be more native to us. There are conflicting moral values among tribes, and this is even more so when you combine a number of tribes for the purpose of forming a sustainable geo- political entity called a nation. We did that, and the resulting conflicts were fairly predictable. Our problem to this day, however, is not the fact that we had conflicts among tribes, which are the building blocks of the nation, but that tribal propensities were discouraged and at times condemned long enough for tribal people to feel worthless. The inevitable reawakening consequently took the form of anger, and this is what it has led to. We would have fallen in love with our new national identity if we were not required to renounce our tribal one; after all, a tribe is a collection of people with carefully defined bloodlines but bound by land, language and common values. We accepted those values and defended them as our heritage. We could have similarly accepted our national values and defended them as our sovereignty. But there is a question. We know the tribal ones, but what are those values for Liberia? The true mixing of the tribes happened through our migration toward the metropolises, the seats of the new civilization, strange as it was to our tribal experiences. That, perhaps, was why we tried so hard to emulate the new values, but we also saw the contradictions built right into the new system. Truth, for instance, was sought in courts instead of from the hearts. Cheaters often won because victims had no witnesses or other admissible indicators of lawful truthfulness. So a man who beds your wife goes unpunished because you have no proof and he will not confess. Tribal people were impotentiated because they now lived in the cities. And so we cheated too. They stole until they were caught. Bribery was common enough to lose its rank as a crime. But natives sometimes felt a need for confession. So stealing on the job became a laughing matter because you were not alone in doing it, and you felt better for mentioning it over beer and drew the expected and confirming laughter, which was really a cry of sorts. Value lost. Yet when you returned to the pristine village that remained uncontaminated by the vice of the urban need to survive, they looked up to you for an enhanced form of their own values. But you are damaged. If you did not steal, your son would not have finished high school; he would therefore not be better equipped than you were to advance the struggle a bit further and perhaps less tainted than you are. The next generation is already here. Do you want them to watch you laugh about stealing? You don't, but the situation has not changed. You can't live on your salary, but you must survive. Justified or not, that is corruption although on a smaller scale. But it also exists on a larger scale in Liberia. Elected presidents seek to buy houses in the United States, however short their tenures and however small their official salaries. The shorter their terms the more determined they are to steal. If they have not accumulated what they most before the predicted expiration of their reign, then everything else is tampered with to ensure their longevity. If they grow wealthy, they also grow more powerful. Yet when examples are to be set to discourage corruption and change direction, it is the situationally corrupt who is made an example of. The customs clerk is fired - or worse, beaten - but the commissioner of customs gets his bribe delivered over a cold beer. And so the thing spreads, and those in the interior, although not corrupt, are ripe for the picking. Bring back the hut tax. If we must change, where do we begin? If we must fight, whom do we target? It was in 1971 when I visited my native Pallipo to see my mother. It would be the last time I would see her before I traveled to the United States for the first time. The folks in my village knew even back then that I had an opinion about things they did not understand. But the village had not suspected it was being taken by yet another scheme. As levies go, this one looked as legitimate as any. It was a national raffle ticket booklet. I believe it had five tickets in it. My mother said the town chief had given her the booklet and she needed to return it with $3. Every household was presented with the booklet and told to return it with the amount. So my mother gave me the booklet and asked me to give her the money for returning it. There was only one booklet for the whole village. From house to house, each family received and returned the booklet with the $3. Both the method and the levy were strange to me even as a native of this village. I told my mother that the draw for the raffle had been held on television in Monrovia a month earlier. The First Lady, Mrs. Victoria Tolbert, had been involved in the drive which required every company manager's wife to be a part of the sale of the raffle tickets. I had bought a single ticket from a booklet as an employee of British Petroleum Company. I did not win. Somebody won something. The game was over. The tickets were therefore invalid, and so on. My mother regarded me with a bereaved look as I explained. I had missed the point. The point was three dollars, not a long dissertation about the absence of justice in Pallipo. I gave her the money and she returned the booklet. I had solved her problem. It was not her fault. It was not the town chief's fault, and probably not even the district commissioner's fault. Perhaps the scheme was hatched at the county level. Even that was not the root of that particular problem. How do we prevent situational corruption which breeds the sadistic kind which consumes our national budget through conspicuous consumption in which government ministers insulate themselves from "budgetary constraints" by driving sport utility vehicles and swimming in bleached water while residents of the capital, who are trapped away from the natural habitats, thirst for clean water? And yet we continue to blame those who abuse us. Tarty Teh, a Liberian, is a contributing columnist for USAfricaonline.com Copyrighted © Tarty Teh 1998 Back to: Inside Africa Index USAfricaonline Homepage