West’s holier-than-thou attitude just hot air

Benny Tsododo
Last week, the world woke up to some unprecedented news from the European Union with Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem saying her commission had produced a damning report on corruption in Europe. Though the report is yet to be presented in full, she highlighted that there was “breathtaking” corruption in Europe.

Malmstroem underscored that this was the first time the Commission had produced such a report. She revealingly mentioned that corruption is costing European countries as much as US$160 billion each year.

We, from the vilified part of the world, could hardly believe this. How can these “democracies” be blighted by corruption, a vice supposedly indigenous to the poor developing nations?

Nevertheless, the coincidence of these revelations with growing reports of corruption in Zimbabwe had a didactic purpose. The staggering figure of money lost to Europe due to corruption is enough to shoulder the budgetary needs of 40 small economies like Zimbabwe that require a mere US$4 billion to pass each year.

Such is the damaging nature of corruption. Figuratively, corruption in the EU is destroying the economies of 40 nations each year. This is shocking considering the fact that efforts to secure US$4 billion to run Zimbabwe’s economy are not yielding much.

Malmstroem said corruption erodes public trust and undermines the strength of economies. “We hope that this (report) will start a political process and will spur the political will and the necessary commitment at all levels to address corruption more effectively across Europe,” she said.

Malmstroem added: “The price of not acting is simply too high.”
Malmstroem’s advice squarely applies to Zimbabwe. Reports of ubiquitous corruption in the country should jolt those with the political and legal power to spring into action and stem the corrosive tide of corruption. Like Malmstroem pertinently mentioned, “the price of not acting is simply too high”. The lesson to Zimbabwe is manifest. The country can only delay acting on corruption at the peril of its economy.

Corruption aside, the EU Commission of Home Affair’s first ever report on corruption in Europe serves to demystify certain moral illusions that have been blindly purveyed for a long time. All along, Europe has been presented as a morally upright region where human maladies such as corruption are reviled and non-existent. The region has religiously been projected as having unparalleled corporate governance infrastructure that is impervious to graft and other economic ills.

No one could imagine corruption erupting in such a “clean” environment. Through an astutely engineered perception management campaign, Europe and the rest of the Western communities have passed themselves off as flawless communities incapable of erring on the economic, political, religious or social fronts. They paraded themselves as beacons of democracy and yardsticks on governance.

To this day, challenges afflicting developing nations such as the HIV/Aids pandemic appeared alien to Western nations. To most of us, it had become unfathomable that there could be people afflicted with HIV in the West. We could not accept that there are homeless people in Europe or America. Only Africans and other “poor” people from developing nations were presented as perennially smitten by these unbearable illnesses and trapped in economic morass.

Due to this fraudulent disposition, Westerners have nurtured a superiority complex that had enabled them to arrogate to themselves the power to oversee world events and marshal other nationalities. They have presented themselves as the big brothers who dish out instructions to presumably lesser beings in the developing parts of the world.

Using this latitude, they have crafted and prescribed economic policies they foist on developing nations through their powerful financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

On the political front, they have set themselves as the commissioner of oaths of our electoral processes. Without their presence and approval, no election can pass the test of being free and fair. The West had given itself the power to arbitrarily interfere with any country’s internal political processes and could deploy drones or whole armies or impose indiscriminate sanctions to push their hegemonic agenda.

Can you imagine that the issue of homosexuality that the West is feverishly pushing on the global stage has not been fully embraced on its own backyards? America, which has become the vengeful proponent of homosexuality, has only 17 states that have legalised same sex marriages while 33 states have outlawed same sex marriages as we speak.

As late as 2008, some US states such as Arizona and Florida outlawed same sex marriages through constitutional amendments yet any similar moves by African nations are regarded as anathema and an attack on human rights. Such is the condescending attitude of Westerners towards Africans and other nationalities from other “poor” continents.

Using this derived moral latitude, they have made themselves immune to international law and positioned themselves beyond the jurisdiction of international courts. They have even crafted laws that shield their citizens from being prosecuted at the International Criminal Court.

Africa has been a regular victim to this derision. Recently, the US and EU disdainfully sought to divide the Africa Union by inviting some of its members to their respective summits while snubbing other African nations such as Zimbabwe. Such actions are a slap in the face of the AU, when the West should engage with mutual respect and a sense of equality. It is disrespectful for the West to impose conditions on Africa prior to any summit.

But with the revelations of endemic corruption in Europe, it has become clear that Westerners are flawed like all of us. They err like all humans. They have no claim to moral uprightness. They are not infallible and this automatically erodes their supposed claim to superiority.

Such revelations should embolden Africa’s claim to self-determination. The continent should resist efforts by the West to interfere in its internal processes. No more should the AU stand akimbo while the West unilaterally sends troops to intervene in the internal political processes of its members.

No more should Africans be treated as second class citizens of the world.