Blog
Global Issues: Aid and Corruption: The Wabenzi - Africa’s Big Men
14th March 2010
The Wabenzi are Africa’s ‘Big Men’ so named from the Swahili word meaning ‘the Benz people’ - they are the ones who have their sleek cars paid for by the government. In fact, they are the government. The Wabenzi are colourful examples of corrupt government officials and thus a useful illustrative example for the topics on ‘Corruption’ and ‘Aid’. South Africa’s Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande, who is also incidentally the leader of the SA Communist Party, has just acquired a BMW 7 Series as his official vehicle - Karl Marx must either be turning in his grave or planning on being resurrected. The UK have just pledged to give South Africa £65 million for ‘transport’ following on from Jacob Zuma’s recent state visit - can only imagine how ‘JayZee’ might interpret ‘transport’...
Here are two articles on the ‘Wabenzi’:
A recent article in the Newstateman - ‘Hard Times for the Wabenzi’ - focuses on new austerity measures by the Kenyan government which might affect the Kenyan political elite, but that…
”But Kenya’s political elite don’t do austerity. Ninety-four senior politicians each earn more than £9,000 a month, putting them among the world’s highest-paid parliamentarians. In 2006 a report revealed President Mwai Kibaki’s government spent £7.5m on luxury cars in its first 20 months, including £3.5m for 57 Mercs. Meanwhile a third of Kenyans live on less than 80p a day.”
In an older article, written in 2005 Aidan Hartley [author of the Zanzibar Chest], focuses on ‘How African Leaders spend Our Money’:
‘Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz,’ prayed Janis Joplin - the United States singer who died of a drug overdose at the height of her popularity, and the Lord obliged. With or without divine intervention, the late Pope had one. So does the Queen. Erich Honecker, who was an East German Communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1971 until 1989, hunted at night by dazzling the deer in his Mercedes jeep’s headlights until he got close enough to blow them away. Mao Tsetung had 23 Mercs. Today Kim Jong II owns dozens, all filled to the gunwales with imported Hennessy’s cognac. Hitler, Franco, Hirohito, Tito, the Shah, Ceausescu, Pinochet, Somoza - they all swore by Mercedes. Saddam Hussein liked them so much he probably had shares in the company.
Today, though, there is one man who is doing more than the Lord himself to buy a Mercedes-Benz for the leading creeps of the world. That man is of course Bob Geldof, the spur to our global conscience. Africa’s leaders cannot wait for the G8 leaders This is a List of the heads of government of the Group of 8 nations at each G8 Summit since the Group’s inception in 1975. The Group consists of the eight largest industrialized democracies, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. -hectored by Bob and Live 8 into bracelet-wearing submission - to double aid and forgive the continent’s debts. They know that such acts of generosity will finance their future purchases of very swish, customised Mercedes-Benz cars while 315 million poor Africans stay without shoes and Western taxpayers get by with Hondas. This is the way it goes with the WaBenzi, a Swahili term for the Big Men of Africa….