What Lies Behind the Governments Concern with “Good Governance” in Africa?
Peter Hain, the Foreign Office Minister for Africa, has taken several recent opportunities to lecture on the importance of “good governance” in Africa and especially in southern African countries. His latest theme has been the necessity to eradicate corruption, but this too is nothing more than yet another attempt to facilitate interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states and to organise their governments to accept the consequences of globalisation. According to Hain corruption can no longer be tolerated, but he makes it clear that this is “not simply a moral imperative” but one of the consequences of globalisation and the drive for maximum profits. In his view, “Modern capital is so mobile it prefers to invest where corruption does not take a slice of the profits.” According to Hain, the central problems facing Africa are those of “governance” and “transparency”, rather than the interference and exploitation of Britain and the big powers which has created and continues to
