Page 42 - The Economist20171214

42 Middle East and Africa The Economist December 16th 2017
2 Almost all African utilities “are basical- think-tank funded by America’s defence South Africa
ly bankrupt”, says Chris Trimble, a re- department, reckons that about a quarter
of fish caught off Africa’s shores are taken Zuma loses again
searcher for the World Bank who is based
in Senegal. And that in turn lowers invest- illegally. International observers, who
ment where it is most needed. have watched Sierra Leone’s fish stocks
Nairobi, for example, has more than falling, are tryingto help. In 2010 the World
enough power. Even so, big firms maintain Bank gave money to a project to help the
JOHANNESBURG
backup generators to see them through fre- government police its waters. A $6m boat Courts rebuke the presidentagain. Has
quent blackouts. The grid’s old transform- was built in the Netherlands and sailed to the ANC had enough?
ers explode when it rains. The entire coun- Sierra Leone. But the project was mired in
try can lose powerifthey fail, as happened controversy; there were claims that the HE wheels of justice turn slowly, but
last year when a monkey climbed onto Dutch shipbuilder, Damen, had paid back- Tprobably not slowly enough for South
one. Fish dropped by seagulls onto power handers to win the order. Last year the Africa’s scandal-plagued president. Jacob
stations have been known to plunge Da- World Bank barred it from winning con- Zuma’s court dates have piled up in recent
kar, the capital ofSenegal, into darkness. tracts for18 months, and Dutch authorities years, along with seemingly endless ap-
Worldwide, power consumption is are investigatingallegations ofbribery. peals in what his allies have termed his
strongly correlated to GDP, but in Africa Moreovertheboathasbeenoutononly “Stalingrad strategy” of contesting every
most countries use less power than their two patrols: the government says it cannot judgment, no matter the futility. On De-
incomes would predict. That is largely be- afford the fuel to do more. This leaves it cember 13th, in the latest damning deci-
cause Africa has so little manufacturing with two inflatable boats donated by Brit- sion, a high court ordered Mr Zuma to set
and heavy industry. If electrification pro- ain and a handful of even smaller boats, up a judicial inquiry into allegations of
grammes continue to focus on rural areas, none ofwhich is bigenough to go far out. “state capture” against him, his son Dudu-
utilities may be too cash-strapped to main- There are scant official data on the state zane and their friends. A few hours earlier
tain the grid where it really matters: in cit- of Sierra Leone’s fish stocks, but local fish- the court ruled in a separate decision that
ies and industrial regions where investors ermen have their own measure of the pro- Mr Zuma had abused the judicial process
are building factories. Without industrial- blem. Sulaman Kamara, Pa Seaport’s 33- by trying to block an anti-corruption om-
isation and good jobs, few Africans will be year-old son, has been fishingsince he was budsman, Thuli Madonsela, from releas-
abletoaffordmuchmoreelectricity.Thatis 16. “The fish are less, they are definitely ing a report on state capture in late 2016. It
real powerlessness. 7 less,” he says. “And the valuable types are ordered thatMrZuma mustpersonallypay
disappearing. We used to get a lot of bonga the legal fees in both cases.
and kine [barracuda]. Now they are rare. It is not clear whether Mr Zuma will ap-
Not another fish in the sea Sometimes the catch hardly pays for the peal even these, as he did another judg-
boat’s petrol.” He blames foreign trawlers, ment a week earlier in which the courts
Nets akimbo saying they use nets with small holes that fired his appointee as head of the national
sweep up the baby fish. prosecutors’ office and tookawaythe presi-
Pa Seaport’s daughter and Sulaman’s dent’s power to name a replacement. The
half-sister, Kadiatu Kamara, is a govern- judges thought that since Mr Zuma faces
ment fisheries officer. She agrees that there 783 charges of corruption, he might not be
are fewerfish, but says it is not just because entirely neutral in the matter. Instead they
TOMBO of the foreign trawlers. She also blames lo- said the taskshould fall to the deputy presi-
WestAfrica’s fish stocks are falling
cals who catch the fish as they breed. dent, Cyril Ramaphosa.
NE evening in Tombo, as fish buyers Even so, a little boat might catch in a Mr Zuma’s lawyers have proved adept
Othrong the seafront, an argument year what a trawler can take in less than at dragging out his defence, but at some
erupts at the far end of the harbour. Angry two days. As youngmen like Sulaman pull point the appeals must end. Mr Zuma now
voices waft through the air, as Pa Seaport, ineveremptiernets,itseemshightimethat has 30 days to establish the commission
the master fisherman of Sierra Leone, tries the government polices its waters. 7 into allegations of state capture and the
to solve a heated dispute between local judge in charge ofit must be nominated by
fishermen and a South Korean man. They the respected chief justice, Mogoeng Mo-
accuse him ofdamagingtheirnetswith his goeng. Even MrZuma’sown party, the Afri-
trawler, which, they say, was heading to an can National Congress (ANC), recom-
area where fishingis banned. mended in a statement that he heed the
This squabble points to a much bigger rulings “without delay in the interest of
problem. In Sierra Leone nearly half the ourcountry”.
population does not have enough to eat, South Africa’s courts have gained a rep-
and fish make up most of what little pro- utation for fierce independence during Mr
tein people get. But the country’s once- Zuma’s eight years as president. Their deci-
plentiful shoals, combined with its weak sions are increasingly scathing.
government, have lured a flotilla of un- Dunstan Mlambo, a senior judge, de-
scrupulous foreign trawlers to its waters. scribed Mr Zuma’s attempts to block the
Most of the trawlers fly Chinese flags, state-capture inquiry as “ill-advised and
though dozens also sail from South Korea, reckless”, and said the president’s conduct
Italy, Guinea and Russia. Their combined “falls farshort ofthe expectation on him as
catch is pushing Sierra Leone’s fisheries to of the head of state to support institutions
the brinkofcollapse. ofdemocracy”.
Sierra Leone is not alone in facing this Mr Zuma’s continued litigation to hin-
crisis.AccordingtotheUN’sFoodandAgri- der the release of Ms Madonsela’s report
culture Organisation, 90% of the world’s was “unreasonable”, the decision said. It
fisheries are dangerously overexploited. also raised the possibility of “perjury” re-
The Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, a Fish out of water lated to the president’s excuse for inconsis- 1