CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

Elite Cartels 117
As in many patronage systems such considerations at times spilled over
into corruption. Misappropriation of $15 million intended to provide
school supplies occurred when a politically connected firm lacking prior
experience in that field was given major contracts. Illegal land sales, fraud
in the construction and allocation of housing in and around Gaborone,
the capital, and a near collapse of the Botswana Cooperative Bank all
involved corrupt dealmaking among elites. The board of the National
Development Bank, dominated by bureaucratic protégés of top ministers,
turned a blind eye to lax lending, land-titling, and debt collection
procedures in a variety of programs benefiting ministers and their allies
(Good, 1994: 500–516). During the early and mid-1990s a series of
presidential commissions of inquiry were created to look into corruption,
and a new corruption control agency, the Directorate of Corruption and
Economic Crime (DCEC) was eventually created (Frimpong, 1997).
Hegemonic corruption
The 1990s scandals involved significant misappropriation of resources,
and did little good for Botswana’s image. But they did not produce anything
like a crisis for the system: public protests were broad-based but not
confrontational. Opposition parties continued to gain strength, in part
through public reactions to corruption. Politics remained largely nonideological,
and the official response to the scandal – presidential commissions,
the DCEC – in a sense reflected the same patterns and agendas
that had shaped politics since independence.
Botswana, like several other countries in the Elite Cartels group, is a
democracy with competitive elections, dominated by a core elite whose
legitimate and illegitimate dealings maintain cooperation while controlling
political competition. It would not be accurate to say that corruption
has been ‘‘functional’’ for Botswana, even given its economic successes.
Instead – as in Korea – corruption helped a paternalistic elite stay in
power and pursue goals that were development-oriented. The stability
and predictability that followed, along with considerable external backing,
enabled Botswana to take advantage of liberalizing trends and opportunities
in a way that many of its neighbors have not.
Conclusion
In thinking about Elite Cartel corruption, it is tempting to fall into two
traps. The first is to conclude that it is a benign, or even beneficial, form of
corruption. The second, perhaps less likely, is to emphasize the relative
simplicity of corrupt practices – ‘‘money politics’’ exchanges, for example,