target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_c9671f56-279e-57f0-b2c7-b6ea76a7b5d4">105 Geschiere 1997.
Clientelism and dependency
The influential are those who get the most of what there is to get.106
106 Lasswell 1958:13.
Ugandan proverb107
107 www.allgreatquotes.com.
A type of interpersonal relationship exists in Africa that is different in practice from relationships in the West.108 Westerners traveling or working in Africa bump into it in many situations. Typically, they don’t understand what is going on and don’t know how to respond to it.
108 Although sociologists accept that “clientelism” exists in Western democracies, as in the relationship between voters and politicians, such clientelism operates very differently from that described here.
Upon arriving in Africa and trying to be friendly and make friends, sooner or later many of these new African “acquaintances” will try to fit Westerners into roles the Westerners don’t understand. (Note that the Africans being discussed here are not government officials or business contacts. What are being discussed are clerks, peddlers, neighbors, domestic workers, and others whom the expatriate encounters in day-to-day life.) These Africans are attempting to draw expats into their system of relating to people. Africans have no way to know that the Westerners don’t understand it. The Africans are on their home turf and don’t (and shouldn’t have to) understand that the foreigner has a very different way of relating to people. It is up to the Westerner to understand the system and how to relate to it.
The system in focus is known as clientelism.109 In various forms it is found in much of the world, but it has particular characteristics in Africa.110 It is “the ubiquitous presence at every level of African life of the exchange of gifts, favours and services, of patronage and courtier practices.”111 Basically it is a system where people with economic means enter into informal, long-term relationships with people who have less access to power, wealth, and influence. “Less access” is relative as there is a hierarchy of clients and patrons. The patron of one client will be the client of one above him, from lowest to highest members of society. Patrons and clients enter into a relationship for purposes that both see as beneficial. The type of relationship practiced in clientelism “is clearly the rule rather than the exception in most of Africa.”112 Some real-life examples will help explain the situations and relationships involved.
109 Other terms that basically refer to the same political-economic system are patron-client, prebendal, clientage, and patrimonial.
110 Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith 2004.
111 Walle 2003:311–312.
112 Lemarchand 1972:69.
A man I slightly knew started to pay me near-daily visits. I was new to the country and did not understand why he would do so. For me, he was wasting my time. Finally after maybe a couple of weeks, and to my increasing exasperation, he told me he wanted to be my client. I would be his patron and take charge of him. He thought he was honoring me but I was not looking for such honor.
Implicit in his “offer” was the understanding that if I accepted him as my client, I would take responsibility for him and his family, including financial support, assisting with the educational expenses of his children, finding employment, meeting health needs such as providing money for filling prescriptions, etc. There were also implicit responsibilities for him as client, as patron-client relationships are by definition two-way. Each party receives what it needs from the other. So my friend would frequently come to my house. He would also be “loyal” and vote for me if I ran for public office (if I were a national) or needed public or moral support. He would encourage his friends to do likewise.
I have been to the houses of “big men” who have wealth and influence. Their courtyards have many men sitting around, and coming and going. Some are just hanging out opportunistically; some are seeking an audience so that they can present their need of the moment. In societies where this pattern of behavior exists—and there are many in Africa—such attention by clients gives prestige to the big man, indicating his importance and following. Note that patrons do not normally visit clients, except for funerals and weddings. Visiting is one-way.
Naturally, for the Westerner there is no attraction to accepting an invitation to become part of this system. What a “client” could offer a Westerner is not what he values or wants. The “benefit” of having a constant flow of visitors and supplicants would be considered an unwelcome intrusion on one’s privacy and time. Becoming a “big man” in his home culture might be appealing, but it would have a totally different definition from that of an African clientelistic setting. So when Africans try to pull Westerners into their system there is a total misfit. Any benefits would be entirely one-way in the eyes of the Westerner: financial resources flowing from the Westerner to his client. Such a relationship would involve benevolence, not true clientelism.
A very different real-life example of the implications of clientelism was a high-level African who was named to the board of an international non-profit organization, an NGO with head offices in the USA. He served for a total of six years, attending semi-annual meetings. All board members served without remuneration, as required by law. Upon his retirement in his home country, he requested a pension from the NGO. When he was informed that his service did not warrant a pension, as was the case with all board members, he became very bitter and critical of this “unfair” organization. I believe that in his mind he had been a faithful client of the organization for several years, which therefore obligated it to take care of him long-term.
An employee in one African country suffered a brain tumor. His medical expenses were covered by health insurance for some time. The insurance finally ran out as he was hospitalized for a very long period. The organization continued to pay his medical bills and salary for many months beyond the legal requirements, but when he moved to his home village to be with his family, it stopped supporting him. He became very bitter that the payments stopped. He spread the word that the organization was unjust, unreliable, and uncaring, that it treated its employees very badly. This critical behavior was also typical of clientelism: loyalty to the patron continues only as long as the patron-client relationship remains intact.
An expat researcher in agriculture had a young man assigned to him as an intern by a government ministry. The intern was a vocational high school student already in his twenties. The researcher saw that he was honest and capable, and took him under his wing. The researcher understood the patron-client mindset that was part of the young man’s culture and tried to educate him to think and act independently. He taught him various agricultural methods: how to graft fruit trees, establish a tree nursery, etc. He pointed out business opportunities. He explained about entrepreneurship and taking initiative and that the system wasn’t going to help him so he needed to do what he could to get things going on his own. The intern often expressed his appreciation for the training but did not seem to absorb much of it even though the training continued many months.
Then one day after the researcher told the intern that he was going on home leave, the intern came into the lab beaming,
with his face shining like he had gotten a revelation. He said he now understood how it could work out in the future. So I said, “Good, how?” He said, “Vous pouvez me prendre en charge” (you can take me in your charge). He was in a country where life is very difficult and discouraging, where it takes bribes even to get beyond primary school, to pass exams, to receive a diploma that has been earned, to obtain a paying job….Consequently,