For one split second Dafida Trouble, attending a meeting of the Luanda Book Club, in Angola, was almost grateful that corruption in Nigeria is democratic, compared with the corruption in Angola, which is dictatorial. Dos Santos, father, is president of Angola and has been so for a long time and so cannot think of himself as not being president. Isabel Dos Santos, daughter, is head of Sonangol, their NNPC. Jose Filomeno de Sousa Dos Santos, son, is head of Angola Sovereign Wealth Fund. Let us give thanks for little mercies, jo. And the meeting of the Luanda Book Club that day was about reading and discussing two books. The first is by Gene Sharp and it is entitled FROM DICTATORSHIP TO DEMOCRACY: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR LIBERATION. The second is by the Angolan journalist and writer Domingo da Cruz and it is called in English translation TOOLS TO DESTROY A DICTATOR AND AVOID A NEW DICTATORSHIP. There were thirteen people including da Cruz. Both books look at the power of non-violent protests especially civil disobedience.

Gene Sharp is well-known for his work in the area of nonviolence by people all over the world who are curious, about nonviolent alternatives to both passivity and violent conflict,. His other publication is almost four hundred pages long called SHARP’S DICTIONARY OF POWER AND STRUGGLE: LANGUAGE OF CIVIL RESISTANCE IN CONFLICTS. Given this background of Gene Sharp it is only to be marvelled at the way and the forceful manner in which the government of Angola reacted to the meeting of the Luanda Book Club and its agenda for that day. All thirteen readers, members of the Book Club, were accused of attempting a coup, attempting a rebellion, meeting in a criminal association and threatening the life of the president and key officials of the government of Angola. Two others were arrested as well and in a little time they were all tried for these and other crimes that the system could think up. They were all sentenced to terms of imprisonment from two to eight years.

In Nigeria or Angola or South Africa or any other African country, there is a System. Invariably, that System is the same as the government. There are those who benefit from the System and so fight to protect it and to prolong it’s life. At the same time, and especially when the System is not for the greatest good of the greatest number of Nigerians or Angolans or South Africans, there are those who oppose the System and must be repressed. At what point would the number of those who must be repressed for the System to remain intact outnumber those who think they benefit from the System and so brink repression to an end? This is the critical question in this debate about the hashtag our corruption is better than yours! Or our corruption is more representative than yours!!

There are eggs and there are eggs. Same with corruption. There is corruption that is defended with guns and mortars along with imprisonment and torture. Such corruption can be said to be in your face. There are two problems here. There is the corruption, which must stop. And there is the violence, which must stop. Those who fight would find themselves fighting on two fronts – they are fighting corruption and also fighting the violence used to protect the corruption. Is this type of corruption easier to fight?

There is the other kind of corruption, which is more widespread in the society, which permeates every structure and every institution. If the institution is small and the people involved are lowly workers, the corruption is there in its littleness and smallness. If the institution is middling and medium sized, the corruption is there in its right size working its magic in its own measure. And when the institution is large, like our NNPC the corruption is mega and speaks in billions and trillions. This is the corruption with the democratic spread. The question here is not if this type of corruption is easier to fight than the previous type of corruption. The question is whether or not if this type of corruption can ever be eradicated.

All societies contain complications. Containing complications means getting everybody into the system, benefitting as much as they need and contributing as much as they can. The complication of Angola is skin deep. There are whites, there are the children of white and black, there are the children of mixed and there are blacks. And in the ancient racist rhyme: if you are white you are alright. If you are brown stick around. If you are black stay back!!! In this System nonviolence would work if those defending the System would allow it. Otherwise force must be used to force the needed change.

Building institutions, restoring institutions, repairing institutions and ensuring institutions function as they should are the ways to fight widespread corruption. In addition, the democratic rights of free association and freedom to read whatever we like must also work towards preventing apathy.

It is to be feared that a country such as Angola, steeped in the discipline of book writing, book reading and book giving should now criminalise book meeting. The first president of Angola was a much respected poet Agostinho Neto. Writers Angolan and Angola-loving have written extensively about this much traumatised African country. Much of the writing in recent times have been of disillusionment with the country. Lara Pawson describes one of the tragedies of Angola in her book IN THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE: ANGOLA’S FORGOTTEN MASSACRE. Paul Theroux, renown the world over for his travel books comes to grief in Angola as he attempts to travel the left side of Africa the way he had travelled the right side of the continent in his book THE LAST TRAIN TO ZONA VERDE. What happens? We are told that Theroux crosses the red one into a different Africa: “the improvised, slapped-together Africa of tumbled fences and cooking fires, of mud and thatch,” of heat and poverty, and of roadblocks, mobs and anarchy. It is sad to finish this argument quoting Chinua Achebe in his poem to Neto watching:

The sinister grin of Africa’s idiot-Kings/Who oversee in obscene palaces of gold/The butchery of their own people.