Corruption and democracy as inextricable bed-fellows: a critical reading of money galore and a man of the people

Abstract

Corruption is particularly associated with multiparty democratic governance practices in Africa. Although the phenomenon of corruption can be traced to every human society, irrespective of race or colour, it appears more pronounced in Africa than elsewhere. Africa’s underdevelopment is largely attributable to the impact of corruption in the public sphere. The President of the Republic of Ghana in a recent speech described corruption as “Mass murder”. It is significant to note that all the military interventions which truncated democratic governance from the 24th February, 1966 Coup d’Etat which overthrew Ghana’s first Republican Constitution under the leadership of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah to the 31st December one that ended the reign of Dr. Hilla Liman, were justified attempts to fight the cancer of corruption. The competitive nature of multiparty democracy and the so-called ‘winner-take all’ syndrome, coupled with the fervent desire of individuals or groups of people to capture and control the public sphere and resources of their countries, provide the driving motivation for corruption. This paper examines the various parameters of corruption and democratic politics in Amu Djoleto’s Money Galore and Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People so as to lay bare the intricacies of the existing relationship between the two phenomena, and how difficult it is to eradicate the former without annihilating the latter. It points out the fact that corruption is an integral component of democratic governance practices. Any successful fight against it can only be predicated on a drastic socio-cultural transformation driven by a concerted education towards this end. The study is posited in the theoretical framework of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) of Van Dijk (2000)