"Let this Pan African Parliament be the voice of the poor. Let us be open to allow the voices of those who speak through us be heard,"

Nelson Mandela challenging the members of the Pan African Parliament (PAP) while launching the Trust Fund at the seat of the august House in Midrand, South Africa.

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The launching of the Trust Fund triggers many things to many people. Personally, it swings my mind back to the pet subject of many in Africa—corruption! Corruption is nothing new in Africa. Unfortunately, there is a prevalent consciousness that corruption has been on the increase on the continent over the past 40 years. Undoubtedly, bribery is not new to the region, but substantial graft seems to have multiplied, as suggested by scandals in many African countries. Assuming that the observation of amplified corruption mirror a real vice, and is not due simply to enhanced reporting and closer scrutiny by a more observant public, what are the focal reasons behind this increase? Current explanations tend to stress heightened opportunities for extracting bribes more than incentives for doing so. As regards the former, many scholars have pointed to growing state interventionism, which gives bureaucrats and politicians broad discretion over appealingly huge resources. Other scholars, by contrast, have pointed to the recent wave of neoliberal reforms, during which bureaucrats and politicians disposed of huge portions of public property, often with limited transparency. While these factors were at work in some cases, they do not grant an adequate explanation for the recent rise of corruption. Corruption can result from a multiplicity of causes or combinations of causes.

Corruption may be defined as the provision of material benefits to politicians and public officials in exchange for illicit influence over their decisions. The corruptor uses private benefits to induce a public decision maker to bend or break formal rules of procedure in order to confer on the corruptor special favors in the adjudication of rights or the allocation of resources. Although it may be tolerated by a country's citizens, corruption is, by definition, illegal. It is important to distinguish corruption, which entails the illegal sale of special favors, from political patronage, which occurs when public decision makers use their legal margin of discretion to confer favors on their friends and followers without receiving material benefits in return. Corruption can have two different purposes. Politicians and public officials may sell favorable decisions in order to accumulate funds for political reasons, such as a future election campaign. They may also use bribes to accumulate private wealth. Of course, the boundary between political and personal corruption is fluid.

As regards increased enticement for corruption, a prime suspect is the wave of democratization that has swept across Africa over the last 20 years. By dispersing power and requiring the consent of several institutions in decision making, the return of democracy has extended the variety of performers who can demand bribes. Also over the past 20 years, personalistic leaders with mass swaying charisma have sought to bypass established political parties and interest groups in order to reach "the people" through direct, most often televised, appeals aimed at building up a loyal following from scratch. Because its methods are costly, the new media-based politics has given ambitious politicians much higher incentives to resort to corruption.

With this in mind, I call upon all young leaders in Africa to take the challenge by Retired South African President Nelson Mandela when he led members of the Pan African Parliament (PAP) in launching the Trust Fund seriously. We understand that the fund will act as the basket for pooling assistance from member states of the African Union (AU), companies and individuals from the continent. It will also allow PAP to seek financial and related support from foreign governments and organizations for implementation of its programmes. This is a very noble goal which ought to be fought for by all mindful and patriotic Africans. Indeed the African leaders who attended that function and heard that challenge from Nelson Mandela owe it to the African continent to respect and honor our statesman. He is our role model in many ways. He sacrificed his own life to “emancipate’ Africa yet when he ascended to power he did not exemplify greed and arrogance like many of the African leaders.

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