A mea culpa is in order before I proceed: this piece focuses on an unforgettable quotation from someone I have mentioned multiple times in this column, and I might therefore sound like a broken record to regular readers.

That person is Kenyan-born intellectual PLO Lumumba and the quotation, posted on his social media pages more than a year ago, is: “In Japan, a corrupt person kills himself. In China, they will kill him. In Europe, they jail him. In Africa, he will present himself for election.”

Instead of moaning about our lot, I decided to be a bit light-hearted. So, I pretend that we are academics and that Lumumba’s lamentation about African politicians comprises a set of hypotheses that have to be tested empirically.

The first hypothesis is that a Japanese person would rather take his own life than live with the shame of being suspected, or having been proved, to be corrupt. What does the ‘empirical’ evidence show? In 2007, Japan’s Agriculture Minister, Toshikatsu Matsuoka, hanged himself hours before he was due to face questioning over an alleged expenses scandal. Mark the word ‘alleged’ – we shall return to it later.

Five years later, the country’s Finance Minister, Takahiro Matsushita, also hanged himself amid a scandal involving infidelity – a form of corruption, really. The next high-profile Japanese to take his own life – in 2018 – was Finance Ministry bureaucrat Toshio Akagi, who had been exposed as having tampered with official documents relating to the sale of public land at a knockdown price to the operator of a school whose honorary principal was the wife of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

So, with respect to Hypothesis 1, the finding is in the affirmative.

As regards Hypothesis 2 – that corrupt Chinese individuals get killed – the evidence abounds. The latest corruption-related death sentence was handed down in January 2021 to a former asset management company head convicted of collecting $260-million in bribes over a decade. He was also found guilty of squandering public money.

Again, hypothesis confirmed.

Lumumba is also spot-on when he says Europeans don’t think twice about sending corrupt politicians to jail, even if they previously occupied the most senior position in their country. A case in point is former French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who was handed a one-year prison sentence in September 2021 for illegally financing his 2012 re-election bid. Seven months earlier, he had received a jail term for corruption.

Sarkozy, who is appealing both convictions, has also been charged over suspicions that he received millions of euros from the late Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, for his 2007 election campaign.

But does the hypothesis that African politicians who are decidedly corrupt or perceived to be so offer themselves as candidates at election time hold water? We needn’t go far for confirmation of this. Those who are old enough will recall that Jacob Zuma was indicted in the early 2000s for having a “generally corrupt relationship” with Shabir Shaik, although the indictment was later withdrawn, before being reinstated after he had become President. Had he been Japanese, he would not have proceeded to run for the presidency of the African National Congress (ANC), which paved the way for him to become head of State. Remember Matsuoka, the Japanese ex-Minister I mentioned earlier, who killed himself on the basis of yet-to-be-proved allegations of making fraudulent expense claims? On the other hand, Zuma was facing, and still faces, serious corruption charges in a court of law.

Now I hear that Zweli Mkhize, the disgraced former Health Minister who allegedly looted State coffers during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, intends to challenge President Cyril Ramaphosa for the ANC presidency in December.

There are many such characters in Africa. We are too tolerant.