Review by Alan Rake. The Criminialisation of the State in Africa by Jean Francois Bayart, Stephen Ellis and Beatrice Hibou. Published by the International African Institute in Association with James Currey, 73 Botley Road, Oxford OX2 OBS. £9.95 paperback.

This book is by three investigative academics already well known for their works on Africa. Their thesis is that it is no longer sufficient to talk of a growing crime wave in Africa because the very body politic is in the process of being criminalised. Criminal activity has now become routine affecting the very heart of political government. In other words corruption and involvement in international criminal activity has now become big business.

Corruption has always been prevalent in Africa since the time the first whites began to trade and prevailed on the local chiefs to sell their fellow men into slavery, but in recent times it has become endemic.

The economic marginalisation of Africa, the failure of the democratic transition and the spread of armed conflicts have all contributed to the search for illegal ways of generating wealth.

The authors emphasise the spread of war and the growth of the arms trade. This produces a new generation of warlords who set their own rules and search for any means of enriching themselves and of paying for their campaigns.

Again and again the authors quote examples of how freedom fighters finance themselves by poaching protected animals, ivory trading, drug smuggling and illegally trafficking valuble minerals.

Most "liberation" armies and the government troops sent to oppose them take to drugs to combat the boredom of long periods of inactivity. Bayart points to the use of drugs in the Congolese rebellions of 1964-5 and in the Biafran war. In Liberia both the West African soldiers of ECOMOG and Charles Taylor's forces which opposed them smoked, swallowed and chewed drugs with abandon. Today the use of drugs is commonplace among troops in Sierra Leone and Somalia.

Bayart points out that sub-Saharan Africa has recently become a staging post of world importance for trade in more serious drugs. Heroin passes through Africa from Asia's golden triangle to the markets of North America. Nigeria became so heavily involved that the US suspended direct flights after a number of drug seizures. New drug routes are now being developed through South Africa and other West African countries such as Ghana and Senegal.

Bayart shows how criminalisation of all kinds has passed to the heart of government. In Zambia, leading members of the ruling party (and opposition) have been involved in drug scandals. In Madagascar, Congo and the Central African Republic, democratically elected presidents, have sought parallel financing from organisations that are clearly fronts for money laundering or fraud on a grand scale. Food aid is often stolen by highly placed officials to be resold for profit on open markets.

In Angola, both the government and the opposition benefit from the smuggling of diamonds. This practice has been duplicated in war situations in Sierra Leone, Somalia and in a whole range of minerals in the Congo today.

Bayart notes that apart from drugs and money laundering, the illegal trafficking in diamonds, gold, valuable minerals, poached animals and ivory are "increasing at an impressive speed."

There are also more subtle ways in which governments are involved. Many heads of state such as Mobutu, were involved in importing or printing banknotes without any control by the central bank. In this way colossal sums were diverted for private use leaving the long suffering people with another wave of inflation and soaring prices.

But Bayart's desire to expose probably takes him too far when he lists what he describes as "smuggling states or states which indulge in fraud on a grand scale". He cites "Gambia, Togo, Benin, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi and Somalia". Some of them, like Liberia and Togo, have depended on the smuggling of legitimate goods for decades and others have been forced into it by the wars that have overwhelmed them in recent times.

Stephen Ellis, a former Editor of Africa Confidential, concentrates on South Africa. It is fertile ground. Everyone has heard of the growing crime wave.

Ellis points out that South Africa has the highest incidence of murder of any country in the world that is not at war. Over 80% of more than 2,000 households surveyed recently had some experience of crime. Black townships are under the control of unoffical armed groups, sometimes in the guise of self-defence or self-protection units claiming allegiance to the ANC or Inkatha or are threatened by tsotsi gangsters with no political ideology.

Police spokesmen admit that elements of the force have been penetrated by organised crime, particularly attached to the drug trade, money laundering or arms smuggling. The South African police did not have a unit to combat organised crime until 1993, and until 1996 South Africa had no laws against money laundering.

Ellis suggests that the ANC is now dealing with the violence which it once encouraged as part of the anti-apartheid struggle. The forces of apartheid reacted by training Inkatha, encouraging vigilantes and official death squads. In the last stages of the war some police and army officers developed criminal enterprises of their own, such as trading in weapons gems, ivory and drugs. Now the new government has to cope with a society in which thousands of men were trained to use violence who have easy access to cheap firearms.

Young men, often adopting political labels, make a living by providing protection or indulging in money making rackets. The feuds between rival taxi operators which sometimes give rise to deadly gun battles are closely linked to local politics.

Since the early 1990s, counter-insurgency officers who developed close connections with professional criminals, have left the government to work in the private sector. Many of them have become involved in arms trafficking, or mercenary activities, or even the legitimate export of arms to other African countries. One compay is named as being responsible to selling arms to Rwanda immediately prior to the genocide in 1994.

Ellis says that South Africa has become the centre for a burgeoning smuggling economy. It was the hub of the ivory and rhino horn trades during apartheid years. Today it is gold that is smuggled by rich criminals wanting to circumvent currency laws. South African mines are estimated to lose some 1.5bn rands worth of gold per year to theft.

Ellis and Bayart make a solid case for the rise of criminalisation in Africa, and as long as honest economic growth is frustrated and wars and violence spread, it seems unlikely that the trend will be reversed in the near future.