Piracy: Smart Somalis vs dumb Nigerians - Comment
I just love our Somali brothers and sisters.
On Tuesday, South Africa's National Defence Force Intelligence Division offered what has been described as a "blunt" assessment of the security risks facing Africa to visiting Chinese Defence Minister Chang Wanquan.
The report ended up in the hands of the French news agency AFP, and so now we all know.
Some of what it said is to be expected: The Boko Haram militants could bring Nigeria to its knees; the Central African Republic is diving deeper into hell; and Al Shabaab is likely to be more dangerous when the international arms embargo on Somalia is partially lifted in the near future. No prizes for guessing why. There is a lot of "leakage" from official Somali weapons stocks to the Shabaab arsenals because of corruption.
My favourite, though, is when the South Africans talk about piracy.
They note that there has been a rise in piracy in West Africa's Gulf of Guinea, which has corresponded with a decline off the coast of Somalia.
"[Pirate] attacks [are] launched primarily from Nigeria, with the aim of stealing from vessels," the intelligence report said.
Then, in one of the juiciest bits, the report claimed that, "Levels of violence [are] higher as [West African] pirates are less concerned with maintaining the well-being of hostages than their Somali counterparts."
It is like the story of the California gold rush of the 19th century, that the people who really made money were not the ones who went to mine the gold. It was those that went in to mine the miners ± selling them work clothes, booze, housing, horses, and so on.
The West African pirates go in for the merchandise, the Somali ones for the ships and their crews. To them, then, the hostages are their meal ticket.
Piracy is a terrible thing, yes, but why are the Somali bandits the smarter ones here? To begin with, ship and cargo owners do take out insurance, so having their goods stolen is not a business-ending affair. They can therefore more easily absorb a hit on the cargo.
Human beings are different. You can take out insurance against your crew being injured, falling sick, but you can't take out an insurance that allows you to write them off when they are taken hostage by pirates.
Because of this, it means you will always negotiate and cut a deal, if possible, with the pirate who has taken hostages. You don't always have to do that with the ones who steal your crude oil. Once you have to negotiate with a pirate, it means he has the possibility to set his price for the release of hostages and ship.
The West African pirate, meanwhile, will be selling the cases of whiskey he stole from a ship at below market price in order to get rid of it quickly. That has its problems, because it means he makes enemies of other traders by undercutting them.
The Somalis, on the other hand, because they don't offload stolen goods, don't eat into the margins of the local traders, thus keeping in the good graces of their communities. In short, the Somali pirate is better than the West African one. It's a strange world.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa (mgafrica.com). Twitter:@cobbo3
