OPINION: Of corruption and love for country
We can try and run away from corruption and its stories, but we can never hide from them, as the high profile arrests of big men who have been accused of dipping their hands in the Kenyan cookie jar this week reminded us.
As it happened, with the smell of corruption still thick in the Nairobi air, Botswana’s President Eric Masisi visited and hobnobbed with President Uhuru Kenyatta.
It would have been precious to be a fly on the wall after Kenyan officials had retreated and Masisi was left alone with his aides, to hear what they had to say about the sums allegedly puWe can try and run away from corruption and its stories, but we can never hide from them, as the high profile arrests of big men who have been accused of dipping their hands in the Kenyan cookie jar this week reminded us.rloined in the dams’ scandal, as they would certainly have read the newspapers and watched TV coverage of it.
There must have been a lot of head shaking in the Masisi entourage. Botswana has for long being rated among the most honest countries in Africa, placing second after Seychelles in Transparency International’s 2019 rankings.
It is in Africa’s “Holy Quintet” which also includes Cape Verde, Rwanda, and Namibia. The question why the Seychelles, Botswanas and Rwandas of this world have low corruption, while other countries, including its neighbours, are wallowing in the filth of graft, has been debated a lot in recent years. However, we have not fully explored all the reasons why corruption is rampant in countries like Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria, to name a few of the distinguished members of the dirty club.
Some of our countries have been corrupt for so long, something has broken. Many people have become cynical, and for their sanity, have priced it in as a normal – and even distinct – feature of their countries’, and African, politics in general, although corruption is not unique to the continent.
Many years ago, investigative journalists made great careers uncovering corruption. Any journalist who has been in a newsroom for the last 30 years, will tell you that every year the bar for a Page-One worthy corruption story has been rising.
Thirty years ago you could double circulation with a Page One on how $500,000 had been stolen. The country would stop in horror. Today, that is Page 22 stuff. It will only make the cover page if there is an extremely absurd twist to it too; for example, if a crooked official bought a few spades, bathroom towels, or plastic buckets for $500,000 – as some have done.
What is broken is the filiality to government, and more broadly the state. The state is not with or of the people, and the people are not with it. While millions still care, and would like to see change, there’s probably an equal number who have turned their backs and don’t. That makes it difficult to build the critical mass that would frighten politicians and officialdom from corruption.
However, that is only part of the story. It gets more complex. Many people who are put off by years of corruption, don’t just go home to mourn and groan about it. Unlike 30 years ago, they build alternative universes and realities that best express their worldview, and they have a cast of figures they can rally around that represent it.
It expresses itself in ways that are easy to miss. So Wanuri Kahiu makes the globally acclaimed “Rafiki”, a story of romance between two women, that’s proscribed by the state censor because it allegedly promotes homosexuality. But Kahiu understands that in Kenya as elsewhere, there has been a sexual evolution and, at a minimum, youthful 21st century is no longer monochromatic about it sex. When a court lifted the ban briefly, people flocked in record numbers to watch the film and were gushing about.
The “Rafiki” storm demonstrated dramatically Kenya’s dual worlds. A Kenyan feeling suffocated by the parochialism of its political and moral Establishment, will delight in the globalism that award-winning actress Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o represents, or escape in the airy cosmopolitanism of Carol Mutoko’s YouTube channel.
And in the ultimate act of collective national sweating, run in the Standard Chartered Nairobi marathon or do their bit to save a bit of the country by tackling the Mater Heart Run.
The Throttle Queens are six female Kenyan bikers. Early in the year they rode from Kenya, through Uganda to the Rwandan capital Kigali in a road safety campaign. In Kigali, they got a celebrity welcome.
A Daily Nation story on their trek, also noted that “the riding couple of Mr Dos Kariuki and his wife Wamuyu…in July 2018, left Nairobi for a three-year journey across seven continents”.
Think about that. When the world or Africa is your oyster, it might well seem petty to allow your heart to bleed to death just for your spoiled tiny corner of it.
The author is publisher of Africapedia.com and explainer site Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3
