Last week’s Tuesday paper was an
interesting one. The fact that last week’s column (on corruption, if I need to
remind you) was on page 9 in a newspaper whose banner headline was of one of
the most egregious examples of graft seen in Kenya in recent times was purely
coincidental. This column is usually written on the weekend before publication.
While I may want to claim powers of clairvoyance, they do not extend that far.
What was clear from the column, and from
the story of corruption at the election and examination bodies, is that we have
given in to the fight on graft in a way that is not just disheartening, but
also embarrassing. The piddling amounts of money that officials were prepared
to accept for corruption of such great import are, literally, laughably small.
The infamous ‘chicken’ demanded by top officials of both the IIEC and the KNEC is
so minuscule that the executives of the corrupting companies could have paid
for them out of their own pockets.
That’s the thing about where our corruption
has gotten to – it is not just about rushing to the trough to feed; but that it
doesn’t matter how thin the pickings are at that trough. Any opportunity to
demand a kickback is taken with gusto. It is not an issue of the amount of
money to be ‘earned’, or the seniority of the position to be gained. Corrupt
officials will take any amount proffered, in as demeaning a manner as
available, if only to say that they didn’t ‘waste’ the opportunity they had
while in their positions.
Even as I was sitting down to write this,
reports began to filter in of the horrific massacre that had taken place in
Mandera. Dozens of Kenyans had been murdered in the most ghastly way possible,
in a continuing wave of crime and terrorism that is threatening to take any
sheen off government achievements on the economic front.
Kenyans have demonstrated and shouted until
voices went hoarse, demanding the removal of those responsible for keeping the
country safe from bandits and terrorists. The President has kept faith in these
officials, retaining them in their positions despite scores of terrorist
attacks, as well as the steady, ominous drumbeat of murder, rape, robbery and
other violent crime that continues to stalk the country.
These issues are all of a piece. It sounds
inconceivable that our security mandarins do not feel enough of a moral twinge
to simply resign in acknowledgement of the failure to keep their compatriots
safe and alive. It is remarkable that after Westgate, Mpeketoni, the wave of
urban terrorism in Nairobi and Mombasa, countless attacks in Mandera, Wajir and
Garissa, the slaughter of rookie police in Kapedo; the makeup of the security
team remains almost exactly the same as before these incidents.
It is remarkable, but not surprising. In
the same way that heads at the IEBC and KNEC will not roll, and the officials
involved won’t feel the need to resign, or even apologise, the security chiefs
will continue in their roles, even as the blood of the slaughtered continues to
pool around their ankles.
The reason is the same, and familiar to all
of us as Kenyans. We operate with a certain remove from our jobs. Our performance at work is entirely separate
from how we look at ourselves from a moral perspective. It is perhaps in the
African psyche (and certainly in the Kenyan one) to compartmentalise the
different elements of our existence. We wall off the private from the public
life, professional from the personal, in a way that our behaviour is perfectly
understandable.
That’s why you will find a priest who
quietly, and for decades, maintains a family, despite his very public vow of
chastity. That is why we had the jarring sight of a church-going President who
oversaw one of the most rapacious administrations in Kenya’s history. It is
even perhaps how some of our notorious religiopreneurs manage to bilk their
flocks while insisting on the credibility of their religious credentials.
The corrupt officials, or the incompetent
ones, simply do not measure their public performance against the same scale
that they do their private lives. Our demands for their resignations are a
moral judgement on them, and one that they do not share. When we express our
outrage at the performance of those we have elected – or at least hired – at
the highest levels, we’re asking them to break down the wall which, as Kenyans,
we never deign to breach.
That is why it is futile to keep calling
for resignations until we have a massive change in our socialisation. Until we
reject rich benefactors whose wealth comes from the proceeds of crime, it is an
exercise in futility. Until the public and the private are merged in such a way
that public incompetence leads to private shame, then we’ll simply be howling
into the wind.
Also published in the Business Daily on 25 November 2014, at http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion-and-Analysis/-Inept-public-officials-should-resign/-/539548/2533526/-/item/0/-/d3jrrxz/-/index.html
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