The Urchins At The Feast

Take an informal poll of Kenyans today about the biggest problem facing the country, and chances are better than even that you’ll get a variation on two answers – corruption and its ugly little brother, impunity. You may, in addition, also get some respondents speaking about tribalism. All these responses are understandable, especially given what the country has witnessed over the past few weeks.

Revelations and allegations of breathtaking graft, with some outrageous little details (pianos? condom dispensers?), seem to have brought the country’s sense of indignation to something close to boiling point. Carol Musyoka, who was on my radio programme last week, thinks that things are coming to a head – there is a chance that the current ferment will lead to a denouement of some kind.

I’m not sure I agree, and even the diagnosis of the problem (as illustrated by our hypothetical focus group) is more looking at the symptoms, rather than the ailment itself. The responses, as well, have a certain familiarity about them that indicate that this is a passing storm, and Kenyans will be back to business as usual.

The problem, as I see it, is in the smallness of our thinking. The rapacity with which the corrupt among us are trying to accumulate wealth is similar to what would happen if you let a street urchin into a feast. The attempt to grab as much as possible, as quickly as possible, is indicative of a populace which has little trust in itself, and little trust in the future. Those stealing have a haunted look about their demeanour that indicates a fear of the closing of opportunity.

This is not just in the public sector, or in the highest reaches of public office. I had a chance to meet and speak to an investor and depositor in the recently shuttered Imperial Bank. Many of the facts about how the deceased Managing Director, Abdulmalek Janmohamed, stole tens of billions of shillings have been documented. The details I was given, though, and the documents I saw, simply stop you in your tracks when you see how the fraud was executed. Anything from keeping three sets of books (one for the board, which was kept in the dark; one for Central Bank of Kenya inspectors; and one the true set, which was then used to keep track of how much could be skimmed); to handwritten and verbal instructions for the transfer of tens of millions of shillings (up to KSh 80 million a week). Instructions were e-mailed to inspectors at the Central Bank to amend already-submitted reports (establishing the culpability of the bank inspection section at the CBK, and correcting malpractices there, may be one of the long-lasting results of the whole saga). Software was altered to spit out erroneous reports, meaning that a cursory glance at the books would have revealed little wrong.

According to the person I spoke to, the board of Imperial Bank met for twenty three years on mostly fictitious board packets (the set of documents boards of directors are sent and which are the basis of their meetings). In effect, the late Mr. Janmohamed had created a parallel bank (and a superficially successful one) within the shell of an institution that was showing signs of good growth. The fact that the fraud was only found out and reported by the board to the Central Bank after Mr. Janmohamed’s demise made this almost the perfect crime. (There had been an attempt to blow the whistle by some employees back in April 2012, but it did not register on anyone’s radar – including, admittedly, the media, who were part of the e-mail blast).

Another form of graft, which is much smaller, but equally, illustrative, is one that I have been told about by two different sources. Inspectors from the health inspectorate have been busy visiting private offices, especially in Industrial Area in Nairobi, and harassing (and seeking bribes from) businesspeople there who have coffee percolators in their offices. These businesspeople (largely Kenyan Asians) have been asked for food handling certificates, in effect being accused of running restaurants when all they wanted was a freshly-brewed cup of coffee.

All these are remarkable, not because of the crimes committed, but at the sheer ingenuity required to pull them off. As Carol and I discussed on radio, if half that resourcefulness and imagination were actually channelled in legal methods, Kenya would never have to worry about economic growth. So why isn’t it? It goes back to that smallness in our thinking. The people involved either don’t have faith in their ability to use their imagination to build world-class operations, or they are such short-term thinkers that this doesn’t even occur to them. As with the urchin at the feast, they try and pile their loot as high as they can on their too-small plates, never thinking that they can, with a bit of work and a bit of patience, host the feast themselves.

Also published in the Daily Nation on 10 November 2015.