Kenyans have learnt gross rapacity from their rulers

I HEARD WITH HORROR VICE-President Kalonzo Musyoka express understanding that Kenyans would risk their lives in a mad scramble to steal petrol gushing out of an overturned tanker.

To Mr Musyoka, it was not a case of peculiar behaviour, but an indication of the poverty that drives normal people to crazy actions.

Quite apart from the fact that Mr Musyoka has served successive governments in senior positions for most of his working life and therefore must bear some responsibility for the poverty Kenyans have been condemned to endure, I beg to differ with the Vice-President’s prognosis.

What the Molo oil tanker inferno reveals is not so much the poverty in Kenya, but the greed that has become the national philosophy.

Whether super-rich or dirt-poor, Kenyans will forever be in scramble to get something for nothing, and in many cases, all sense will be cast aside in the rush to grab more than the other fellow.

The Molo disaster stands as a classic example of where caution and common sense gives way to pure greed. Even as we mourn the loss of life, let us not be so hypocritical as to ignore the fact that those who died were not innocent victims of some unavoidable accident, but mostly victims of their own greed and recklessness.

This national trait is not confined to the poor, but has been inculcated as a national ethos by those in positions of power and responsibility.

The national ethos holds that it is perfectly in order to enrich yourself, not just by hard work and sacrifice, but by taking what does not belong to you.

The already filthy rich will conjure up the Goldenberg and Anglo Leasing scandals. They will become commodity traders and make super-profits from their dealings in maize, petrol, wheat, sugar and anything else vital to national sustenance.

Our government is composed, in large part, of those who entered politics, not to render service, but to amass wealth. The leadership have demonstrated time and time again that in Kenya, crime pays. That is why there will never be convictions on the long succession of mega-scandals. Anyone who rises to high office and fails to enrich himself through theft is considered a fool.

The example of greed from on high is bound to be emulated down the ladder, which is why those who do not have the connections to profit from maize and oil deals will seize on the more modest opportunities available.

“FREE” OIL GUSHING OUT OF AN overturned tanker presents an opportunity that cannot be allowed to pass, despite the obvious risk. Elsewhere, you will find that petty crime has become so rampant that it hardly features in police records. Muggings, burglaries, violent robberies, fraud, embezzlement and so on are now common staples of life.

Our leaders have set the dubious example, and can now have the gumption to take crime as an understandable symptom of our poverty.

We attribute that greedy rush for “free” petrol to poverty and therefore declare national mourning when those who rushed for the opportunity perish in the inevitable inferno.

That is the same mindset that makes us sympathise with the “innocents” who lose their wealth to confidence tricksters after falling for those innumerable get-rich-quick scams. Foolish and greedy Kenyans continue to put money in pyramid schemes and other dubious investments that promise instant wealth.

Other will entrust their money to “magicians” who promise to double or triple their investment, while others will happily surrender all they have to charlatans who promise them heaven right here on earth.

Inevitably, those who are greedy and rush for that instant wealth will burn their fingers (pun fully intended); unless they are part of the ruling elite and therefore within the official corruption networks that drive the Goldenbergs, Anglo Leasings and dodgy commodity trade.

When they become victims of their own greed, we mourn for them. And if it looks like the law might catch up with them, we politicise the whole thing and assemble our tribesmen to make threatening noises.

Those are the kind of noises already coming out of the Rift Valley from some minister feeling the heat over the maize scandals.