We must understand the anatomy of graft

Once again, we are helplessly banging our heads against the wall because of corruption.

However, beyond the labels such as “mega”, “grand”, “cancer”, “dragon”, there is little diagnosis of the problem.

To effectively tackle corruption, it is important to dissect it from as many different perspectives as possible as it is like a hydra-headed monster.

Our governance structure and mode of production is based on liberalism and unhindered capitalism. This has over the years provided fertiliser for nurturing graft. 

Without limits to personal wealth, sleaze has become our second nature. 

However, no single policy decision catalysed corruption, hastened the decline of fiscal discipline, and undermined the Kenyan state apparatus more than the 1971 Ndegwa Commission, which allowed civil servants to participate in private enterprise.

This acted as the fertiliser to the seed of “eating”. It allowed civil servants to start doing business with the government using fronts.

True, constitutional amendments before the Ndegwa Commission had already opened the conduit of corruption and conflict of interest in the upper levels of State management.

Barely 10 years after independence, some key leaders were already mysteriously inordinately wealthy. The Ndegwa report extended this addiction to unbridled accumulation to the entire Kenyan civil service. 

By the end of Jomo Kenyatta’s regime, a value system that normalised “eating” was already deeply entrenched in our collective psyche. During Mr Daniel arap Moi’s term, the only industry that ran efficiently was fleecing the State. 

Mr Mwai Kibaki’s regime colonised the sleaze industry. It is this sheer force of an entrenched value system that Uhuru Kenyatta’s government is facing.

MORTAL FEAR

By the time we came up with a new Constitution, the only value that young Kenyans understood is the business of amassing as much wealth as possible. 

This is fuelled by the high social expectations to acquire great wealth quickly as a symbol of success.

In a country without viable social security frameworks to shield the vulnerable, most people live under mortal fear of poverty.

This drives many people to do anything to escape the poverty trap.

The Constitution, as a set of values, is irrelevant and ineffective in fighting corruption because it is diametrically opposed to the established culture and attendant local attitudes on wealth accumulation.

Beliefs and values supersede written constitutions. We naively expected that promulgating a new constitution would miraculously expunge the old set of values on which corruption thrives.

Furthermore, the new Constitution, though hailed as one of the best, in the world, was largely talked down to Wanjiku. Does she own it? Not a letter of it.

That is the reason things have remained largely the same for many years. The Constitution has not been internalised because, among other things, we did not try to mitigate the dominant culture entrenched by the Ndegwa commission. 

In some countries, it took a revolution lasting several decades to establish new ways of thinking. In others, it was terrible social strife. We do not have to go through all that, but we have to look for a way of fighting corruption.

Dr Mbataru teaches at Kenyatta University’s School of Agriculture. [email protected].