High-level corruption is a threat to the existence of our country

What you need to know:

  • Even though this narrative has been debunked by experimental palaeontologists as being essentially false, hence the parody, it is, rather oddly, a generic but apt description of Africa through the ages.
  • As the most illiterate continent, we have not only generally been clueless and clumsy on how to best forge our way out of poverty, disease, and civil wars, but these very circumstances have, ironically, predisposed us to insidious political classes from home and abroad that have been uniquely parasitic.
  • From the Portuguese explorers, who set the stage for the horrific trans-Atlantic slave trade, to European missionaries who served as emissaries for colonialism, Africa, more than any other continent, has been under external parasitic siege for centuries.

Last week, a very rare composite skeleton of the now extinct dodo bird was sold at an auction in West Sussex, the UK, for £280,000 (Sh36 million).

Typically, I would care less for such news for I consider it far removed from what is near and dear to my heart. However, I could not help noticing some striking parallels between our own fate and that of this legendary bird in the face of what seems to be State-sanctioned runaway corruption.

The predominant narrative on how the dodo became extinct could not have been better parodied by The Atlantic magazine in its June 8, 2016 online story: “The bird was fat and flightless, clueless and clumsy. It was a walking evolutionary error practically preordained to die out. When the Dutch colonised the dodo’s small island home (of Mauritius) at the end of the 16th century, the earthbound oddity toddled straight into the waiting arms of hungry sailors and settlers. Less than 100 years later, it was extinct.”

Even though this narrative has been debunked by experimental palaeontologists as being essentially false, hence the parody, it is, rather oddly, a generic but apt description of Africa through the ages.

As the most illiterate continent, we have not only generally been clueless and clumsy on how to best forge our way out of poverty, disease, and civil wars, but these very circumstances have, ironically, predisposed us to insidious political classes from home and abroad that have been uniquely parasitic.

From the Portuguese explorers, who set the stage for the horrific trans-Atlantic slave trade, to European missionaries who served as emissaries for colonialism, Africa, more than any other continent, has been under external parasitic siege for centuries.

However, in the past 50 years or so, most of Africa has been under African rulers who have not only embraced the principles of slavery and colonialism, but have perfected the art of robbing their subjects. 

In Kenya, for instance, the foundation for economic enslavement through neo-colonialism and outright robbery was set right at independence by our founding president and his cronies.

Daniel arap Moi, Mwai Kibaki, and Uhuru Kenyatta are merely dyed-in-the-wool “masters” who executed the principles of economic parasitism with cumulative precision and wantonness.

Theirs was not just robbery due to political over-representation such as we currently have in our Parliament and Senate. Rather, the hallmark of their theft was and has, consistently and progressively, been the debilitating high-level corruption in government such as we now see in the news almost on a daily basis.

To say that the past 50 years of our “independence” have been extremely depressing economically for the common man would be an understatement. That the very people we have over the years entrusted with State resources to fight poverty, hunger, and disease have, instead, been actively and purposefully digging us deeper into misery is the bigger heartache.

And you can tell just how pervasive high-level corruption is by observing the deportment of President Uhuru Kenyatta. Just like the rest of us, he knows exactly what corruption and its manifestations look like. He knows where corruption resides.

He knows what perpetuates corruption. He has the tools needed to effectively combat corruption. And yet he looks honestly stomped by and resigned to the wiles of corruption. This is dangerous in one of two ways.

First, by appearing stomped he sends the message that he is incapable of fighting corruption, or, God forbid, he is complicit to its machinations. It is ugly either way. Running government is tough business. Running a government riddled with systemic corruption? A whole lot tougher and needs herculean determination.

Second, and consequently, his visible acquiescence to corruption serves to, one, embolden the perpetrators to loot some more, and two, disenfranchise the common man. And therein lies the danger: Countries like Somalia, Iraq, Syria, and Libya are dying in part because the ruling class considered itself bigger than the country.

If this runaway corruption continues unabated, disenfranchised Kenyans might soon violently refuse to be held captive by a fiefdom that considers itself bigger than the country, a sure recipe for our extinction — not in the literal sense of the dodo, but the crumbling of the social construct we call Kenya.

Dr Ondari is a senior research chemist in Midland, Michigan, USA. [email protected]