Are you listening, Kenya? The secret to ending corruption is to buy honesty

What you need to know:

  • Now in the counties, everything is game — wheelbarrows, pens, plastic buckets, name it, long-fingered chaps are inflating their prices.
  • You see, previously with Kanu in power, for example, corruption was patronage for the party faithful.
  • But with devolution, even the opposition rules in several counties, where they have control of the budgets.

The outcry over corruption in Kenya continued this week, perhaps even louder.

On Twitter, an influential figure in Kenyan business asked an intriguing question: Why has there been an upsurge in corruption lately?

There are a couple of views one hears.

The most familiar one is that corruption is not any worse today than in the past.

The difference is that there is more space and freedom to expose it.

That is partly true. Perhaps the biggest difference with corruption today is that it gets amplified via social media.

By the time a tweet about a wheelbarrow in Bungoma County costing Sh109,000 gets retweeted 10,000 times, the whole world knows about it.

DEVOLVED CORRUPTION

The Bungoma case also points to another change that commentators have pointed out; “eating” is no longer macro, it has also become micro.

It is no longer a rogue official in Nairobi “chewing” half a road by himself.

Now in the counties, everything is game — wheelbarrows, pens, plastic buckets, name it, long-fingered chaps are inflating their prices.

Related to that, they point out, another big change is that this is the glory period of equal opportunity corruption in Kenya.

You see, previously with Kanu in power, for example, corruption was patronage for the party faithful.

But with devolution, even the opposition rules in several counties, where they have control of the budgets.

Thus, for every Jubilee governor who has fingers in the cookie jar, there is an opposition Cord one who has his deep inside too in another county.

WHY FIGHTING CORRUPTION IS DIFFICULT

This has muddied the waters quite a bit, but also, we are seeing a couple of far-reaching social changes that might be making the battle against graft difficult.

The first is the product of something good — increased life expectancy. We are living longer these days.

The result is that there are people who are living longer as retired folks than the years they worked.

Maybe you get a good job late and work for 30 years, before retiring at 60.

But by 92 years, you are still going strong in the fashion of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.

Some of these retired fellows will pause at 80 and pick up a new young wife of 30. At 89 he is paying nursery school fees.

The more serious thing about this is that if one is living a “fuller” life after retirement, it has to be funded.

The nursery school fees have to be found, the car has to be replaced and fuelled, a smartphone and airtime have to be bought, and there is the hip replacement surgery to be done.

Soon, the need to cover for this long life without a job, driven by insecurity, might be as big a force for corruption as greed is. You have to steal to provide for your future.

Outside of a welfare system that covers an aging population, it will be tough to fight this tide back.

CHANGING FACE OF THE FAMILY UNIT

The other factor is the change of family structures. Patriarchal power in Africa has constructed a world that is fast disappearing.

It conceived of a world where all families would be traditional ones, with a mother and a father.

Secondly, that the couple would, like in fairy tales, live happily ever after and not divorce or separate.

Therefore, a home would have two incomes — in some form or other.

That is no longer the case. Already in parts of Kenya and the suburbs of Nairobi, most families are headed by single parents (some as a result of divorce), and therefore, are single-income homes.

Now, single parents have to find that second income. Most will work doubly hard.

Some, as the West Africans say, are likely to “chop” the budget in their control to get something to cover for the future as a lonely single parent, divorcee, widow, or widower.

In a world where people got good jobs and married at 20, then became grandparents by 45 and died at 55, people were insulated against these pressures.

So what does reform that helps fight (not end) corruption look like? In East Africa, we can look at the most honest nation, Rwanda.

Rwanda has one of Africa’s most universal health insurance systems, called Mutuelle de Santé.

Someone is more likely to listen to you when you tell him not to steal public funds because he needs to get medical treatment for his family when you are able to provide it.

And that is the rub. The way to end corruption is by buying honesty.

The author is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa.