Why we carry insecurity with us wherever we go
What you need to know:
- We have lived to see four generations of successive anti-corruption agencies. The great grandpa was KACA in 1997, headed by John Harun Mwau.
- Personally, I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. I could swallow a conspiracy theory if we had all systems in place and the right institutional backing but this is not the case.
- The pre-Westgate way of thinking was that streets were not safe. It was better to shop at a mall or shopping centre.
Viktor E. Frankl was one of the greatest Austrian psychiatrists in modern times. Frankl, a Jew, spent three years in three different Nazi concentrations camps: Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Kaufering. His parents and his wife died there.
In these painful circumstances, Frankl came face-to-face with pain, hatred, torture and death. Such an experience nurtured one of his most beautiful books, Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl said: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
Every human being, every society, reacts in different ways to threats. Much has been written about the way Kenya and Kenyans have reacted to recent security attacks.
Last week, the Nation Media Group hosted a writers’ round table. It was a very engaging and mature conversation about the cause, impact and threat of insecurity.
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Insecurity is an ugly and scary word. When looking at the possible causes, three key ideas came up during the discussion.
The first one pointed at a third force, outside government and the opposition. It falls within the realm of conspiracy theories. This third force has an agenda, the conspiracy is from the outside, and it is operating to either undermine economic growth or monopolize and control it.
The second idea pointed at the first force; the government or a few individuals within the system who may be sabotaging power structures and diverting attention from key economic and social issues. This conspiracy theory looks within.
The third idea was simpler and perhaps more real, it did away with conspiracy theories and it pointed at deficient structures, a disorganised system that is still coming to terms with new realities. The crux of the problem is disorder, sometimes incompetence or sheer lack of capacity, and surely, petty corruption, through which security leaks.
All these forces can be summarised in one word: impunity.
We know there is corruption. We have lived to see four generations of successive anti-corruption agencies. The great grandpa was KACA in 1997, headed by John Harun Mwau.
FORENSIC LABS
Grandpa succeeded it, headed by Justice Ringera. Ringera’s KACC gave birth to PLO Lumumba’s KACC, which soon after suffered a heart attack when the new Bill was passed. It suddenly had to mutate into the EACC, under Mumo Matemu.
Amazing crusaders and valuable professionals have worked in these bodies for seventeen years. Sadly the results are not adding up. It seems nobody’s fault but everybody’s.
DPP Tobiko has the impossible task of conducting prosecutions without sufficient personnel. The number of trained forensic experts is dramatically low and labs are poorly equipped.
The number of trained prosecutors needs to increase. The DPP is trying to see ways of bridging this gap, but he has neither the money nor the time, and the clock is ticking.
The DPP’s office is sandwiched between the police, who are usually first on the crime scene, and the Judiciary, which weighs the evidence and decides. If anything goes wrong, the prosecutors are to blame, and yet their job is really hanging on a difficult balance between police efficiency and judicial impartiality.
'NO-ONE HAS BEEN CAUGHT'
Personally, I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. I could swallow a conspiracy theory if we had all systems in place and the right institutional backing, but this is not the case.
We are still quite disorganized, dysfunctional, shorthanded and inefficient. The root cause: impunity.
Impunity is the culture medium that breeds corruption, a sort of complacent kitu kidogo attitude. Its motto is: “no one has been caught, everyone is doing it, why not me?”
It looks like the security issue will never be resolved until we agree to sit down and seriously harmonise this old machinery, which was built 50 years ago.
The new Constitution tried to change some things, but the Constitution can't do it alone without political will.
No matter how many cameras or scanners we install all over the city, what really matter are the men and women behind them, their integrity, their capacity and professionalism.
In the old days one would only be scanned at the airport, but we have now turned every shop, hotel or office building into an airport.
The guy who makes those round mirrors is making a killing, and the guards may not even know what they are looking for.
THE WESTGATE CONTRADICTION
Many people tell me that all those searches we go through several times every day are not really to improve security. It is as if people were trying to cover their back, denying liability in case something goes wrong.
The pre-Westgate way of thinking was that streets were not safe. It was better to shop at a mall or shopping centre. This was the great Westgate contradiction, for you are now unsafe where you thought you would be safe. Before we could be attacked between A and B; now we may also be attacked in either A or B.
Our insecurity is not mere external aggression or terrorism. Insecurity has become something real, so real that we carry it within ourselves wherever we go. It will stay with us for as long as impunity, this cancer produced by greed, is not eradicated.
A quick but deep review at this 50-year-old forensic machinery and the proper staffing and training of the office of the director of public prosecutions are perhaps a step in the right direction to deal with the impunity issue.
Hopefully this change of aptitude will lead to a change of attitude.
Dr Franceschi is the dean of Strathmore Law School. [email protected] Twitter: @lgfranceschi
