#FRONTROW: Corruption is real, and it is a matter of life and death here

Whenever I host a segment that paints the government in bad light, I invariably get accused of being an Opposition sympathiser. This doesn’t come just from ordinary Jubilee supporters, but also from senior communications “gurus” around the presidency. As corruption scandals continue to pile up, the accusations have also hit fever pitch. In their ideal world, this administration is beyond perfect, deserving nothing but praise and admiration from the media, civil society and donors. Any criticism is met with anger, as if any failings must never be spoken about. They envision a mini South Korea or China where the media reports only what the state approves of and opposition politics is non-existent.

“This is by far the most corrupt government in our history,” anti-corruption campaigner John Githongo told me last month in a scathing review of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s record on graft. On Thursday, a peaceful protest calling on him to act on corruption or resign was violently broken up by anti-riot police. Online, the meta-narrative centred on whether activist Boniface Mwangi was a coward for walking out of a TV talk show when ambushed by Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria. He wasn’t, and you don’t have to participate in every pig-fight you’re invited to.

“Mnataka nifanye nini?” the President had asked at the State House Summit on Accountability and Governance. What do you want me to do? It was a made-for-TV spectacle, where he gave an epic dressing down to the leaders of agencies tasked with handling graft and ridiculed the Auditor-General. Theatre is what Githongo calls it. It is the appearance of activity but no progress.

FALSE NARRATIVE

There is this false narrative that corruption in Kenya is entirely a creation of either the Opposition or the media. Despite Kenya getting ranked among the world’s most corrupt countries by numerous independent international bodies, these government apologists see no evil, hear no evil. Even after President Kenyatta dedicated one whole State of the Nation address to the large-scale looting in government, these court jesters unashamedly deny what’s happening right before their eyes. They reduce corruption to a political circus, a contest between Jubilee and Cord. In short order, you see arguments that there are also Opposition leaders implicated in the scandals. What this translates to is that if they’re all doing it, then it is Okay.

Mombasa Senator Hassan Omar called out this premise two Sundays ago on NTV Weekend Edition. There is theft of public resources at the county level that is going largely unchecked. Most of these counties are run by Cord governors, so corruption is not an exclusively Jubilee affair. Some of the shady deals revealed that senators and MPs from both sides benefited almost equally from them. Despite what they might say at press conferences, in TV studios and on social media, some of those Opposition lawmakers are just as corrupt as their opponents. For many of them just haven’t had the opportunities to enrich themselves and clinch those life-changing tenders. In Kenya, corruption pits the tenderpreneur class against the ordinary citizen. Graft has no political or tribal colour, just the unvarnished love of money.

Corruption isn’t a political issue, it is an economic one. When people get away with conflict of interest, nepotism, influence peddling and outright theft, the whole country is the poorer for it. Even if you buy your fancy house in a nice neighbourhood for hundreds of millions of shillings in cash, a broken system affects us all. The road construction that was tendered for but never actually built, you did that. The poor children dying in hospitals without medicines or doctors? That’s your fault. The insecurity in the country because active young men have nothing productive to do? It’s among your greatest hits. All those annoying people begging for handouts and harambees because you’re richer than they will ever be? Gaze upon your work and enjoy it.

Various studies say that as much as a third of Kenya’s total budget is stolen. This fiscal year, that’s Sh500 billion that has gone with the wind. Poof! There are people who have Sh650 in their account one day and then it hits Sh1.6 billion in a year. There are “businessmen” in this country who move from defaulting on Sh13,000 rent to buying a house in Karen within a few months. There are well-connected individuals coming from poverty into fabulous wealth literally overnight.

Meanwhile, women, the youth and people with disabilities are struggling with small-time tenders to supply airtime and pens. A true patriot should speak out against the systemic corruption that plagues this country, regardless of their political stance. Corruption is not a Jubilee or Cord issue, it is a matter of life and death for every Kenyan.

Send your comments to [email protected]

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WILL CARREFOUR DO BETTER THAN NAKUMATT AND UCHUMI?

I have fond memories of the Uchumi sandwich. Full of energy but short of money, I always bought one from the Hyper outlet on Mombasa Road when I was a full-time university student. So frequent were we there that the manager knew my friend, Tony Mwenda, and me. We would pass aisles and aisles of groceries and household items we couldn’t afford. When the brand went into decline and senior employees stole from it, we were distraught.

Even if you couldn’t always find what you wanted from your “Home of Value”, at least there was always Nakumatt. Now East Africa’s largest retailer is selling 25 per cent of its business to stay afloat. It is struggling to pay suppliers and shelves are emptying in some outlets as cash flow suffers.

“These challenges range from a depressed economy, higher operating costs and extraneous factors including enhanced risk management due to prevailing security threats,“ managing director Atul Shah said in a statement.

The French supermarket chain Carrefour, which just launched in Nairobi, must be at a crossroads at the moment. Reports say more branches will be opening soon, but is the economy depressed as a whole or was it just poor business by Uchumi and Nakumatt?

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APPLE FALLS SHORT WITH NEW MACBOOK

There are people who will always use a Macbook; every creative ever in a movie, artists, creators, inventors and inexplicably rich people. The Apple laptop lends itself to status almost without effort. They had not been updated for some time so the California-based company did what we all expected. But the new Macbooks will break the bank, alas. They added a new gimmick, a context-sensitive touch bar that replaces the function keys. The cheapest of these new models costs Sh180,000 without taxes. It is very likely that the 13-inch will cost more than Sh200,000 when it lands in Kenya. There isn’t much else that the machine has going for it and analysts around the world are disappointed, considering how long they waited for this. For instance, RAM is at a modest 16GB by today’s standards. For that prohibitive price, we just expected more from Cupertino. That said, the iSheep will buy it anyway.

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FEEDBACK: ON WHY WE WON’T HAVE A FEMALE PRESIDENT SOON

Larry, you are a true champion of women’s issues! But more than that, you are a very fair and logical person. What you say about the Kenyan male mentality is right but what about the women themselves? Women would rather vote for men than for women! This is brain conditioning that makes women fear dominance by their own gender!

At the same time men like to keep women under their thumbs! Men hate women who are successful in life and making a name for themselves. If a woman earns more than her husband, she gets neither respect nor appreciation from him!

In fact, most men will try and belittle their wives in public! I doubt many men are behind their wives’ success but women always are!

Gender equality is a pipe dream! Men have to learn to respect and honour the women in their lives, be they their mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, friends, colleagues or relatives, instead of looking at women only as sex objects, house keepers or child minders. Women, too, have to learn to respect themselves and other women! We should elect a person who is honest, patriotic and incorruptible as our president, regardless of gender!

Usha Shah

I agree with you that we Kenyans will not see a woman president soon. But in apportioning blame, our women, too, have to bear some. They should be smart politically and stop playing the woman card.

Maybe with the exception of Martha Karua, all the other female presidential candidates we have had had no substance apart from their gender. They hoped to be elected on the basis of their weaves and high heels.

Here is my free prescription to future female presidential candidates:

1. Stand for something, a good and realistic cause

2. Read and understand the prevailing political mood and align yourself with a popular political formation and fight from within to rise to the top.

Otherwise, you can be a lone ranger (because you’re a woman) and lose terribly like Nazlin Umar, Charity Ngilu or a non-starter like one Kingwa Kamencu.

Hillary Clinton clearly has more going than the women’s vote because she stands for something. I would vote for her if I were eligible to vote!