Romance in times of mega corruption

Kenyan literature these days rarely depicts corruption the way the country’s writers used to do in the 1970s and 1980s.  Even in popular works by David Maillu, Charles Mangua, and Mwangi Gicheru, the authors poked fun at Kenyans who lined their

pockets through bribery. 

But it is in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s 1980 Caitaani Mutharaba-ini (Devil on the Cross) that the brazenness of the thieving class was most openly laughed at.

Depicting a competition among thieves boasting about who is crudest in stealing among them, the novel shows the spread of corruption among different classes.  

Corruption is figured in this text as an illegitimate sexual act, in which the bourgeoisie of the new nation regard their nation as a mother, whose ciero (thighs) they should be left in peace to incestuously toy with. 

In the actual world, abuse of office is thriving with such fierce intensity that past perpetrators of impunity are now seen as not deserving the punishment they received when they were caught pants down.  

Only literature can save us, but it’s nowhere to be seen in this hour of need. Even in Yvonne Owuor’s magnum opus, Dust, corruption still happens but its most significant occurrence seems to be in the main characters’ past. It is rarely treated as an

important theme.  

If venality is all over, why then is literature not interested in graft any more?  One of the reasons has to do with the feeling that fraud might have become so mundane in the country that it’s no longer worth talking about. It’s just another of those banal topics. 

Graft is regarded as an overworked theme that enjoyed its heyday in the 1960s with works such as Achebe’s A Man of the People and Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not yet Born. 

CONNECTION BETWEEN ROMANCE AND CORRUPT DEALS

Yet, even without reading Achille Mbembe’s On the Postcolony, we quickly recognise the connection between romance and corrupt deals in Kenya.

Matatu conversations are full of juicy stories about how the corrupt are co-joined at the loin, entangled in eternal romantic relationships so sweet it’s hard to separate the elite lovebirds.

To Kenyans, it is unimaginable that the corrupt can enjoy what appears to be government protection unless there’s a love angle to the saga, in which some sacred force is enjoying erotic benefits from the corrupt member of the opposite sex.

Such conjectures are unfair to women because the female suspects are reduced to sexual vassals in our national aesthetics of vulgarity.

Nobody is interested to hear about the literally dirty concubines the male suspects have lavished the stolen money on in Sabina Joy.

There’s more pleasure in dragging the degree-holding elite woman to the level of a cheap Koinange Street hustler.

I usually advise anybody visiting Kenya to consider taking a bribery insurance policy. Graft is the order of the day here, now as natural as sex or breathing.

And in a country where you’re guilty until you’re proven rich, life is all good if you have some money to oil palms around. Then you can file a claim with your insurer.  

Because it is as regular as a casual sexual act, in this hotbed of sleaze that we call our motherland, corruption is not ending any time soon. We like blaming the tribal jokers we elected as our leaders, but we are as corrupt as they are. When I watch them on

TV, I see myself in the scammers — minus their fuel-guzzling motorcades, minus their elite concubines. 

A recent survey by the East African Institute showed that as high as 47 percent of Kenyan youths admired people who have made their money corruptly.  Completely destroyed to accept corruption as a normal way of life, Kenyans shouldn’t be expected to

vote for a morally upright leader.

Therefore, our rulers will always come from the rich crop of rapists, con-men, poachers, drug dealers, and murderers. Even in 2017, we’ll only have to pick our poison from among different tribal thugs.

One weakness in Ngugi’s early writing on corruption is the tendency to see wives of corrupt individuals to be an extension of their husbands. They have no individuality separate from that of their dirty men. This projection changes in Wizard of the Crow.

Wives of corrupt men here sometimes subvert the regime their husbands serve in.

But in the real world, we haven’t evolved much. Kenyan families remain a sly political social unit. In most cases, the conjugal partner of an anti-corruption crusader works for the corrupt government being criticised. The family eats from both opposing sides,

giving only lip service to anti-corruption efforts. In the same vein, the most vocal lawyers against corruption also represents obviously corrupt government functionaries.

MEDIA PART OF THE CONSPIRACY

Our media are part of the conspiracy to sanitise corruption. My dog Sigmund and I recently watched a TV show in which an alleged scam architect appeared on air to deny his alleged involvement in NYS scams. We were told that the the man appeared

before us in spite of himself, only because he had nothing to hide.

The accused businessman carried with him to the set two boxes of paperwork to publicly prove that all his dealings at the NYS were documented and above board. In the excitement of the moment (oh my, oh Maina!), the host opened the wrong box to

reveal to the cameras the evidence of the businessman’s innocence. And it turned out that that particular box was empty. It was just a stage prop.

It was live TV, but the host and his guest had a good sense of stage control. They suddenly acted so unfussed that viewers didn’t even notice the glitch. The host asked no questions about the empty box of evidence his guest had brought along to place on

the bench for the cameras. The cameras didn’t zoom in on this “evidence”; they were more interested in the men’s suits.

And we were told that the only thing that the women who tweeted the programme wanted to know was whether the guest was single and available. LOL.

In the wake of corruption charges against Supreme Court judges, even progressive media commentators argue that Justice Philip Tunoi should have spared himself the legal pains of appearing before a tribunal by retiring in peace. At the heart of that argument

is the view that corruption among officers of the highest court of the land is fine as long as its details don’t come to the surface to disrupt the status quo.

BUREAUCRATIC CALM, NOT JUSTICE

Apparently what we need is bureaucratic calm, not justice — just a veneer of fairness even if the system is rotten to the core. Like the fine details about steamy illicit sex in a 10-star hotel on Valentine’s Day, secrets about a judge’s corrupt acts should remain

strictly between the sheets. 

It is quite revealing that the government’s talking point is that corruption is not a new thing in Kenya. Officials have appeared on TV to trot out their tacit belief that corruption is as old as prostitution. In effect, these laptop-carrying comedians unwittingly

confess that their government is no different from the seedy corridors of Karumaindo.

I would be lying to say that Sigmund and I (especially this my dear beloved dog here) have never been tempted to part with a bribe.  Purely for legal reasons and to avoid having to give a bribe in case I’m taken to court for having confessed that I’ve given a

bribe to a government officer not before the honourable court, let it be clear that I’ve never bribed anybody. Never. But my Sigmund here (not me) has bribed some Kenyan cops more than once. 

Whenever he’s in Nairobi, Sigmund (not me) is usually apprehended by some junior policemen who demand kitu kidogo (bribe) from him reportedly to take to their boss. Sometimes the trumped-up charges are ridiculous even by a dog’s standards, usually

involving allegations of habouring subversive passions. Sigmund is ashamed to call for assistance from his senior friends in government (Sigmund knows big dogs) because they consider him a virtuous animal who cannot sniff at another dog’s wife from

behind.

So Sigmund (not me) pays the effing bribe to avoid hunger in a police cell, the inconveniences of court proceedings, and malicious media attention, not to mention the lawyers’ fees. He knows he can recover all the money spent in a lifetime of offering such

small bribes to Nairobi’s petty cops within half an hour of honest work, writing a weird government-sponsored quasi-biography of mine he’s about to complete, titled The Man with a Dog in his Head.