Graft is evil, why does it bring out the ‘best’ in our thieves?

Everywhere you turn these days in Kenya, President Uhuru Kenyatta is either threatening to deal with the corrupt, some corrupt fellow is being jailed, another corrupt person is stealing big, and everybody else on social media is ranting against corruption. And, needless to say, somebody somewhere is plotting to steal.

Everywhere in Africa, corruption is a mega issue, again, because in some cases, it is killing off countries and driving dangerous divisions.

In Angola, President João Lourenço has based a large part of his credibility on dismantling the multibillion-dollar corruption apparatus created by his predecessor, the long-ruling dictator José Eduardo dos Santos.

Next door in Uganda, after nearly 33 years, President Yoweri Museveni this week tried to reinvent himself as an anti-corruption crusader. He announced, to some comic reception, a corruption hotline, among other things.

That came at an awkward moment, days after a US court found former Hong Kong Home Affairs Minister Patrick Ho Chi-ping guilty of offering bribes worth millions of dollars to a couple of African leaders, including the Ugandan president.

TRIBALISM

Ho offered a bribe of $500,000 each to Museveni and Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa. Kutesa’s was received by his charity, but Museveni’s seems not to have arrived at State House.

And, there was injured national pride, too, as it emerged that Chad President Idriss Déby’s brown bag had $2 million, four times what Ho had thought appropriate for Museveni.

The thing with corruption is that it is so annoying, we almost never see anything beyond the graft. Yet, there is.

Take Kenya. During elections, and reading a lot of political commentary, you will learn that tribalism is a big problem. Politicians play tribal politics and the electorate vote along tribal lines.

From time to time, we get lists of ministries where everyone who holds key positions is from the same tribe.

And every day on social media, lists circulate showing how all the important jobs in the country are held by Kenyans from a few regions. Until it comes to corruption.

SUSPECTS

It seems no Kenyan is tribalistic enough to eat only with his people. When corruption scandals break, a new Kenya emerges.

By the time the secretary, banker, clerk, accountant, ‘tenderpreneur’, mistresses, police officer and driver involved in a scandal are listed, it is the face of Kenya.

No crook shows up in court defended by a lawyer from the village neighbouring his. Almost always, they pick on a celebrity attorney from the opposite corner of the country.

Why, you ask yourself, are we more inclusive and nationalistic when we are stealing from the taxpayers than when we are supposed to be doing the noble work of building the nation?

In high security states like Uganda, there are sections of the government that, on the face of it, are stuffed by diehard loyalists from President Museveni’s village and ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM).

Then a corruption scandal comes along and the guy who walked away with the most shilling-stuffed sacks of money is a bloke from an anti-government corner of the country where everybody complains they are “marginalised”.

OBIANG CLAN

Which raises the question, which is the true Kenya? The tribal, open democratic or the closed, corrupt inclusive one?

Then you hear these stories of President Déby or one of the most hidebound leaders like Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been Equatorial Guinea’s dictator for 39 years and rules it with his family. Its oil wealth is the property of the Obiang clan.

Now if you read only the stories of Obiang’s repression, you’d think he is one of the most backward leaders anywhere.

Then emerge tales of his corruption and that of his family, especially his son Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who also happens to be the long-suffering country’s vice-president.

All of a sudden, they are experts in all the loopholes to beat the global financial security system.

They know the smartest bankers; the new developments with the most precious properties in parts of the world you’ve never heard of before; and all the limited editions of super cars.

CONCLUSION

The parochial dictator and his thieving children now turn out to be the most global world citizens and transcend the potholed roads and wretched poverty of their people at home to live and dine with the cream of the world jet set.

So, again, you would ask, who are the real Obiang Nguemas — the ones whose enemies allege are cannibals and feed their critics to crocodiles or those who hang out with the caviar-eating global super-rich?

If you can solve this puzzle, you know where to reach me.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africapedia.com and explainer Roguechiefs.com. @cobbo3