Whom Should Kenyans Blame For The Faltering War On Corruption?

The resignation of Philip Kinisu as head of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission caps off yet another week during which corruption and the faltering war waged against it have dominated newspaper headlines. In the aftermath of the Olympic games, ironically Kenya’s most successful ever judging by the number of medals our athletes gathered, revelations of theft and joyriding have demonstrated that Kenyan accomplishment comes in spite, rather than because, of their government.

Yet listening to Kinisu’s predecessor, the former head of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, Dr PLO Lumumba, it is these very Kenyans who are to blame for the mess we are in. “Kenyans as a society have not demonstrated that they want corruption to be fought,” he claimed on Wednesday evening on the Jeff Koinange show. 

This was perhaps not a surprising sentiment, given how Dr Lumumba was himself hounded out of office for trying to do his job. But as understandable as it may be, it is nonetheless profoundly misguided. He confuses Kenyan society for the state and Kenyans for those who claim to represent them but actually are little more than parasites sucking the lifeblood out of them. It is the equivalent of claiming that the fiasco in Rio was evidence that Kenyan athletes are corrupt.

Sadly, there is a failure within official discussions of corruption to distinguish between perpetrators and victims of corruption; a tendency to fault the latter for their victimisation. In 2005, then Justice Minister, and now Senator, Kiraitu Murungi, outraged many when he compared criticism of the government's fight against corruption to "raping a woman who is already willing", a remark he was to apologize for a few days later. It is unclear why Dr Lumumba, and his fellow guest on the show, publisher and columnist Barrack Muluka, appear to think that it is less outrageous to suggest that Kenyans are willing participants in the plunder of their resources.

As I have previously discussed on this column, studies on the nature of corruption have established that the vast majority of bribes paid by Kenyans are extorted by government officials for access or expedition of services that citizens are already entitled to. Reversing this violation of public trust will not be accomplished by appealing to the victims to change, just as rape culture will not be vanquished by asking women to behave differently. Rather it is the perpetrators and their enablers and protectors within government that must bear the burden of punishment and change. In fact, later in the show, Dr Lumumba attributed the relative success of anti-corruption efforts in Nigeria, Botswana, Mauritius and Rwanda not to changes in societal attitudes towards graft, but to the willingness of their respective heads of government to “lead from the front”.

In Kenya, there is little sign that President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy, William Ruto, are doing likewise. On the contrary, a survey of public perceptions of corruption recently released by the Africa Centre for Open Governance indicates a majority believe their offices to be the most corrupt. The fact is it is not the ordinary mwananchi who lacks the will to fight corruption but rather, the very people within government tasked with carrying out that fight. 

The reasons for this are not hard to fathom. The political class, which benefits greatly from the vice, has the most to lose from any serious attempt to stamp it out. It is they, not ordinary Kenyans, who would be the primary targets of any such enterprise and can thus be relied upon to pull out all the stops to ensure that the EACC remains little more than a paper tiger. Whoever elects to take on the job of fighting graft must expect that he or she will be an enemy of the governing elite and, unlike Kinisu, must not present them with easy avenues of attack. 

However, and more importantly, we must all realize that the war on corruption will not be won by scapegoating its victims but rather by harnessing their collective anger and outrage and directing it against the perpetrators. This means that the onus and pressure must be focused squarely on the person best placed to do this, the instrument of our collective force and he whom the constitution describes as the symbol of our national unity: President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Quitting On Integrity

It came as no big surprise. “I will not resign”, declared the new chair of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, Philip Kinisu, regurgitating what has become a stock phrase in the vocabulary of all Kenyan public officials. Barely six months after he was appointed to head the country’s premier public ethics agency, Kinisu has been accused of ethical violations of his own, after his family-owned firm was found to be transacting business with entities he was meant to be investigating.

There is nothing new in his claim that “resigning would be setting a terrible precedent because any person can fabricate a claim against a public official”.  It is the same excuse we have heard before most notably from the embattled commissioners of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. The defiant language is reminiscent of similar statements from cabinet ministers such as Anne Waiguru and Amos Kimunya, who memorably declared that he would rather die than resign. In fact, there is a long and unsavory history of refusal to resign, or to step aside, whenever the integrity of public officials is questioned.

Professor J. Patrick Dobel, of the University of Washington in his article entitled The Ethics of Resigning published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, states that “resigning from office is a critical ethical decision for individuals. Resignation also remains one of the basic moral resources for individuals of integrity. The option to resign reinforces integrity, buttresses responsibility and supports accountability.”

The impetus for resignation flows from the understanding that public office is held on trust, the belief that what matters more is safeguarding the faith that the public has in the mechanisms and systems of democratic governance rather than the individual culpability of office holders. In fact, a principled resignation is paradoxically a reflection of the abundance, not of the lack, of personal ethics among such officials.

Kenyans yearn for such displays of integrity from the folks they pay to manage their affairs. But sadly for a country where the abuse of public office for private gain has been elevated to an art form, personal interest has always seemed to trump public interest. Whether it is as a result of principled policy disagreement or because of allegations of wrongdoing, politicians and bureaucrats alike have been loath to let go of their jobs, many time preferring to be pushed rather than to jump.

One can take lessons from the resignation of the immediate former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, over the loss of the Brexit referendum. It did not require the hullaballoo of street protests or parliamentary committee decisions to force him out. The decision was personal, the stinging rebuke delivered by the electorate sufficient. Contrast this with the actions of then President Mwai Kibaki, who after losing a referendum on a new constitution in 2005, chose to fire those whom the public had sided with. It is clear that he did not think his mandate to govern was in any way affected by the fact that the people in whose name he claimed to do so, had disagreed with him on such a fundamental issue.

On the other hand, one could also question the actions of the “rebels” in Kibaki’s cabinet, led by Raila Odinga, who, despite their disagreement with the official government position on this most basic of all issues, would themselves not contemplate principled resignation, but rather, opted to hang on till they were fired.

The fact that resignations from office are so rare in Kenyan history is thus a telling indictment of the logic that permeates our pretend democracy where government is divorced from the consent and will of the governed. As Kinisu’s explanation demonstrates, it is a system that privileges the position of officials above the credibility of the institutions they lead; one that is less concerned with what the public thinks than with the private tribulations of the elite that lords it over them. This is the real and far more terrible precedent that Kinisu seeks to preserve by his refusal to jump.