working together: The partnership between Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto is a real coalition because the union between the two principals was derived from the ICC charges they both faced going into the election.
A combination of the ongoing questioning of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project; the dismissal by the government’s own leading procurement oversight agency of the laptop project procurement process as fatally flawed; and, a series of other corruption-related developments highlighted by the media have served to starkly demonstrate that for now, as far as corruption is concerned, this government has lost the battle.
I say it has lost the battle; there are those who would say it has lost the plot. However, even a cursory reading of the Jubilee manifesto makes it clear that from the beginning it never had a plot when it came to corruption. In a world where GDP growth can often blast ahead, even in a high corruption environment, the hardnosed attitude of the administration has been: “do what it take to get stuff done because in the end, the critical criteria in judging success will be based on the achievement of particular goals”.
The assumption: a few kickbacks here or there will pale into the recesses of the collective imagination when confronted with on-the-ground realities: a gleaming new railway, a state-of-the-art port, a generation of pupils proudly carrying laptops. The Jubilee coalition’s biggest promises have been about both bricks-and-mortar, and service delivery. In the past couple of months, it would seem to have become apparent to the regime that the underlying economics of these projects and Kenya’s systemic corruption makes efficient delivery of all these promises at the same time – impossible.
CORRUPTION: A CLASH OF CULTURES
I should like to argue that a clash of cultures vis-à-vis the corruption inherent in the Jubilee regime has, thus far, stymied even the most pragmatic efforts to get to grips with it. Keep in mind that the current administration is more of a coalition than the last one ever was. While Raila Odinga was Prime Minister, President Kibaki’s side of the coalition wielded the real power. There wasn’t much Odinga could do about it but complain. The partnership between Uhuru Kenyatta (TNA) and William Ruto (URP) is a real coalition however, primarily because the union between the two principals was derived from the ICC charges they both faced going into the election. The catch however is that the two sides of the coalition are pulling in different directions.
While we don’t admit it openly in polite company, power in Kenya is sought primarily to eat or accumulate wealth, and/or to protect previously acquired ill-gotten wealth. Within the Jubilee coalition, a clash of cultures vis-à-vis ‘eating’ appears to be underway, if the consistency and increasing din of grumbling among the elite is to be understood in its proper context. Noticeably, there has been a more frustrated gnashing of teeth coming from the URP side of the administration than the TNA side. Some have been bold enough to call it for what it is; complaining at a perceived unfair distribution of public service positions and implicitly, the contracts that accompany these positions.
THE “TERMITES” MODEL
The 1990s saw scandals like Goldenberg extract 10 percent of GDP in a series of transactions. When details finally emerged, it left the public dumbfounded by the sheer magnitude of what had been stolen from its coffers. Under the first President Kenyatta, graft had started out with more stealth; immediately after independence, it was specifically with regard to the dishing out of land. Under President Moi, this developed into a gigantic patronage network via which elite politics was managed. By the start of the 21st Century, several public corporations had been reduced to shells, entire forests decimated, and large swathes of state farms had been dished out to the President’s cronies. This Moi-era ‘let’s-eat-it-all’ model meant the destruction of entire institutions. There are many politicians today, in both government and opposition ranks, who cut their teeth and first made their wealth in this way. Hence the “shock-and-awe” scale of Goldenberg. One side of the Jubilee coalition reputedly seeks a return to these ‘good old days’.
This “termites model”, devastating as it can be, is by necessity ethnically inclusive – when it rains the termites all grow wings and fly off. Every tribe’s elite gets its cut. Ironically, this inclusivity makes this model far more stable politically. Under the current constitutional dispensation, making this approach work is more challenging, though it is not unlikely that devolution will see some counties exhibit its characteristics.
THE “JIMMY ROGER” MODEL
There was a chap in the village, very much a product of the colonial period, called ‘Jimmy Roger’. You could tell Jimmy Roger from a mile away. He dressed like his mzungu master: hat tipped to one side, a well-ironed shirt complete with a cravat, socks pulled neatly up to the knees, safari boots or shiny black shoes, starched khaki shorts, and a carefully trimmed thin moustache. Jimmy Roger was a happy fellow and walked with a swagger.
The eating model inherited from the Kibaki regime is a sort of lassaiz-faire Jimmy Roger, perceived as the preferred modus operandi of the other side of the ruling coalition. It is corporatized, white collar, vernacular-speaking, overseas-educated, grand corruption, whose architecture is often reasonably sophisticated. Accountants, bankers and lawyers acting for ‘consortiums’ using a variety of financial vehicles design it. It is dependent on a powerful amalgamation of nepotism, taking conflict of interest so far to the edge of normal business practice, that it sometimes falls off. This narrative was given its policy underpinnings by the Ndegwa Commission Report of 1973 that allowed civil servants to go into business. Intrinsically, this model (dependent as it is on nepotism and conflict of interest), is necessarily exclusivist ethnically. It is therefore politically poisonous and unsustainable on the national front without generous use of the security services to manage the fallout.
The Jubilee administration has settled into a model of graft that is neither of the two models and both at the same time. However, it is 50 years since independence and we are governed by a new constitution that is accompanied by more confident, urgent and impatient demands for accountability from wananchi more cognisant of citizen responsibilities. This, in part, explains what can be described as a comedy of gaffes and faux pas on the part of regime spokesmen answering questions on some of the current government’s flagship projects. Secondly, as far as huge, officially sanctioned scams go, a pattern has emerged in Kenya averaging roughly one, at most two, every decade. Currently however, the media seems to uncover a new scam practically every month. And others become scams because of the inexperience, bungling and miscommunication on the part of senior officials. The multiplicity of grand policy and economic misadventures on the part of the regime is complicated by the transition to a new constitutional dispensation.
CONSEQUENCES, CONSEQUENCES…
The consequences have already started to manifest in political volatility, elite fragmentation and social disorganisation as we try and wrap our minds around it all. But perhaps the most unsettling current consequence is the meltdown underway on the security front around the nation. Cities like Nairobi, Kisumu, and Mombasa have been especially hard hit. Members of the middle class, for the first time sensing themselves as sustained targets of the types of crime the poor long ago became accustomed to, are disheveled but keeping a stiff upper lip. To admit it too wholeheartedly would be to accept that in the short term, it will get considerably worse…
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