OPINION: Fight Corruption, Or Wait For A Meltdown

When one considers that corruption has been with us ever since our fathers took over the mantle of leadership from their colonialist predecessors, 50-odd years ago, the current fixation may appear out of place. In fact, opposition politicians have dismissed the current  goings-on in Kenya as a mere  game of musical chairs, a disingenuous effort by Uhuru Kenyatta’s government to appear to be doing something while in actual fact planning to do nothing to fight the vice.

While the problems that forced out some senior political figures in Tanzania were brought about by their alleged involvement in a specific scandal, in Kenya the resignations are due to alleged misdeeds in myriad scams involving dozens of public figures, from politicians to career civil servants.

You would be mistaken for thinking that the rot is only at the top. Corruption is like a cancer that slowly spreads until it has completely spread throughout the whole body, fully incapacitating its victim. Taking cue from their masters, junior officials have also become masters of the game, from traffic policemen to junior clerks in land and court registries.

Often, these junior workers work in cahoots with their more senior colleagues who do not want to take the risk of receiving money from people they hardly know – you never know when someone may give you treated money and you end up being hauled to the courts, you know.

Resisting attempts to silence the society

In fact, even our supranational institutions have not been spared. Looking at recent audit reports of the East African Community as well as its Organs and Institutions, it becomes clear that the desire for greedy accumulation is threatening to hold the integration process hostage. The latest report by the Public Accounts Committee of the East African Legislative Assembly makes for particularly depressing reading, even though the EAC Secretariat has tried to undo some of the damage.

There are good reasons why all this is happening at this point in time. The increasing democratization of African societies – even with all its shortcomings – has ensured the participation of previously muzzled voices. Attempts to silence sections of society are regularly resisted, and the awe with which the ruling classes were previously viewed has all but disappeared.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, which brought the Cold War to an end, denied autocratic regimes their previously predictable fallback positions. In a unipolar world, the option of moving to the other side of the ideological divide simply does not exist.

The growth of the news and information industry, galvanized by the power of the Internet, is also doing wonders in the fast and efficient spread of information to all segments of society. Social injustices and official scandals that would previously have been known by only a few officials are now being exposed in broad daylight, naming and shaming those responsible for the whole world to behold.

Frustrations of the common people

This is all very good for the common citizenry. But it still falls far short of the ideal. The worst that can happen to corrupt elites, from recent experience, is a disgraceful exit from positions of power. In countries like China, heads roll (literally); here, even a refund of corruptly-acquired funds would be revolutionary.

The current trend, whereby corruption and other ills get exposed but insufficient action is taken, is extremely dangerous for the region.  The frustrations of the common people, bottled up over what they see as insensitive arrogance and a business-as-usual attitude by those in power, could erupt with disastrous consequences.

So far, such an eruption has been prevented largely by the artificial fissures that the ruling elites have placed among the people. Hence, in countries such as Kenya (and Rwanda until the genocide), the unthinking masses see the other ethnic group as the enemy. The political power barons can therefore sit pretty knowing that their kinsmen will defend them to the hilt, even if it means going down the path of civil war – as is happening in South Sudan.

But that kind of ill-conceived complacency cannot go on forever. To truly fight corruption, the whole region needs a major shake-up along the lines that Rwandan President Paul Kagame took, thankfully succeeding in turning that country from its suicidal path. Whether our collective leadership in the region has the capacity to undertake such a shake-up voluntarily, or it will take some sort of a social meltdown to do so, is another question altogether.

By Isaac Mwangi

Courtesy: East African News Agency