These hyenas are derailing war on graft

In other parts of the world, once a government official is suspected of corruption, all their operations cease as the investigation and court process unfold. If they are found guilty, in some countries such as China, they are executed, while more merciful nations recover the stolen money.

In Kenya, well … the war on corruption is a circus. Nothing brings this out more than the case of the Kenya Ports Authority managing director. Daniel Manduku spent the past six months being investigated for alleged corruption. He was finally arrested on Monday this week. The country was waiting to hear his plea bargain on Tuesday when he was arraigned in court. Well, turns out there was no charge sheet, so he was set free. This event illustrates why Kenyans are fed up with the unsuccessful war on corruption that the country has been fighting for eight years. How can a country fight a war whose soldiers are also the terrorists — and expect to win?

The Manduku saga is a representation of the circles the justice system has been taking Kenyans through. When Kenyans ask the man at the helm of the country why his government has turned into a money heist programme, he points to the Judiciary and tells us to ask them as they are the weakest link in that war. On Tuesday the Judiciary pointed fingers at the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions for not bringing a charge sheet. The DPP in turn directed us to the Director of Criminal Investigations.

We are tired. We don’t care about charge sheets or insufficient evidence or lacklustre investigations; they all sound like Greek to most of us anyway. What we care about is that we break our backs and pay our taxes, just for them to end up in people’s pockets. What concerns us is that our country does not have enough hospitals; our children do not have desks and some of them are still studying under trees! Our roads are ribbons, and the economy is doing so badly, thousands of small businesses have closed shop. All these sideshows in the name of fighting corruption neither intrigue us nor return our stolen taxes. The blame games do not seal the holes that exist in every ministry that has been found to be corrupt.

If the justice system cannot successfully carry out this war against corruption that the President keeps launching in all his speeches, they might as well give up and let us as find alternative means of getting back our money. We could go the Angolan way and go after the looter’s children’s wealth. We could borrow a leaf from the Chinese, or we could use the wisdom of our ancestors and fine our thieves and their clans the amount stolen from us.

What we can’t afford to do is fund the DCI, the DPP and the Judiciary and after all that, discover they cannot prosecute the looters or find our stolen money. If the concerned bodies cannot carry out their work, we ask that they save us the sideshows and just raise their hands in defeat. The government of the day might have lost direction, but Kenyans haven’t. The war on corruption might be dead, but that’s only because we trust hyenas to oversee cases whose evidence is a carcass.

Ms Mwende comments on social issues.