When the world is your oyster, Kenya will look very small

We can try and run away from corruption stories, but we can never hide from them, as the high-profile arrests of big men who have been accused of dipping their hands in the Kenyan cookie jar remind us.

As it happened, with the smell of corruption still thick in the Nairobi air, Botswana’s President Eric Masisi visited and hobnobbed with President Uhuru Kenyatta. It would have been precious to be a fly on the wall after Kenyan officials had retreated and Masisi was left alone with his aides to hear what they had to say about the sums allegedly purloined in the dams scandal, as they would certainly have read the newspapers and watched TV coverage of it.

There must have been a lot of head shaking in the Masisi entourage. Botswana has, for a long time, been rated among the most honest countries in Africa, taking second place after the Seychelles in Transparency International’s 2019 rankings. It’s in Africa’s “Holy Quintet” which also includes Cape Verde, Rwanda and Namibia.

The question why the Seychelles, Botswanas and Rwandas of this world have low corruption while other countries, including its neighbours, are wallowing in the filth of graft has been debated a lot in recent years. But we have not fully explored why corruption is rampant in countries such as Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria, to name a few of the distinguished members of the dirty club.

Some of our countries have been corrupt for quite long; something has broken. Many have become cynical and, for their sanity, priced it in as a normal — and even distinct — feature of their countries’, and African, politics in general, although corruption is not unique to the continent.

Many years ago, investigative journalists made great careers uncovering corruption. Any journalist who has been in a newsroom for the past 30 years will tell you that, every year, the bar for a Page One-worthy corruption story has been rising.

Thirty years ago, you could double circulation with a Front Page on how $500,000 had been stolen. The country would stop in horror. Today, that is Page 22 stuff. It will only make the cover page if there is an extremely absurd twist to it too; for example, if a crooked official bought a few spades, bathroom towels or plastic buckets for $500,000 — as some have done.

You have to steal $500 million to be sure of pride of place on Page One these days; and even then, copy sales will probably not increase by more than two per cent.

What is broken is the filiality to government, and more broadly, the State. The State is not with, or of, the people and the people are not with it. While millions still care, and would like to see change, there’s probably an equal number who have turned their backs and don’t. That makes it difficult to build the critical mass that would frighten politicians and officialdom from corruption.

However, that is only part of the story. It gets more complex. Many people who are put off by years of corruption don’t just go home to mourn and groan about it. Unlike 30 years ago, they build alternative universes and realities that best express their worldview, and they have a cast of figures they can rally around that represent it.

It expresses itself in ways that are easy to miss. So, Wanuri Kahiu makes the globally acclaimed Rafiki, a story of romance between two women that’s proscribed by the state censor because it allegedly promotes homosexuality.

But Kahiu understands that in Kenya, as elsewhere, there has been a sexual evolution and, at a minimum, youthful 21st century is no longer monochromatic about sex. When a court lifted the ban briefly, people flocked in record numbers to watch the film and were gushing about it.

The Rafiki storm dramatically demonstrated Kenya’s dual world. A Kenyan feeling suffocated by the parochialism of its political and moral Establishment will delight in the globalism that Oscar Award-winning Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o represents, or escape in the airy cosmopolitanism of Carol Mutoko’s YouTube channel.

And in the ultimate act of collective national sweating, run in the Standard Chartered Nairobi Marathon or do their bit to save a bit of the country by tackling the Mater Heart Run.

The Throttle Queens are six female Kenyan bikers. Early in the year, they rode from Kenya through Uganda to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, in a road safety campaign. In Kigali, they got a celebrity welcome.

A Daily Nation story on their trek also noted that “the riding couple of Mr Dos Kariuki and his wife Wamuyu … in July 2018, left Nairobi for a three-year journey across seven continents”. Think about that.

When the world or Africa is your oyster, it might well seem petty to allow your heart to bleed to death just for your spoiled tiny corner of it.

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