Albert Einstein once quipped that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. This quote conceivably -comparatively- points to the fact that the belief that repeatedly electing the same corrupt politicians into parliament and expecting that they change once they get into office is an act of futility. We have tremendously failed to learn from history and as such we are destined to repeat this same mistake.
Much worse is the belief that government agencies can and will investigate all cases of corruption and bring those implicated to book. It's all sizzle and no steak. It always has been. History ought to have taught us by now that we can form as many commissions of inquiry and anti-graft institutions as is humanly possible but still that won’t kick corruption out of the door anytime soon. To look up to the government, especially African governments, to launch investigations that would sweep them almost in their entirety into the net is not only baffling but outright stupid. Sadly, that has become our expectation. And our downfall.
Even as we look forward to the future with hope; hope that things will ultimately change -and change for the better- let us also have bigger, bolder and honest debates about this disease that has persistently haunted and continues to ail our society and its institutions.
Just as Martin Luther King Jr once opined that "we are living in a sick society", Kenya is indeed emblematic of a sick society whose people excel at pointing accusing fingers rather than using the same to bring about the much needed change, sobriety and sanity to its institutions and to itself.
That the politician is perhaps the most corrupt being in Kenya is no longer in doubt. That is everyone’s guess. However, equally corrupt are the many of us who bribe police officers and judicial officers to let us off the hook. Equally corrupt are you who carry “something small” to public offices to gain small favors or, rather stupidly, “just in case they ask for it”. The most corrupt are those who pay government officials to provide them with identity cards, title deeds, birth certificates and other documents "in time".
In this same category are the teachers and head-teachers who levy fees on students for non-existent activities, and who order the same students to come with whole bunches of printing papers every term yet the said students only sit for mid-term and end-term exams while the remainder of the printing papers are ferried to the teachers’ cyber cafes and homes for commercial purposes. Sex for grades is the norm in some of our higher learning institutions. To add salt to injury, these are the same teachers in whose care we have entrusted our young ones to bring up future generations of men and women of virtue and substance.
From the politician to the policeman, the corporate head, the doctor and the nurse, and even to the shopkeeper, the mama mboga and the village head, the young and the old, corruption permeates every crevice of the Kenyan soul.
Kenyans, and Africans by extension, have historically excelled at rewarding the most corrupt and bigoted political failures with new terms of office so much so that an Oscar Award in recognition of this adeptness is long overdue.
When not recycling them, their sons and daughters are alternatively elected to positions of power. Essentially, Kenya has ceased to be a democracy and is now somewhat an aristocracy ruled by the corrupt. And to make sure that they greatly and thoroughly enjoy the prerogative to loot and plunder as much as they want, we are always on the front foot, armed and ready to fight for and to defend the very vampires that have for ages sapped all the life out of our souls and spirits, and who have made sure that apart from their kin and cronies, nobody else enjoys the political loot unless when the electioneering period is beckoning.
Since we elect these leaders to office, and we seem to have no qualms about how they loot with reckless abandon, and we are too happy to pay them for services that they should otherwise be extending to us for free by virtue of the social contract, then it’s safe to say that we deserve the raw deal that we are currently getting.
The famous Ghanaian political scientist George Ayittey was at pains to explain why “the continent's untapped mineral wealth is immense and its tourism potential is enormous yet it is inexorably mired in steaming squalor, misery, deprivation, and chaos”. As he correctly points it out, it is because of the kleptocratic African governments, the parasitic corporate institutions, and former colonial masters who have connived to make life miserable for the Third World populace. Most importantly, though, it is because of the citizenry that this continent is stuck in a seemingly unending tunnel of darkness and treachery.
While most of us are just as corrupt as the politicians, the other large chunk has chosen to sit pretty and do absolutely nothing about the injustices that are happening in our country(ies) because the system that the former colonial powers bequeathed on the continent really suits all and sundry and because we are stuck in a zone that we really don’t want to get out of.
Maybe it’s high time we looked long and hard in the mirror to know who our real enemies are. Only then will we know those who, alongside the politicians and former colonial masters, have done the greatest injustice to this country. All I know is this country would be very prosperous if only we were half as concerned and as honest as we should be. After all will have been said and done, we are not going to reverse these dangerous trends and change this country if we can't change ourselves.
