When Auditor General Nancy Gathungu this month exhorted looters of public money to, at the very least, invest the stolen funds in the country instead of stashing them away abroad, she was borrowing from the popular quote from Mokokoma Mokhonoana who said, “Stolen oranges also have Vitamin C. Likewise, a stolen salmon, too, has omega-3 fatty acids.”
“Perhaps we should start a campaign that says if you steal it and you can get away with it, invest it in the country where it is stolen. If you steal it from Kenyans, invest it in Kenya. It sounds very strange, but perhaps we could then see development in our country, and then later, we ask, “ Where did you get it from?” Ms Gathungu said. “If there was no safe space to hide, stash, or invest and thereby give legitimacy for laundry services to illicit financial flows, where would this illegally acquired and stolen money be kept?”
Ms Gathungu’s assertion only confirmed what many have always suspected: stealing from public coffers is ‘official policy’, and the only immoral thing about it is “not being ‘patriotic enough’ to invest the loot in Kenya”.
Ask Kenyans why our country isn’t developing as fast as it should or investors why they choose to bypass Kenya for other countries, and corruption is almost always at the top of the list. We spend billions of shillings in ethics campaigns and government agencies to fight corruption, yet it endures. Neither does graft stem from a lack of values or knowledge; it is just the ‘easier, quicker route’.
In spite of all the reasons advanced against corruption, some suggest that corruption can actually offer positive opportunities.
Today, most countries measured by the global anti-corruption group Transparency International (TI) score lower than 50 — out of a possible 100 — on the annual corruption index (a score of 0 is seen as very corrupt, and 100 is seen as very clean.) The average score worldwide is 43. According to TI, more than two-thirds of the people in the world live in countries with “corrupt” governments. That’s a lot of us, but it’s hard to estimate the negative effect that corruption has on countries like Kenya, where its mere perception impedes investments that can help them create wealth and prosperity.
Often, the war on graft seems like a losing game, for as soon as one corrupt player is defeated, more pop up in its place, all of them willing to risk it all to make it. Because corruption is institutionalized – those who succeed in defrauding the public from its money encourage others to try. If they can get away with it, so can anybody else. And before you know it, the incorruptible ones are driven out because ‘what good are they if they cannot play the game?’
Ms Gathungu is not the first to make such a provocative statement.
In many corruption-saddled countries, the poorest suffer, and the smallest entrepreneurs – those without access to the decision-makers in the government – miss out.
Yet, in spite of all the reasons advanced against corruption, some suggest that corruption can actually offer positive opportunities. Ms Gathungu spoke with the exasperation of a parent who, finally tired of warning their child against using prostitutes, eventually quips, “okay, you can bring them home, but can you at least bring good-looking ones?” One can only imagine the mental toll that must be given for people like the Auditor General, who compute daily, and with increasing horror, the billions upon billions lost daily to a few individuals.
Others, like Dr Benjamin Barber, say corruption can be virtuous. “In the short-term, corruption can be an equalizer, a kind of crude fast-track to proximate equality…In a society where exploitation and unfairness are built into the system, those same vices become compensatory opportunities – acceptable tactics in the struggle against systemic injustice,” Dr Barber wrote in an article, The Virtues of Corruption, which was published online in 2013.
It is, however, unwise to apply this logic, because while it may benefit a few unscrupulous individuals, the impact of corruption goes beyond the corrupt individuals, the missed opportunities at quality life for millions of people, and the wellbeing of entire nations. Corruption erodes our trust in the public sector to act in our best interests; it wastes our taxes that have been earmarked for important community projects – translating to poor quality services or bad school infrastructure – or we miss out altogether.
We cannot completely eliminate corruption, but we can begin to say no to the brazen theft that goes on in the government. To paraphrase Ms Gathungu, there is nowhere further to fall from here. We are at the lowest of the very low. (
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