To the new president: It’s the graft, stupid!

By Peter Wanyonyi

In March 1991, incumbent US President George H.W Bush was riding a crest of popularity that other politicians then and since could only ever dream of. Bush had led America resolutely in the then-just-ended Gulf War, routing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and kicking Iraq out of Kuwait. As the 1992 US Presidential elections drew near, Bush’s job approval rating was a staggering 90%. In comparison, the doddering Joe Biden today enjoys an approval rating of 36% with the midterm elections looming. 

Bush was up against Bill Clinton, a formidable campaigner whose ability to charm voters is second only to the untouchable gifts of Barrack Obama. Clinton needed to take the attention off Bush’s glittering war record and pivot to something Bush had not done so well at – the economy. The 1990s oil price shock had resulted in a significant slowdown in economic activity in the West, and the American economy had plunged into recession. 

Noting this, Clinton’s strategist, James Carville, came up with a brilliant phrase: “It’s the economy, stupid.” The phrase encapsulated the tribulations of the American public who, while happy with Bush for his Gulf War victory, nevertheless were struggling with growing unemployment and inflation. Clinton went to town with the slogan, with Bush slow to recognise the potency of Clinton’s approach. By election time in 1992, Clinton had eaten away at Bush’s lead, going on to win the presidency with a landslide. 

As we draft this article, Kenyan Ferdinand Omanyala has just been knocked out of the semi-finals of the Men’s 100 metres sprint race at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon, USA. Omanyala’s qualification for the semis was remarkable, as he took part in the race barely three hours after touching down in the US, following a visa hitch that saw him unable to fly to the US until the evening before the actual race. Africa’s fastest man ran into visa troubles not because he was slow to apply for his visa – it was because of Kenya’s old nemesis, graft: corruption.

For many years, Kenyan officials have used sporting trips abroad as profit-making junkets, issuing bogus sports credentials to their families and friends to travel abroad at government expense. This was not a big deal to Western countries until some of these bogus sports travellers started absconding while abroad and then filing bogus asylum requests. 

Western countries are infamously process-gridlocked, but their general subscription to at least an appearance of following their own laws means that, in such cases, they are stuck with the asylum applicants for months or years while the cases while and wend their way through immigration panels and courts. In most cases, the authorities just give up and allow the migrant to stay – and this is what Kenyan sports officials have been relying on.

But this has taken a sinister new twist, thanks to our insatiable greed. Kenyan officials have now started selling foreign visa slots to bogus “sports people” who want to move abroad but cannot secure a visa. This, it turns out, is what happened to delay Omanyala: while the delegation of athletes and officials travelling to the US was thought to be 82, Kenyan officials submitted a list of more than 130 people to the US Embassy in Nairobi. 

To ensure that the bogus names on the list would be granted visas, the officials at the Sports Ministry allegedly submitted the bogus names first, ensuring they received visas. Omanyala and other athletes had their names submitted in a later batch. The Americans, having smelt a rat, issued just 82 visas, leaving many genuine athletes and unsuspecting officials stranded. It eventually took the intervention of senior government functionaries, like the Sports Minister, for Omanyala to secure a visa to travel to the championships. In the end, Omanyala could not overcome the ravages of last-minute travel and jet lag, and bowed out in the semis, despite his enormous potential at these championships.

This story is neither unique nor new. All of us know that, in Kenya, everything is available at some price – legally or otherwise. We have perfected the dastardly science of corruption, and it is an indicator of just how bad graft is in Kenya that the president himself regularly laments the extensive corruption in his own office.

Imperial presidency

Pause and think on that for a bit. Kenya’s presidency is imperial. We have concentrated untrammelled power in the presidency, making it the most coveted office in the land. This is an African thing – we love the cult of the Big Man, the Bwana Mkubwa, the Mtukufu Rais. Africans do not like their presidents powerless and symbolic. We generally do not like small things – everything we want is generally big and out there, and that includes our political leaders. 

We see stepping back from anything as a loss, as cowardly and unbecoming – which is why it is so difficult for Kenyan men to retire from employment. Used as they are to the spending power that their regular salaries provide, they are unable to pivot to a life of lowered incomes, and many do not survive long after retirement. And so, it is with our presidents – we like them super-powerful, taking the power-worship to stratospheric new levels. 

But, despite all this power, the president of Kenya has severally declared that he is effectively powerless to end the corruption in his own office. Not the wider sleaze in government, nor even the graft that bedevils the entire country, but just the rot in the Office of the President – Uhuru says he cannot do anything about it. He is reduced to making ineffective speeches and issuing plaintive pleas to the corrupt to clean up their act. They have, predictably, ignored him – after all, he is a lame-duck with just a few days left in power. It is the incoming president, whoever it is, that will have an opportunity to clean up Kenya’s corruption. And what an opportunity it will be.

Raila Odinga is Kenya’s indefatigable anti-corruption fighter. The Old Warrior has grown soft in his old age, and now sups with the very people who promote sleaze in the country, but there is still a bit of the old anti-graft fighter in him. His chosen deputy, Martha Karua, is less so: she is an ethnic campaigner most of all, seeing in everything an opportunity to advance Kikuyu hegemony over government. Her Kikuyus-in-power-at-all-costs approach saw her lock horns with Raila himself in the aftermath of the 2007 General Election, in which Raila clearly won the presidency but Kibaki stole enough votes to secure another term in office. That Raila somehow forgave Karua and brought her into his camp might be admirable from the outside, but points to worrying compromises that the old man must have made to secure the support of Kenyatta and his Kikuyu inner circle – what else, one wonders, has Raila compromised on in this race? With Karua at his side, it is obvious that fairness and fighting corruption is not going to be anywhere near the top of a President Raila’s agenda. 

William Ruto is a mystery. His fabulous wealth has raised eyebrows everywhere, and his association with post-election violence in the Rift Valley after the 2007 elections – when he was, ironically, supporting Raila Odinga – has stuck to him like a cursed shadow. I met Ruto in 1992 at Kakamega State House, when I was a high school student caught up in the KANU campaigns just before that year’s General Elections. Then, as now, Ruto – at the time in the company of Cyrus Jirongo – was handing out cash by the fistful to anyone who would ask. What are the sources of this cash that Ruto has always had, how does he make it? How can he have so much money to dish out to all comers? And what of his invisible running mate, who is accused of having a KANU torturer and would thus do well to remain out of the limelight – what is his end of the Ruto ticket bargain? 

Ruto’s ticket, it appears, should remain a riddle – for if we went digging to find out what it is all about, we might not like what we see. And so most Kenyans contend themselves with Ruto’s rhetoric, which does hit all the right notes: he is against corruption, he rightly accuses the president of short-changing him in their Faustian Bargain to support each other for the presidency, and he admirably refuses to air the dirty linen of the Uhuru administration in public. A man who, on the surface, is more sinned against than sinning – the sympathy vote certainly goes to him.

But what of Kenya, the prize that these two political titans are tussling over? Kenya is hollowed out by corruption. The vast amounts of money Uhuru borrowed from China to underpin his impressive infrastructure development have bred a level of corruption that is astonishing even by Kenyan standards. The Chinese stand ready with even more money for Uhuru’s successor, as they bid to enfold Kenya in a Beijing Debt Trap not unlike what they visited on Sri Lanka, whose economy has just collapsed under the weight of unsustainable and unpayable debts owed to China. 

Which of the two leading presidential contenders will stand against corruption and help find a way out of the mess of graft that we find ourselves in? Corruption affects everything we do and adds a graft premium to every transaction in the country, every business decision. We pay the price of corruption at the duka, at the petrol pump, in our bus fares, in our school fees, in our rents and in the unaffordability of life in Kenya as a whole. A huge chunk of the inflation that is rampant in Kenya is due to corruption – commodity prices include a bribery element. We are at the point where corruption is so much of our lifeblood that it is almost impossible for the economy to survive without it. 

The unwelcome news for Kenya is that neither Raila nor Ruto will confront corruption, for both are beneficiaries of it. They surround themselves with corrupt people – and, as the old aphorism goes, show me your friends and I will show you your character. The two campaigns are awash with the proceeds of sleaze, and it is a brave soul who dares believe that either of them will bite the hand that feeds them. 

In a perfect world, there would be a third way, a third candidate not beholden to corrupt interests and not invested in the sleazy status quo. This candidate would reach out to the suffering, downtrodden average Kenyan, for whom commodity prices are out of reach and public services non-existent. This Kenyan does not care about the tribal affiliations of leaders, but simply wishes for a roof over her head, good education for her kids, and an economy that creates employment.

Anything on top of that – clean running water, available, dependable, and affordable electricity, and a working public transport system – would be a bonus. In that perfect world, this third candidate would campaign not just against the current contenders, but also against the system of ujambazi that has raised them to be the dual favourites for the presidency. If such a candidate were in the race, there is no doubt that Kenya would flock to that ticket.

But how would the candidate, when elected president, actually fight graft? This is probably quite easy: sack the entire government, ground the civil service, invite a foreign private corporation to run things for half a year or so, and use that time to set up a new government from scratch, with those who served in the old government or civil service, and their families, ineligible to serve. When the inevitable outcries against that brutal approach are raised, the president would respond with the obvious answer: It’s the graft, stupid! (

— The author is an information systems professional.