Hypocrisy

Poor senior civil servants don’t exist in Kenya. They bank alongside the wealthy, productive citizens of this beloved country. Our banking industry knows them quite well. ~ Carol Musyoka, The Nitpicker (13th April, 2015)

We've tried that already.

 I believe a clue about how Kenya mints billionaire civil servants lies in the culture bestowed upon this territory named Kenya by the British East Africa Company and all governments since. Hypocrisy defines the governments Kenya has had, more so since Independence. It is this hypocrisy that encourages banks to wink-and-nod at the requirements of the banking Act and the Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money-Laundering Act. It is this hypocrisy that sees banks carry on as if nothing is amiss when their clients are named in schemes to siphon off billions from the National Treasury. And it is this hypocrisy that guarantees that the Kenya Revenue Authority will not be slapping the billionaire civil servants with multi-million shilling tax demands on their ill-gotten "rents".

Just like the hypocrisy in the US Declaration of Independence about the equality of men, all law documents of Kenya that spoke of fairness an justice is Kenya created two classes of citizens - the privileged and powerful, and the poor. Even with Independence, Kenya is still a two-class system, in which those with power can get away with murder, literally, while chicken-thieves have the law books hurled at them with great enthusiasm. It is how the colonial government could see no irony in creating 'native reserves' or segregating the blacks in their Eastlands' hovels over which great mirth is had by those residing in the leafy suburbs.

All Kenyan banks do business with the Governed of Kenya in one for or another. The people who make the decisions about how much business a bank will do with the Government of Kenya are quite frequently the ones against whom Know Your Customer rules would be most inconvenient. So banks will swear fidelity to the strictures of the statute books without doing anything that would jeopardise the chance to handle billions upon billions of shillings that make their annual reports look so rosy. We will react with umbrage and shock when lists of shame are published but do absolutely nothing to dismantle the infrastructure that sustains the misappropriation and mismanagement of tax shillings. We will keep stumm because we hope - pray, really - that one day we too will be in a position to ride special express lifts to the the tenth floor of the buildings that house our banks to meet with senior bank staff and plan the "investment" of our billions.

It is hypocrisy, plain and simple. They say that no government should create billionaires of its public servants. They say a great many things. They have since the beginning of time. We have chosen to hear but not listen. Nigeria went to shit because of the hypocrisies bequeathed upon it by the British. It is still trying to recover. Kenya is becoming the Nigeria of East Africa before our eyes, but because of the hypocrisy at the heart of our desires we are seemingly powerless to anything about it. That should give us pause.