What a sight

The fallacy is simple: there are men and women in Kenya who wish to serve in the public service for the good of the nation and the people. The fallacy is promoted by the President and key members of his government, including the Chief Justice and the Inspector-General of Police. The fallacy is promoted by the unofficial head of the opposition and key members of his coterie. In the history of Kenya, from when it became the plaything in the pre-colonial game to date, not even the most committed clergyman has had the good of the nation or the people in mind when they did what they did.

The idea that someone becomes a civil servant because of his love of country is swiftly dispelled by the lazy attitude towards the president's anti-corruption tirades. There are myriad forms of corruption in Kenya. It is not just the simple extortion of the police, or that of the headmaster, admitting nurse or the oily unctuousness of the one with his hand out for a handout, it is the expected payoff for doing ones job whether or not the job is actually done well or even done at all.

We live in a world where big numbers are bandied about every day: hundreds of millions and billions and trillions are mentioned as if they were abstract concepts of no import. Did your hear, we whisper conspiratorially; they lost 791 million! They lost 200 billion! These numbers mean nothing. Even reducing them to things that makes sense will still not make them make sense. "1.2 billion can build you a one-hundred room hotel in Nairobi" means nothing to the twenty one million Kenyans who don't have access to piped water and have to take a shit in the bush because they don't have land in which to dig a pit latrine.

Kenya is no different from Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Russian Federation or Egypt; service in its government is one of the surest way to great wealth and power. It is what service in the post-colonial regimes meant. Alternatively, doing business with the government, or doing business with money loaned to you by the government, were ways that one could avoid the stink of being a civil servant yet still make a killing in the market. These are not men and women who joined the public service to serve; the became civil servants to become rich. And they did. Fabulously so.

It might seem odd that an election petition will drag on for four years, doesn't it? Yet it must because the petitioner and the respondent want their lips suckling firmly at the tit of the government, suckling like their lives depended on it for it very well does. Our hypocrisies about duty and servant leadership must make whatever gods we worship a little exasperated: if you are going to behave like a god - greedy, grasping, selfish, unforgiving and coldhearted - you don't have to be hypocritical about it.

This is the scheme we have: every Kenyan, alive and yet to be born, pays taxes. Those taxes are collected in the name of the people. Those taxes go towards the comforts of the public service. What little is left is shared between people who win tenders and the people. The people frequently get breadcrumbs. And when the whinging gets particularly piteous the people are given an opportunity to shuffle the deck: some people get reelected; some people become civil service nawabs; some become "successful" entrepreneurs. The people are mollified. The game continues. The fallacy remains untroubled by analysis. It is quite a sight.