Shameless.

Do you believe that a ten or fifteen-years' prison sentence will somehow persuade Kenyan public officials from engaging in graft? The deterrent effect of stiff penalties has been discounted the world over. The United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia and China regularly execute capital offenders and yet capital offences continue to be committed at a shocking rate. China executes corrupt public officials, yet graft has metastasized into a monster in China.

In Kenya, believe it or not, graft is not a law-and-order challenge. When the police authorities put their back into it, proof is always found of malfeasance. When the DPP isn't busy covering his ass, the proof provided by the police is always sufficient to sustain a prosecution. When the judiciary isn't having a hissy fit, conviction and sentencing are as night follows day. No, the problem is not law-and-order; the problem, as with many Kenyan peculiarities, is that Kenyans have made their peace with corrupt acts, corrupt public officials and the corrupted public services. In other words, very few Kenyans care any more.

Think about the ease with which corrupt Kenyans have purchased legitimacy in the eyes of the people. They lead prayer rallies. They head church-building committees. They pontificate at funerals. They have received the seal of approval from preachers of faith. They are not shunned; they are admired, by both young and old. They attract to their service the best minds; witness how their sins are rationalised by professionals in their pay: lawyers, doctors, engineers...professors one and all. Watch the verbal contortions that the educated elite put themselves through in their attempts to prove to us that the corrupt are as white as the driven snow. Their efforts have paid off handsomely among the intellectually naive.

A man died at the doorstep of a hospital simply because there was no bed to admit him into. A woman gave birth to a baby while standing up - because there was no nurse to help her during labour. A fourteen year old girl was, if you believe the DPP, murdered by policemen who couldn't be bothered to read the Bill of Rights or their own Service Standing Orders. The families of the victims weep with despair. The rest of us go, "Meh!" shrug our shoulders accept and move on. Well, not exactly "move on" but move on in the sense that we wish, pray really, that one day we will be in a position to "handle" the billions that seem to dematerialse into thin air every time they wash through the coffers of this ministry, that parastatal or that office. These deaths are the product of corrupt acts and we have become desensitised to them.

The irony can be seen in some of the loudest anti-corruption voices. The are dedicated to their show. They are frequently intelligent and experienced. But in many, many cases, they are as bent as the people they go after. I don't doubt their zeal; I doubt their motivation. And they are the ones, after they escaped sanction for their corrupt acts, who call for the most stringent of penalties. They are shameless in their hypocrisy. And so are we for indulging their masochism.