Will bottoms sting?

Kenya has the Penal Code, the Anti-corruption and Economic Crimes Act, the Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Act, the Prevention of Organised Crimes Act, the Consumer Protection Act, the Kenya Deposit Insurance Act, the Public Finance Management Act, the Election Campaign Financing Act, the Prevention of Fraud (Investments) Act and the Public Procurement and Disposal Act. These are about a third of the laws used in the War on Corruption. Kenya is not short of statutory provisions of institutional arrangements in this war. Kenya isn't even short of political will in this war. What Kenya seems to lack is a will.

What I mean - Kenya is unwilling to do the hard things that must be done or take the hard decisions that must be made in order to prevail in this war. Kenyans seems to prefer that their sacred cows be left ell alone and for this Kenyans are prepared to live with a revolving door at Integrity House and quislings everywhere else. The temporal distance between the overhyped chairmanship of PLO Lumumba and the low-key nomination of Philip Kinisu is an indictment of our commitment in this war.

It is why I am a little amused when people sneer at the "lawlessness" of President Magufuli in Tanzania as he goes about firing public officials without any particular authority to do so. Tanzania is not the paragon of anti-corruption virtue its boosters would have you believe; Anne Tibaijuka, a former UN-HABITAT bigwig and a darling of the Kenyan media, was fired by President Kikwete, President Magufuli's predecessor, for corruption. What Tanzania isn't is self-righteous and obsessively self-conscious about its anti-corruption credentials nor so wedded to the idea that public service is the only true route to great wealth, like Kenya is.

What Tanzanian presidents seem to get is that for the people to support the government, hard choices must be taken, like firing favoured Ministers and senior officers of the government as a warning. (Of course, the warning could be that while corruption will be tolerated, blatant corruption will not.) Either way, President Magufuli is leading from the front in what he clearly feels is a crisis situation. Tanzanians, the only constituency that matters, seem on board with his maverick ways. Sooner or later, though, the status of the law will have to be clarified and whether or not he has the powers he seems to exercise with such determination.)

In Kenya, from President Moi to the incumbent, the war on corruption has been the war to write newer and more complex legislation. The presidential will in the war has been remarkable by its absence. Ministers have gotten away scott free. Billions have been looted. It is getting to a point where even small fish are getting away scott free. (When senior policemen were being "vetted', it emerged that their "wives" held bank accounts with hundreds of millions of shillings whose provenance remains a mystery to the National Police Service Commission, whose members are living in fear after a severed human head of a secret witness was deposited outside their offices at the start of the "vetting" exercise.)

Kenyan presidents seem to live in perpetual fear that their governments will fall if their ministers, principal secretaries, police and army chiefs, diplomats and elected representatives are jailed for corrupt acts. There are some lauding the president for finally "dropping" the five minister whom he asked to "step aside" in March. He should simply have fired them in March. He waited until the Devolution and Planning minister resigned amid a flurry of allegations against her.

No. We don't have the will to fight and that is why "corruption networks" will prevail. We must be prepared to burn down the house in order to get rid of the rats. There is no logical reason why a Cabinet Secretary should join the government when he is worth a hundred million shillings and leave it when he is worth fifty billion unless that reason is corruption. Lifestyle audits are all well and good, but if all they do is lift the skirt without making bottoms sting, then we'd rather just ignore the whole thing. The taste of the pudding is in the eating, and our dessert has been shit for a decade.