Saving our national soul

Despite the increasingly shrill and ridiculous calls for public servants to "carry their own cross", there is one thing that we can be certain of: whoever was caught fiddling with the public purse will not spend more than a few days in "remand" answering soft-ball questions from the "sleuths" of the EACC, the DCI and the ODPP. Minions and minor functionaries will ultimately be found responsible and kingpins and masterminds will get off scot-free.

Now that we know that, understand it and appreciate its implications, we might as well consider the calls for so-and-so to "carry their own cross" being made by party bosses and the like. These are not the most honest people in the world and their sanctimonious outrage is as hypocritical as it is transparent. In the light of the spectacular fiddles they engage in behind closed doors when their parties "nominate" candidates to stand in elections, these should be the last men and women to declare with straight faces, Carry your own cross. But Kenyan politicians and political hacks are not endowed with a great sense of irony, so perhaps they need to be reminded that the corruption that pervades the DNA of the political class is fostered by the fecklessness of party apparatchiks.

Do not look to the judicial or clerical classes to offer much in the way of durable solutions, as a friend of mine in refugee management would aptly describe it. In recent years, and I can't believe how true this sentence is, increasing numbers of both judicial officers and men of the cloth have been accused and prosecuted for attempted murder! And this while innumerable numbers have been accused of either soliciting or accepting bribes and defrauding members of the public. Would you place your anti-corruption faith in institutions that have been infiltrated by murderers and con men? I think not.

The last bastion of the honest is the home, but going by the salaciousness of morning FM radio, this now seems like a citadel about to fall. Men and women, many of them married, are increasingly lying to their spouses or partners about fundamental things to do with their relationships, whether it is sex, money or property. There are more cheaters in marriages today than there are mipango ya kando to go around! Young men and women are being socialised to accept that lying and cheating are the fundamental building blocks of  happy marriage. If you expect them to resist the charms offered by corrupt acts, you have greater faith in the innocence of the youth than I do.

School, you say? Come, come now my friend. You have to think it through. Is tribalism being used as a cudgel to deny qualified students places in schools? Yes it is. Are schools' boards of governors uncovering fiscal malfeasance on a staggering scale on a daily basis? Yes they are. Are students reacting to the corruption of their schools' values through violence and destruction of property? Yes they are. No, my friends, learning institutions have also been infiltrated by the corrupt and the mendacious.

That leaves the self, doesn't it? What are your values? What lines will you never cross? Will you allow the corruption of your family, your school, your church, your place of work and your government to corrupt your soul? What are you prepared to do about it? In that answer, perhaps, we may find an answer to save the soul of our nation.