The indignity of theft

We cannot dignify theft.—Wangari Maathai, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, 2004

We may not be able to dignify theft, but we are giving it the old college try going by the efforts of the sanitation departments of the various public agencies, bodies and arms of government to declare so-and-so to be beyond reproach when it comes to the touchy subject of who has their hand deep inside the public cookie jar.

The Leader of the Majority Party in the National Assembly was at one point or the other especially voluble and vocal about the absolute innocence of the then Cabinet Secretary for Devolution and Planning when the goings on at the National Youth Service came to light. Come to think of it, so too did the newly minted Deputy Leader of the Majority Party in the Senate. Now it could be that both were doing what party hacks have a tendency to do, but in light of her recent revelations in an affidavit-by-affidavit spat with another suspect in the unfolding NYS saga we have no choice but to ask whether these two worthies we doing their bit to put the lie to Prof Maathai's words. Because in the past two weeks, they have used extremely unparliamentary language as they distance themselves from the former waziri.

They are not unique. A popular comedian with a TV show of his own has done his bit to make Prof Maathai to be a liar. A con man pretending to be a preacher, whose own mother was a con woman pretending to be a preacher,was caught on camera swindling Christian faithfuls. He was unapologetic and called on his congregation to come to his aid, which they did in their hundreds. He was roundly condemned on social media, news media and newspaper editorials and commentaries. But the comedian "invited" the con man to his popular TV show to "explain himself" and the rest, as they say, is history. The Director of Public Prosecutions has been unable to find a crime that the fake preacher committed; the Attorney-General has been unable to publish rules to control the activities of this con man and others of his odious ilk. If it is not unlawful, then it is not immoral or bad, seems to be the official serikali reaction.

Some of the worst thefts involve the theft of the innocence of children. The Governments of Kenya, Malindi, Mombasa, Kilifi and Kwale have done a pretty good job of ignoring the sexual exploitation of children at the coast at the hands of both foreigners and locals. It is such a pervasive scourge that it has almost acquired the veneer of normality. Whenever there is a public outcry, wrists are slapped and more police are deployed, but by the end of the month, the issue passes from the public's imagination and children at the coast go back to being the playthings of adult monsters.

What is wrong remains wrong, regardless of the foreign accent we slap on it, or the approval of the white man whose approval we always seek. Political corruption is as old as organised government, and Kenyans did not invent the systematic theft of public resources. We have always known it is wrong and it is why thieves seek to cover themselves in the cloaks of political and administrative legitimacy and when those cloaks fail, to hide behind presidential skirts and tribal victimhood. Now we have injected a dose of sexist bias in things. It will not work. Kenyans may be slow to point fingers, but no matter how hard you try, once you are branded a thief, the stench will follow you wherever you go. It will not be a dignified journey.