Whistling in the dark | 21 March 2009

It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower, by Michela Wrong

Once, when I was crossing Mali by bus, it took three days to go 100 yards. This was not because of the condition of the road, but because three sets of officials — the army, the police and the douaniers — insisted upon extracting their pound of flesh from the passengers (except for me), and would not let them go until they had duly paid up.

The passengers took it all with a good-humoured resignation that both surprised and moved me. Perhaps their resignation derived from an understanding that, had the boot been upon the other foot, they would have behaved in the same way. Such a degree of self-understanding is rare in the world.

Perhaps this also explains why, when dictatorships and presidencies for life are overthrown in Africa, the successor regimes, nominally more democratic, seem often to be not much better, at least in point of corruption. In this book Michela Wrong, who wrote a marvellous account of Mobutu’s Zaire, In Mr Kurtz’s Footsteps, tackles the Kenya of President Kibaki, who attained the presidency by defeating the old dinosaur of Kenyan politics, Daniel arap Moi, in an election the latter had been forced to concede, much against his inclination, after 24 years in power. Initially there were high hopes that Mwai Kibaki would clean out the Augean stable of Kenyan corruption; but before long, the Augean stable was simply under new management, albeit somewhat more economically efficient.

The author uses the life and experiences of a Kenyan whistle-blower, John Githongo, to recount the collapse of the high hopes roused by arap Moi’s defeat. Githongo, a scion of a well-to-do Kikuyu family, had long studied the corruption under Moi, and was asked by the new government to head a department dedicated to exposing and preventing further corruption.