Kenya: Kibaki Has Two-Year Window To Tackle Kenya's Corruption And Deliver On Promises, Says Analyst
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INTERVIEW
1 January 2003
Posted to the web 1 January 2003
Ofeibea Quist-Arcton
Nairobi
Corruption, and the battle to curb it, was the oft-repeated election campaign message of both Kenya's new president, Mwai Kibaki and his National Rainbow Coalition (Narc), and of the man he beat to the top job, Uhuru Kenyatta, the candidate of the outgoing governing Kenya African National Union (Kanu).
In his inauguration speech on Monday, Kibaki said "Corruption will cease to be a way of life in Kenya" and again pledged to fight the practice, with the help of the people of Kenya, a country where graft has become endemic and some say almost institutionalised.
John Githongo, a political analyst and former journalist, is currently the executive director of Transparency International, Kenya, a watchdog organisation that monitors levels of corruption in and out of government.
In the run up to Kenya's general election on 27 December, Marianne Kihlberg of Swedish Broadcasting and allAfrica.com's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton caught up with Githongo for his predictions on what the outcome would be. He correctly forecast a sweeping victory for Kibaki and Narc in the voting, which has been declared orderly, free and fair by observers.
Githongo also explored the pressing issue of corruption in Kenya, its origins, impact and implications. He again rightly predicted that corruption, and how to fight it, would dominate the initial utterances of the new administration in Kenya.
How would you assess corruption in Kenya?
Corruption in Kenya is systemic, it's endemic. It affects every institution. And at the lowest levels, the simplest corruption is not seen as wrong in the eyes of most Kenyans. They don't see it as being that much of a problem. That is the petty corruption, which takes place at low levels involving small amounts of money.
Grand corruption, which usually involves kickbacks in public works' contracts and that kind of thing, is still very prevalent and is a major problem.
The third type of corruption is particularly prevalent in countries that are undergoing political and economic transition - we call it looting here. It is a type of corruption which is politically driven, in many parts of Africa. It is used to finance militias. It is used to finance elections and competitive politics - that kind of corruption has declined in Kenya. But still Kenya remains in the bottom 10 percent of Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI), always has. That persists which seems to show that, at least in terms of perception, Kenya is one of the world's most corrupt countries.
Give us an example of the three types of corruption you've mentioned.
The petty corruption you will see on the side of the road. If you drive out of here, ask your driver to take you up the Ngong Road, stop there for half an hour and you will see a lot of it, because the police have a roadblock there and they are taking money from every public service vehicle that passes by. That's quite common.
Grand corruption usually involves the government purchasing goods and services at an inflated price, because some of the money is going into the pockets of senior officials - either political or bureaucratic. We have a study called "Public Goods, Private Purposes," which details the way it happens, how grand corruption works.
The third type of corruption, which we saw a bit of in Kenya particularly in the early 1990s and which Mobutu made famous in Zaire, is where the political leadership of a country becomes delinquent with a country's resources and uses them as personal resources, usually for political purposes to keep themselves in power. That destroys all the institutions.
In grand corruption, a service is still delivered. So, if a kickback has been paid to build the road you just drove on, on the way here, the road is still there, it's just that you are paying what you should not be paying for it.
In the looting type of corruption, no goods and no service are delivered. Money is paid, but nothing is delivered for it. This is very premeditated. What it does is really undermine the main institutions of any country. It causes increased money supply, exchange rate falls, banks collapse and it has the effect of undermining the very institutions on which it itself is dependent. So, it's very cannibalistic.
In a country where you have that type of corruption, the main government institutions are deteriorating steadily.
But does Kenya fall into that category?
Relevant Links
Kenya fell into that category briefly in the early 1990s, when we first went into multiparty politics. We had a series of scams that is now called 'Goldenburg,' where a lot of people were paid money for export compensation for exporting gold, ostensibly, which they never exported.
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