Mutuma Mathiu
6 September 2008
opinion
Nairobi — If you are a broke, newly-minted minister with only two nylon suits and acid in the stomach because your shopaholic wives have been running up bills, you have a tribe of in-laws and other villagers you have been giving money to impress with your importance and you have been running after young girls (whose expensive habits leave your eyes popping out) out of mid-life madness, what do you do?
Well, you start by swivelling in your fake leather chair and massaging the bank of telephones on your fake mahogany desk. You run your feet on the thin, maroon carpet of your office.
Then you walk over to your ancient, Kenyatta-era secretary who is busy hammering away at a keyboard with her fists, tongue between teeth.
"I want a detailed report on all the parastatals in this ministry," you order. "And I want it on my desk like now!"
The ancient secretary creaks to her feet and lumbers to a cabinet. She fishes out a neatly bound report, her beady eyes shining with wisdom and secret knowledge.
She is very efficient and has seen it all, you being the 50th minister she has outlived. And she knows when your type walks into the office, the first thing they ask for is a report on parastatals.
"Holly Molly!" you shout in delight at the sight of the great wealth managed by your otherwise third rate ministry.
If you "cut deals" and pocket just one tenth of all this money, you tell yourself as you reach for the phone, why, you could run for the presidency without having to bother the Libyans.
"Hello, Firstborn..." Firstborn is the affectionate name you have given your side-kick-in-chief. You went to the same primary school and he is married to your step-cousin.
He is an AHITI-trained idiot who has spent three quarters of his adult life behind a cow and has never managed anything more complicated than three syringes and a handful of cow pills.
But at least he is your idiot, you figure, and in any case he is one of the most gifted thieves you have ever come across, after a lifetime among thieves.
His management of your campaign funds has on many occasions left you with dark thoughts about getting thugs to finish him.
But he always manages to get back with you because he flatters you, is roguishly charming and -- even more important -- is the only man in your village who can speak English.
Besides, he knows a thing or two which, if shared with the wrong people will get you a nice room with a view of the courtyard at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.
So you have had him appointed to health management boards, school boards and all that, which he fleeces with equal democracy. Sometimes you manage to get a share of the loot.
The fuddy-daddies at Harambee House, which to you seems like a factory for selectively applied rules, say that if you want to appoint a parastatal chief, the board contracts an independent head-hunter to advertise, interview and shortlist.
The board interviews some more and presents you with names from which to pick.
Firstborn has no hope in hell of getting his thieving nose past the consultant. No sane farmer would hire him to milk his cows, the guy would be squeezing the cow tits into his mouth, such are his talents.
So you park your nylon-clad bottom onto your fake leather chair and your cunning brain goes to work. You think you have nothing to fear from the President, who is likely peacefully sleeping in his house.
The Prime Minister, you figure, is too good a politician to interfere. There are loyalists, possibly none-too-qualified, to reward and campaign money to raise.
Besides, every minister must be doing the same thing, right? Why would they pick on you? Whose goat have you stolen?
So you sit down and compose a memo to the graft-fattened top cats in your ministry and its parastatal appendages.
It is your unyielding commitment to take full, immediate and complete charge of this ministry and its institutions, you say.
And it is your implacable determination to deliver value to taxpayers (ha, ha), pull out corruption root and branch (double ha,ha), incompetence and inefficiency. All officers, you conclude, are free to treat your memo as a final warning.
You sit back and marvel at your own genius. The thing about delivering value for taxes is a definite masterstroke.
Since the whole government is a blasted gravy train, a black hole into money more and more money is shovelled, you know all those who don't deliver value were to be fired, the entire government, from the President to the humblest cow fondler in the village, would definitely go home.
A week later, you call a press conference. "In order to stamp out endemic corruption in this ministry, introduce efficiency and deliver value to Kenyans, I am making the following changes," you announce sternly.
Out goes some ka-superstar from the previous regime who has been walking around town with some tu-reports about profits, and in comes Firstborn.
You have had him powdered for the cameras and measured him for a suit. But the bugger is still the spitting image of dishonesty and befuddled incompetence: a shifty eye and a twitchy, grovelling smile.
His speech is incomprehensible (what made you think he could speak English?), his moustache glistening with sweat, his cheap outsize suit drenched in it (must kill tailor, you note).
The powder begins to run, like the mascara of a crying woman, and a stench rises out of him like steam off the back of a cow after an afternoon shower.
The whole thing is a disaster, but you remain hopeful. You are the boss, appointed by the President, right?
When you see the headlines the following morning, you lose control of your bladder. Now who has bribed these parasitic reporters? You wonder in horror.
Isn't anyone interested in f-fighting c-corruption and intro-tro-ducing efficiency any more?
Mutuma Mathiu is the managing editor, Sunday Nation.
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