Kenya-A conversation with John Githongo
Nov 29th 2012, 16:02 by S.L. | NAIROBI
http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/
2012/11/blogs/baobab/20121124_map507.jpg
JOHN GITHONGO knows first-hand how bad governance can undermine development.
He blew the whistle on the widespread corruption in the government of Mwai
Kibaki, who appointed him to expose graft. Mr Githongo, who reported for The
Economist (among other journals) in the 1990s, was then forced to flee Kenya
in 2005 and went into hiding in Britain. He has since returned to the
country, where he is head of INUKA Ni Sisi! ("Rise up, it is us!"), an NGO
that does work on citizen empowerment and good governance. His story, and
the story of how corruption undermines Kenyan society, was told in Michela
Wrong's " <
http://www.economist.com/node/13176864> It's Our Turn to Eat". He
recently spoke to Baobab about the challenges facing Kenya.
Baobab: Recently we've seen outbreaks of violence around the country,
including the massacres of villagers around Tana River in the east and the
slaughter of police recruits in Samburu county in the north. So far an
estimated 500 people have been killed. Is this a repeat of the
election-related violence in 2007 and 2008, or is it something else?
John Githongo: Violence as a political tool is something that has long been
used in Kenya. We have a rich history of using it strategically. It comes
with our kind of politics. What we are seeing now is localized violence, the
result of a struggle for power that comes from the competition for resources
due to an increasing amount of international and local elite interest in our
newfound oil, natural gas, gold, as well as our fertile land. All those
things combined means that the politicians are still using violence as a
political tool. But unlike 2007, it is at a local, contained level. It is
below the radar of the international criminal court. It is, however,
spreading and exposing the dysfunction in our security infrastructure.
Baobab: You are saying that the violence is due to a political struggle over
resources, but in the press these conflicts are often described as ethnic or
tribal clashes.
JG: The boundaries are being redrawn in a country where politics have always
been organized along ethnicity, and therefore all major boundaries are also
ethnic boundaries and so, people have a sense of ownership of these
resources. It's our oil, it's our gold, and therefore you have the intensity
of violence in those kind of areas rising as a result of elites wanting to
ensure that they are in a position to profit from this increased interest in
Kenya's mineral and natural resource wealth. It has been given a very
political face by the fact that we are entering a devolved political system,
so we will have governors and senators in these regions who will conceivably
have a say in terms of how these resources are extracted and used, who see
themselves as having the ability to charge rents around these resources.
Baobab: So what does that mean for the people who live in these areas?
JG: What's happening is that there is a massive land grab underway in these
areas of the country that have lots of pastoralists, so their livelihood is
being turned inside out. Now, there's oil. There's gold. There's gas.
There's pasture. And when you combine that with devolution and international
investment-the stakes rise higher and higher. The political intensity
increases, and that's why in these regions the violence has just exploded.
Baobab: So the violence is really a problem of corruption? Wasn't that what
the constitutional reforms were supposed to address?
JG: The fundamental reason Kenya went for a devolved government was to
increase accountability. Before, power was centralized to the point that we
had a one-party state - it was very corrupt, there was a climate of fear.
And it was with a great sigh of relief that we left that almost
authoritarian rule. So the things that Kenya has been pushing for ever
since-improvements in the judiciary, in the police force, in government
institutions-has all been focused on increasing the accountability of the
elite. We have a very entrenched elite in Kenya, a very ossified elite.
Baobab: Kenya has a chronic hunger problem: this year 2m people do not have
enough food, last year it was 4m. It is predictable, and yet is continues.
Is this a corruption problem, is this an incompetence problem, is this a
political problem? How do you think about it?
JG: It is a broad governance problem. A drought is made by God, a famine is
made by man. It draws on all the issues you mention. It used to be every 10
years that we would have a big drought. Then it became every four years, and
then it became every two years. This is due to climate change, increase
population, soil degradation, etc. We have a strategic grain reserve, and
that's when it becomes a corruption problem. Drought is big money for the
corrupt elite-because it gives you the opportunity to import maize and other
staples into the country and make a killing off of the backs of hungry
people.
Baobab: Do you mean that humanitarian agencies are declaring a hunger crisis
in order to help the elites?
JG: No. I think that there is a deliberate lack of preparedness on the part
of the elites. Kenya does not need international assistance. Kenya collects
enough in taxes to feed its people. We actually don't need all this
assistance, but the preparations are not made. It's an underlying
fundamental governance failure that creates a situation where you have this
rather ridiculous relationship that is sustained and really you know, it is
up to Kenyans to sort ourselves out in this area. The humanitarian agencies
are stuck - what can they do? They come in-they genuinely save lives in a
situation where the local government is not that interested in doing that.
Then they step back and go to another place where the same thing is
happening and then come back in a few years time. I think some of the
humanitarian agencies don't have it as part of their mandate to look at
these governance issues-they respond to emergencies.
Baobab: Is Kenya more corrupt than other African countries?
JG: Kenya is more corrupt than other African countries.
Baobab: Why?
JG: It's our history. At independence, the state that emerged was a colonial
one in many respects - small, aggressive, violent and engineered to serve
the interests of only a small elite. Corruption can create an elite which
creates a system of patronage that in itself produces a level of stability,
where the goodies are being shared out by an elite, and a bit of it trickles
down to the poor. Those poor who complain are locked up or killed, and
that's the way it has been for a long time.
TE: Is one party better than the other?
JG: There is not much difference within the elite. Elections concentrate
political minds, and that creates forces, tactics that are sometimes not
dissimilar regardless of who's wearing the hat. Elites are using old methods
to keep themselves in power. I want to say that we talk about tribes in
Kenya-there are really on two tribes: rich and poor.
------------[ Sent via the dehai-wn mailing list by dehai.org]--------------
Received on Thu Nov 29 2012 - 18:06:58 EST
