US Trade Representative Katherine Tai addressing journalists at Serena Hotel, Nairobi on July 19, 2023.
In the coming days, there will be a half-hearted show at fighting corruption. It will be big, lots of noise, lots of big names, arraignments, sackings and hype.
Call me cynical but none of this will be because the scales have fallen off the eyes of the high and mighty and they have realised that graft will kill our country: American companies have complained of being asked to haul briefcases of dollars to big offices to get tenders.
They have also complained that some parts of the Judiciary could be taking orders from elsewhere and are not entirely free and, therefore, US companies could lose their money, or time, in cooked litigation. So, expect a cooling off of efforts to sabotage Chief Justice Martha Koome and judges who rule against the government.
Foreign companies can complain and be ignored by the host government. But Americans are different. First, the US government has supported Kenya Kwanza strongly; it would be unwise to antagonise such a pivotal patron.
Secondly, the aim of Washington, especially in Africa, is to support US business, especially in competition with the Chinese. The policy, I seem to have read somewhere, is “access and influence”. That means be able to make money and to get us to do their bidding.
Lastly, when US companies complain, they are not just whining; their government listens and does something about it. If Chinese companies are getting all the juicy deals and Americans are being taken to the cleaners by extortionists at “all levels” of government, it means the over-arching US strategic intent in this part of Africa—to edge out Chinese business and Beijing’s influence—is not being achieved and this becomes serious potatoes.
The US, the UK and the European Union generally supported Candidate William Ruto over Raila Odinga because they understood him to be more supportive of the West and its commercial ambitions in Africa and less likely to continue the debt-soaked love affair between Kenya and China of the previous government. Mr Odinga, 50 years later, still carries a whiff of the East about him, given his education in East Germany and his alleged communist leanings. So Mr Ruto ticked the “Access” box.
Mr Ruto, I suppose, was more engaging and eloquent and, therefore, reassuring to those seeking to satisfy themselves that he represented no risk to Western interests and would be willing, and capable, of giving the Chinese the boot. But Mr Odinga has a stubborn streak from here to Bondo and is more likely to go off on an ideological tangent and upset the apple cart.
My farmer’s reasoning tells me that President Ruto is now in a position where he has to reassure his US benefactors that they did not make a mistake by banking on him. Thus the impending “crackdown”.
But let me put aside this section of the farm and move to the other ridge.
All countries, indeed all communities of humans, will face a hardship, a risk in their environment, that tempers their motivations. There was a clip doing the rounds on social media of waves washing ashore, drenching roads and sweeping holidaymakers from the beach and into a roads in the Maldives.
That string of low-lying islands is at risk from rising sea levels. Japan has earthquakes, the US has Frankenstein weather—tornadoes, hurricanes, extreme cold. England has that gloomy, maddeningly endless drizzle which has driven generations of Englishmen out of their country to come and cause trouble here. China, I’d guess, has its huge population to keep everyone awake at night. Every society has that one problem which, if not addressed, will tear it apart.
Kenya’s is corruption. We have been corrupt since 1963 but I guess it started slowly, confined to a privileged class or ethnic elite, building to the looting of the Moi era. But in all these years, the kind of free-for-all suggested in the American complaint has not been achieved before; where, right from the clueless counties to the rarefied pinnacles of the national government, is a riot of bribes and extortion. One hopes it is not that bad; one fears it might be so.
Corruption will destroy the economy and the potential of our country, replace our values and undermine our capacity to continue to exist as a nation. Sadly, this view is not shared by those who think corruption and extortion are marks of an “enterprising” person. I hope the American pressure at least forces the system to smoke out a few bad hombres.
* * *
Speaking of bad hombres, Donald Trump looks like he is going to beat Joe Biden in November. President Biden is looking a little wan these days, perhaps not the perfect image of strength and command in a world where the Middle East is truly on fire and the Ukraine war is draining the US treasury with no end in sight.
The President’s running mate is a black woman (bless her heart) in a powerful but racially divided country that has never elected a woman president, has had a minority president only once in its 247-year history and has previously considered electing a Catholic a very brave departure from its white Anglo-Saxon male norm.
Prepare for Trump.
- Mr Mathiu, a media consultant at Steward-Africa, is a former Editor-in-Chief of Nation Media Group. [email protected].
