By Abdi Ali
Published May 10, 2018
If you believe that Government exists for the good of the governed or the citizenry, don’t read this book. If you believe that governors put public interest ahead of their own, don’t read this book. If your confidence and trust in people, especially politicians and state institutions is easily swayed, don’t read this book. If you believe that what you don’t know doesn’t hurt you, don’t read this book. If you subscribe to the saying that where ignorance is bliss it is folly to be wise, don’t read this book. Because this book is likely to leave you disillusioned about your Government.
Kenya: Looters and Grabbers (54 Years of Corruption and Plunder by the Elite, 1963-2017) by Joe Khamisi, a former journalist, diplomat and legislator in Kenya, reads like an expose of who is behind the plague known as corruption in Kenya.
Reading the introduction of the more than 700-page publication that is divided into four sections corresponding to each of Kenya’s four post-independence Presidents—Jomo Kenyatta (1964-1978), Daniel arap Moi (1978-2002), Mwai Kibaki (2002-2013), Uhuru Kenyatta (2013-present) may be all that one may need because it summarises the subject under discussion fully.
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By abolishing the federal system of government at the onset of independence in 1963 and concentrating executive powers in the Presidency, Khamisi writes, Jomo Kenyatta gave himself immense powers, including capacity to eliminate opponents. He also allowed tribalism to fester and influence every sector of nationhood, leading to entrenched corruption manifested through nepotism, abuse of power, embezzlement and various forms of misappropriation, influence-peddling, prevarication, insider trading and abuse of public funds.
Khamisi, who has written three other books–The Politics of Betrayal: Diary of a Kenyan Legislator (2011), Dash Before Dusk: A Slave Descendant’s Journey in Freedom (2014), The Wretched Africans: A Study of Rabai and Freretown Slave Settlements (2016)– argues that Corruption is not just the biggest impediment to Kenya’s economic development but that it is also the main cause of abject poverty that affects more than half the population of the country.
Saying ‘Corruption and bribery are encountered everywhere, Khamisi says the vice ‘has extended beyond the public sector to private and civil society sectors…(and) created an environment and a culture that encourages unethical practices…where the malfeasance of some have encouraged a large number of Kenyans to engage in corruption without need to justify their behaviors’.
‘Each one of the Kenyan presidents – together with their families and cronies – amassed enormous personal wealth through means which were not entirely lucid or honest. They used their positions to snatch large pieces of prime public land, raided public coffers, built luxury mansions, bought expensive personal items, and banked their loot overseas away from prying eyes,’ Khamisi writes.
‘By mid-1990s, the thieves of the 1970s and 1980s had turned themselves into a Leviathan at the heart of all of Kenya’s governance institutions, especially creating a criminal elite who, with their offspring, were above the law’, according to the 2016 report of the Katiba Institute which promotes understanding of constitutional matters.
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Corruption has also become a threat to national security. Corrupt police and military officers are reportedly bribed to facilitate entry of terrorists resulting in attacks and deaths to innocent civilians inside Kenya.
When Jomo Kenyatta, the man who became the first President of Kenya came out of detention in 1961, Khamisi writes, he was landless and penniless. Three years after becoming President, however, Khamisi writes Kenyatta had accumulated more than 500 000 acres of land across the country when he died in 1978. Kenyatta, Khamisi writes, had gone on ‘an acquisition binge, obtaining everything he could find for himself and his family – from cars to real estate. Moreover, he did not restrain officials in government from engaging in illegal activities and in amassing wealth without minding laws. It was like a contagious disease. It engulfed everyone at the top of the public sector leaving in its wake impunity and a feeling of hopelessness on the part of the rest of Kenyans’. He says that Kenyatta’s fourth wife, Ngina Muhoho, was the one who went around inspecting properties to be ‘grabbed’.
As Vice-President and Minister in Kenyatta’s government during the high tide of land grabbing in the 1960s and 1970s, Daniel arap Moi, the second President of Kenya, ‘became part of the African elites to take advantage of the plunder’, stretching his wealth after he became president, and by the time of his retirement in 2002, he was in the big league of land ownership. Mwai Kibaki, the third President, ‘joined the rush for land like everyone else in government’ when ‘he became Minister for Finance and Economic Planning in Kenyatta’s government in 1969’, Khamisi writes. ‘He continued to amass wealth as Moi’s Vice-President and as President to a point of owning an estimated 30 000 acres in the White Highlands and elsewhere and interests in numerous private companies by the time he retired in 2013’. On his part, Uhuru Kenyatta, the current President, was in 2017 ‘rated by the prestigious financial organization Forbes as being one of the richest Africans, Khamisi’s book says.
The book says Commissions of Inquiry reports not only attest to the severity of corruption, money-laundering, and land-grabbing in Kenya but also name family members and friends of the four Presidents, as well as senior officials, politicians, and prominent businesspeople.
One of the first things Kenyatta did after becoming Prime Minister and before Kenya became a Republic on 12 December 1963, was to order a Rolls Royce car from the London’s Motor Show, a Lincoln convertible from American businessmen, and “a luxury customized Mercedes for his use without any state budgetary provisions or (even) personal intent to pay, Khamisi writes.
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‘In so doing, Kenyatta became the first Kenyan official to violate procurement procedures which required that the Central Tender Board (CTB) call for multiple quotations from suppliers. It was a colonial process which did not change until the 1970s. Kenyatta also ignored the advice of Finance Minister James Gichuru who told him Kenya was short of capital and therefore bankrupt and could not afford the expensive vehicle,’ he writes. ‘That single action by Kenyatta of infringing procurement rules set the precedence for Kenyan civil servants to follow and for corruption to thrive throughout his regime and the three administrations that followed’.
Another precedent Kenyatta set was in not paying his personal bills, according to this book that no bookshop in Kenya wants to sell out of fear of being sued.
‘It was known publicly that Kenyatta did not pay his personal bills and that applied to both the small claimant in the farm and the big businessman in the city. A good example is when he received an invoice to pay G Campagnola, the man who built his house at Gatundu in 1963. Kenyatta refused to honor it, contended the Italian contractor’s work was a “contribution to the independence celebrations”
The name of Kenyatta, Khamisi writes, ‘was linked to land-grabbing, poaching, corruption, and fraud’, with an American diplomat describing Kenyatta’s time in government as a “robber baron era,” in which ‘everyone stole with impunity and any efforts to halt corruption were quashed.’
‘One of Kenyatta’s most serious errors is his tacit assent to the acquisitiveness of some of his Ministers and civil servants. Soon after attaining power, they began to buy (sometimes with money gained by dubious means) – sometimes from loans obtained from local banks – large houses, farms, motor cars and other possessions,” Malcolm MacDonald, the last British Governor who also served as first British High Commissioner to Kenya at independence, is quoted as having observed of Kenyatta and his associates nine years after leaving Nairobi in 1965. ‘This development not only tainted his administration with a reputation for corruption, but also produced a wide economic division between the governors and the governed, the haves and the have-nots…it would have been more prudent as well as moral if Kenyatta had enforced on his colleagues and subordinates a stricter code of conduct, preventing them from becoming such a conspicuously privileged class’.
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‘Of all the blunders Kenyatta made as President,’ Khamisi writes, ‘none was more damaging to his international reputation as the involvement of his wife, Ngina, and daughter, Margaret, in the illegal business of game poaching. It was during Kenyatta’s time that poaching of animals for elephant tusks, rhino horns, skins and other animal products, took a histrionic dimension. Illegal animal killings went on in almost all parks and game reserves, but Tsavo National Park was the most hit. The magnitude of poaching and illegal sale of ivory in general emerged in July 1968 when authorities raided a warehouse in Mombasa and found crates marked “jaggery” though containing a cache of ivory worth GBP.52,000 (KES.7 million), destined for the Persian Gulf.’
Ngina and close relatives are said to have earned Sh800 000 annually from illegal ivory trade.
Khamisi quotes New Scientist, an international science and technology magazine, as having reported in 1975 that ‘Ngina helped arrange for ivory tusks to be transported out of the country on State planes.’
A British official is reported as having described Ngina Kenyatta, who Khamisi writes also exported charcoal to the Middle East without caring about the long-term effects of deforestation, as being ‘very beautiful but massively corrupt’.
Khamisi then moves to land-grabbing at the Kenyan coast under the leadership of Provincial Commissioner Eliud Mahihu.
‘The grabbers began building hotels and holiday mansions and some erected concrete walls that blocked out beach access. Among those who acquired or built hotels in the south coast were Njenga Karume, a businessman-cum-politician and Kenneth Matiba, a top civil servant and later politician,” Khamisi writes.
Questioning whether Kenyatta was a nationalist or tribalist, the writer says Kenyatta did not nationalise but ‘kikuyunised’ Kenya after independence.
‘Kenyatta’s Kikuyunization policy,’ Khamisi writes, ‘was a success’: the Kikuyu dominated the civil service and the private sector, owned banks, commercial and industrial plants, and controlled hospitality, transport, and agricultural sectors.
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When Moi succeeded Kenyatta in 1978 he pledged ‘continuity’ of the Kenyatta Era through his Fuata Nyayo (follow Kenyatta’s example or footsteps) slogan. He began replacing Kikuyu elements in his Government with his own Kalenjin, Khamisi writes.
While Kenyatta had initiated corruption, and made it a pastime for well-placed government officials, Moi institutionalised it and made it routine within all ranks of society, Khamisi writes.
Upon ascending to power, Mwai Kibaki dishonoured a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) entered with the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that would have given Raila Odinga the position of prime Minister. He also allowed Members of Parliament to increase their salaries and perks exponentially, approved an increase on his own salary to US$.312,000 (KES.32.3 million) per year while almost half of the population lived below poverty line and awarded his Ministers and top officials brand new E240s Mercedes Benz to replace the “outdated” E220, placing eight of them in the office of the President and ordered an S600L for himself .
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When Uhuru Kenyatta took over from Mwai Kibaki, tribalism, nepotism and cronyism were his trademark, according to Khamisi. Uhuru Kenyatta followed the footsteps of all his predecessors in embracing tribalism with all its degenerative consequences.
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Kenya: Looters and Grabbers (54 Years of Corruption and Plunder by the Elite, 1963-2017) has Endnotes, Abbreviations, a Glossary and a Bibliography to assist readers interested in further information to get it from the cited sources.
However, one feels the book could have been shorter were the information in it synthesised and summarised instead of being repeated under each President. Would the value of the book not have been enhanced had it been summarised under 54 Years of Corruption in Kenya instead of it being split under Kenyatta, Moi, Kibaki and Kenyatta all of who use the mould designed, built and used by Jomo Kenyatta with same results .
