The Culture of Corruption in Kenya
Annual General Meeting of the German Development Service in Kenya, Trisan Hotel, Friday 1st December, 2000
The Culture of Corruption in Kenya
Presentation by John Githongo[1]
I WOULD LIKE to start by thanking ALGAK and the German Development Service for inviting me to come and speak on corruption here today.
In talking about corruption let me also start by pointing out that it is not intrinsically useful to make qualitative distinctions between corruption in various parts of the world. At the end of the day it often means the same thing: the abuse of public office for private gain. However, this can be broken up into petty corruption, grand corruption and looting.
Petty corruption involves relatively minor amounts of money or gifts changing hands where one of the parties is themselves a relatively minor official in the organisation or system within which the transaction takes place. For example paying a policeman 50 Shillings to ignore the fact that your car’s licence has expired.
Grand corruption most often involves businessmen and government officials of senior rank and the figures involved are significant. Examples of these are kick-backs paid to officials on government public works contracts. And by the way in regard to grand corruption, there is now an increasing focus on the supply side of corruption and not surprisingly, therefore, the attention is shifting to include the private sector. Last year Transparency International issued its Bribe Payers Index or BPI that ranked 19 of the world’s leading exporting countries according to perceptions regarding their propensity to use bribes in transacting business internationally. Sweden and Australia emerged as those least likely to pay bribes while South Korea and China scored at the bottom of the list. At the beginning of this year Transparency International released a Bribe Payers Survey that ranked key economic sectors according to which ones were most likely to have public officials who extorted bribes from the business community. Public works and construction came out on top of the list followed by the arms and defence industry; and, in the power sector including petroleum and energy. Agriculture was at the bottom of the list as the one least likely to have public officials who extorted bribes from the business community.
The third type of corruption I call ‘looting’ and I have recently seen described as large-scale economic delinquency. It differs slightly from petty and grand corruption, however, and is sadly prevalent in those Third World countries where institutions of governance are weak. Looting usually involves the kind of scams whose figures are so huge that when they are successfully concluded they have macroeconomic implications fairly quickly – they cause banks to collapse, inflation to rise, the exchange rate to decline. The impetus for looting is often political and it happens under the direction or with the acquiescence of the dominant political players in a given country. It often involves, for example, the printing of currency to fund fictitious projects; using public revenues to award enormous contracts to individuals who never supply the goods or the services – in Uganda they call this ‘air supply’ because you get paid but only have to supply air. The primary movers in the companies behind these scams don’t just cream off 10 or 20 percent with a cut within that for the higher-ups. In these deals the cut can be as high as 100 percent and most of the cash goes to the higher-ups. These resources fund election campaigns and pay for private militias in many African countries.
Another important distinction between grand corruption and looting, in my opinion, is this: in cases of grand corruption a minister may take a kickback of 100,000 dollars on a government road construction contract worth a million dollars. The road is built but its quality does not reflect its cost. Looting on the other hand is a much more premeditated activity because it often entails the deliberate creation of a government project for which resources will be allocated and spent but the project is not meant to be completed from the outset. If grand corruption is manslaughter, then looting is murder. Looting, as far as I can tell is most prevalent in a number of Third World countries and I have also heard of it in relation to certain countries in the former Communist bloc. Typically, in a country where grand corruption and looting happen regularly corruption has become systemic and pervades a society.
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It is no longer possible to engage in a conversation with a Kenyan, almost any Kenyan, about the state of the nation without the topic of corruption coming up. When the topic does arise the opinions offered in regard to it are almost always strong ones. The lack of transparency in the conduct of national affairs in Kenya as in all other countries where it happens undermines economic development mainly through the misallocation of resources on a macroeconomic scale. Corruption undermines the country’s fledgling democracy by putting an unofficial price on all significant political positions that should under normal circumstances inform national policy. Widespread corruption has undermined public faith in national institutions and leadership. This has turned Kenya into a low-trust society prone to increasing bouts of instability and violence and where many national problems quickly seem to develop an air of intractability about them.
Resulting from the compounding of all these trends is economic stagnation, political instability and social decay best and most directly revealed in the daily press every day in Kenya. Statistically, for example, nearly 40-47 percent of the Kenyan population lives in absolute poverty that is concentrated among subsistence farmers, pastoralists, people without any education and among unskilled workers. Corruption is considered an important cause of poverty because it promotes unfair distribution of income and inefficient use of resources[2]. By the late 1990s, it was estimated that 25 percent[3] of Kenyans cannot meet their minimum daily calorie requirements even if they concentrated all their spending on food and a World Bank report in 1996 indicated that the top 10 percent of Kenya’s population earned 47 percent of the national income[4]. According to the same report, these inequalities were second only to those reported for Brazil. The political implications of sharp economic inequalities are sometimes even more potent than those of poverty when considered alone as an issue.
Transparency International was founded in 1993 as a non-governmental organisation dedicated to increasing government accountability and curbing both international and national corruption. It combats corruption by collaborating with all stakeholders including the state, civil society and the private sector. It is organised into a network of 77 autonomous National Chapters around the world and has a presence in 100 countries. TI-Kenya is one of a total of 12 Chapters in the East and South African region. National Chapters develop their own programmes to suit conditions on the ground in their own country.
TI–Kenya was registered as a Company Limited by Guarantee on the 14th of February 1999. The motivation for establishing a Chapter in Kenya was simply the Kenyan situation vis-à-vis corruption: Kenya has a poor reputation internationally where corruption is concerned and its ranking in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Indexes (CPIs) is an indication of this. In 1996, Kenya was ranked third from the bottom of all the countries surveyed, with only Pakistan and Nigeria below it on the list. In the expanded 1998 index Kenya ranked 73rd out of the 85 countries surveyed and 90th out of 99 in the 1999 index. This year Kenya was ranked 82nd out of 90 countries. The lack of transparency in both public and private affairs has helped fuel corruption – now widely acknowledged one of the greatest challenges facing Kenya today. It undermines the country’s fledgling democracy, human rights, economic well-being, growth and development, and national stability.
Speaking at a debate on corruption organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs earlier this year, the director of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority, Justice Aaron Ringera, revealed that a recent study by his institution had found that, presented with an opportunity to profit from corruption, a vast majority of Kenyans admitted they would jump at such an opportunity. For me this reveals the fact that the fight against graft in countries like Kenya and Nigeria is not about Saints versus Sinners – its primarily about lots and lots Sinners pragmatically deciding to change future behaviour. The fight against corruption has a lot to do with reducing its profitability. Lets face it: in Kenya today and in many other Third World countries when you look around you many of those described as ‘rich’ have come to find themselves in such a delightful condition because they have in the past engaged in activities that in West would be described as corruption and invite legal sanction. The fact of the matter is that for a long time corruption has worked, it has worked extremely well as a method of accumulating wealth. I always say that the great irony in many of our African countries is that no where else in the world does one find periodic anti-corruption drives of the intensity and ferocity of those found in Africa. Across the continent governments have been periodically been overthrown and their leaders lined up on beaches to be shot dead primarily for being corrupt. What this demonstrates is that its not the extremity of punishment that matters but the certainty. It does not matter if engaging in corruption is a hanging offence if I am confident of not being caught. If it were only a one-month-in-jail offence but I was more or less sure of getting caught this one month sentence would have a much more significant deterrent effect.
C=M+D-A
Corruption is often defined using the equation that:
Corruption = Monopoly + Discretion – Accountability.
C for corruption equals M for monopoly plus D for discretion minus A for accountability
Thus corruption has been associated with systems and organisations that don’t face much competition economically and or democratically; systems and organisations where those who lead them enjoy wide discretionary power and where they are not held accountable for the decisions they make. This popular equation omits one vital variable and that is ‘V’ for values. For as we have seen in Kenya, we can have good laws on paper and impressive systems that are designed to be accountable and transparent but corruption can persist. I personally believe that we can hold workshops, create new institutions, change laws and draft endless Codes of Conduct to no avail where corruption is concerned unless we start addressing the underlying social, political and economic rationales upon which a value system that facilitates corruption is constructed. I shall examine these issues by starting with a look at the excuses people make to justify engaging in corrupt activities.
Allow me if you will to leave out some of the more generic justifications for corruption that we hear all over the Third World. I shall leave them out because I believe we are already familiar with them. Here I am talking about policemen and civil servants who explain that they take bribes because they cannot live on their monthly salaries; businessmen who say that paying bribes is the only way to guarantee quick services and goods from the government, the only way to win contracts. Let me focus on the justification for graft that’s quite common in some parts of Africa and which has led to the kind of dysfunctional value system that would lead the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority to find that a sample of Kenyans found the vast majority would take bribes.
The most serious corruption that we have seen in Kenya is the one perpetrated by ruling elites and their associates. The Goldenberg scam is the best illustration of the debilitating effects of this kind of corruption. On the economic front it caused a dramatic slide in the value of the Kenya Shilling and a large jump in the inflation rate. Politically, the resources it availed affected the conduct of the 1992 general election and served to dramatically diminish the credibility of the Kenyan government in the eyes of the international community. On this front as well it even touched various leaders from many political parties. It had its social effects as well, entrenching an atmosphere of impunity with regard to corruption.
An environment where corruption is rampant and corrupt activities are seen as an important method of accumulation is often characterized by dysfunctional attitudes towards what constitutes corruption. This high impunity environment with regard to graft can often see the corrupt lauded as latter day Robin Hood-style heroes. In Kenya, for example, some of the largest contributors to the construction of churches in certain parts of the country are among individuals often mentioned in the press in relation to cases of major corruption. An anecdotal indicator of this kind of situation and its effect on national morale is, for example, a falling regard for the profession of teaching among the youth. In Kenya and other parts of Africa there was a time when if you went to a rural village the local school teacher, headman, chief, pastor and other such individuals were among the most highly regarded community leaders. Today because it is the corrupt who seem to succeed most in terms of acquiring material wealth, the product a teacher sells – education - simply does not seem to have as a high a value as it once did. Short-cuts to wealth seem more effective. Many youths opt to wait for that single big deal that can bring sudden wealth by virtue of what are euphemistically described as ‘connections’.
The relationship between corruption and politics is an important one and is not only a problem for us in Kenya where what is described as corruption more often than not finances the politics of patronage, we have seen that it is also a problem in a country like Germany. In the land where we have Transparency International’s headquarters the former Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, became embroiled in a campaign finance scandal. In the US, major questions continue to be asked about the methods of lobbyists and the system that allows them so much influence in the first place. So these questions are truly international.
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Taking the focus to local government what has emerged over the last few decades in many Third World countries is that the weakness of many central government institutions and the pressure to improve local services and respond to needs at the local level have led many countries to pursue policies of decentralization that give more responsibilities to local government. Responsive, accountable, transparent, and effective local government is a goal that many residents now demand. Nevertheless, in many countries, attaining this goal remains difficult. If anything, local government is sometimes thought to be more corrupt than central government, for it can be argued that it is often at the local level where issues like nepotism, tribalism and other ‘isms’ can be manifested most profoundly. Our own experienced here in Kenya, especially when one considers the recently reported cases of graft uncovered in Councils both in Nairobi and Kisumu, can perhaps attest to this reality. Local government is that part of government that is closest to citizens and the part that may touch them in their daily lives.
Corruption at the local level undermines the delivery of basic services to residents and importantly undermines efforts to make democracy effective. The elements that are involved in strengthening municipal services are diverse. Local governments, like central governments, undertake a variety of tasks that may be susceptible to corruption. These include procurement, local police and judicial action, administrative actions involving licensing, the provision of services, and the undertaking of development programs. In larger cities, they also include sophisticated financial transactions undertaken as these cities, increasingly, raise substantial sums of money in national and international markets. More than with central government, local authorities are judged by their residents on the level and quality of the services they deliver and their responsiveness to the needs of their inhabitants. Corruption clearly undermines this. And so in Kenya whereas the issues such as constitutional reform can affect the perceptions citizens have with regard to their government, at the local level perceptions are shaped by whether there is water in taps; whether the local dispensary has drugs and the like. Furthermore, as the level of government closest to the population, a corrupt local government undermines respect for authority and a belief in democracy.
Transparency International via its fledgling local government programme has been exploring a number initiatives aimed at local government, such as:
-City Assessment Missions
-Integrity Conferences at the Municipal level