When you look at it closely, you begin to realise that the kind of grand corruption we see revealed to us on a day to day basis is our national trauma.
You could quite possibly make the conclusion that every generation of Kenyans has that corruption scandal or scandals that affected the way they saw the role of government in their lives and their attitude towards the country.
Every generation has that scandal which made them lose faith in where the country was going, a scandal that encapsulated all the decay that surrounded them in that moment.
For Kenya’s Millennial generation, it was the NYS scandal that showed them the true colours of what the real promise of a Kenyatta government would be.
For those who came of age in the 00s, it would be the Anglo Leasing scandal and the 90s gave us the Goldenberg scandal.
Each one of these scandals had a psychological imprint that fundamentally changed the way those who witnessed it viewed Kenya, with little shred of hope left after the collective sense of betrayal begins to settle in the population.
Eventually when the trauma comes to pass, as Kenyans, we are in no denial about our corrupt environment, we begrudgingly accept it and as a result it is permeated into our culture.
It is now quite possible that there are Kenyans out there who have experienced corruption since birth and given the current state of affairs, will likely experience it all the way to death as well, notwithstanding the fact that they will pay bribes to get basic needs like jobs, healthcare and education.
It is no wonder that seven in 10 Kenyans report paying bribes to obtain quick government services.
Kenyans have been pushed into a corner, they feel helpless in many situations and paying bribes is the only way that they can get unstuck.
Bribery and corruption have long been seen as necessities and in business circles, it is “the cost of doing business”.
What the culture of bribery also means is that there are many people out here getting away with things that they should not be getting away with.
The corruption at the Immigration Department has long been seen as an enabler to many of the crimes that happen in Kenya, allowing sex traffickers and drug smugglers to roam freely within the country.
We like to think that bribery and corruption are the result of poorly designed and inefficient institutions, that one pays a bribe because things don’t work.
The evidence, however, shows the contrary.
Our institutions, policies and public services are the result of corrupt, bribery ridden leadership and systems.
The evidence comes from every single corruption scandal we see and shows that our systems are designed with corruption in mind.
We may be in a case where the designers of these systems seek no actual change but to improve the benefits they derive from these very systems.
If someone else is taking away from those benefits, they are a threat that must be stamped out or taken over.
Furthermore, it is impossible to talk about Kenya’s corruption culture without talking about the media.
Media, be it digital or traditional, is the stage where the performance of corruption plays it out for audiences to consume.
The news serves a very critical function for citizens here as unfortunately, we don’t have the time to peruse through parliamentary and audit reports and neither do we understand them.
According to the EACC, 92 per cent of Kenyans, as a result, hear about corruption from media outlets with radio serving as the biggest source of awareness.
Paying attention to the media environment around corruption, however, reveals something else about corruption that is worth taking note of.
It is no secret that in light of dwindling circulation and consumption of news media, the perception amongst media practitioners is that corruption delivers the clicks, sells papers, makes TV audiences tune in.
For a news junkie audience like Kenya’s, one could argue that corruption scandals have become a form of entertainment, with news specials almost feeling like a script cut straight out of a Hollywood movie.
The framing and settings of corruption stories take a turn where the amount that has been stolen takes centre stage with a supporting cast of characters.
By now, given the improvements in measurement of the impact of news on audiences, especially given the advent of digital media, some patterns have definitely begun to emerge.
It is no coincidence to find media practitioners discussing the idea that Kenyans may have been desensitised to reporting on the amount of cash lost in a scandal.
It is not uncommon to see tweets dismissing a certain amount revealed in a scandal as being too small to warrant prosecution.
In some ways the media has primed the audience to be hungrier for bigger scandals for their entertainment, forgetting that accountability is still something that needs to be pursued.
The follow-up to a lot of scandals in the end is almost always missing.
We have gone from denial to acceptance with regard to corruption and this apparent acceptance is fuelled by involving the general public in corruption through indirect “benefits”.
Donations to churches, building infrastructure in strategic areas, offering jobs in government offices, erodes the public’s emancipatory power and reduces the effect of collective efforts towards citizen accountability.
A large majority of us are failing to ask critical questions of our leadership. We see people often putting their personal interests before the country’s collective interests, with the false belief that collective interest does not help them much.
Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko knows this well, and he has created a brand as “man of the people” through acts of service conducted by the Sonko Rescue Team.
It is not strange to find that Sonko or any other politician under prosecution has ardent defenders and this is mostly because his supporters are willing to forgive his “success”.
It is evident that corruption in Kenya has become a culture among some political leaders, business people and the population. It is time we took a step back and looked again at what corruption is making us do and understood what it is doing to our society in a broader sense.
It is something I’m grappling with myself to understand beyond the headlines that I read every now and then.
Although the environment in which we live to some extent breeds the rot, the silver lining is that we know that there are many people who have not been consumed by the decay of ethical values.
I salute those individuals and institutions that choose to break away from the culture of corruption and rather promote a culture of whistleblowing, transparency and accountability.
Kenya will hopefully one day be yours.
Credit: Source link