That we are all equally human, we should all have equal rights of some sort, the argument goes; equal opportunity, equal outcomes, equal by some measure. Michaela Wrong’s It’s Our Turn to Eat provides a living, detailed, vibrant story of human beings conspiring to deny equal rights for all – embodied by Kenya’s corrupt politicians and the inherited system of political patronage at the heart of Kenya’s recent electoral violence. This story was the subject of Monday’s event hosted by the Cato Institute, featuring Wrong, with comments by the former Vice Chairman and Co-Founder of Transparency International, Frank Vogl.
The story provided harrowing testimony to human equality, by reminding us that people of all races are equally capable of extraordinary courage, and extraordinary crime.
“John Githongo sees a certain racism in the lower standards for governance that the international donor community holds for African governments, and I have come to agree with him,” Wrong said. Githongo is the main protagonist of It’s Our Turn to Eat, and had been permanent secretary for governance and ethics in the Office of the President of Kenya. Appointed by the newly and democratically elected President Mwai Kibaki in 2002, Githongo was effectively Kenya’s first anti-corruption czar. The book tells the story of the immediate resistance Githongo encountered as the new government simply took the old system of ethnic patronage inherited from British colonizers and turned it to favor their own ethnic group that had been locked out of power, first under the British and again under Kenya’s first two presidents, Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi.
As Wrong reported, “It was ‘their turn to eat,’ Kibaki’s administration said privately,” telling of their looting official foreign aid funds on behalf of their tribe. Githongo’s struggles drove him to seek hiding in Wrong’s own private residence in Kenya, turning in his resignation vicariously through her. He had been fleeing government authorities who sought to silence the one bureaucrat who refused to play along. Now in exile, Githongo is a senior associate faculty member at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford University.
“Where [Best-selling author] Dambisa Moyo goes wrong and Wrong is right,” Vogl commented, is how Moyo places all the blame on Western aid and donor agencies, while Wrong renews the limelight on the long-held leading roles that African politicians have played in taking advantage of such agencies, at the cost of western taxpayers and to the benefit of their ethnic groupings. Vogl added his own personal story of working at the World Bank, where in 1985 he wrote a memo to the World Bank Vice President for Africa, citing these very tendencies of elected officials across the African continent—tendencies Vogl continued encountering as a journalist, anti-corruption activist, and renowned financial communications adviser, for decades onward including today.
Largely absent from that afternoon’s discussion, the private sector and its role in fighting corruption remain somewhat of an afterthought for many anti-corruption efforts. Besides the potential of broad-based economic reforms and their advocates to break down ethnic divisions, a vibrant private sector and the tax revenues it provides are ultimately the best means of keeping politicians accountable to their own people rather than to Western donors or to Chinese Investors. It will take the extraordinary courage, not just from Githongo and other political leaders but also from small farmers and entrepreneurs in the private sector, to wrestle govenments free from the foreign funds addiction.
Published Date: June 22, 2009