A bunch of hypocrites, that is who we are as a nation.
We need to stop pretending and acting like Kenya is corrupt because our leaders are evil. Kenya is corrupt because we all are. We are always bribing our way into one thing or the other. If it is not a parent who knows someone that can get their child into a good school, then it is giving the policeman at Nyayo house ya macho so that we can jump the queue while applying for passports. So normalized has this corrupt system become, that if you do not have an upward of ksh 20,000 you are rest assured of being taken in circles while waiting for your passport. But if you do, you will have it in two days maximum. Twenty thousand, that is what you need in this country to pay as a bribe for a service that costs 7,500.
We’ve built an entire culture on shortcuts and favours, then act shocked when the rot drips from the top.
Just the other day, police recruitments were underway. These recruitments have become so bad that if you do not have hundreds of thousands, you will not even be considered. Half a million shillings for a job that barely pays fifty thousand a month. Then we turn around and curse the police for taking bribes. What did we expect; saints in uniform? Someone that paid all that money to get a job that pays peanuts….and you expect them not to take a bribe? They’re simply recovering their “investment.”
We can riot all we want and chant all the witty slogans we come up with, but the truth is that every time we grease a palm or fake a receipt, every time we bribe someone at immigration or appreciate an officer for looking away, we’re feeding the same monster we claim to hate.
These leaders that we love to demonize are not imported from another planet. They’re born and shaped right here, among us. They grew up observing their parents giving bribes and saw how far corruption could take a person. The same system that taught us to cheat is the same one that raised them.
What comes to mind when you think of the word Corruption? Someone in a suit sitting somewhere in Parliament, signing contentious bills and selling the nation for envelopes, right? Well, it is more than that. Corruption is the small, silent exchanges that happen every day. It’s in the driver who talks nicely to an officer instead of fixing his headlight and the tenderpreneur who inflates a quotation because that’s how things are done.
When a parent pays quite an amount for their child to steal the national exams, what exactly do we expect of this outcome? When a child whose full potential at KCSE exams is a C gets an A due to cheating and goes ahead to study medicine, who then will we blame when this product of corruption “kills” a patient at the operating table?
And we have the audacity to blame our leaders, when we are actually worse than them.
But of all the civil servants trapped in this mess, I pity teachers the most. They pay to be posted and even get promoted. Even something as simple as a transfer….And yet theirs is the one job where there are no bribes to take back.
There are no shortcuts in the classroom.. Just sweat and broken promises. They give their all only to go home counting coins while others swim in stolen millions.
We’ve normalized a system where integrity is punished and dishonesty is rewarded. At this point, the unwritten rule that nobody talks about is if you do not play the game, the game will play you.
And do not let me start on churches, where we gather at least once a week to pray for good leadership. Meanwhile, the very same church leaders that should be guiding the sheep are receiving bribes in fat envelopes behind closed doors, wetting their beaks while misguiding their folk to vote for so and so.
In whose hands are we safe…..no really, in whose hands?
We shout “change!” every five years at rallies and wave flags in the air, as if this time will be different. But why do we lie to ourselves so much? We are a hypocritical nation that votes for who paid more. And it is very sad how the bribes are usually inconsequential things wrapped in t-shirts, flour or a few crisp notes that carry your future.
Less than a year after the so-called leaders get in office, we are crying hard and hitting the streets because they begin recouping their investment. Why do we usually act shocked when it is us who accepted the bribes with wide grins and casted votes voluntarily? They spent millions to get there, and now it’s payback season.
This is just a sick nation, and if it is not votes that are being stolen or bribes being dished out during elections then it is nepotism doing its thing. Look at the Kenya Revenue Authority, or, as Kenyans now call it, the Kenya Relatives Authority. This is the mother organization of nepotism in Kenya where you cannot get employed no matter how qualified you are, unless of course your cousin’s husband’s brother sits somewhere in HR. Jobs, tenders, scholarships, promotions; you name it. Everything filtered through bloodlines and backdoors.
A hypocritical nation, that is what we are.
Our outrage depends on who is caught stealing and not what they stole. If it’s our tribe member or our political hero, then suddenly we are being targeted. We demand justice for the poor, but when our brother lands a government job, we celebrate that it is our time to eat.
Selective morality, that’s what.
And it cuts across everything. When it is your son doing it then it becomes hustling but if it is someone else then it becomes grand corruption. When your daughter brings home heavy shopping then she is street smart but when it is the neighbor’s daughter……then she is a whore.
We shout about SHA and other hospital shenanigans but then turn right around and fake receipts or sneak our kids into schools they didn’t qualify for.
A nation that bribes its way through life cannot claim to hate corruption.
When did the rain start beating us? When did the line between right and wrong become this blurred that corruption has become a national language?
We act as if corruption lives only in State House when in reality it is engrained in our hearts and in our daily habits while we keep hoping for that one perfect leader who will cleanse the nation. But how can a clean leader rise from a dirty people? Whether we like it or not, every corrupt official was once just another ordinary Kenyan who learned early that integrity doesn’t pay.
We created this monster that is now eating at us.
So before we point fingers and curse the leaders we helped elect, let’s all take a long hard look in the mirror.
