Dr. Oculi comments on the corruption issue in Kenya:
The African-Americans have a folk wisdom which goes
someting like this:'if white folks dont like something
a black man is doing, then that black man must be
doing something good for black folks'. In April 2000,
a public television channel in the Washingto DC/
Maryland area aired a lot of anti-Mugabe views by
"experts" on African affairs. It provoked a counter
perspective from mainly African-American callers who
insisted the Mugabe's record must be seen in the
context of the brutal racial dictatorship which Prime
Minister Ian Smith had presided over before him; as
well as the vast lands being held by white farmers who
had gotten "ownership" with the use of much more
despicable, horrendous and criminally casual violence
against the Ndebele and Shona ancestral owners. I
found that racial divide over the sociology of
knowledge, and the utilization of the historical
record for political goals, most interesting. I was
visiting Howard University where I was inducted into
that American tribal ritual known as "book signing".
My book "DISCOURSES ON AFRICAN AFFAIRS" had just been
released by Africa World Press.
I recalled this incident to a Kenyan official who was
in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, for the 2005 mid-term
summit of the African Union. I was interested in his
side of that most colourful claim made by the British
Ambassador to Kenya, Mr. Clay, that Kenya's cabinet
ministers were so corrupt that they had vomited over
his shoes. The official immediately referred me to that
famous proverb in Chinua Achebe's literary
classic:"THINGS FALL APART". It goes thus: "the elders
say that if you see a toad jumping about in the
daytime, something (a snake) is after its life".
British diplomats to Kenya may not be required to read
Chinua Achebe as part of their being scrubbed down in
preparation for the job, he said, but that doesn't make
Achebe's wit less pan-African in its relevance.
According to him,the British government has been
insisting that Kenya must privatize (or sell to them)
some key institutions including the Kenya National
Bank and its telecommunications agency. It so happens
that Mwai Kibaki, Kenya's president, is
internationally noted as a brilliant economist. He was
awarded a First Class degree in Economics by Makerere
University in Kampala before Uganda, and his native
country, Kenya, became independent. Even Wole Soyinka,
Chinua Achebe, and Ngugi Wa Thiongo never passed
through that colonial eye of the educational needle!
Kibaki doesn't see economic sense and benefit to Kenya
in the British greed for Kenya's key economic
institutions.
The European Union diplomats in Nairobi are also not
too happy with President Kibaki's social policies like
free primary education for all; economic measures like
injecting funds into small scale businesses, and
letting Kenya's private sector and NGOs have a say in
the budget without the final veto of the IMF/World
Bank economic policy police. President Kibaki was the
Vice President to the former big man of Kenya,Daniel
Arap Moi, and knows what role these institutions
played in running Kenya's economy into decay while Moi
held power for twenty four years. He is not hearing
any mea-culpas from them today, and finds it difficult
resisting the temptation to regard them with revulsion
and contempt, while recognizing their right to
practice the famous British tribal wisdom that:
"Britain has no permanent friends, only permanent
interests".
It is within this context that the cacophony by the
diplomats from the European Union (and their tools in
the media), about corruption in Kenya, should be
analysed and interpreted. Africa's scholars owe it
themselves and to Africa to insist on research, and
rigorous research too, and on seeing the coating on
the tongue that is making these accusations. Without
that we will return to the simple habit of believing
the NATO view of Patrice Lumumba.
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