/ 7 November 1997

Always something familiar out of Africa

Matthew Engel reports on the troubled heart of Kenya, once Africa’s greatest hope, now with its social fabric crumbling and an election due before the end of the year

It is half way through the equatorial afternoon. In the wood-panelled parliamentary chamber, a grey-haired African in a dark suit gets to his feet on the opposition front bench. “Bwana Speaker,” he begins.

This is how the most optimistic British imagined it would be when they began their withdrawal from Africa almost four decades ago: Westminster democracy exported in kit form and rebuilt in the tropics. And here in the Kenyan National Assembly are all the trappings of home: points of order, the mace, the despatch box, “the ayes have it”.

Unfortunately for Kenya, the ayes always have it. Since independence in 1963, it has been governed by just two men: the founding father, Jomo Kenyatta, and, since 1978, his successor, Daniel arap Moi. President Moi is widely regarded as a corrupt and vicious egomaniac who has tortured dissidents and bled dry what was once Africa’s most promising nation.

Earlier this month Joshua Kulei, the presidential adviser, was accused of having grafted a fortune of 100-million in a country where the per capita income is about 150 a year.

The most staggering thing about this well- presented allegation is that it appeared in a Nairobi magazine, Finance. In Parliament, opposition members are not afraid to make similar comments. The grey-haired African is Martin Shikuku, known as “the people’s watchman”: “Thou shalt harvest what thou hast sown,” he is saying, looking at ministers opposite. “He that harvests what he has not sown is a thief. They harvest everything.”

Shikuku spoke mainly in Swahili. I only discovered later that he also apparently threatened to hire mercenaries to kill the children of two other opposition leaders with whom he is feuding.

The follow-up edition of Finance, which widened its attack to pin corruption allegations on President Moi’s powerful son, Gideon, failed to make it to the Nairobi newsstands. Welcome to Kenya.

The controversy over Nigeria enabled the Moi regime to pass unnoticed among the crowd at the recent Commonwealth summit. And in any case, Kenya exhibits few of the outward signs of traditional dictatorship.

At the moment it is enjoying a remarkable outbreak of vibrant debate. The British can never have allowed anything like this: and for most of the 34 years of independence Kenyatta and Moi never did either. Parliament was a sham until the early 1990s, when Western pressure forced Moi to allow parties other than his own ruling group, Kanu.

But this is more ferment than jolly-good- show free speech. What is allowed in sophisticated Nairobi does not happen upcountry. The Kulei allegations first appeared in a small-town paper, the Rift Valley Times: the publisher and writer were locked up. Troublesome young men who criticise tribal elders and district commissioners are not patted on the head indulgently, either. This is Africa.

The dissent has not happened because the president wanted it. A country dependent on tourism and aid has had to adjust, at least outwardly, to the will of its paymasters.

And it may not last. Moi faces re-election before the end of this year. He may find an excuse to postpone the vote. He may win again, even though he is much hated, because the election will be unfair and the opposition is both split and hopeless.

Anything is possible, including bloody civil war. It is hard to imagine that Kenya can continue on its present path.

Many African leaders have long complained, with some justification, that the Western media give a false impression by only reporting the horsemen of the African apocalypse: coups, wars, famines and epidemics, preferably involving at least 10 000 dead. It is customary to quote Pliny: Ex Africa semper aliquid novi – always something new out of Africa. In fact, there is never anything new out of Africa. What we hear is always the same.

The leaders would like us to report only their successes – which would be even more misleading. But somewhere in between is the day-to-day reality of Africa.

It needs a Dickens rather than a news bulletin to describe it properly. And it is a reality that bears more relation to Dickensian London than Western life in the 1990s: prone to gnawing hunger more often than utter starvation; ordinary, preventible diseases more than epidemics.

The reality reaches its apogee in the urban slums: brutal, elemental, joyful, fearful. Dickens novels traditionally end with the hero discovering a rich benefactor to take him away from the poverty. Africa has a rich, if not generous benefactor: the West. Unfortunately, the money rarely arrives.

Half-knowing this, half-fearing the complications, the West has turned away from most of Africa. It has preferred the simplicity of South Africa, where goodies and baddies have been clearly defined. That huge chunk of the world between Libya and the Limpopo has become too complicated. Sometimes the West watches, appalled; sometimes it even weeps. But I doubt if one in 1 000 people in North America and Europe ever worked out, for instance, who was killing whom in Rwanda, and why. Mostly they turned away. It is the very Dickens of a continent.

Even the maps deny us understanding. Mercator’s Projection, which flattens the tropical regions, makes Africa appear the size of Greenland: it is 13 times as big. The United Kingdom can fit into Sudan alone 10 times. Most maps show roads and railways. A newcomer imagines they can be treated like a motorway or train line in Europe.

I first went to Africa to bum around 20 years ago. I was entranced by Kenya, but never dared try to get into Uganda, at that time under the thrall of Idi Amin. Now Kenya is perceived to be on the way down, and Uganda on the way up. This time I was able to visit them both. Kenya remains utterly beguiling, full of natural glory and sparky people. But its social fabric is crumbling, as certainly as the roads.

For much of the 1990s, Kenya had the world’s highest population growth. Arguably, this was the result of its particular level of development. The health system had improved enough for babies to live, and sick adults to recover, but society had not reached the level of sophistication that leads to smaller families.

Kenya seems to be solving its population crisis. The hospitals no longer have medicines: they get stolen, to be sold privately. Cholera is rampant over much of the country. In some places nearly a third of the population is thought to be HIV- positive. The papers are full of death notices for youngish men and women. Ask why someone died, and the answer is usually a shrug: “He just got sick.”

If you turn off the main road past the lovely, shaded Ngong racecourse, you find Kebira. It is a slum, housing 150 000 people, maybe more; no one seems to know. People just come and put up one-room mud huts. They are now so packed in, there is no room even for more latrines.

Some men do casual work; more look for it, though every hut seems to operate as a sort- of business, mostly a one-woman business – the Rub-a-Dub Bar, Mashimuni’s Music, the Jambo Butchery, with one slab of meat in the window. This is Africa at its most Dickensian. Goats wander the muddy streets, living on discarded banana leaves and corn husks. “They are very healthy,” says Rev Joseph Oduor, chairman of the well-regarded Kebira Community Self-help Project.

The humans do less well. At the project’s shabby headquarters, with no electricity, never mind sanitation, a lone social worker is teaching a safe motherhood course. She is on to the relevance of water hygiene and its importance in preventing disease. On the day I visited there was a breakdown, and only one tap was working to service a medium- sized town.

People in Kebira are not starving, so they never make the news. They are just hungry. From the highest point, it is possible to see the presidential mansion, less than a mile away. “He came to visit us once,” Oduor says. “He walked around for a little while. He didn’t stay long.” Clare Short, Britain’s international development secretary, came more recently on her ministerial visit to Kenya. “Don’t these people have votes?” she asked.

They do, but democracy here is mysterious. The peculiar requirements of the Kenyan system are widely thought to have been responsible for the recent outbreak of ethnic cleansing around Mombasa, when traditionally anti-Moi voters from upcountry were attacked and killed or driven out.

The main aim was not the killing, but the removal of opposition votes from what, in the Kenyan context, is a marginal seat. Local Kanu leaders – scared for their own graft-gathering positions more than the president’s – are presumed responsible, with connivance from on high.

The high-profile attacks on demonstrators in Nairobi have now, belatedly, been repudiated by Moi. These incidents were more a reflection of the security forces’ crassness and jumpiness than of the regime’s intentions. The evil of Kenyan politics is meant to lurk in the crevices, not frighten the tourists.

Worse violence will almost certainly come. But it will probably happen away from the camera crews.

Vote-rigging is a certainty as well, but many believe it will not be on a scale to affect the overall result. “Of course the election will be corrupt,” says Jaindi Kisero, editor of the Weekly Review in Nairobi. “These fellows have been there for years. They don’t know how to have a fair election. Everything will go on. The results won’t be accurate, but I think they will still be a fair assessment.”

The Weekly Review is not regarded as anti- Moi. But Kisero is convinced Moi has had it. “It will go to a run-off, and whoever finishes second will beat him. The man is very unpopular. The country needs to modernise. Everyone knows that. The only sector that hasn’t caught up is the political one, and it has to change.”

The British know how difficult it is to believe that a long-running government can possibly be beaten. But the corruption of power in Kenya does not involve tinpot politicians filching the contents of the odd hotel mini-bar. It involves tinpot politicians filching the country. “There is so much that could happen here if you just got rid of not even 100 thieves, just 20 of them,” says one local businessman.

The corruption is on a mind-boggling scale. Everyone’s favourite case is the Goldenberg scandal. This resulted from a scheme whereby exporters were encouraged by substantial incentive payments from the government. An Asian businessman got millions of pounds as reward for exporting gold and diamonds. Kenya, of course, has no gold or diamonds.

In Nairobi, public toilets and car parks have been quietly sold off to well-placed figures for development. In the suburbs, a big new supermarket has been unable to open because, at the last moment, the crony of a minister popped up and announced that he had just been given title to the verge between the supermarket land and the road, and wanted 500 000 before he would allow access. Meanwhile, the roads get worse with every rainstorm.

The corruption is built into daily life. Kenya depends on the harambee system. This was supposed to be an admirable method of self-help, widely used to improve, for instance, education. It works in almost the same way as the primary school sponsored walk or the Parent Teachers’ Association jumble sale. Except for two things: (a) since the central funds have almost certainly gone missing, the school will be wholly rather than partially dependent on harambees; (b) politicians traditionally donate to all the harambees in their constituency.

To maintain face, they have to give large sums to each one. Since they are only paid 100 a month or so, most of the money must be stolen. Kenyans seem unable to make the connection. MPs who have tried to be honest, and make small donations, have had the money flung back at them as an insult.

There are other ways for politicians to raise funds. On a cool Nairobi evening Joe M’Mukindia, the Minister for Energy, began his forthcoming campaign for the Meru constituency in the garden of his pleasant suburban home. After a buffet dinner and plenty of drink, M’Mukindia’s manager rose and began soliciting contributions.

The guests then rose in turn, made a little speech of praise and offered their pledges. Some came in cash: 1 000 was the biggest offer. Most gave items to help the campaign. Most speeches were subtle. Some were not.

“The Minister for Energy is one of my favourite politicians,” said one man. M’Mukindia did not know him. “What do you do?” he asked. “I sell coal,” came the reply. “I’d like to pledge 300 T-shirts.” And so on – 100 footballs, 300 umbrellas, 500 posters, 250 caps, 70 dartboards, a ton of sugar “for the men”, a ton of salt “for the ladies”. Kenyan rural housewives prize salt highly. The manager was hoping for more salt.

All this might have been shocking in the Western context, though it happens here more discreetly, and at the national rather than local level.

It is not very different from what happens in the United States. It can hardly be wrong in Kenya, since my presence was no secret. But this is the tip of the iceberg, and one has to be very alarmed about what might lie under the water. “I don’t call any of this bribery,” said one guest. “I call it … sugar.”

M’Mukindia thanked his donors and promised he would always listen to their requests and then make up his own mind. It was, in other words, influence-peddling. He is young, bright, highly regarded, said to be straight, and, in the re-alignment that would follow a defeat for Moi, might fetch up in another government.

Is Kenya corrupt? “I don’t think it’s worse than Uganda or Tanzania,” he says. Most analysts disagree. On the wall of his downstairs loo,he has put up a strip cartoon called Jolly Giraffe. “It’s the jungle election soon,” says a bird. “You gonna vote villain or idiot?” Giraffe: “What’s the difference?” Bird: “The villains make some animals better off and some worse off. The idiots make all animals worse off.”

In Kenya, the villains have overdone it. Too few animals are better off. There has to be a reckoning. And if it does not come at the ballot box, then it may well come in a manner too terrible to contemplate.

Wildlife experts are currently worried about the possible extinction of a rare type of antelope: the hirola. What also worries thoughtful Kenyans is the possibility of the disappearance of the high roller, the rich tourist who has sustained the country all the while its neighbours were collapsing into chaos.

Out in the bush, I caught a family of cheetahs devouring a freshly killed impala. It was a moment of timeless, brutal, beautiful majesty. A group of camera- clicking American tourists were there too.

But natural selection dictates that animals take on the characteristics of their surroundings. I could swear that when the mother cheetah looked up, she was mouthing: “You want pictures? Gimme dollars, bwana.”