Britain has raised the stakes in its fight against sleaze in Kenya by warning that ministers, civil servants and businessmen suspected of involvement in corruption will be refused visas to the United Kingdom.
A senior official in the regime of the former president Daniel Arap Moi was refused a visa to visit his family in Britain last week, and the British high commission in Nairobi has signalled that further refusals are likely.
The decision was made public on Monday following a week of mounting tension between Britain and its former colony.
The British High Commissioner to Kenya, Edward Clay, was described by the country’s foreign minister as ”an incorrigible liar” after he made a fresh attack on corruption.
In a speech at a journalists’ awards ceremony, Clay said that efforts to tackle corruption had failed to halt the ”massive looting” of public funds.
The Kenyan Foreign Minister, Chirau Ali Mwakwere, retaliated by branding the diplomat a ”liar” who made wild accusations after drinking ”one too many”.
The fight against sleaze appears to have stalled following the resignation last week of the country’s anti-corruption tsar, John Githongo.
Githongo’s resignation signals a loss of confidence in the willingness of the government of Mwai Kibaki to fight corruption.
He announced his resignation by fax from London amid reports that his life was in danger if he returned to Kenya.
Kenya has the biggest economy in East Africa, but roads are crumbling and public hospitals are desperately under-funded because public works projects are milked for commissions by politicians and civil servants.
Bribes are sometimes required for the provision of basic services, such as connecting water pipes or telephone lines.
The United States Ambassador, William Bellamy, backed Clay’s attack on sleaze last week, saying: ”Corruption in Kenya isn’t a matter of kitu kidogo [Swahili for ‘a little something’], or of a few ministers skimming off commission.
”It is big enough to cause macroeconomic distortions. Every Kenyan labouring to feed his family, educate his children, care for a family member suffering from Aids or simply avoid getting hacked to death in the mounting wave of violence sweeping this country is a victim of today’s corruption, and they know it.”
After Githongo’s resignation, the US froze $2,5-million funding for anti-corruption work in Kenya.
The British restriction on corrupt Kenyans visiting the UK is not a formal travel ban like the European Union-wide restriction on travel by Robert Mugabe and his close political allies. But the refusal of visas will embarrass Kenyan politicians and businessmen who make regular trips to the UK.
A spokesperson for the British high commission in Nairobi said permission to travel could be refused ”if we consider that a person’s presence in the UK would not be conducive to the public good … anybody who is implicated in a major fraud inquiry may be considered to be ‘non-conducive’.”
Quoting a phrase used by the Kenyan president in the fight against sleaze, the spokesperson warned that visa refusals could affect the highest echelons of Kenyan society.
”There are no sacred cows,” he said.
The Kenyan government’s attack on the British high commissioner was echoed by Kiraitu Murungi, the justice minister, who said Kenya was committed to the fight against corruption.
Criticism from foreign donors was ”like raping a woman who is already too willing”, he said, prompting a march on his office by women’s groups, who accused him of making a joke of rape.
Clay first earned the wrath of the Kenyan government last July with a speech in which he accused it of ”arrogance, greed and perhaps a desperate sense of panic to lead them to eat like gluttons”.
He told British businessmen: ”They can hardly expect us not to care when their gluttony causes them to vomit all over our shoes.” – Guardian Unlimited Â