Kenyatta and Kibaki did it; Ndii is right to call for past graft amnesty

The most stunning reversal in our independence struggle has to be Jomo Kenyatta’s address to white settlers in Nakuru. The colonialists were worried that a man who had served time for leading the lethal Mau Mau was taking over as the leader of the new republic.

Given that the organising vision of the Mau Mau was the reversion of land to the majority, the settlers were quite sure that Kenyatta would give them a smart kick in the backside to eject them out of the country. Kenyatta instead shrewdly reassured the wazungu, telling them that both Kenyan Africans and them must forgive and forget the past, and build Kenya together.

Naturally, Kenyatta was seen as betraying the cause of the freedom struggle by cosying up to the tyrannical beberu, who had acquired endless tracts of land virtually for free, and forcing his compatriots, who had been viciously dispossessed, to buy this land back. It was a hard pill to swallow in the early 1960s, and it still is difficult to really comprehend today. 

Yet Kenyatta was adamant that the only way to ensure that the new nation endured was to get the former oppressor and his victim pulling together in the spirit of Harambee.

Here we are, six decades later, pushing along. The victims of Britain’s Gulag won their case against the British in the courts of the UK. The Talai of Nandi and Kericho, as well as the natives of the two counties who were displaced to give way to the tea estates, have mobilised to institute their own actions.

Amnesty for past corruption

The settlers who chose to remain did so comfortably, keeping all of the land their ancestors were rewarded with for serving their crown. It is hard to tell which portion of their heritage explains their immense privilege: race, wealth, or both? But just like the elder Kenyatta’s abrupt concession to the enemy, the persistence of an invisible colour bar owing to differential access to land rights is a matter whose political litigation is always intensely ambivalent.

Despite self-righteous declarations and glorious self-advertisement, many nations have a founding shame, the original sin. Genocide, slavery, plunder and colonialism are the key terms by which this silent accusation stubbornly expresses itself. Except for very few cases where fuller justice has been attained, many nations oscillate between denial and reluctant, meagre atonement.

A few artifacts are returned, the remains of a much-tormented ancestor are repatriated, equivocal statements of regret are made, as offender and victim each focus on their respective future opportunities. Greater satisfaction would require stronger action, which, between nations, would imply ability to wage effective aggression.

After Kibaki declared that corruption “would cease to be a way of life in Kenya” in December, 2002, the dragon mobilised and virtually captured or compromised his government. Titans of sleaze quickly installed their deadly acolytes in the corridors of power and gleefully fueled acrimony in NARC so that by 2005, the question of fighting corruption had been stood over generally as the government focused on survival. The biggest donors to campaigns on both sides of the aisle are often chieftains of graft, the better to ensure that “neither foes nor loving friends can hurt them”.

David Ndii, ever the Socratic gadfly, set the cat among the pigeons, again, last week. He proposes amnesty for past corruption to enable the country move on by freeing our energies from the obsession with a losing war. His was a most pessimistic assault on orthodox institutional sensibilities that forced us to recognise the proper scale of what we are up against. 

No society of angels

Since independence, the corrupt have looted trillions of shillings, and possess capability to not only resist anti-corruption enforcement, but also capture state institutions, which are meagerly funded at the best of times. According to Ndii, we cannot meaningfully confront a resolute behemoth with hollow, anemic, under-resourced institutions; we will lose badly.

Our obdurate normativity is naturally repulsed by the idea of capitulating to impunity.
The vision of looters toasting expensive champagne to celebrate their triumph as we die of destitution instigated by their felonious avarice is perfectly repugnant. And it should be.

Yet how do we win this asymmetrical contest against a behemoth whose pocket change easily surpasses the total budgetary allocations of the justice, law and order ministries, departments and agencies?

The amnesty debate forces us to confront may outrageous ideas and people, but it is a debate worth having. In any event, it must be remembered that it will not be the first time that Kenya has forgiven the unforgivable.

To quote Jomo Kenyatta, “There is no society of angels, black, brown or white… We are human beings, and we are bound to make mistakes. If I have done a mistake to you, it is for you to forgive me. If you have done a mistake to me, it is for me to forgive you.”

Mr Ng’eno is an advocate of the High Court and a former State House speech writer. @EricNgeno