This is where the hustler narrative that we have been spinning and glorifying these past few years has brought us: The shame of a nation fighting its children almost militarily to stop them from cheating in national exams.
In a nation where cheating, stealing, making deals and cutting corners are seen as achievements, stopping the youth and other budding entrepreneurs from indulging was never going to be easy or cheap. And the public that has been glorifying the vice will always pay for it.
In the just-concluded KCPE and ongoing KCSE exams thousands of security and provincial administration officers were and continue to be deployed to guard the process and stop candidates from cheating. Knec headquarters has been heavily guarded, just like the neighbouring State House, with armed GSU officers moving in and out in shifts. Of course taxpayers footed the bill for that military-like deployment over exams.
Before the exams, many schools went up in flames. Reports always indicated candidates resorted to arson to protest the closure of avenues for cheating or for being forced to work hard in a nation where hustling is more rewarding than hard work or academic credentials.
Reports emerging from these two exams paint a picture of a nation in rapid moral decline, with young citizens getting bold and shameless about it. There were reports of a student attempting to bribe a Knec officer to allow another person to sit the KCSE exam on his behalf; exam papers going missing, a security guard being arrested while trying to sneak fake papers into an exam centre. Bold actions indeed for those who sat exams before the hustler narrative took over the nation.
A society that has lost faith in hard work and stopped playing by the rules is a sorry sight to behold. The Oxford English Dictionary defines hustler as “a person adept at aggressive selling or illicit dealing” or “a prostitute”. It gives the synonyms of hustler to include criminal, lawbreaker, offender, villain, black hat, delinquent, malefactor, culprit, wrongdoer, transgressor, sinner. Yet here we are, debating and promoting hustler as some kind of hero figure to be emulated and hustling as a career worth pursuing.
Then we launch a military operation against candidates who want to hustle their way to ‘A’ grade in exams; the culture the very leaders calling for reinforcement against cheating have been promoting. While campaigning for governor of California in 1966, Ronald Reagan spoke of a leadership and morality and decency gap engulfing the US and condemned “these people and this trash” and promised to clean it up if elected.
Years before Reagan, in 1960, President Harry Truman had called for a review of and a critical look at how the nation was bringing up its children with regard to values the country wished to espouse.
“Our children are our greatest resource, and our greatest asset — the hope of our future, and the future of the world. We must not permit the existence of conditions, which cause our children to believe that crime is inevitable and normal. We must teach idealism — honour, ethics, decency, the moral law. We must teach that we should do right because it is right, and not in the hope of any material reward.”
Kenya has had some critical moments that changed its course with regard to politics, morals and values. The YK92 that preceded the 1992 elections introduced the politics of money and violence. It made politics a zero-sum game in which the spoils went to the highest bidder. That culture lives with the country to date and we have never really figured out what to do about it, even as it keeps many professionals away from politics.
We are now in the throes of the hustler narrative whose ramifications will be broader and deeper than the damage the YK92 did. The narrative targets the youth. While our already-poisoned politics is its vehicle, its result is to render critical pillars of any society — like education, hard work, honesty, rule of law — useless.
Reining in and stopping this hustler culture may be the most critical battle Kenya will have to wage if the country is to be saved. And it will take more than guns, police and ministers administering exams.