• For sometime now, Kalenjin politicians have taken to accusing President Uhuru Kenyatta of targeting their community by fighting corruption in their areas through the ongoing crackdown.
• Failure to fight corruption can only harm every community as it enriches a few and impoverishes the majority across all tribes. If any community can announce itself an ally and protector of graft, it would similarly be pronouncing its own suicide.
Image: MATHEWS NDANYI
As I write this critique to the ongoing narrative that corruption is being fought to weaken the Kalenjin community and Deputy President William Ruto, it will probably be said that my name betrays me and my argument is worthless. But no community grows under management of graft.
Failure to fight corruption can only harm every community as it enriches a few and impoverishes the majority across all tribes. If any community can announce itself an ally and protector of graft, it would similarly be pronouncing its own suicide.
For sometime now, Kalenjin politicians have taken to accusing President Uhuru of targeting their community by fighting corruption in their areas through the ongoing crackdown.
Unknown to the gullible masses, political propagators have benefited more from the Uhuru government than their communities — who have probably gotten nothing from the corruption they are being asked to defend.
When some Kalenjin graft suspects are arrested, not every tribesman or woman is accused. It will, therefore, be wrong for the community to rise in defence of its sons and daughters who are suspected and arrested for corruption.
I will also oppose the Kikuyus if they were to defend a few of its sons and daughters arrested and prosecuted for corruption as if the community is not greater than its individual members.
Because of the community’s disgust for corruption, when some of its individuals are arrested for corruption, most of its members and especially the poor are never heard crying for their release. Instead, they are heard crying for their prosecution and conviction.
Likewise, when some Kalenjins are arrested, they community should be heard not crying for their release and retention in their jobs but for their arrest and prosecution. This is what is likely to take Kenya forward.
To survive, corruption is using the ideology of negative ethnicity. And yes, this applies to the corruption of the Kikuyu elite, that of the Kalenjin elite and every other Kenyan community.
Because the corrupt of all communities are same the carnivores that eat herbivores of every other tribe, thieves are being arrested from all the communities. Any community that thinks it can have the right to be corrupt without apprehension is wrong and mistaken.
Corruption is the malady of all our elite from all communities. That is why most suspects are elites from the Kikuyu, the Kalenjin, the Luo, the Kamba and others, almost proportional to their space in government, public companies and private sector. It is, therefore, a lie to claim that only Kalenjin Ruto followers are targeted.
Corruption in projects such as mega dams is also being protected by claiming it is being fought to weaken politically Ruto and “his people”. Yet corruption in a project can only be exposed and investigated for the good and benefit of the people for whom the project was first and foremost meant for. Any attempt to protect and defend corruption in such a project is suicidal to the community, though it may have made some of their sons and daughters billionaires.
I believe the Kalenjin have individuals who know their community cannot thrive under exploitation and thievery of infrastructural corruption.
Is Uhuru favouring the Kikuyu in stealing and prosecuting corruption? If so, there would be no Kalenjin billionaires who got an equal share of government and parastatals to steal from. If the Kalenjin elite did not complain of being favoured when sharing the loot, they should not complain when they are being prosecuted.
The rich embrace corruption eagerly. But the poor applaud the fight against corruption while the corrupt hate it. They would rather free corruption than eradicate it. The rich will never prioritise it and Kenyans should not expect them to end it. They only fight corruption for self-preservation.