In 1944, near the end of World War II, the Office of Strategic Services, which was the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency, released a field guide called the Simple Sabotage Field Manual which has since been declassified. The purpose of the manual was to incite rebellious citizens in occupied countries.
The manual gave them suggestions for executing sabotage that would weaken their countries by reducing productivity in the workplace and causing national embarrassment and inconveniences. The tactics were meant to undermine organisations from within and were more than malicious mischief consisting of acts whose results would be detrimental to the country.
The manual proffered that citizen saboteurs did not require specialised training, tools, or equipment. It was to be executed by the ordinary citizen who may or may not act individually and without the necessity for active connection with an organised group. It was to be undertaken in such a way as to involve a minimum danger of injury, detection and reprisal. The actions encouraged devious talent for sowing chaos that only an intelligence agency could properly master.
Citizen saboteurs were encouraged to try and commit acts for which large numbers of people could be held responsible thus making it impossible to fire them all. The weapons of the sabotage were often objects to which the citizen saboteur used in his daily work and also had inconspicuous access to in everyday life. This field manual offered specific suggestions for wreaking havoc with buildings, manufacturing, production, agriculture, railways, communications and electrical power, which when damaged presented a large handicap to the country.
Recent mishaps at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport have left many people puzzled. These mishaps include power blackouts even when brand new generators lay idle waiting to be commissioned, leaking roofs from the heavy El Niño rains in a recently renovated section of the airport, and embarrassment and inconveniences on travellers by rummaging through their bags publicly in the name of ensuring compliance with Kenya Revenue Authority taxation laws.
Begs the question, are we witnessing an unfolding manifestation of citizen saboteurs?
There is no denying that in any workforce, you will have a proportion of workers who are genuinely lazy, arrogant, lethargic, detached and have a non-cooperative attitude in discharging their duties. But for one to employ the acts of a citizen saboteur requires a particular skill set because it requires one to be purposefully stupid which is contrary to human nature.
When deployed, the acts of citizen saboteurs results in accidents, delays, negative publicity and general obstructions even under very normal conditions. The potential saboteur identifies the types of faulty decisions and actions normally found in their line of work, and then devises their sabotage so as to enlarge that margin of error.
To get a sense of how timeless the Simple Sabotage Field Manual is, allow me to cite a few examples of the suggestions it contained. You will probably laugh ruefully, then perhaps shudder a little as you recognise just how much you resonate with the kind of dysfunctional mess the OSS meticulously planned during World War II.
General Interference – insist on doing everything through channels to delay decisions; make speeches as frequently as possible and at great length and illustrate your points by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.
As often as possible refer all matters to committees for further deliberations and consideration and ensure that the committees are as large as possible – never less than five raise irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
Haggle over precise wordings of communications and resolutions; refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision; advocate caution by urging your colleagues to be reasonable and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
Also raise questions on the propriety of any decision on whether any action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or organisation, or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.
Managers – demand written orders; engage in long correspondence about such orders and quibble over them when you can; do everything possible to delay the delivery of such orders; don’t order new working supplies until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown.
Always assign the unimportant jobs first and ensure that important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers; hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done; multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions and ensure that at least three people have to approve everything where one would do.
Employees – work slowly, very slowly and devise ways to increase the number of movements necessary on your job; inform important callers that the boss is busy or unavailable; contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can; do shoddy work and then blame it on bad tools or equipment.
Forget your tools so that you will have to go back for them; snarl up administrative tasks in every possible way by filling out forms illegibly or with mistakes so that they will have to be redone; and never pass on your tacit knowledge and experience to a new or less skilful worker.
Does all this sound familiar? Could citizen saboteurs be the possible reason for the bureaucratic disorder we are witnessing at the national and county level and is consequently what is plaguing our various installations such as the power blackouts and leaking roofs at the airport, the philistine search on travellers’ bags at customs, the national power blackouts witnessed in households and commercial units, or the ping-pong El Niño weather predictions?
After all, hasn’t there been evidence adduced by the Nairobi county assembly planning committee that has uncovered proof of county officials deliberately sabotaging the automated approval system, forcing developers to physically seek approvals for construction? You be the judge.
Finally, my unsolicited advice is to Wanjiku. Nothing ruins a magic trick more than knowing how it works. Now that you know what could be the possible reason we have had these recent mishaps, will you continue attributing it to sheer incompetence by the authorities in charge or will you credit them to the ardent students of the Simple Sabotage Field Manual?
Betrayals rarely come from an enemy - Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel