It's Our Turn to Eat

by Michela Wrong

  On an infrastructural project of any size, cautious customers usually insist on paying in tranches, checking that targets have been met and a certain quantity of equipment delivered before handing over the next cheque. Not so with the Anglo Leasing deals, in which the government displayed a baffling eagerness to cough up, even initiating payment before the projects had actually begun. ‘In some cases, the full repayments of the credits were accomplished before the projects were completed,’ wrote Mwai, logging one case in which the loan was fully repaid five months ahead of schedule.

  At every step, the government seemed to place suppliers’ interests before its own. And all for what, exactly? In its talks with foreign donors, the government routinely put education, the fight against malaria, the digging of wells and the fight against AIDS at the top of its agenda. These were surely the correct priorities in a developing African country where nearly half the population lived below the poverty line. Yet now, it seemed, one of the world’s poorest governments deemed digital communications and state-of-the-art surveillance equipment so vital it was willing to put future Kenyan generations in hock to secure them. As the British high commissioner Edward Clay put it: ‘Why bid for all these sophisticated computerised programmes when your own official government strategy puts computerising far below things like anti-measles vaccinations?’

  It didn’t take a genius to work out what was really going on. The Anglo Leasing contracts were a crude device for extracting large wads of money from the Kenyan Treasury. Where the funds would eventually end up was anyone’s guess, but it was safe to assume they would be split between those in government who authorised the deals and the entrepreneurs who provided the necessary camouflage by setting up a range of respectable-sounding shell companies and credit providers–‘looting pipes’, John called them. The hope must have been that the confidentiality of these security contracts would muddy the waters long enough for the perpetrators to get away scot-free. Sometimes the suppliers at the end of the chain actually existed, although one had to wonder why any legitimate firm would agree to become embroiled in such intricate, shady deals. In other cases, the supplier was no more than a street address. Twelve of these contracts had actually been signed–if not activated–under KANU and six under NARC, a detail which highlighted one of the most intriguing aspects of the scam. This was an apolitical money-making venture. The shady players who had originally sold the idea to the Moi administration had not let the change in regime put them off their stride. Supremely flexible, these amoral, shape-shifting pragmatists had simply made their pitch to State House’s new incumbents.

  The fact that many of these middlemen were of Asian origin had its roots in the country’s colonial history. The white administration brought indentured coolies from the Indian subcontinent to Kenya to build the railway. Most returned to the subcontinent, taking word of the job opportunities opening up in East Africa, and their places were taken by skilled clerks, craftsmen and traders from the Punjab, Gujarat and Goa. The colonial authorities did not want these new arrivals buying land–that was for whites–and once Kenyatta Africanised the civil service, jobs in the public sector vanished. The one sector in which Asians could flourish unhindered was trade. From modest dukas in one-road towns, vast business empires grew, and with them a reputation for deals clinched with a nod and a wink. The emerging African elite felt little affection for the wahindi, seen as tight-fisted, snooty and brazenly colour-conscious, but its members knew they needed its business nous. With extended families stretching across half the world, only the Asians had the international contacts and backup to help a minister wanting to stash illegally-acquired funds abroad. Only they understood what legal hoops had to be jumped through to manipulate the import licensing process, establish a fraudulent bank or set up a shell company in the Canary Islands. Moi’s Kalenjin, in particular, relied on Asian wheeler dealers like Ketan Somaia and Kamlesh Pattni–real-life models for the oleaginous anti-hero immortalised in M.G. Vassanji’s novels–to hatch the strategies that would allow them to make their margins and hide the proceeds.

  The key question for John was: where did the president stand in all of this? John’s best-connected informants were painting a picture of a vacillating head of state, being pulled in one direction by the Mount Kenya Mafia and in the other by his conscience. John clung to that scenario. His boss might be weak, he told himself, but he was fundamentally decent. And if a war of influence was taking place inside State House, then John, the persuasive charmer, was determined to win it. ‘I was advised to move even faster, as the political sharks were rounding against me, and I had to get to the president before they did.’

  The fuss John had whipped up over the first two Anglo Leasing contracts was producing results. On 11 June, finance minister David Mwiraria stepped into his office to announce that Anglo Leasing had returned all the money it had been paid on the forensic laboratories contract. He was joined by justice minister Kiraitu Murungi, and together the two men urged John to back off, insisting that this was what the president had requested and warning that if he continued pursuing the case, the government was likely to fall, so many of ‘our people’ were involved. Four days later, John learnt that Infotalent Ltd, a company which had won a police security contract, had returned 5.2 million euros. By the end of June, almost a billion shillings had been repaid by bogus companies on the eighteen-item list. Some frantic back-pedalling was taking place.

  It did nothing to allay John’s fears. The civil servants concerned claimed to have no idea who was returning all this money: that blank-faced ghost making his appearance once again. Yet, in a moment of indiscretion, finance minister Mwiraria let slip that he had arranged Anglo Leasing’s refund by instructing a member of staff to call Asian businessman Deepak Kamani. If Mwiraria already knew Kamani was behind Anglo Leasing, it made a mockery of the investigations being conducted by the KACC and the auditor general. The same haziness hovered around the figure of Merlyn Kettering, an American consultant whose name kept surfacing in connection with the eighteen deals. John’s informers told him Kettering attended high-level meetings in the office of the president at which sensitive military and communications projects were discussed. Yet Dave Mwangi, permanent secretary for internal security, denied Kettering’s involvement when quizzed in front of the president.

  As he stumbled on lie after lie, John continued briefing the president on what he was learning. On the morning of 18 June, noting that Kibaki seemed in high spirits, John decided the time had come to make his pitch. Circumstantial evidence kept pointing to the same players, he told the president over breakfast. Given the shambolic nature of Kenya’s judicial system, the matter could not safely be left to the law. A political gesture was necessary; heads must roll.

  He had overreached himself. Looking across at the man he admired, John caught an expression he had never seen before: Kibaki seemed, well, sheepish. Like a boy caught with his hand in a biscuit tin. The president urged John to slow down. Above all, he was not to hand the files he was compiling on the roles played by the two permanent secretaries to the attorney general. ‘In essence, I was stopped. I had been put on ice,’ he recorded in his diary: ‘The war against corruption is in State House, and I have lost the president’s support. H.E. has let me down.’ He had entered the room full of energy. He left it with his weightlifter’s shoulders slouched, his morale in his shoes. It was time to go, he told himself.

  He was beginning to feel unbearably dirtied. He had learnt so much about Anglo Leasing, who was behind it, the sums involved. He was the anti-corruption chief, appointed to protect the Kenyan people from predatory politicians, yet in his own eyes he was virtually sitting on his hands, smiling, chatting and cracking jokes with the looters in the interests of keeping the peace. ‘I was complicit. There was no doubt, I was complicit.’ For someone who had imbibed the Opus Dei lesson that work is a means to sanctification, professionalism a form of godliness, nothing could have been more abhorrent. Sometimes he hated himself.

 
; In John’s mind, Kibaki was no longer an inspiring abstraction. He had become a man whose personal qualities–or rather, failings–were of huge, immediate significance. But one could swiftly drive oneself crazy trying to work out who the president really was, or what he genuinely believed. Kibaki’s survival, John increasingly realised, was based on his very amorphousness. ‘Because he’s so enigmatic, people see in him what they want to see. People will tell you, “He’s incredibly wishy-washy,” others say, “He’s very indecisive,” others say, “He’s actually very cruel.” He’s everything to all men. I can’t say I was immune.’ Craving a reformer, he had persuaded himself Kibaki was that man.

  Yet John stayed his hand. Concern for his family was one factor. His father had been almost financially ruined when he had fallen out of political favour once before, and John had no desire to force him to repeat the experience. The old man was not in the best of health, nor was John’s mother: they had reached an age where they deserved some peace of mind. His brothers and sisters were all building their lives, starting young families, moving into new apartments. If he fell from grace, if the Githongo family name became politically toxic, how would it affect the people he loved?

  In Kenya, as in most African nations, the moneyed, well-educated upper class forms a numerically tiny group. The political elite, business elite and social elite are one and the same thing. Rubbing up against one another at private schools, in clubs and at high society weddings, its members share an incestuous intimacy. ‘In Kenya,’ one young woman explained to me at a dinner party, ‘it’s not so much six degrees of separation, as one and a half.’

  If a sociologist were to try to capture the various milieux featured in this book in the form of a Venn diagram, he would find the circles overlapping each other so heavily the categories became almost indistinguishable. One large circle, labelled ‘St Mary’s school’, would include John himself, presidential aide Alfred Getonga, wheeler dealer Jimmy Wanjigi, anti-corruption campaigner Mwalimu Mati, opposition leader Uhuru Kenyatta and David Kibaki, the president’s son. Another circle, intersecting the first in unexpected ways, would be labelled ‘Received medical treatment from Dr Dan Gikonyo’; it would include John, his father Joe, Kibaki and Nobel Prize-winner Wangari Maathai. A circle branded ‘Membership of Muthaiga, Karen, Limuru, Kiambu and Nyeri golf clubs’–Kibaki; TI board member and University of Nairobi chancellor Joe Wanjui; George Muhoho, head of the Kenya Airports Authority; Matere Keriri, former State House comptroller; future defence and transport ministers Njenga Karume and John Michuki–would take a huge bite out of the circle marked ‘Democratic Party founding members’, and would virtually swallow up two others labelled ‘TI-Kenya Board’ and ‘GEMA’. A circle labelled ‘Practising Catholics’ would overlap with all the smaller circles. All this before the circles for ethnicity were even drawn.

  It was all very cosy. When things went well, of course, these networks were a great source of strength, a safety net stretched out in anticipation of life’s shocks and reverses. But for anyone out of tune with the times, each link felt like one of the slender ropes the tiny citizens of Lilliput used to tether the giant Gulliver to the ground. As soon as John tried to lift an arm or raise a foot, he became aware of a delicate cobweb of expectations, obligations and duties tying him down.

  As June ticked by, his relations with colleagues grew ever more strained.

  Listening to the recordings John taped around this period, what’s jarring is the laughter. Missing the undercurrents, unable to see the darting eyes and uneasy body language, an outsider would be forgiven for assuming these are old pals having a whale of a time. Underhand methods are explored, violent outcomes hinted at to a steady chorus of Santa-Claus-like ‘ho, ho, ho’s. Blackmail may be attempted, death threats pronounced, but anyone would think it was all some great, back-slapping joke, a delightful exercise in male bonding. A friend of John’s would instantly have recognised these as the baritone chuckles John produced when he was nervous or mentally on the run, a world away from real humour. But it was laughter nonetheless.

  ‘I would always respond by trying to make a joke of it,’ acknowledges John. ‘It was the only way. If you fell silent and the room went quiet, then…’ He pauses.

  ‘Then what?’ I asked.

  ‘Then you would have to deal with the uncomfortable realities as they had just been presented.’ To name something is to allot it its rightful place in the universe, imbuing it with power. Not naming allows a measure of ambiguity–that necessary Anglo Leasing ingredient–to be retained. John came to label it ‘The Culture of the Deadly Smile’. Al Capone and his lieutenants, Caligula and his aides, must have had just such strained exchanges as these, where the fake smiles constantly trembled on the verge of full-throated snarls.

  Conciliatory by nature, John was never the type for the macho standoff. Yet he became embroiled in a one-hour argument with the head of the civil service, Francis Muthaura, that escalated into a shouting match. Muthaura accused John of leaking Anglo Leasing stories to the media, and insisted on putting out a reassuring press release that John regarded as so misleading it constituted lying to the Kenyan people. A call from Philip Murgor, director of public prosecutions, alerted him to the fact that Alfred Getonga was asking whether a batch of letters John had arranged to be sent to foreign banks, seeking to establish the identities of the shadowy figures wiring money back to Kenya, could be recalled. Far from persuading the president to sacrifice his tainted aides, John now heard rumours that he was the one about to be moved. On 29 June, without advertising the fact, he surrendered his diplomatic passport and took out a new one, allowing him to travel as an ordinary Kenyan citizen. He also had his frankest ever exchange with Kiraitu. ‘He said it was now clear that Anglo Leasing was “us”–our people. He said no matter what, he did not have what it took to order or countenance the arrest of Chris Murungaru for corruption because they had too much history. He was blunt and emotional,’ John wrote in his diary. ‘You are conducting the fight against corruption like a person burning down a house to kill a rat,’ Kiraitu admonished him. John shrugged. ‘Killing rats is always a damaging business,’ he replied. The justice minister’s closing words were pointed. ‘Tomorrow,’ he warned, ‘is the kind of day reshuffles happen.’

  And so it proved. The atmosphere in State House the following day was charged. Senior officials came and went, slipping quietly into the president’s office, exiting with hurried steps. Rumours buzzed from corridor to corridor, each contradicting the last. Rows of chairs were being lined up on the lawn in anticipation of a press conference, announced first for 13.00 hrs, then 14.00 hrs–but by nearly 16.00 hrs nothing had happened. John heard that both Murungaru and Kiraitu had been in the building, yet ominously neither had dropped by to see him. Finally, everyone scrambled: the television cameras were ready, journalists mustered, microphones switched on. The president mounted the podium and prepared to announce his new cabinet. In his office, John pulled up a seat alongside his staff and someone turned up the volume on the television. The names and titles rolled. No mention of John yet. On it went. And then, at the end, with the very last name, it came: John Githongo was being transferred to the ministry of justice. The axe had fallen. John had lost his precious access to the president, the favoured status which had made it possible to bypass ministers and gainsay permanent secretaries. He had lost Kibaki’s ear, and would now answer to a minister who had made his position on Anglo Leasing abundantly clear. There was a shocked silence. John looked at Lisa Karanja.

  ‘Well, that’s it, then.’

  ‘They have won,’ said his secretary simply.

  Immediately, John’s mobile started buzzing with incoming text messages–some faux-sincere, some sardonic, others genuinely sympathetic–‘congratulating’ him on his demotion. One call was from Charles Njonjo, former attorney general, once Moi’s éminence grise, a man who knew what it was to fall from favour. His message was stiletto-sharp. ‘You ARE going to resign, aren’t you?’ Another call
was from John’s brother Mugo. ‘Have you been moved?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then you need to resign.’

  There seemed no reason now to remain in State House, so the team decamped to John’s place. That evening, old friends from his civil society days turned up to commiserate and the get-together turned into a spontaneous party. John had failed, and with the knowledge of his failure, he was surprised to discover, came not depression–not now, at least–but relief. The invisible arbiter to whom he mentally presented his conduct might conclude that he had made mistakes, but could never accuse him of bad faith. Anglo Leasing, the ugly and spectral guest at virtually every encounter of the last four months, was no longer his problem. It was true that in the middle of the laughter and music and chinking beer bottles, Stanley Murage, permanent secretary in charge of strategy at State House, rang to mumble something about John’s relocation not being the ‘real thing’. The idea was so preposterous John ignored it, and partied on. That night he slept through without waking, for the first time in months.

  John spent the following day at the ministry of justice–the downtown skyscraper to which his emasculated operation was soon to be relocated–while his staff began packing boxes. It felt like an exercise in humiliation. The announcement of his demotion had triggered cries of alarm in the diplomatic community and civil society. Transparency International, his old employer, took out a full-page advertisement in the Kenyan press to protest, indicating that it would call off a planned international conference on corruption. But Kiraitu Murungi made no attempt to hide his glee as he inducted John into his new role. He was in full I-told-you-so mode. He had done all he could to save John, he claimed, but the combined forces of Murungaru, Getonga, Mwiraria and Muthaura, all pushing for John’s ousting, had proved too much. Back at home that evening, John began planning his departure overseas with a friend. There seemed little point in staying on.