It's Our Turn to Eat (35 page)

 

It was a Saturday afternoon at the Karen Country Club, that time of day when the club's golfers stroll in off the greens and settle on the leather banquettes in the wood-lined bar to play the role so relished by the Kikuyu elite: that of African English country squire.

Across the rolling lawns, shaded by the kind of giant fig tree the golfers' forefathers would once have regarded as sacred, the caddies padded away, their job done. Above the tennis courts, the giant knuckles of the Ngong Hills were delicately outlined in indigo. Wallets were opened to allow private bets to be settled, chits were signed and beers downed, producing a chorus of low, deep belly burps. Gradually, the conversation got round to John Githongo, who many of the golfers–prosperous businessmen, lawyers and doctors in their fifties, sixties and seventies–had known as a youngster. ‘Too young for the job,' said one. ‘Amateurish, hugely naïve,' chimed his businessman neighbour. ‘It takes time to tackle corruption. John expected things to happen from one day to the next, and so do the donors. It's very immature.' ‘Ah, but it was worse than that,' said an older friend, a retired bureaucrat. ‘To take confidential information that you came across in your job as a government employee and pass it on to foreign governments, now that's an act of gross betrayal. I was a civil servant under both Kenyatta and Moi, and that would have been a hanging offence.' Voices were rising now as they warmed to their theme. I began to recognise a particular tone to the conversation. These statements had the vehemence of arguments rehearsed so many times they had become a kind of rote-recital, exercises in group affirmation rather than real debate. ‘The man was a spy,' said a lawyer, ‘a spy who was recruited'–his eyes widened, his finger jabbed the air for emphasis–‘yes,
recruited,
by the British embassy.' There was a chorus of nods and murmurs. ‘Yes, yes, he was a spy.'

Now the conversation shifted a gear. John's betrayal, they felt, could not be separated from its wider context, a long-held colonial-era grudge. The fact was, said the businessman, looking directly at me, that the Brits had been happy to do business with Moi, but they had always had it in for Kibaki. Why? Simple: because he was a Kikuyu. I shook my head, aware I was beginning to flush with irritation. But the club member who had invited me agreed. ‘The Kikuyu were the first Africans to fight colonialism on the continent. After the Kikuyu came the Algerians against the French. But we were the first. And the fact is that the British have never, ever forgiven the Kikuyu for fighting them, not till this very day, and that is why they are out to destroy a Kikuyu presidency.' The civil servant joined in, with a certain pride: ‘We were the Mugabes of the day, the bad boys.' ‘They hate us,' said the businessman. ‘They really hate us.' In a mood of belligerent victimhood, the beers were finished off and the golfers headed off to their SUVs, gleaming in the car park.

I've had that conversation many times now, in different locations and with different individuals, but always Kikuyu men of a certain age and class. I have tried to persuade them that the obsession driving–if not warping–British policy in East Africa these days is not repressing the Kikuyu but delivering on the Millennium Development Goals; that my country's baby-faced foreign and development ministers are probably more familiar with the Arctic Monkeys' back catalogue than with the history of the Mau Mau, and that to these New Labourites, products of the 1960s, the colonial rationale feels about as familiar and appetising as hoop skirts and spats.
*
I have never succeeded, even though the statistics bear me out, showing, for example, that British aid to Kenya under a ‘hated' Kikuyu president is greater than it was under the Kalenjin Moi, and that Kenyan imports
from British firms–supposedly smarting at being boxed out of the Kibaki economy–have actually risen by over a third in the same period.
³⁹
These Kikuyu gentlemen simply refuse to believe that the horrors of Emergency, which loom so large in their own minds, could be so easily forgotten by their former imperial master, just one of a succession of historic misadventures to be mentally filed away. A $750-million procurement scam has been miraculously transformed into a colonial vendetta.

The irony bites bone-deep. For very few of these aggrieved golfers came from families whose young men played deadly hide-and-seek with British soldiers in the dank forests of the Aberdares. Today's Kikuyu elite traces its roots to the other side: to the Home Guard loyalists who helped the British crush Mau Mau and were handsomely rewarded for their collaboration when the whites pulled out. In fact one of the men fulminating over his beer that day was named, much to his irritation, as a prominent Home Guard member assigned by the British to ‘soften up' recalcitrant Mau Mau detainees in the internment camps in a recent book by an American academic. In positing John Githongo as a pawn in some dastardly post-colonial plot, the Kikuyu landed gentry had cheekily rewritten their own role in the past.

But perhaps the most revealing aspect of these conversations is what is always omitted. No one, in these exchanges, even bothers to claim the Anglo Leasing deals were honest transactions, or that the ministers involved weren't on the take. No Kikuyu, especially Kikuyu of this social
milieu
, is naïve enough to believe that. Beneath their belligerence lies the same tacit acceptance conveyed by the refusal of every politician named in connection with Anglo Leasing to put his side of the story when I asked for comment. The issue, for these men, is not guilt or innocence, but loyalty. They cannot forgive the fact that the man who exposed a Kikuyu administration to public ridicule came from within. As the businessman told me that day in the Karen Country Club: ‘We have a saying in Gikuyu: “No matter how faded or shabby she is, she's still my mother.” John should have felt that.'

 

In choosing to become the ‘Anti-Kikuyu Kikuyu', as he was dubbed on many websites, John had expected to be reviled by his kinsmen, especially those of this age and class. ‘I will not be able to travel in certain parts of the country at night,' he'd predicted when drafting his dossier. ‘If my car breaks down in Nyeri and people realise who is in it, I'll be in for it.' What he had not anticipated was the bored disaffection of his own peer group. When I telephoned Lisa Karanja, who had taken over the directorship of TI-Kenya, to arrange a get-together, she said she'd ask another member of John's old anti-corruption unit along. But when we met, she was on her own. Her former colleague had bailed out. ‘You know, we've been talking about him for four years and a lot of people are all Johned out,' she explained. ‘People feel a bit fed up. They feel he did some very good things, but that there's more to Kenya than this.'

She had been surprised, she said, by the sour reactions of younger Kenyans in civil society–and not just Kikuyu–when John's name surfaced. ‘When he was first appointed there was a feeling of “Oh, you're just going to serve as a fig leaf.” Then it became hero-worship. Then, with the tape leakings, there was a return to hostility again.' John had become indelibly associated with an interfering donor community which, in African eyes, always pinned its hopes on totemic individuals, ignoring the steady work done by less charismatic people and organisations. ‘It's a form of national pride, and in John's regard it translates into a feeling of “You're over there in the UK being a prima donna, but you don't have the guts to come and do this stuff here.”'

Even those immune to this mixture of chauvinism and professional envy took issue with John's tactics. Rationing his leaks had certainly wrong-footed his enemies, but he had lost the sympathy of his audience in the process. A PR guru of the Max Clifford variety could have told him that winning public affection requires more than sensational facts and compelling proof, it demands a touchy-feely instinct for how the masses–emotionally fickle, sometimes vengeful–will respond. Absence of spontaneity, the obsessive preparation on which this cerebral operator prided himself, had its price.
John came across as too clever by half, a man playing a game rather than acting from the heart. One newspaper later commented that he had leaked his dossier ‘like a man chewing groundnuts from his pockets'. A Kikuyu community worker in Mathare slum summed it up. ‘At the start, people said, “This is great.” But now he's lost a lot of credibility. People say, “Why doesn't he give us the whole story? It's like a movie: you don't want it in bits. And he keeps giving it out in bits.”' If the public wanted the catharsis of a three-act blockbuster, John had offered instead a maddening ‘Tune in for next week's instalment.'

 

As Kenya braced itself for elections, the Anglo Leasing affair looked increasingly irrelevant. John remained an avid follower of Kenyan news, religiously scouring newspaper websites each morning, and being briefed by his network of sources. Over his mobiles came offers of key positions in a future ODM cabinet. ‘Come back. Your country needs you,' was the message. He vacillated, packing his things in boxes, shredding his papers, mentally saying goodbye to Oxford. Then he paused, unable to take the final, irrevocable step.

He did not share the donors' faith in the future, noting instead the vast crowds turning out for ODM rallies in the Luo and Kalenjin strongholds of Kisumu and Eldoret, voters who, it was safe to assume, could not afford the Hummer H3. Surveys would expose, on later analysis, a curious phenomenon. Most Kenyan voters acknowledged that the economy had done better under Kibaki than under Moi. Even a majority of the opposition's natural supporters admitted that their own ethnic community's living conditions had either stayed the same or improved under NARC. Yet there was a widespread perception that particular ethnic groups had done far, far better than the rest, and it was that sense of
relative
deprivation that rankled.
⁴⁰
‘There's an anti-Kikuyu vote forming, based on perceptions of inequality,' said John. ‘Development experts are allowing themselves to be bamboozled by the figures. They are not asking themselves the key question, which is “growth for whom”? The way the rest of the country sees it, it's growth for the Kikuyus, and it hates our guts.' On
his travels, John was approached by delegations of diaspora Kenyans, non-Kikuyu who saw him as an ally. ‘They tell me they would rather vote in a way that causes an economic slowdown, if necessary, so long as these arrogant Kikuyu are taught a lesson.'

Familiar with the Alcoholics Anonymous programme, John had come to think of his country–so determined to hope for the best, so reluctant to tackle issues that kept bobbing to the surface like a drowned man's corpse–as a boozer in the ultimate state of denial. The first principle of AA is that the hardened drinker cannot cure his addiction until he recognises his problem. Bumbling around, knocking into the furniture, this particular drunk–John was beginning to suspect–would only admit the need for change when he came round in the gutter with puke over his clothes, blood in his hair and his wallet gone. Things might have to get a whole load worse before they got any better.

One of the few to share his fears was KNCHR head Maina Kiai, the other ‘anti-Kikuyu Kikuyu'. ‘Luos are saying, “No matter what it takes, we must win,” and Kikuyu are saying, “No matter what it takes, we can't lose.” It's scary.' A few high-profile gestures would be enough to defuse the growing antagonism, but the Kikuyu elite's sense of entitlement was so great it did not see the need. That failure of imagination, Kiai said, had been illustrated a year earlier, when the
Nation
published a photo showing Kibaki shaking hands with all his provincial commissioners. ‘All the suits that day were either Kikuyu, Meru or Embu. Every non-Kikuyu saw it, but the people at the
Nation
, who published the photo, didn't even notice.'

But the two doomsayers were in the minority. Most analysts noted how often the country had teetered on the brink of disaster, only for commonsense and the profit motive to triumph every time. Land of the compromise and the fudge, Kenya had a knack for staring ruin in the face, backing off and muddling along. The nation, declared businessmen, journalists and diplomats, had now staged so many multi-party elections it qualified as a seasoned democratic player, with all that implied in terms of stability. Showing the same cheeriness, financial advisers boldly classified the forthcoming polls ‘zero risk'–
a remarkable position to take in any African election, let alone one in a nation whose fissures ran so deep.

‘The ethnicity thing has actually got much better. The media is just playing it up,' insisted economist David Ndii when we met three months before the polls. I was, he hinted, indulging in a very typical Western stereotyping of Africa. ‘Why assume that grievances, even justified ones, translate into violence? We don't take things as seriously as people expect us to. Of course people resent not getting a job because they are from the wrong group, but they know next time around, when it's their tribesman in power, it'll work in their favour. It's part and parcel of our public life. Kenya is a very nepotistic society. We expect it.'

For the first time since John had materialised on the doorstep of my London flat, I found my belief in the importance of what he had done wobbling. My doubts crystallised in, of all places, the slick new Westgate shopping centre, where Nairobi's plaza phenomenon had surely reached its apogee.

I was old enough to remember the tremor of excitement that shuddered through Nairobi when Kenya's first escalator opened in the Yaya Centre in the 1980s, heralding the arrival in East Africa of the modern consumer experience. But Westgate's Nakumatt hyper-market was in an entirely different league. Open seven days a week, extending over two storeys and boasting motorised shopping trolleys for the disabled, its shelves offered everything from dog muzzles to mattresses, artificial flowers to birthday cards, nappies to dishwashers. Forty-five different types of shower gel, twelve varieties of soy sauce, eleven types of toilet paper, this was a supermarket designed to satisfy a fussy society's every whim. Slicing Parma ham and handling French cheese takes certain skills; Nakumatt's staff had been taught them, and they had been drilled to the point where they could recite the precise location of key products without a moment's hesitation. And how Nakumatt's Kenyan customers, wheeling their loaded trolleys to the phalanx of checkouts–each equipped with a plasma screen beaming out slick commercials–revelled in it all, fishing out their loyalty cards and totting up their points.