It's our turn to eat: book review

It’s our turn to eat. Michela Wrong. Fourth Estate Books, 2009. 354 pages.

“Eating” is how Kenyans dub the gorging on state resources by the well-connected. After the 2002 elections, writes Michela Wrong in It’s our turn to eat, many eyes were on Kenya. President Moi stepped down after twenty-four years as head of state. The atmosphere after Christmas –when elections are generally held in the country- was euphoric. In an international poll taken at the time, Kenyans were rated the “most optimistic people in the world.” Things were looking good. Five years later, the electorate was more divided, with more than half in favor of a change of rule.

Many eyes turned to Kenya again in the low news season at the end of December. If only the new regime could get it right on corruption, if only Kenya could find its way, there was hope for the rest of Africa. Post-apartheid South Africa, post-military Nigeria and a revived Kenya could form the three points of a triangular success establishing Africa on firm, unshakeable foundations. This was the thinking in Western embassies and corridors of power.

After the 2002 elections, the new regime started to do all the right things: free primary education, prosecute land grabbers, clean up the judiciary….. John Githongo was appointed anti-corruption czar, the new government thereby showing its determination to end sleaze. In his youth, John had written a short story about a man who wakes up one morning to discover a giant pile of manure dumped outside his house. Puzzled, he tries to discover where it came from and how to shift it. This, somewhat modified, was to be John’s future task.

But events took a surrealistic turn. Frustrated at the performance of the people he had to work closely with, after some time, and sensing his life was in danger, John “jumped the boat” on an official trip abroad and landed at the doorstep of the author’s London flat where, in good spy thriller tradition, he lay low, juggling with several mobile phones to hide his whereabouts from unwelcome callers. He was offered a lecturing post at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, together with two hefty guards. His tracks were being followed.
He decided to spill the beans to the media. The initial effect was beyond all reckoning, especially in Kenya, yet eventually did not meet his expectations, least of all among official circles in donor countries. In February this year (2009) John left Oxford for Nairobi, where he plans to do community work in Mathare Valley slums and build grassroots support for a parliamentary seat.

His critics have branded him a traitor, at worst, and politically naïve at best. “I accept that,” he says. “Only a naïve person would take an anti-corruption job after twenty-four years of systemic corruption. But that’s what you need. I went in naïve and I want to stay that way.” Few public figures would have the honesty and humility to say the same.
Sub-titled “The story of a Kenyan whistle-blower”, the book is also the story of a continent, our continent, in transition; and in crisis, a crisis of trust. I have heard Italians say it is good to trust, but better not to trust, especially outside one’s immediate “family”. This Machiavellian cynicism is deeply-rooted in much of Africa too. People like John Githongo set out to show that the mold has to broken.

Michela Wrong”s “In the footsteps of Mr. Kurtz” exposed Mobutu’s Zaire (DR Congo). In It’s our turn to eat she does a photo-scan of present-day Kenya. Based on interviews and conversations with John Githongo and many other players, and her wide-ranging background knowledge of contemporary Kenyan society, it is a compelling read.

Martyn Drakard is a freelance writer based in Kenya who also writes for www.Mercatornet.com and ACEprensa.