Lack of public morality means graft will get worse

How does one begin to steal money meant for pregnant women, children and HIV control? This is the question that has been on my mind over the last few days. From the outset, it seems like only a pathological thief with incorrigible sadism would dare rob the most vulnerable and needy among us. But look closer and you will see that the Kenyan system is intended to systematically shield such thieves from moral and legal costs of their actions.

Back in 1975, Peter Ekeh, a Nigerian sociologist, wrote an important paper on colonialism and its effects on civic culture. While Ekeh’s paper was mainly about Nigeria, it is widely applicable in most other post-colonial settings. The basic argument in the paper was that colonialism – in legal and practised terms – fostered development of two publics in Africa. On the one hand you had a civic public, in which Africans were incentivised to display highbrow civic virtues and signal their aspirations for public-spirited behaviour. On the other hand you had a primordial public, in which Africans primarily sought to conform to demands of their sectional allegiances – whether they were ethnic groups, clans, or religious groups.