Lumumba talks, but will he walk the talk?

Plaudits have been flowing thick and fast following the nomination of PLO Lumumba as the next director of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC).

Barring unforeseen developments, Dr Lumumba will be the next CEO of the anti-graft watchdog after Justice Aaron Ringera. However, using Lumumba’s oratory skills as the basis of picking him for the job was unwise.

It reminded me of Otto van Bismarck’s famous speech where he said challenges facing Germany would not be settled by speeches and majority decisions, but by iron and blood.

While an effective leader has enormous communication or oratorical powers, oratory in itself can do little to settle anything, least of all corruption.

Good laws, and men and women of ability, are the basis of good governance and not speeches.

Not that words do not matter. They do. How else can one communicate his vision and expectations other than through verbal communication?

But it is those who go beyond the rhetoric, those who act away from the rostrum that make a difference. We, therefore, need less posturing and more action. Fewer speeches and visible deeds.

I also noticed that the KACC Advisory Board appears to think that the institution primarily needs men and women with a legal background. Ringera was a lawyer. So was his deputy.

Lawyers

The fight against corruption should go beyond the legal profession lest it becomes unduly legalistic. Such a body, or the entire body politic, needs to renew its values, whose paucity is what explains incidents of corruption.

We need men with a relatively broader perspective of what is ailing this country — people who have the capacity to generate a new culture that frowns on graft.

Turning KACC into a prosecution outfit duplicates the work of the Attorney General. Nor could it do much even if it were to prosecute suspects because with clever lawyers, the cases will drag on in court for years.

We also institutionalise corruption when we set up a body to fight it. Does the US or Britain have such a body? Why are we behaving as if graft will be with us for a long time to the extent we need a permanent body to deal with it?

Let us re-examine ourselves and harshly punish the corrupt. That is the only way we can slay this dragon.

{Kennedy Buhere, Nairobi]