What counts in corruption is which side you are, depending on the paymaster

President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto with Governors Hassan Joho and Salim Mvurya during the opening of Miritini-Mwache-Kipevu Link Road, Mombasa County. [Standard]

Kenya is in the grip of a dysfunctional government and a dud Parliament. The unsinkable Jubilee Titanic is crumbling. Its planks are shaking frightfully; ready to collapse into shark-infested waters. There are dreadful accusations and counter-accusations about corruption between the two major formations in the cabin crew. The secret is out – the entire formation was all along about eating up the country. It was about accumulation of personal treasures. Two sets of mutually suspicious sea pirates came together because this was the convenient thing to do in their mutually selfish search.

If you have read Robert Louis Stephenson’s 1881 classic titled Treasure Island, you will recognise some of the characters. First, there is Billy Bones. He holds the roadmap to the treasure. He arrives with a chest full of secrets – including the map to Treasure Island. And Kenya possibly has her own Billy Bones, complete with skeletons in the closet. The drama of greed in Stephenson’s story begins when a blind man called Black Dog slaps a black spot in Billy Bones’ palm. In these greedy gangsters’ universe, this is the pirates’ way of telling one of their own that his days are numbered. They are telling him, “We are coming for you. We are going to kill you.” Have the black dogs of Kenya slapped the country’s Billy Bones’ with the political black spot?

Billy Bones’ friends are no longer at ease. They have heard that there will be a lifestyle audit. This is Kenya’s black spot. Everyone knows that there are buccaneers in government. As a top lawyer said two years ago, ours is a bandit economy in the hands of gorilla hunters. The audit should help us to smoke out these characters who believe that every animal must be hunted, killed, eaten or stuffed. Now our Billy Bones’ friends think that the proposed audit is a wicked ploy. Someone wants to rob their captain of the map to Treasure Island. Like R L Stephenson’s story, ours is a narrative of chaste greed. The buccaneers are gluttonously focused on treasure that must be obtained at whatever cost. It does not help matters that a one-legged seasoned pirate, called Long John Silver, has entered the fray. John Silver has befriended the captain of the ship, pretending that he is a cook. Silver – or Jan Fedha as we called him in Kiswahili – compounds matters by causing division among the pirates. Never mind that he has his own piracy designs and that in the end he will flee with a portion of the treasure and disappear for good.

You would wish that it were a simple adventure story like Mr Stephenson’s. The bad news is that it is not. Ours is a harsh reality. Our country is easily the global headquarters of corruption and scandal in government. We stumble from the National Youth Service to sugar and from sugar to maize. From there we move on to faulty power transformers in Kenya Power Company – and on to suspect procurement of police helicopters. From there we run into scandals in the National Land Commission. And there are forgotten scandals from three past regimes. It requires far too much energy to even think about them. The country is full of eating chiefs and thieves. They will eat just about anything – including you.

Parliament has this week dramatised the true nature of our government – and by extension our country – as a badly divided pirate world. The Leader of the Majority and the Minority Leader alike were in their element blasting a government fronted committee report on alleged poisonous sugar in the country. Captain Flint is our acknowledged national leader. Billy Bones is only his deputy. But when the Leader of the Majority speaks, you hear the voice of Billy Bones, haranguing Captain Flint. For his part, the Leader of the Minority speaks and you hear echoes of Long John Silver taking to task both Billy Bones and Captain Flint.

The common factor is their omnivorous appetite. Next to this is the appetite to cover up and to point the accusing finger at someone else. There is little appetite for the truth. What counts is on which side you are, depending on the paymaster. Your concern is limited to who is involved – and not on what is involved. In the end, it does not matter who seems to be pointing accusing fingers at the other. What matters is that you can only trust these three stands in government at your own risk. For some, it is about securing the roadmap to Treasure Island, where they must dock in 2022. It is about removing the black spot from the palm of their leader, Billy Bones.

Others have different thoughts. Captain Flint is in charge and don’t write him off future plans yet. Billy Bones must never set foot on Treasure Island. The black spot is here to stay and he must be stopped. If Long John Silver can help to contain Billy Bones, he is welcome on board. You can send him on missions across the world and give him a taste of the good life in government for as long as he is helping you to put Mr Bones in his place. You will worry about John Silver when the time comes, three years down the line.

When you are Long John Silver, you meanwhile focus on your adversaries on the ship one at a time. For now, it is enough that the Buccaneers of M V Hispaniola are quarrelling. Your barking dogs will help to push this to the bitter end. Then you could deal with whoever emerges at the top. Whether it will be Captain Flint or Billy Bones can wait. Bones may seek to impeach Flint. Or, Flint may just want to do that to Bones. Silver is sitting pretty. He could go with either.

The writer is a strategic public communications adviser. [email protected].