Kenya’s middle, ruling class must stop this heartlessness

One of the most irritating things about the Kenyan society is the middle and ruling-class hypocrisy.

Many of us were brought up in humble environs. The same scrawny peasants now stooping behind walking sticks and hoping to be put on State welfare – lest they die of hunger and sheer hopelessness – paid taxes for our State-subsidised university education.

Many of us walked barefoot to school and relied on bursaries, harambee and other forms of communal effort.

In short, and as John S Mbiti reminds us in his seminal tome, ‘African Religions and Philosophy’, before this hypocrisy set in, we lived in the good old set-up where the credo was “We are, therefore, I am.” Yet today, we seem to have shrugged off memories of our upbringing in Spartan provincialism and we live like we have all our lives been life-of-the-party playboys and socialites.

So now, when we are formulating budgets for county and national governments, we think more about how to cream off per diem by visiting foreign countries, besides other useless forms of wastage. This at a time when the same people who sacrificed their all so that we could get an education – which they could not get - are dying because there are no machines to treat diseases like cancer.

The governors, their cash-hungry executive teams, the national leaders and the rest of us who enjoy a medical cover, feel nothing about the dying poor lot. Do we ever stop to imagine what we would be feeling if it were our own biological parents going through this kind of pain in a country where we spend billions in scare-crow anti-corruption efforts yet tenderprenuers and other vermin steal a whopping Sh300 billion every year? Where is your heart, Kenya?
Of course, we have a conscientious and empathetic few in our midst.

They give generously and participate in walks, runs, marathons, fund-raisers – to lessen the pain of the suffering in our midst. They exemplify the spirit of selflessness personified by First Lady Margaret Kenyatta. Here is an icon who oozes what Shakespeare calls the milk of human kindness.

As others shamelessly use public office to line their already overflowing pockets, this small group is doing all in its power to remind society of the need to get in touch with its empathetic side. When I look at both levels of government today, populated as it is with people who were in all likelihood brought up in debilitating penury, I shudder at our ignorance of social engineering.

It is a fact of sociology that if very few people control a lot of money in the economy, very many people are pushed to destitution. And while we must encourage people to get rich – hell, I could trade anything to stop living like a church mouse!- We must ensure thieves and the grubby hands reaching for the public coffers through crooked tenders are thrown into a very dark place. It is time we started celebrating financial success and at the same time demonising graft.

Take Parliament, for instance. Cushioned from the daily pressures of life, our MPs have come up with laws not meant to correct those who do wrong, but to push the poor to jail through exorbitant fines. That is how you end up with a 100-year-old granny in prison when many who have robbed the country blind occupy high public offices where all their bills are paid for by the taxpayer.

No society can find stability for long with such inequities and iniquities. Anyone with an elementary understanding of governance will tell you – and the Kibaki government seemed to have realised this – that Kenya needs fiscal reforms, infrastructure and other transformational projects to attract investment and fuel growth. That is why as the economy inches closer to the 6 per cent growth rate predicted by the World Bank, we need to expand social safety nets and welfare for the poor. But when we start losing hundreds of billions of shillings to tenderprenuers and we have no radiology equipment in our public hospitals, we further heighten the social tensions that increase despondency, crime, youth radicalism and other such ills.