Why Kenyan youth are not to blame for the rampant corruption

There’s been a smear campaign over the last one week to paint the Kenyan youth as either compromised or flat-out corrupt. The youth will lead this nation to its detriment, it’s been repeated time and again on TV. My ears are aching from such flagrant acts of defamation.

This was after a survey conducted by the East African Institute (EAI) showed that 50% of Kenyans between the ages of 18 and 35 have no qualms whatsoever with evading taxes or bribing. An almost equal proportion, at 47%, said that they admire people who have ‘made it’ in life, regardless of how they made it, while another 30% said they’d accept a bribe from a politician in exchange for a vote.

Can we cut the chase on the whole I’m-startled-façade and tackle the real issues already? Where do these EAI people live? In Pluto?

As far as I’m concerned, that’s a perfectly normal response in the Kenya we live in. In this Kenya, a country ranked sixth on extreme poverty index and where the unemployment rate stands at a whopping 40% and climbing and where close to 2000 people apply for a single job vacancy and where 43.4% of the population live below the poverty line, why would I expect a difference response? Or you or anyone else for that matter? Keeping in mind that 75% of the 500,000 youths who graduate from various tertiary institutions every year remain unemployed. No. Seriously? Why? Why not spare me this whole ‘I’m shocked’ phantasm.

What did the EAI expect?

Since the findings went public, everyone has been casting aspersions upon the Kenyan youth, and even more alarming to me at least, are who these analysts on TV really are. You’d think they are as white as snow. These old guard waxing nostalgic about how the ‘good old values’ of this nation are being eroded by the current generation is nauseating. How wanting things now, compared to God-knows-when. How integrity and honesty is being flushed down the drain. Taking us for fools as if we have never attended a single history class to learn of how they’ve been running the affairs of this country since 1963! Ha! Guess what? We know better. We, the Kenyan youth, know about their backdoor two million US Dollars court rulings among other unscrupulous deals. We know.  

So, are the youth the real villains in this story?

These rich old folks are the ones who have put this nation in the dire state it is in. Thanks to their hunger for infinite power and disinterest in strengthening public institutions and framing proper policy that will stabilize the nation and provide for fair competition, we are where we are. Man eat man! Moreover, they are the ones who have fuelled that make-it-at-all-costs mentality with their actions over the decades. These are the same people accused for amassing suspect wealth over short periods of time.

Tell them to recapitulate their wealth and you’ll be met with blank stares and dropped jaws. Perhaps you’ve heard of that old Charcoal to Gold chestnut? Blatant lies will quickly follow shortly after; lies that even, I, know better than to buy. Dig deeper and you’ll find some backdoor dealings. One way or another. Dig further down and you’ll find the buried skeletons of the rats of corruption that you’ve been smelling all along. At the risk of being branded a xenophobe, you’ll have to search with a toothpick to find a Mark Zuckerberg prototype? Or a Bill Gates? Among the self-acclaimed, self-made, black Kenyan billionaires. That’s the cold ugly fact.

The rich/poor gap is increasingly widening as the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. Every five years we go to the polls to democratically elect people in public office. Every five years these office occupants promise improved lives by strengthening the public and private sectors.  But instead they milk the public coffers dry.

Every day we are exposed to new stories of the super-rich stealing from the public and getting away with it. No prosecutions are ever done. No jail for these people. Not high-profile ones anyway. They’ll vaunt to you about how they have overflowing bank accounts to buy top notch shark lawyers and judges. None of them has ever gone to jail for all the billions of shillings lost.

As if all that’s not bad enough, new graduates enter the job market every year with dim or almost no opportunities awaiting them. Even when one is an entrepreneur, they still have to raise the capital and subsequently, perpetually, grease the palms of state officials like police, K.R.A, Registrar of Companies among the long chain such institutions depend on to survive in business. It is how things are anyway. The cost of living is increasingly becoming unbearable with the skyrocketing taxes. And that doesn’t stop the mouths from wanting food or the heads from wanting roofs on them. Desperation galore!

With the youth in Kenya facing these myriad of challenges, I’m a bit reluctant to point fingers at them entirely, if at all, for the EAI survey.

Psychologists and social anthropologists will tell you that humans, especially when young, learn more by seeing than by hearing. Lecture me, I forget; show me, I imitate. So where does that put us, the youth? Having grown up in these conditions where corruption and impunity is the order of the day? We imitate. We salivate at perks of corruption. We all yearn for the pleasures that come with all that privilege; to loot and get away with it.

Again, why are we casting aspersions upon the Kenyan youth for these findings? Better yet, why are we startled? Let’s just cut the Kenyan youth some slack and point the problem in its rightful direction: the corrupt rich old folks.