For Kenyans, what's wrong is right and what's right is wrong

Recently, a story made the rounds on social media. A man met a lady online and invited her for an evening drink. The lady, who had not planned to step out, agreed and joined him. Shortly after she arrived and received her order, the man seemed distracted, stepping out every few minutes to ‘answer phone calls’. On one of those phone calls, he disappeared altogether. The lady had been deserted.

Appalling one might say, but it gets worse. She soon discovered that the man had left without settling the bill. Not only had he abandoned his guest, he also walked away from his obligation.

One would expect the public reaction to be straightforward: Call out the man for his misconduct. Instead, the majority of commentators praised him for ‘being smart,’ applauded him for refusing to ‘be used’ and celebrated him for teaching the ‘girl child’ a lesson on freeloading. Completely lost in the applause was the simple fact that he failed to pay his own bill.

Missteps are part of human existence. We all make mistakes and exercise poor judgment from time to time. That is part of our humanness. The real test, however, is not whether mistakes occur but whether a society still possesses the moral clarity to call out wrong for what it exactly is. What should worry us is not the existence of wrongdoing, but the growing tendency to admire, even, celebrate it.

It would be of less concern if this attitude was confined to social media banter about modern-day dating. But it is not. The same line of thought emerged when a Nairobi City County officer was arrested and millions of shillings, suspected to be proceeds of corruption, recovered from his residence.

Rather than express outrage at the possibility that public money had been stolen, many focused on the officer’s supposed carelessness. To them the offence was not corruption but the incompetence of an officer while engaging in it.

A society that mocks virtue certainly prepares for its own collapse.

We are increasingly shifting into a culture where evil is praised, integrity is ridiculed and principle is considered weakness. The employee who insists on following procedures is dismissed as difficult. The businessman who refuses to compromise on quality is accused of standing in the way of progress. The student who reports misconduct is branded a traitor.

Even in relationships, kindness, respect and faithfulness are considered weaknesses. The bar to which we hold ourselves and everyone else has not just fallen, it no longer exists. The message is clear: What matters isn’t whether something is right but whether it works in one’s favour.

These attitudes should not be dismissed as harmless banter. Our conversations, even in passing, are often a reflection of our values. They reveal what we admire, what we excuse and what we are prepared to tolerate. With time, they inform how we carry ourselves in our homes, at the workplace and in public institutions.

This trend is even more worrying as Kenya moves towards the 2027 General Election. In an ideal society, the period before elections would be a time for reflection and audit. Public discourse would be around assessing leaders based on their performance, their fidelity to the promises made, their respect for the law and their commitment to improving the lives of the people who elected them.

Yet that is rarely where our attention settles. We like to speak as though politics exists separately from society when in fact it does not. The values that shape our politics are the same ones that we reward in everyday life.

If we celebrate cunning over character, we should not be surprised when cunningness thrives in public office. If we reward shortcuts over integrity, we should not be shocked when corruption flourishes. When we reduce political discourse to personalities and theatrics, we should not be surprised when they give us five years of drama instead of service.

Societies rarely decline because perfect people no longer exist. They decline when people fail to distinguish between imperfection and wrongdoing. When greed is rebranded as ambition, dishonesty as smartness and cruelty as strength.

Ms Wekesa is a development communication consultant