The monster within: The politics of greed and the murder of conscience

UDA Secretary General Hassan Omar Hassan during a press briefing in Nairobi where he luanched a scathing attack on Kenya's mainstream media. [Collins Oduor, Standard]

Kenya wakes up to unending narratives of greed and death. Headlines on billions of shillings lost, stolen, or dealt, all speak to the man-eat-man society that Mwalimu Julius Nyerere spoke of in the 1960s. But did Tanzania’s independence president speak too soon about the collapse of the ethos of his neighbours?

We often imagine that societies collapse through dramatic events. A revolution, a war, an economic crisis. More often, they decline quietly. It is a cancerous invasion that metastasizes over time, to turn a society into a massive greedy machine that does not know where to stop.

Wisdom through wide ages and pages teaches us that greed eventually matures into a monster that wants to eat up everything, and everyone. Hence, the emerged Kenyan culture of daylight bribery of the public by State functionaries. In what is being called “empowerment” the cancer is spreading everywhere, eating up public conscience. 

The flipside is the silencing of conscience that refuses to be eaten up; such as youth who stand up to call out corrupt leadership. Also demonized by the merchants of sleaze are the clergy, the media, civil society, and all who attempt to say, “Enough.”

It has been gradual, but it has now matured. A small compromise was excused because it appeared harmless. A favour was exchanged. A rule was bent. A conscience was persuaded that necessity demanded what principle outlawed. Before long, what once shocked us now seems normal. We are now a nation of thieves, waiting for bribes at every corner.

That is how nations lose their way. Kenya has become a country of poor citizens who throng political rallies on a normal working week day, to receive Sh200 from State agents. The agents themselves boast of hundreds of millions at any one rally. The source is undisclosed. But, everyone knows of the stolen, lost, or dealt billions that are reported every day.

The moral capacity to fight back seems to be in erosion, as UDA Party honchos come out to lambast the media and other agents of what is left of conscience. Kenyans have seen the Secretary General’s tirade against the media. Ironically, it was intended to be broadcast through the self-same media that is under attack. UDA and Kenya Kwanza are not capable of saying that what they have accumulated is enough.

Perhaps that is Kenya's deepest crisis. It may also be Africa's. We have become accustomed to asking what has happened to our economies, our politics and our institutions. Necessary as those questions are, they leave another crucial question,both unasked and unanswered. What has happened to our conscience? Have Beasts eaten it?

Our own Grace Ogot approached that question through a story rather than an argument. In her haunting narrative titled Tekayo, the central figure is a respected elder, who turns into a monster. Tekayo is a family patriarch. Here is a man who is expected to embody wisdom, restraint and protection. Yet, something within him changes tragically.

One day, he robs an eagle of its meal. The bird of prey is flying with a piece of liver, dripping with fresh blood. Tekayo throws his giant herdsman’s stick at the bird, causing it to drop the liver. He gobbles down the meat that the bird had claimed for itself. He does not pause to wonder whose liver it was. Where the dead animal is, who killed it. Is this where Kenyans are, even as they scramble for empowerment liver monies?

The start of Tekayo’s liver grab seems almost insignificant. It is  like that of Kenya’s grab of public coffers. Yet, appetite, once it discovers that it can cross a boundary without consequence, rarely stops there. Tekayo's hunger for liver grows stronger, stranger and darker. Soon, he seeks other livers. But they do not satisfy him.

The elder who should stand between his grandchildren and danger eventually becomes their destroyer. He kills them with his naked hands, one after the other, to remove and eat their livers. The paterfamilias, whom custom commands to protect the family is consuming those whom he should protect. Tekayo eats the children.

Moral decline

In Ogot's story, Tekayo is not deformed into a monster overnight. He deteriorates one appetite at a time. Is that how moral decline happens? Is this the road Kenya has travelled? How much land does a man want? How many companies does a leader want to take over? How much money is enough? How many men? How many women?

The Speaker of the National Assembly leads Parliament in partisan liver funds dancing orgies across the country. Parliament loses its role as the political conscience of the nation.  He telephones writers, such as the present writer, to threaten them with “consequences”, for interrogating the loss of innocence. Conscience must be silenced.

Tragically, the Kenyan we call “the common mwananchi” has swallowed the bait. His corruption began with a favour we persuaded ourselves was harmless. He is now trapped in the tyranny of handouts, squarely in the monster’s mouth. Tyranny rarely begins with prisons. It begins with small acts of “benevolence” and silence. Communities do not wake up one morning having lost their conscience. They surrender it gradually, until what once seemed unthinkable begins to feel ordinary.

Tekayo's tragedy is therefore greater than greed. Greed is merely the path he walks. His real offence is that he begins consuming what has been entrusted into his care. He becomes the killer and eater of conscience. Has the Kenyan State become the killer and eater of public conscience? Has it eaten Parliament? Is it eating the citizens? Is Mwalimu Nyerere’s “man-eat-man Kenya” now in full bloom?

Away from Kenya, across another continent and another civilisation, an old Greek story addressed the same image of the eagle and the liver. The Titan Prometheus was chained to a rock, because he dared to steal fire from the gods, and bring it to humanity. As punishment, an eagle painfully tore at his liver, as he wreathed helplessly from the rock. Each night, however, the liver recovered; only to be torn once more the following day. And it went on, and on, world without end.

The powerful lessons from Tekayo and Prometheus move in opposite directions. Tekayo robs the eagle of the liver because his appetite wishes to destroy and consume life. Prometheus feeds his liver to the eagle, yet life mysteriously returns. We can only imagine of conscience devoured. Tekayo devours the conscience of the nation – Parliament and the people, the Judiciary, civil society, religious entities, and even trade unions. All these are livers that Kenya’s Tekayo has eaten. Everywhere you go, you see them singing Tekayo’s praises.

 Enduring conscience

Yet, all is not lost, or is it? The story of Prometheus arms the nation with the imagination of enduring conscience. Although it is invaded daily, and plucked at with sharp beaks, it regrows.  It is not clear if Grace Ogot had read the story of Prometheus, or not. She most probably had. Yet, whether or not the two traditions ever knew one another is beside the point. Together, Ogot and Prometheus ask a question that every civilisation must eventually answer: Can conscience be consumed, or does it possess the mysterious power to renew itself after every assault?

Another ancient story seems to offer a reply. In the medieval morality play titled Everyman, Death unexpectedly summons an ordinary traveller. His Wealth cannot accompany him. Friends abandon him. Family remains behind. Only his Good Deeds go with him. Yet, there is a painful surprise. His Good Deeds are too weak to stand, because they have been neglected for so long. The image is unforgettable.

Goodness has not disappeared, however. It has simply become frail. We have such people around us; whom we could characterize as Good Deeds. They teach our children with integrity in schools that we have forgotten, or neglected. They judge fairly in the law courts, even when no one is watching, or noticing. They refuse bribes that others regard as routine.

They care for the sick in rundown hospitals. They cultivate the land honestly and raise families that still know the difference between success and honour. These people, Good Deeds, are rarely celebrated. Yet, they quietly continue with the work of holding society together. We must still wonder, all the same: Why does goodness so often appear so powerless?

In The Imprisonment of Obatala, Nigerian playwright Obotunde Ijimere shares with us the tragic story of Obatala. Obatala is the Yoruba god of creation. But he also dwells among men as an elder and guardian of wisdom, creativity and moral order.  Unhappy with the presence of these virtues, Men elect to imprison Obatala, the messenger of the Supreme God, Olodumire.

Consider the Christian writ alongside. Does it sound familiar? It is an image that requires little explanation. Once conscience is locked away, appetite quickly assumes the throne. Yet, prisons have never had the final word. Long before the arrival of the Christian Obatala, Hebrew prophets spoke of a remnant seed. It was not a majoritarian remnant. It was not even powerful. It was only the faithful few who preserved the moral life.

Even when everything around us seems to be collapsing, there is always a small remnant. History repeatedly reminds us that renewal seldom begins with crowds. It begins with men and women who refuse to surrender their conscience, even when conscience appears to have become unfashionable. The media, now under attack in East Africa, is such a remnant. So, too, are Kenyan youth, who are a great inspiration to Africa, and to young people across the world. Tekayo and the Eagle invade their liver daily, but they refuse to die.

Perhaps that is why the story of Prometheus still matters. The eagle returns every day. So does the wound. Yet, the liver returns as well. Conscience has an extraordinary capacity for  regeneration. It can be mocked, ignored, threatened and wounded. It may even fall silent for a time. But unless it is willingly surrendered, it returns with the same persistent question.

Is this right? That question has outlived empires and emperors over the ages, across the pages of history. It has survived dictators and endured fashionable ideologies. It has quietly outlasted every Tekayo that history has produced.

We often ask what Africa requires in order to flourish. Better governments, stronger economies, more accountable institutions and wiser policies are all part of the answer. But none of them can substitute for a people who have recovered the courage to say, "This is enough." Enough greed, enough fear, enough excuses. Enough silence, when conscience asks to be heard.

For nations are not finally destroyed by what they lack. They are destroyed when they forget the difference between appetite and stewardship; and between consumption and responsibility; or between the foolish political cleverness, and the wisdom of the silent. The future belongs to those who still know where enough begins.

Dr Barrack Muluka, PhD [Politics & International Relations, Leicester, UK] is a Strategic Communications Adviser