DfID’s first boss, the principled and forceful Clare Short, ruled that the department’s efforts and funds should be focused on the ‘poorest of the poor’, countries where annual per capita income was $875 or below. This only seems right and proper. But nations emerging from civil war, authoritarian rule and military dictatorship are by definition those where governance is poorest, corruption rife and aid most likely to be diverted. ‘Experience proves it’s possible to usefully target aid, even when working in very corrupt environments,’ DfID officials will tell you, insisting that projects are so carefully monitored in the field as to be effectively ‘ring-fenced’ from surrounding sleaze. Not possible, argues Daniel Kaufmann, former Director of Global Programmes at the World Bank Institute, who has spent decades quantifying graft’s impact on development. ‘The idea that donors can immunise their projects in a corrupt country is absurd, it’s not what the evidence shows. When there is no integrity on the part of the leadership, no systematic approach to governance, civil liberties, rule of law, donor aid is simply wasted.’
The World Bank’s own research bears out his scepticism, not just generally, but in the specific Kenyan context. A strictly confidential review by the bank’s internal anti-corruption unit into four Kenya projects approved between 2000 and 2005, worth $375 million, found three suffered from ‘serious irregularities’. It cited almost every imaginable stratagem for ripping off an externally-funded aid project, from the bribing of public officials to abuse of office, inflated expenses, fraudulent claims, conflict of interest, the concerted rigging of bids, failure to carry out allotted tasks, and blatant nepotism by MPs. Two of the projects were AIDS-related, and the report’s compilers highlighted one of the most obscenely ironic consequences of the abuse: because grant money went to bribe officials rather than being spent on orphans’ school fees, many children dropped out of education and resorted to prostitution. A project intended to reduce HIV infection helped, instead, to spread the virus.33
DfID, then, might be trying to do the impossible, seeking reliable partners just where they are least likely to be found. Even if these fundamental questions are put to one side and the correctness of DfID’s philosophy accepted, problems of how to put it into practice remain.
One challenge is how to disburse the increasingly generous sums channelled DfID’s way. In Africa, a shortage of qualified bureaucrats, lack of institutional experience and the absence of many of the legal checks and balances routinely required by Western partners mean poor countries struggle to access the money donors want them to have. Because of this ‘low absorptive capacity’, many African states regularly fail to claim the full amounts allocated them by Western governments each year.
Add to that the tarnished records of the Renaissance leaders the West once regarded as safe bets and it is clear DfID might struggle to spend its rising yearly budget. Having variously rigged elections, altered constitutions in order to hold office indefinitely, jailed their rivals and invaded neighbouring states, once-favoured African leaders have become targets of virulent campaigns by human rights organisations with international followings. DfID had promised the British electorate, and the rest of the G8, that it would massively increase aid. But once you subtracted oil-and mineral-rich African states that didn’t need foreign aid, then removed those which were undoubtedly dirt-poor but whose leaderships were considered beyond the pale, the list of governments meeting the criteria for partnership became embarrassingly short.
There is also a manpower issue. While the British Treasury had promised to raise DfID’s budget, it expected the ministry to cut staff numbers just like every other government department. With fewer staff available to disburse more funds, DfID is understandably keen on moving wherever possible from time-consuming project aid to direct budgetary support. But that requires confidence in the government concerned. ‘They are desperately pushed by the need to disburse,’ says Edward Clay. ‘It’s supply-side pressure. Most departments have the Treasury breathing down their neck to spend less. DfID is unique in that it is required to spend more, and farther away from scrutiny than any other department.’
Last, but not least, comes the China factor. In the last decade, resource-hungry China has been making sweeping inroads on the African continent. On the hunt for the oil, timber, copper and other resources needed by its expanding economy, Beijing offers in exchange cheap funding without the moralising lectures and conditionalities of Western donors. Just as Western governments thought they had put their colonial guilt firmly behind them and established a post-Cold War consensus on what was needed in Africa, a giant player dangling no-strings-attached funding–on governance matters, at least–enters the game. Yet another argument, in the eyes of development ministries suddenly facing their own irrelevance, for erring on the side of leniency.
Small wonder, given these various factors, that DfID in 2004 had little appetite for the antics of a high commissioner who appeared to have launched a personal crusade against government venality in a key African ally. ‘They found it an embarrassing obstacle, because it got in the way of their plans to spend more,’ says Clay. ‘They found it unpalatable to have an ambassador who had a high-profile role on it and was not going to pipe down.’
By the time Clay arrived in Kenya he already nursed reservations about DfID’s role. He was beginning to suspect that while the department dutifully recited the ‘good governance’ mantra, it essentially regarded the fight against corruption as an inconvenience. ‘They’ve said for years, “Good governance is at the centre of development,” and it’s been easy because they thought their bluff would never be called.’ Now he couldn’t help registering that the amounts involved in the dodgy Anglo Leasing deals were roughly equivalent to the sums the Kenyans received each year in aid. Was international generosity merely encouraging those in power to feel they could help themselves to equivalent amounts?
A principle, he felt, was at stake: the link between voter and government in a young democracy. Critics of international aid often claim it all ends up in Swiss bank accounts, a charge development officials easily swat away, pointing at the accountants and consultants who police spending. The argument should be a different one: not that the aid is itself stolen, but that donors make it possible, via that aid, for governments to dip their hands elsewhere in the budget while still delivering basic services, thereby escaping the electorate’s wrath. Accountability moves offshore, thanks to aid’s fungibility.
Surveys in Kenya showed that the one area in which NARC consistently won top marks from otherwise disillusioned voters was its free primary education programme. In rural areas, families who had rationed attendance to an eldest boy could now send all their children to school. In actual fact, DfID funding made it possible for the government to keep class sizes down and make schoolbooks available. Yet, fretted Clay, NARC would get the credit come the elections, and might win another term on the back of DfID’s input. If that happened, British taxpayers would effectively have shored up a corrupt regime, not only shielding it from the ire of its voters but buffing its image. Was that really the role they should be playing?
The identity of the minister for education rubbed salt into that wound. Finance minister under Moi, George Saitoti was a man long suspected by the donors of involvement in the Goldenberg scandal. Yet London yearly bestowed a £50-million blessing, and with it international credibility, on Saitoti’s head. ‘What the Kenyan public see is a minister of education who has been alleged to be a central character in Goldenberg, being chummied and rewarded by the British, who regard him as the most important single partner in their development work. The message that conveys should make us uncomfortable.’
During Clay’s tenure, the topic of shifting from project to budgetary support in Kenya cropped up with a regularity that left little doubt where DfID’s inclinations lay. The department was champing at the bit, desperate to make the move. ‘Unfortunately, they’ve had to confront the evidence that they can’t justify doing it, because the “fiduciary ri
sk” was too high. What they have tended to do is to shoot the messenger.’ And the tension between DfID’s need to spend and its prospective customer’s soiled track record could only, Clay recognised, get keener with time, increasing the temptation to turn a blind eye to government theft. ‘DfID have got themselves into a position where they talk about not wanting to waste “their investment” in Kenya’s education. It isn’t really an investment, of course, it’s an expenditure. But when people talk about investment in that way, they start thinking about defending it, and the more they invest, the more they will be inclined to say, “We mustn’t pull out now.”’ Kenya’s education system represented an expanding ‘sunk cost’ for DfID, its abandonment less acceptable with every passing year.
In the high commissioner’s view, Britain’s integrity was on the line. He, for one, had taken on board Whitehall’s briefings on a new line on graft. ‘Governments have been telling us diplomats for the last ten years: “You have to take up the moral high ground.” My argument was, I’m in Kenya, we have the evidence, this is something we can do something about. For God’s sake let’s do it if we mean what we say.’
It was not a question, in Clay’s view, of cutting aid. More subtle weapons were available, as his own high commission and the American embassy would later demonstrate when they started refusing visas to Kenyan politicians who saw shopping expeditions to Harrods and weekends in Manhattan as a right. The public humiliation cut the likes of Chris Murungaru to the quick. It was a question of engaging forcefully with the government and making clear, loudly and tactlessly if necessary, that Britain expected more than lip service from its African partners in the war on graft. It expected, at the very least, not to have to discuss development with ministers widely suspected of having had their fingers in the pie. ‘We should be less niminy-piminy and say what we think.’ If he felt he owed it to British taxpayers, Clay also felt beholden to the Kenyans he met. Given the dangers faced by those trying to make government accountable–arrest, raids by the security services, legal writs–keeping quiet undermined those attempting to reshape their own societies, the very individuals donors claimed to want to encourage.
Most Kenyans blithely assumed that if the British high commissioner said something, it represented British policy, a thought-through position running from one end of government to the other, like the lettering in a stick of Brighton rock. Not so. Jarring with the upbeat mood music in the run-up to Gleneagles, Clay’s call for a tough line on Kenyan graft set him at odds with DfID, his own bosses and a Downing Street operation famous for its control freakery. Tony Blair’s administration was not one in which individual departments were supposed to break free from their moorings. Unbeknownst to Clay, Vomit One had already triggered an exasperated outburst in the unit drawing up the Africa Commission report, preparing to tout the line that a reformed continent was perfectly placed to benefit from increased aid. ‘Who is this guy?’ spluttered an appalled senior Treasury official involved in its drafting. ‘Why aren’t they reining him in?’ No one wanted a repeat. The issue was not ‘scaleable’, Clay was told by his superiors, meaning events on his patch could not be used as fodder for overarching government policy. ‘We were running up to the Year of Africa and they didn’t want someone pissing on their parade.’
The British New Year’s Honours List for 2005 contained a knighthood for Clay, the ultimate compliment from an appreciative government. But he was becoming a little too pungent for his peers, both in London and in Kenya. Attending a conference on corruption in Nairobi a few months earlier, an event which attracted the usual crowd of badge-wearing NGO representatives, diplomatic envoys and Kenyan government ministers, I was nudged in the ribs by a journalist friend. He pointed to where Clay sat towards the back of the hall, looking determinedly cheerful but very much on his own. Arriving diplomats greeted him, but chose to sit elsewhere. It was as though he was possessed of an invisible aura repelling incoming bodies. ‘Look. No one wants to be associated with him now. He’s become radioactive.’
He gritted his teeth and ploughed on, ignoring London’s heavy hints. ‘I was doing the right job, with excellent material. I was buggered if I was going to be co-produced from abroad.’ On 2 February 2005, Sir Edward chose a press awards ceremony funded by Britain as the occasion for Vomit Two. The ceremony at the Hotel Intercontinental, meant to recognise Kenya’s investigative reporting, became an exercise in irony. Mutterings of embezzlement circulated the tables as it emerged that two competing lists of prize-winners existed. Vice president Moody Awori had graced the event with his presence, and the organisers must have sensed what was coming, for they did all they could to curtail Sir Edward’s performance, packing the programme with extra speakers and knocking on the podium as he delivered his speech to try to bring it to a close. If Vomit One had marked a general sounding of the alarm, Vomit Two, Clay’s second salvo in six months, was far more specific. His team had done their homework.
The ‘unpleasing substance’ he had previously cited remained firmly stuck to the shoes of both Kenyans and the donors, Sir Edward told his audience. He had therefore handed to the Kenyan authorities details of twenty suspect procurement deals. What all these arrangements shared was the customer–usually ‘the good old OP’ (Office of the President)–and a certain kind of businessman. ‘At the back of all these questionable deals is a type of man whose companies travel under many colours and names, but who goes on, apparently forever. He is a man for all seasons of governments. He can find receptive palms in every political party, but you should count your fingers after you shake his hand. He finds changes of government no more alarming than changing his shirt. He has plenty of them; unlike poor Kenyans who lose their shirts.’ As for apologising for Vomit One, he declared, in full Edith Piaf mode, that he regretted only three things about it: not having spoken earlier, underestimating the scale of the looting, and the moderation of his language. He concluded with a parody of another famous children’s poem, this time T.S. Eliot’s ‘Macavity: The Mystery Cat’.
‘He likes to be in transit, and he’s partial to hotels,
He has a place in Manchester, he’s fond of the Seychelles.
So when the nation’s revenue’s in European banks,
Or you need a team of tractors, but acquire a troop of tanks,
Or the nation’s full of caviar, but hasn’t any bread,
Or you want a road for Christmas, but a frigate comes instead,
You can look behind the scenery or stare up in the air,
But the ministers will tell you that Macavity’s not there.’
It was another Clay barnstormer. Sir Edward’s manner of expressing himself might have been as florid as ever, but he had clearly grasped the fundamentals of the Anglo Leasing deals: that they formed a continuum stretching across the 2002 elections; that Moi’s elite had passed its appetites, habits and–most importantly–sleazy business contacts smoothly on to Kibaki’s set.
The government frothed. A furious minister accused Sir Edward of being an ‘incorrigible liar’ and drunk. Yet despite its more weighty content, Vomit Two would have far less impact than Vomit One. In the normal state of affairs, the Kenyan media would have run with the story for weeks. But an upcoming event was about to seize their attention, banishing any other event to relative obscurity.
The months that followed John’s non-transfer were not proving happy. The mysterious paybacks continued, and Anura Perera stepped up his efforts to secure a tête-à-tête John was determined would never take place. Even as he received ever more detailed information about the Anglo Leasing contracts–facts he dutifully passed on to his head of state–Kibaki delivered a series of speeches protesting that he could not take action against alleged government graft ‘without evidence’. The hypocrisy made John wince. What further proof could Kibaki possibly need?
With the passage of time, the Mount Kenya Mafia grew ever more careless, taking John’s acquiescence as read. Its members moved with disconcerting ease from pretending to know noth
ing about Anglo Leasing to coolly presenting it as part of a ‘resource mobilisation’ effort being pulled together by internal security minister Chris Murungaru and Alfred Getonga for Kibaki’s DP party ahead of elections due in 2007.
So here, then, was the supposed justification for a million-dollar con being perpetrated on the Kenyan taxpayer. Elections cost money, as any political party knows. Moi’s twenty-four years at the helm had given KANU every opportunity to build up a vast war chest, the argument went. If NARC was to stand any chance of blocking KANU’s return in the polls, it needed cash. It was unsavoury work, but someone had to do it. ‘If your pig gets stuck in the mud you have to jump in and extract it, even if that means getting dirty,’ Kiraitu Murungi told John.
John knew enough about his colleagues’ appetites not to give their explanation any credence. ‘With these kind of arrangements, only 30 per cent ever goes on political finance and 70 per cent goes on personal spending. It wasn’t about electoral funding. It was about BMWs and mistresses.’ NARC’s 2002 election win, after all, had been built on authentic popular support, not bought votes and war chests. And what appalled him were the terms in which the argument was couched. ‘What staggered me was that the justification was put in ethnic terms. It was: “We need to protect ourselves from the Luos.” “Who is ‘we’?” I’d say. It was always implicit. It meant “We Kikuyu, Meru and Embu.”’ Since independence, Kenya’s various elites had used the clarion call of ethnic solidarity–‘We’re doing this for you, our brothers!’–to camouflage grotesque levels of personal enrichment. Once again, tribal rivalry was being used as the cover for theft. By late October, he had calculated that the suspect contracts could amount to over $1 billion, for behind the eighteen Anglo Leasing cases lay other, even more secret and even murkier projects. The scam just kept growing. ‘I’m worried that we will have another Goldenberg scandal before the elections,’ confided a clearly uneasy Kiraitu Murungi. Part of John watched himself, horror-struck, marvelling, as he joked with the justice minister–that macho joshing again–about the ‘Goldenberg scandal of 2006’, speculating about whether they would appear as suspects or witnesses in the inquiry.
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