It's Our Turn to Eat

by Michela Wrong

  In every individual’s life there are areas that remain permanently off limits to the biographer, defying explanation. Tracking John’s itinerary, there’s something mystifying about the sheer time it took him to recognise the obvious. The dossier he eventually produced can read like a log of a year-long refusal to face the truth. How many times did John Githongo, a man of no mean intelligence, need to be told that his closest colleagues had hatched Anglo Leasing on the pretext of election fundraising before he believed it? Time after time he recorded conversations in which he was told exactly that in his little black Moleskine diaries, concluding in despair: ‘I must now prepare to leave the administration.’ Two weeks later, an almost identical exchange would be recorded, with a touch more emphasis: ‘I really MUST make arrangements to leave.’

  His family’s welfare preyed constantly on his mind. But the problem went further than that. John was always ready to admit that procrastination, which follows on from the need to control events as night follows day, was one of his character flaws. ‘I haven’t even started procrastinating yet. I’m going to start tomorrow,’ he used to joke, poking fun at his own failing. His girlfriend dubbed the reflex, a tendency to flagellate every decision to the point of near-extinction, ‘analysis paralysis’. Friends saw this Hamlet-like irresolution as the expression of a perfectionism that had characterised John since school. If the unexamined life is not worth living, the over-examined life can become a terrible burden. ‘If you aren’t free to make mistakes, you aren’t free to act. No mistakes are tolerable to him, and that accounts for the inaction,’ says Mwalimu Mati.

  But that was not the only reason for the foot-dragging. John’s slow mental churning, so baffling in retrospect to the clear-eyed outsider, was also a form of mourning. ‘It sounds almost comical, like I’m describing someone in a relationship. But I honestly think John’s heart was dented,’ says former colleague Lisa Karanja. Like an accident victim sitting dazed in Accident & Emergency, John needed to go through the necessary stages of disbelief and denial before he could digest his loss. The time it took–not months, but years–was a testament to the depth of his belief, in that bright post-election dawn of 2003, that NARC could break with Moi’s grubby ways. For John, who like so many Kenyans had believed he was taking part in an ethical rebirth, this really was a grieving process, and it could not be hurried. The oedipal aspect of the ordeal made it all the more painful. A young man who had enjoyed a filial relationship with the president was being forced to realise that Kibaki had feet of clay, just as he had once registered with his own father. When acceptance finally set in, affectionate belief would be replaced by cold fury.

  By October, John was setting his affairs in order, still not entirely certain how far he was willing to go. Whatever happened to him, he did not want his staff to bear the brunt. Quietly he downsized his unit, sending civil servants back to the departments from which he had poached them.

  There was to be one last betrayal, in the course of one of the sparring conversations that had become a surreal feature of his working life, during which deadly-serious matters were alluded to between guffaws of phoney laughter. Following a 4 November meeting to discuss NARC’s governance strategy, Justice Aaron Ringera, head of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, stayed behind for a private chat. Fraught, craving support, John ruefully confessed to the colleague whose career he had done so much to further that he had realised State House only wanted him to go through the motions of his job: ‘Mine is the shock of a personal realisation.’

  Ringera nodded in agreement. ‘So you stay there, you are a little wiser and you know that you are there!’ And then this refined man of the law, John’s trusted friend, made crudely explicit the sheer horror of his predicament. ‘You can’t, in fact, afford to make any move. That’s when you will really be killed.’

  So, joked a dismayed John–attempting, as ever, to clothe the abnormal in palatable language–the message from his superiors was: ‘That’s far enough.’

  Ringera nodded, and added a diabolical twist: ‘If you wanted to resign and go today, that’s when they would kill you.’ It was the classic predicament of those who climb onto the merry-go-round of power, only to find themselves whizzing around so fast they cannot jump off.

  The two chortled cynically together as John sketched aloud a twee scenario in which the hulking anti-corruption chief drove around in his ‘little car’, doing meaningless errands while sending out reassuring messages on the government’s behalf. If Ringera was right, John was a prisoner in his job, damned if he tried to do it, damned if he resigned.

  The conversation was one of the bleakest moments of John’s life. The man who should have been his greatest ally had just passed on a death threat. ‘I felt lonely, very lonely. I realised at that moment that I had no more allies within government. In just one and a half years, it had come to this.’

  On 12 December, Kenya marked the anniversary of its independence. Jamhuri Day was when the presidency handed out its yearly honours, and to John’s surprise he was made Chief of the Burning Spear, First Class. The message was none too subtle: ‘Keep quiet and you will be amply rewarded,’ his bosses were telling him. Two days later, he was called to the ministry of finance to meet donor representatives. He was being used to lie to Kenya’s backers, a pet monkey performing tricks to reassure the regime’s critics. It was a miserable Christmas and a grim New Year.

  His last briefing with the president was on 10 January 2005. Shortly before the meeting, Kiraitu had been quoted in the national press stating that because the money involved in the first two contracts had been repaid, Anglo Leasing could be defined as ‘the scandal that never was’. No money was lost, nothing had actually happened. Not so, John told Kibaki. Running through the eighteen contracts, he doggedly drew the outlines of the scandal in as much detail as he could. The usually torpid president, a man often described as too lazy to lose his temper, suddenly grew animated. For a brief moment, John’s heart lifted: had Kibaki finally become outraged at the scam’s depth and breadth? No, he realised. He was incensed by the uppity young whippersnapper who insisted on making his life so difficult, harping on relentlessly on this discomforting topic. ‘We were both very angry. He was furious, we couldn’t look each other in the eye. Our relationship had collapsed.’

  If the series of paybacks from phantom companies had briefly suggested John was cramping the fraudsters’ activities, even that victory was slipping away. Joseph Kinyua, permanent secretary at the finance ministry, informed John he was coming under tremendous pressure from David Mwiraria to pay out on some of the Anglo Leasing contracts. Kinyua said he hoped to use auditor general Evan Mwai’s report as a delaying tactic, but Mwai informed John that Francis Muthaura, head of the civil service, had been telephoning to insist pending bills were paid, even if the audit was incomplete. John tried to stiffen each man’s backbone, encouraging them to hold firm. But the money-making machine brooked no delay.

  As it gathered momentum, John’s colleagues seemed to lose all reserve. There was a palpable change in tone. ‘You are burning down the house,’ they told him, meaning the House of Mumbi. ‘You cannot burn down the house to kill a rabbit.’ No attempts, now, to hide what was going on. After a cabinet meeting at State House on 14 January, Kiraitu walked into John’s office, pointed at him and accused him of undermining the party. According to the minister, the forthcoming party elections were expected to cost 200 million shillings, and those funds would come from Anglo Leasing. The devastatingly frank conversation was repeated a few days later, with both Kiraitu and Murungaru openly telling John the suspect contracts were all covers for party financing. ‘They had bared their souls to me.’

  There is a famous Sherlock Holmes story–‘Silver Blaze’–which features a dog that fails to bark. A precious racehorse has been stolen, but the clue exposing the guilty man is not a footprint or blood smear, but a non-event: the guard dog fails to raise the alarm because the criminal is, in fact, his master. With Anglo Leasing, just as
in ‘Silver Blaze’, an absence, not a presence, was the giveaway. From the start, John’s priority had been to establish where the president stood on the matter, because in that answer, he knew, lay a nation’s success or failure. No paper trail led from the bogus deals to Kibaki, but that was hardly surprising, given most African leaders’ preference for keeping instructions verbal. The ministers’ brazen behaviour told John all he needed to know. The truth lay in what they didn’t do, not what they did. Had Murungaru and Kiraitu been briefing him on the sly, whispering their insights to him in his office, looking over their shoulders, it would have indicated the existence of factions and cabals in State House outside Kibaki’s control. But no, by January 2005 both men were strolling into his office and, without any sign of embarrassment or anxiety, confessing all. Only Kibaki’s blessing could explain such blithe self-confidence. ‘The fact that these guys were openly, without concern, admitting to these things, knowing I was reporting back to the president–while Kibaki was making public statements saying “Where is the evidence?”: but I’d given him the evidence–said it all.’

  In conversations with diplomats, with the head of the KNCHR or the director of public prosecutions Philip Murgor, John rigidly held the party line. ‘Maina Kiai and I were telling John, “We’re seeing all the signs, we’re on our own,”’ says Murgor. ‘He kept saying, “I can assure you, I was just with the president and he is behind us.” John remained loyal till the very end.’ But John could no longer hide the truth from himself. ‘Ultimately, it became clear. I was investigating the president.’

  Enough: the decision was made. One of his last errands was a visit to Archbishop Ndingi Mwana a’Nzeki, head of Kenya’s Catholic Church. Strong-minded clergymen have played a pivotal role in Kenyan history, nudging reluctant governments along paths they hesitated to take. The archbishop, John knew, had recently had a heated encounter with Kibaki, delivering a series of criticisms on his bishops’ behalf so scathing that the president–supposedly a devout Catholic–had stormed out. It made tactical sense to see him. But John also wanted to consult the archbishop as a practising Christian. He wanted the Church’s backing, implicit if not explicit. ‘Things are more complicated than I expected. And they go much higher,’ he said. ‘Yes, that’s what we heard,’ the archbishop replied, equally elliptically.

  At the eye of a hurricane lies a still, calm place where release finally becomes possible. Back at his villa in Lavington, John larked about with girlfriend Mary, taking pictures of the two of them in the house and gardens. He had barely had time to settle in, and now he was aware he might not get to enjoy such lavish premises for many years to come. His family were kept in the dark: too risky to tell them. But Mugo twigged immediately when he drove round to see John and came upon him burning documents. ‘That’s when I knew he was off.’ Having long fretted over John’s government liaison, his younger brother was quietly delighted. Thank God he was pulling out before becoming any more tarnished.

  John’s trip would take him first to the Swiss resort of Davos, then to Oslo and London, where he and Justice Aaron Ringera were supposed to be tracking Kroll’s progress on Goldenberg. In the flurry, no one noticed that this experienced traveller, the kind of man one would normally expect to see pulling a single roll-on case–seemed to be carrying an unusually large amount of luggage. In London John and Ringera, the man who had disappointed him above all others, held a last tête-à-tête, walking around Horse Guards Parade for two chilly hours. As they crunched across the gravel, John prepared Ringera for what was coming: his resignation and exile. Leaving Kenya would ensure the spotlight of government scrutiny shifted off his family and followed him abroad, leaving those he loved unscathed. And Ringera, a handsome, white-haired veteran who resembled everyone’s favourite uncle, revealed the steel beneath the velvet. Kenyan intelligence would ‘put something in your tea’ if John went public with what he knew, he said.

  ‘We made a sort of deal,’ says John. ‘I wouldn’t attack them and they wouldn’t attack me. And Ringera said he would take that message back to the kiama– he meant himself, Muthaura, Murungaru, Mwiraria and Kiraitu–and a truce would be called.’ The judge’s choice of terminology gave John a jolt. In its own small way, it validated his decision to leave. ‘Kiama’ is not a Kiswahili word. It means ‘council of elders’ in Gikuyu and Meru, and refers to the gatherings which traditionally decided community matters in pre-colonial times. Ringera had just confirmed what every jaundiced non-Kikuyu Kenyan had suspected since 2002: power in modern Kenya rested in the hands of a narrow ethnic clique. ‘I knew there was a mafia. Every mafia has a godfather, and the godfather was Kibaki, and that’s why I left. But it was the first time I’d heard Ringera refer to it like that.’ State House had been primed. As I toured my north London district looking for somewhere from which to fax John’s resignation letter, the Kibaki administration was already braced for what was to come.

  For two years, John’s presence in government had served as a form of shorthand telling Kenya’s foreign partners that despite a few blips, this was still an administration worth trusting. ‘You just didn’t get it, did you?’ Nation editor Joseph Odindo would later tease John. ‘You were meant to be a fig leaf.’ The fig leaf had now been whipped away. How, the Mount Kenya Mafia uneasily asked itself, would the donor community which had taken such a shine to the charming anti-corruption chief react?

  Pretty limply, was the answer. Ambassador William Bellamy announced that the United States was suspending the annual $2.5 million it gave to John’s Office of Governance and Ethics, the KACC and the ministry of justice. ‘It makes no sense, obviously, to partner with a government whose commitment to improved governance is purely rhetorical,’ he said. It sounded good as a headline, but in the same speech Bellamy revealed that the US allocated $175 million a year to Kenya: Washington had frozen just one seventieth of its yearly aid. Eight key embassies issued a joint statement describing John’s departure as ‘an extremely serious challenge’ to the credibility of the government’s anti-corruption policy, and the EU warned it might reconsider aid if the government did not show ‘seriousness and a sense of urgency’ in addressing graft. Given the many months in which top Kenyan officials had demonstrated their total lack of seriousness towards any activity other than stuffing their pockets, the statement seemed disingenuous in the extreme.

  Two months after John’s departure, the donors got their chance to show the government exactly what they thought of its behaviour. Held at a sprawling hotel complex on Nairobi’s outskirts, the Consultative Group meeting on 11–12 April 2005 was one of a series of gettogethers held sporadically between donors and government, occasions at which the administration’s performance was evaluated and fresh pledges of funds made, with civil society invited along to lend its voice. With its anti-corruption supremo just turned international fugitive, the government was braced for attack. A reshuffle in which Kibaki had demoted internal security minister Chris Murungaru to transport minister looked unlikely, outsiders speculated, to placate the donors. ‘They were running scared, on the ropes,’ recalls Clay. In an attempt to forestall its critics, the Kenyan government had submitted a two-year action plan for tackling sleaze. ‘We’d spent the previous weekend crawling over it,’ says Clay. ‘It was mostly things they’d said they would do in other forums, all good things but dependent on the political umph behind them. We had decided to offer some amendments, we were going to go hard on that.’

  The work proved in vain, thanks to the efforts of one man. As World Bank country director, Makhtar Diop had automatically been chosen to chair the get-together. Forceful chairmen can shape meetings to go the way they please. Privy to all the donor discussions ahead of the CG meeting, Diop was well aware of the intensity of concern, yet after the finance minister David Mwiraria had made his presentation, he did his best to close down all mention of corruption, delaying discussion of the action plan until the evening, when everyone would be itching to get home. ‘Makhtar had decided to shrink the time a
vailable and suppress the points we’d prepared. He did his best to subvert that meeting,’ recalls Clay. The US embassy’s first secretary was forced to physically grab the microphone to insist his ambassador had a say. ‘I was either going to interrupt or walk out,’ remembers William Bellamy. ‘The meeting had turned into a series of lengthy lectures from government spokesmen, with no chance for the donors to respond.’ Gladwell Otieno, TI-Kenya’s new director, was left fuming after trying to make a contribution. ‘He wouldn’t let me speak!’

  The outgoing World Bank director’s behaviour appalled all but the government delegation. A chance to signal that the international community would not swallow one outrageous scam after another had been missed. It’s striking how angry those present that day still feel, years later, at Diop’s act of sabotage. Had his overly cosy relationship with his landlord–yet to be soured at this stage by Lucy Kibaki’s behaviour–played a role? What seems clear is that he had fallen prey to a version of Stockholm syndrome. Over-identifying with his client, he had lost sight of the fact that his role was not to argue the Kenyan government’s cause. ‘Makhtar wanted to leave on a high note and to be thought a hell of a guy, with plaudits from the Kenyans and signed pictures. Well, who doesn’t?’ says Clay. ‘His behaviour that day was an absolute scandal. He really did the donors a bad turn, revealing to the Kenyans that there were more important things than governance, or morality, and one of those things was his own vanity. The action plan was approved with only minor changes, and flowed into the sand soon after that.’