In a recent interview, President Uhuru Kenyatta made a shocking revelation and admission that Kenya was losing Ksh2 billion a day to graft. If we were to assume that the theft takes place only between Monday to Friday, it would then mean that the country is losing Sh730 billion yearly. The Kenyan public continues to debate why the head of state is unable to do anything to stop the theft. What the president didn't tell the public is how much of the stolen billions of taxpayer funds are going to the pockets of people close to him. Local media outlets have reported that people close to the president are beneficiaries of corruption.
Every week the press is awash with one case of graft after another. From the looting of funds meant to fight the Covid 19 pandemic to the billions of shillings lost through fake government tenders.
Many Kenyans are aware that corruption is bad for them. They know the leaders in power are corrupt, and that disturbs them. They express their hatred and anger every day through public spaces by organizing demonstrations, publishing anti-corruption propaganda.
We have seen messages like 'corrupt leaders must die,' 'corruption is a genocide against the poor', and many more. Sometimes the capitalist propaganda that corruption is human nature occasionally dampens the peoples' courage to fight.
The bigger question is, what is the root of corruption, and how can it be stopped? The Communist Party of Kenya reaffirms that the mother of corruption is the system that perpetuates it – Capitalism.
Kenya is a corrupt neo-colonial turbo capitalist state. Kenyans are trapped between the corrupt political leaders' interests and the imperialist interests represented by multinationals corporations and non-government organizations.
The Kenyan problem is not only on bad leadership but also in the exploitative relations with the metropole countries. The unequal capitalist system is at the center of our problems. So, we see corruption within the inner life of Kenyan society and its influence from external factors.
Capitalism is the system that encourages the primitive accumulation of land, wealth, and capital, where individuals and families accumulate thousands of acres of land which they don't need while millions of Kenyans are landless and need the land for their survival and development.
Let us elaborate on this more precisely. According to Kenya Land Alliance, more than 65 percent of all arable land in Kenya is in the hands of only 20 percent of Kenyans. The mindless land grabbing has left millions landless, while 67 percent, on average, own less than an acre per person. About 80 percent of the population has already been alienated from their national resource.
Capitalism is the system of exploitation of person by person based on greed; individual families are proud to own billions and trillions, which they are pleased to display while millions of people wallow in poverty in urban areas or ache an impoverished life in primitive lifestyles in the countryside. Is this not corruption?
Let us reflect on another admission. Recently, Raila Odinga, the Orange Democratic Party leader, admitted to having a net worth of about Ksh2 billion in a country where the majority of the population are in dire need of food, medicine, and all the basics that comes with a dignified life. This only confirms a country divided between a few haves and the suffering many. In this capitalist system, people are starving and dying of hunger while the class in power pushes the country deeper into foreign debt. The handshake politics has introduced more thieves into the jubilee administration. The jubilee administration did not go beyond the campaign rhetoric and is proving clueless about our country's future.
The capitalist democracy is corrupt; it's a competition of vote-buying exercise, bribery, deception, forgery – politicians compete in rigging themselves. Rulers keep on parroting about fighting corruption to cover their crimes deliberately. Yet, who in the ruling class is not corrupt? When the election approaches, they start accusing each other of corruption. Every capitalist faction wants to win public opinion by accusing the other faction of more theft. Media outlets widely reported when President Uhuru Kenyatta's statement that he would not hand over power to a thief. What did he mean? If he does not have something to hide, why did he resort to the court of public opinion yet he is the commander in chief, with the instruments of power to prosecute such crimes? To the Kenyan capitalist ruling class, the fight against corruption is just a song, lies, platitude, drama, and open impunity. How can people who are part and parcel of corruption be expected to lead the war against corruption successfully?
Privatization is theft - Capitalism system is anchored on the robbery of public resources through privatization. This is how the rich can horde billions of monies at the expense of the majority poor. To privatize essential services such as water, to put them at the altar of profit for a few moneybags is corruption. To bankrupt state corporations only to end up buying them through backdoors for a song is corruption. To have an opaque private and public partnership that is anti-people, where losses are passed to the public and profits to businessmen that's corruption.
Capitalism culture is corrupt- the culture of deception and lies; through mass media outlets, the capitalist sells their corrupt pop-culture. They attack the poor masses, telling them that they have only themselves to blame for their poverty. They disseminate false hope to the masses, to make them meek, and turn attention away from the capitalist chaos. In the same media outlets, the politicians show off their stolen wealth through opulent life. Teaching young Kenyans to aspire for corrupt lifestyles and values of acquiring money at all costs rather than values of hard work, good morals, and changing our country to a better society based on communist values and not corruption?
The capitalist education system is corrupt- it brews intellectual corruption, both in essence and form. Apart from education meant for the rich by the rich, the capitalist education system is designed to condition the Kenyan masses and mold them to be at the capital's service. The loan funding of higher learning makes most Kenyans an appendage of the capitalist system and distracts any thoughts to change the system that has condemned them into poverty. Higher education institutions are lobbyists of reactionary ideas to maintain the status quo of capitalism. The products of these institutions are intellectuals that have sold their souls entirely to capitalism; they are not near professionals but the capitalist zombies living for their greed. Engineering, Medicine, Political science, et al. is not at the service of humanity but the service of capital and individual greed.
To fight against corruption in Kenya is to fight against the capitalist system. The Communist Party of Kenya recognizes that capitalism is inherently corrupt, it's the base of corruption, and without giving it a final dent, corruption thrives. The tough anti-corruption talk among the Kenyan leaders is only a scarecrow to win the masses through lies. Building and strengthening the Communist Party of Kenya and spreading the communist ideology in Kenya is the only reliable and genuine path towards rooting out corruption in Kenya.
Reference:
2. https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/kenya/article/2001227584/the-untold-story-of-the-kenyattas-wealth
3. https://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Talk:Who_owns_Kenyan_land_2008
4. https://ogiek.org/indepth/ind-who-owns-the-land.htm