The Kawaida Corruption

And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand. (Malachi 2:13)

In my last post, I said that our fiber is stained with corruption. I suspect there are some who are disputing that because they are not connected to the billions that are stolen. They think corruption applies when vast amounts of cash and prime tracts of land are mentioned. They assume the ones down there have no opportunity to be corrupt.

Kawaida is Swahili for commonplace and usual. That is where I want us to look today.

What do you say about those rich men who queue with the poor for relief food or freebies? Why would someone with more than enough spend a whole day yet he will probably feed what he gets to his animals?

What do you say about those who cut queues, however short they are? Or those who will attempt to empty your pockets if you offer to buy them a meal? What about those who go for missions and Christian meetings to be able to eat what they can’t afford?

Elders are entrusted with justice in small issues. Yet do you realize that many times the offender makes them so comfortable that instead of serving justice to the offended they dismiss their cries as petty?

Someone is dismissed from a place he had served so diligently and faithfully. As in most such cases, such jobs will not allow one to join a union. It therefore left him in the cold. He goes to the labor office for assistance, even if only for a severance package, sometimes pay for the days he worked before his sack. Now, instead of settling the dues of his faithful worker, the boss goes to the official involved and feeds him properly so that the case is dismissed. Incidentally the money he uses to oil the official’s palms is more than what would have sorted this guy.

Someone’s chickens get eaten by a neighbor’s dog. He decides to go to the chief instead of pursuing the long and tedious journey of the courts. The offender sees the chief privately and offers a reward. The chief collects all the evidence, but not to as to build a good case for the offended.  He dismisses the case after collecting all the evidence, thus locking out all avenues for redress.

A couple has a disagreement that threatens to break their marriage. Since one party is close to the pastor, the other thinks that the pastor is the best arbiter and calls him to diffuse the tension. But the party closer to the pastor, who could be the offender, goes to the pastor privately and the pastor does not even respond to the distress call, or even acknowledge receipt of the same. Or he takes the side of his friend against the one who sought his intervention.

Two parties go to court and each hires an advocate. The advocates sit together to look for a way to fleece these two fools even as they play with the law. An injunction here, a delay there, lack of witnesses somewhere else becomes the order of the day. Yet they are being paid for appearing in court and building their case. A case that could have taken three days ends up taking years. And when it is determined they advise the parties to appeal so that the gravy train continues.

A person suffers an injury that requires compensation and decides to go to the police. But instead of the police fighting for the right of the injured they haggle for their cut. The police end up being compensated even as the injured goes home emptier than he was before he sought justice. Not only is he not compensated, but the one who has injured him becomes abusive, challenging him to go wherever he wants as he has bought the system.

These are things I have come across in the process of ministry. The victims came to me to get a responsive ear, many times just to vent.

Let me give an analogy by something I saw happen.

We all know that the matatu industry in Kenya is for the most part anarchic. But they are not so because there are no laws or law keepers.

One day I was in a matatu and it was stopped by a city council traffic enforcer. The conductor gave him fifty shillings (about half a dollar) and said something I have never forgotten.

‘I have now bought Nairobi’.

He can stop anywhere; even block traffic to look for passengers as the person responsible for holding him accountable to maintain the law is in his pocket.

Why do police kill known robbers instead of arresting them? That has raised numerous debates.

What does an officer do when the person he arrests time and again is set free by his superiors and he is even reprimanded for it? Then the same guy starts threatening or ridiculing him because he has connections with the senior officers. And the public he is paid to serve and the law he swore to enforce is suffering.

What does one do when his witness statements are given to the criminal he was hoping to help send to prison? Then the said criminal starts harassing him and asking him what he had hoped to achieve by his witness.

Do you realize the reason people take the law into their hands? Many times they realize that the law is meaningless as it serves the interests of a few.

I remember when lynching started in Nairobi. Robbers had become blatant. So much that they would even tell you in advance when they will be breaking into your house and there was nothing you could do.

Imagine a policeman who loves his job in such a situation. You know what you are supposed to do yet your hands are tied as the robbers have arranged the robbery with the knowledge of your superiors!

Think about this parent who neglects their family to seek thrills outside their marriage bed, neglecting the children in the process. I wonder whether you realize that one driver of that is the perennial lifestyle lived outside God’s boundaries. Many times it is the direct product of corruption.

You see money that is not the product of your sweat MUST be wasted on worthless pursuits. That is the reason you find some of those people buying more cars than they can drive. They will buy more clothes they will never wear, even once. They will be in more relationships and more abominations than their systems can handle.

That is the reason as a victim of the freedom struggle, according to the reworked narrative, those who amassed land during the adjudication are losing that land so fast, many times as soon as fathers hand over it to their children who sell it in so much hurry you wonder what is eating them. All that advantage works out as a disadvantage when God steps in to reconstitute His kind of justice.

That is the reason I am saying that in the narrative we create Christ must be central. Otherwise we could be pursuing justice and fighting corruption using tools that are contrary to His.

Let me give an example. Someone in the course of working used a short cut to get something he wanted. He is proven to be corrupt and it is decided that he forfeits everything to the public as he was the only one of the network who was caught. He therefore loses even what was from his sweat. Nobody cares whether he is sorry or not as there is no measure for the same. His family therefore loses everything and must start worse than afresh.

His children will be unable to afford the basics and could suffer extreme deprivation. In our passion to fight corruption we have crucified one person for the sins of the whole team. The rest go scot free to enjoy the loot while the weakest link suffers their consequences.

What then happens to his children? As you know no one will want to be connected to the convicted ‘sinner’. They could even die of hunger as their father serves his prison term. Yet his was not even worthy of being called the tip of the iceberg. But the worst part is that he may even have been innocent, with the real criminals having fixed him to cover their tracks. For example do you realize that during the aborted coup in 1982 some of the people who suffered the most were those who had no idea something was amiss with their lack of information being treated as cover up? Their lives were messed up because they could not explain why they did not know about it or give facts they did not have.

Only Christ has all the evidence to deal with corruption conclusively. And His solution is giving us new hearts not stained with our past sins.

Remember John 8? Everybody wanted to lynch the adulterer, probably a prostitute who may have been set up to rid society of her kind.

Many people ask where her partner was. They even wonder why Jesus didn’t ask that question.

That question was irrelevant. Jesus was about restoration. He knew whether it was a set up or a ‘genuine’ case. But that was not important to Him.

He was about restoring the sinner as well as society. And the restoration begins when we look inward. We must see our sinfulness to be able to deal with the sins of the nation. It would be impossible to judge sin rightly unless you realize that it also is part of your make up.

As with David, his self-righteous judgment of a criminal is what God used to help him look inward to his sin, a sin he had effectively covered up.

Corruption is sin, only that most times the victims are not immediate acquaintances. Many times the devastation caused by corruption is immense. How many die because someone diverted drugs from the public hospital and they are unable to buy them from his clinic? How many children give up school because of the pressure teachers are applying on them to pay for the extra tuition when their parents can’t afford it and it is compulsory, though illegal in our laws? How many can’t get a job however qualified because they do not have a tall relative or money to oil the system? How many lose their livelihoods because they have decided they will not bribe to carry out a legally registered and operated business and for that are harassed to no end? How many accident victims die because the first respondents are after looting instead of helping him? How many die because the person entrusted with taking relief food, seed or fertilizer to them made himself a retail outlet?

That is why we must be able to clearly see the corruptive tendencies in us to be able to deal with the mega aspects of graft we are seeing in those higher offices. We will very easily throw those stones until we see that we are really not much different from the culprits. Chances are that we would be just like them if the same opportunities were availed to us.

Then, and only then, will we be in a position to deal with the issue, by handing it over to Jesus to deal with. Like David said, all sin, corruption included, is ultimately against God. And God is the only one who can address it conclusively by transforming hearts. And His forgiving is so total that He chooses to forget what He has forgiven.