By KWAMCHETSI MAKOKHA

Experts can do wonders for Kenya, especially if they are from Great Britain.

Because of the high regard in which Kenyans hold expatriate experts, there are many 12-year-olds today named after John Troon of Scotland Yard. Should memory fail you, Superintendent Troon was the detective who nailed the murderers of Minister John Robert Ouko.

Of course, the guilty were tried, convicted and jailed for life, or hanged. It is such a long time ago, the names of the convicts and the case details escape recall.

Then, of course, there was that horrible murder of British tourist Julie Ward. Again, Scotland Yard detectives investigated the murder and the inquiry was as thorough as they come. It yielded evidence that nailed murderers who are either rotting in jail or have since been hanged. It is difficult to keep track of these things, sometimes.

It was just a matter of time before the Government rated the theft of public resources as highly as those two terrible murders and sought help from without.

Whitewash? Who said anything like that about the redoubtable anti-corruption advisory team of Sir Humphrey Maud, Mr Graham Stockwell and Mr Stephen Kramer? Kenyans are absolutely happy with British experts brought in at the Government’s initiative. They do a great job, all the time.

Even if the British were intent on a whitewash job – knowing as we do that they taught us the original sin of graft – it would be impossible for them to do it in these circumstances because there is nothing to paper over. The Government has gone out of its way to expose those who steal brazenly by promptly taking them to court.

What, however, makes the whitewash business impossible is the personal involvement of President Moi. The Head of State is himself as transparent as tap water.

Has he not denied having a single shilling outside this country? Has he not refused to accept cash from businessmen who wish to make donations to "a project of his choice"? Has he not promptly sacked ministers implicated in corrupt deals?

Our President is so accessible that anyone who wants to see him about a business or a personal problem only needs to call State House and book an appointment. Unlike the case in other countries, there are no middlemen who charge cash or stakes in companies to arrange a meeting with the Head of State. That is called leading from the front and the President does it all the time.

He has even decided to compromise with the powerful interests that want corruption to thrive by having the IMF appoint advisers to rewrite the corruption law. Even agreed to that difficult clause about amnesty for thieves up to a certain point, but you will not believe the Opposition’s determination to keep Kenya away from donor funds!

Take the Bill that was supposed to entrench the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority in the Constitution. He laid aside his presidential pride and cast his vote for truth and justice.

He would have personally gone to Parliament to vote for adopting the List of Shame, just that he was busy – matters of State and all that.

All this because corruption worries the President. It even enrages him. Thinking back to the many times he has publicly spoken out on the subject and warned civil servants of severe action, one cannot mistake his resolve to stamp out this evil.

Those accusing him of lacking political will are just anxious to forget that in all his 24 years in power the President has been sleepless in State House worrying about how to end corruption.

Corruption and the President go back a long, long way. As far back as when he was a mere vice-president in January, 1978. At the three-day Second Leaders Conference on "The Kenya We Want", Mr Moi gave a very moving keynote speech, one that doubtless led the delegates to conclude that corruption was a festering sore that was eating into the nation’s soul.

One of the reasons the Moi presidency was welcomed so riotously across the country later that year was the hope the public had in seeing an end to the shameless smuggling and blatant corruption – the culture of theft that had gained acceptance in the word magendo.

Some clever people who used to smuggle guns into the country by burying them into coffee beans in the Chepkube days have now been restricted to smuggling only one thing at a time: guns or coffee, never both.

For the past 10 years alone, there have been at least three serious attempts to end corruption – from the Prevention of Corruption Act, to the formation of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority and the yet-to-be-passed Economics Crimes Bill. 

But corruption is no easy enemy. As the President says, he cannot surely supervise every person earning peanuts who happens to control enormous sums of money. Civil Servants just have to learn to be honest, and remember to pray so that they do not fall into temptation.

The financial promiscuity that has taken root in the public service is no fault of the President's. As the Head of State, he may order the Army to go to war but he is just a powerless mortal when it comes to changing stubborn hearts bent on extorting bribes, stealing Government money, misappropriating profits from state corporations, and so on.

Yet, even where there is no evidence of theft, he has constantly shuffled ministers and permanent secretaries so that they do not feel too comfortable in one place begin to get tempted.

Short of breaking off the drawers on all Civil Servants’ desks, building extra confessional boxes around the country, issuing the police with uniforms that have no pockets, there is apparently nothing more we know that can be done.

That the President seeks advice at this time when he has tried all the tricks in the book and failed should be a great credit to him.

There are, of course, those cynics who look at all this and say the President is entertaining the nation in his own tragic soap opera. How mistaken they are! Just like George W. Bush went to the White House to fight terrorism, our own President went to State House to fight corruption. And he is not leaving until the job is done.

The success of the two Scotland Yard teams and the satisfactory conclusion of the two affairs they investigated should inspire confidence in the advisory services of Sir Humphrey Maud, Mr Graham Stockwell and Mr Stephen Kramer. What was their fee again? Just Sh300 million a month?