The second act of a Kenyan whistle-blower

By serendipity, I met John Githongo on 28 February 2011, my last day in Nairobi, where I had been interviewing journalists for a book. If not for the suggestion of the estimable environmentalist and war photographer Sir Mohinder Dhillon, I would have gone back home assuming that the famous whistle-blower was much too busy to meet me. In fact, his current organisation, the INUKA Kenya Trust, was sponsoring a national event that day, the simultaneous singing of the national anthem at about 100 venues across Kenya. I photographed and recorded this event on Ngong Road, a main traffic artery near John’s headquarters in the Kilimani district. Afterward, we returned to the office, where we talked for about an hour.

John Githongo is a big, hearty, generous man. He spoke with intensity and percipience about a range of subjects, including his own career since he blew the whistle on the Anglo-Leasing scandal in 2004. This instance of massive corruption involved the self-proclaimed anti-corruption government of President Mwai Kibaki.
[For a thorough account of the Anglo-Leasing episode, see Michela Wrong, ‘It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower’ (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009)">

EXCERPTS FROM THE INTERVIEW

CORRUPTION AND THE AFTERMATH OF WHISTLE-BLOWING

RON SINGER: Is the furor that followed the publication of the book about you finished?

JOHN GITHONGO: No, it’s not finished. It’s been simply been overtaken by all these other events.

RON SINGER: Yes, the kinds of thing that you blew the whistle on are still going on.

JOHN GITHONGO: Yes.

RON SINGER: Like this Mau Forest business [schemes involving land development">. Mo told me about that.

JOHN GITHONGO: Other scandals, too.

RON SINGER: What do you think of [Prime Minister"> Raila Odinga’s appointment as Head of the Mau Forest Commission? Is that an effective way to deal with the problems and scandals involved? By putting a prime minister in charge?

JOHN GITHONGO: That sort of thing [land deals"> is being done across the country. They start, they stop, then start again.

RON SINGER: I understand that, by law, [former president"> Moi can justify his holdings in Mau Forest [where he owns huge tea plantations">. This is what [eminent cartoonist"> Gado told me. But that the law could also take those holdings away from him.

JOHN GITHONGO: According to the new constitution, the president [Mwai Kibaki"> has the power to do that.

RON SINGER: To take land back?

JOHN GITHONGO: Yes.

RON SINGER: But I understand Kibaki and Moi are on the same boards, and so on.

JOHN GITHONGO: Yes, there’s serious convergence between commercial and political interests.

RON SINGER: And he worked for Moi.

JOHN GITHONGO: Vice-president – a story of continuity.

RON SINGER: It could be a story of revenge, that he now hates him and wants to get even. But it isn’t, is it?

JOHN GITHONGO: No, not at all – a grandmaster master and his apprentice.

RON SINGER: May I ask you about one thing Charles Onyango-Obbo told me?

[Onyango-Obbo is perhaps Kenya’s pre-eminent journalist. In addition to writing eight or nine articles a week for The Nation, its affiliates and numerous blogs, he serves as media editor for the newspaper’s parent company, the Nation Media Group.">

JOHN GITHONGO: Sure.

RON SINGER: He said that, once Moi was gone, the Kenyan press lost its way, its purpose. Even though I think they acquitted themselves well in one election and one referendum before 2007. He said they lack a cause. But don’t they have one after 2007–08? They should.

JOHN GITHONGO: We compromise. I went into the Kibaki government thinking that, after the corruption of the Moi regime, something new was going on. But I found that they were doing the same thing. And, when I asked, they said, ‘This is our turn.’ Everything was the deal. And, if you do that, especially as a Kikuyu [which both Kibaki and, he, Githongo, are">, you’re going to be hated. President Kibaki shouldn’t have come close to losing the elections of 2007. The economy was growing, 5.5 per cent, it had done very, very well. Free primary school education, primary school enrollment doubled, housing boom and so on.

RON SINGER: So why didn’t he win in a landslide?

JOHN GITHONGO: The ethnic factor. The other communities saw all their worst fears about the ‘perceived Kikuyu hegemon’ confirmed. Eventually, an elite behaves like its worse stereotypes.

RON SINGER: From before Moi [who represented a Kalenjin interlude">, even. Are you also saying that the ethnic factor is still part of what keeps the press from finding its way?

JOHN GITHONGO: Yes, because much of it is controlled by the Kikuyu. Dominant group. Because of the climate, diseases, the Europeans settled in Kikuyu country. It gave them a head start. They got the best secondary schools, and so on.

RON SINGER: The Ibo in Nigeria, the Tutsi in Rwanda. The people I’ve talked to here seem to be above that. Of course, one, Gado, is a Tanzanian, and another. Onyango-Obbo, is a Ugandan. They’re not really … Kenyans.

JOHN GITHONGO: Well, I’m a Kikuyu, but I bring this out.

RON SINGER: That’s because you have a gene for trouble-making.

JOHN GITHONGO: Thank you very much!

RON SINGER: Still an infection in the press here … that’s terrible.

JOHN GITHONGO: Terrible. They control the resources.

RON SINGER: And I also hear that some ministries only hire people from one ethnicity.

INUKA AND KENYAN UNITY

RON SINGER: That was very lucky. I had no idea I was going to stumble into the rally.

JOHN GITHONGO: The thing is, it’s a matter of who takes ownership of the country. Kenya came out of a very bad period. It’s still in a very volatile situation, ever since the failed election in 2007. Almost a civil war, over a thousand dead, 600,000 displaced, at one point. And we still have ethnic militias. Now we have a coalition government. INUKA belongs to a partnership that is trying to strengthen this government and forge a national unity. So what you saw today is a rally going on across the country.

RON SINGER: Tell me about your organisation.

JOHN GITHONGO: INUKA is a national organisation empowering people to take charge of their own lives and problems. We engage in initiatives like what you saw today, to pull people together. We want people to engage their leaders.

… We’ve [also"> started a training and employment programme working with youth, people who fall through the cracks. They get everything from artisanal training to car washes and getting microcredit. Little community businesses in shacks. And, on the other side, Kenyan software firms are involved. We set up networks between communities. Like this, people are not cutting each other with machetes.

RON SINGER: So you’re trying to keep that from happening again. Wow, you’re facing a big deadline next year [when elections are to take place">.

JOHN GITHONGO: We keep on trying, and there are many, many other Kenyans on the same project, bringing in a lot of people.

[Ron tells John about the efforts of a visionary named Patrick van Rensburg (b. 1931) to build an alternative mini-economy in the village of Serowe, Botswana, in order to help people help themselves, instead of thinking they could all jump to prosperity via the global economy.">

JOHN GITHONGO: That’s right. That’s a good thing.

RON SINGER: It’s a big enterprise getting people to think locally, on a small scale.

JOHN GITHONGO: We’re just starting.

RON SINGER: Where do you get your money from?

JOHN GITHONGO: Right now, we’re being funded by private individuals. Twenty-five thousand, thirty-thousand dollars.

RON SINGER: Is that right! Hmm. But not corporations?

JOHN GITHONGO: No.

RON SINGER: Because what you’re doing is not what they’re interested in?

JOHN GITHONGO: We have one grant from a foreign government – the Finns, which is exclusively to do our website. They are very steadfast. We now have two grants, one from USAID, as well.

FIGHTING CORRUPTION IN NIGERIA

RON SINGER: Similar things happen in Nigeria. They also have an election coming up [in April 2011">.

JOHN GITHONGO: Yes, it may be difficult. Obasanjo’s re-election was a travesty.

RON SINGER: Yes, and then he tried for the third term. But [Obasanjo’s successor"> Yar’Adua was even worse, I think. Obasanjo, at least, set up the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Yar’Adua tried to take it apart by running the head, Nuhu Ribadu, out of the country.

JOHN GITHONGO: Yes.

RON SINGER: I interviewed him, Nuhu, by the way, if you’re interested. And now Nuhu is running for president. Guaranteed to get at least 20 votes. In Nigeria, no money, no machine, no chance. [In the event, Jonathan won, and Nuhu got about 7 per cent.">

[Ron Singer, ‘An Interview with Nuhu Ribadu, Nigeria’s Corruption Fighter’, The Faster Times, 24 February 2010: thefastertimes.com/.../an-interview-with-nuhu-ribadu-nigeria’s-corruption-fighter/

JOHN GITHONGO: He’s a friend of mine.

RON SINGER: Oh, is he! I met him in Washington during his exile.

JOHN GITHONGO: I met him when I was in Oxford.

RON SINGER: Another guy I interviewed, Abiye Teklemariam, a dissident Ethiopian journalist, is at St Anthony’s [College, Oxford"> now, writing a book about the democratic strands in Ethiopian history.

JOHN GITHONGO: Short book.

RON SINGER: Needles in a haystack. Even Nuhu had limits to what he could do. There was some business with oil leases given to Obasanjo’s friends, circumventing the bidding process. I think Nuhu had to keep quiet about that. Did you know about it?

JOHN GITHONGO: No. When he came to Oxford … I have some Nigerian friends among the intelligentsia who will no longer talk to me, because I defended him. They said he didn’t deserve the job, he was selective in his prosecutions, favored his boss’s people and so on. But I was clear.

RON SINGER: Huh! There’s a grain of truth in that, but it’s not a fair estimate. It’s mostly a smear.

JOHN GITHONGO: In a job like that, you’re making choices that are so difficult.

RON SINGER: We also talked about what brought him down, that business with the FBI. That was terrible. Did you know about that?

JOHN GITHONGO: Yes.

RON SINGER: Terrible. Imagine his position. He owed them something, it was like a blank check that they would fill in. That’s why you don’t like debt.

JOHN GITHONGO: I don’t like debt. I have debt now, but … I don’t own a credit card.

RON SINGER: The FBI is not someone you want to be indebted to. Were you able to persuade your Nigerian friends that they were wrong about him?

JOHN GITHONGO: No, some cut me off. One was a good friend, very close… Does Nuhu have a chance in the election? I don’t know Nigeria well.

RON SINGER: No, no, no chance at all.

JOHN GITHONGO: Then why is he doing it?

RON SINGER: Who knows? A better question is why Goodluck Jonathan [who succeeded Yar’Adua, who died in office"> didn’t welcome him back and give him a big job, like the one he had. The answer must be that Jonathan has his skeletons in his own closet. Maybe Nuhu is running now because he’s mad at Jonathan. Or he’s running on principle.

JOHN GITHONGO: Yes.

RON SINGER: He’s very popular. People give him a standing ‘O’ when he gets on an airplane, then ask for his autograph.

JOHN GITHONGO: That’s wonderful.

RON SINGER: But it doesn’t win Nigerian elections.

JOHN GITHONGO: That’s an interesting point.

AFRICAN POLITICS AND ‘THE ETHNIC CARD’

RON SINGER: In the 1960s, when I was in Nigeria, the place was already in flames because of ethnic politics. I sort of was thinking that, when I came back 45 years later… I’m going there in the Fall. They still have the zonal presidency [whereby the Muslim North and Christian South take turns">.

JOHN GITHONGO: Well, that’s how they keep things peaceful now, they share power.

RON SINGER: But there’s a problem: because the northerner died in office, two Southerners in a row. And If Jonathan is re-elected … [In fact, he was, and, in fact, there were riots in the North. But, as of August 2011, that situation had not spun out of control."> Still a factor … It’s because politicians play the ethnic card. If they united against it, as happened in Ghana, you could get rid of it.

JOHN GITHONGO: Yes.

RELIGION AND SOCIAL CONFLICT IN KENYA

RON SINGER: I’ve met some Catholic activists here who are trying to do similar things [to what INUKA is doing">. Since the last election.

JOHN GITHONGO: They suffered tremendously, because they were seen as partisan. When I traveled around the country, there were still parts of the country in 2008 where, if you were a priest, you took off your collar at night.

RON SINGER: Did the Muslims benefit? Converts?

JOHN GITHONGO: They have achieved, and continue to achieve, conversions among the Maasai [nomadic cattle-herders">.

RON SINGER: Wow! That’s strange.

JOHN GITHONGO: Well, no. If you look at the road that Malcolm X took, Islam appeals to marginalised groups in a way that Christianity does not.

RON SINGER: Christianity has a problem with such groups, because, what they give with one hand, they take back with the other. We’ll feed you, run schools for you, but no birth control.

JOHN GITHONGO: Yes. To marginalised people, Islam is compelling. One of my best times in the US was visiting the Malcolm X Museum in November 2006. I don’t know if you know it, it’s a little house [in Harlem, New York">.

RON SINGER: No, I haven’t been there.

[At this point, the phone rings, and, by chance, the caller must be a Muslim, for JG greets him with ‘salaamu alaikum’.">

ETHIOPIA

RON SINGER: It’s ironic that, with all its democratic institutions, Kenya still has this problem [of ethnic politics">. Ethiopia has nothing like those institutions.

JOHN GITHONGO: Well, I agree with Meles in his opposition to the multilaterals [funding agencies, like the World Bank">. I’m becoming skeptical of them, of all that. But Ethiopia is growing. He achieves growth.

RON SINGER: Well, yes, he sets the agenda away from democracy, but the question is how long you can get away with it. The press is really beleaguered there. The government is afraid of the democratic revolutions. If the press is supposed to lead the nation … The government keeps the lid on too many pots. Something’s got to boil over.

JOURNALISM IN KENYA AND BEYOND

RON SINGER: I’ve interviewed many Kenyan and Ethiopian journalists, and Mo Dhillon suggested I speak with you. Oh, I got turned down once: Hilary Ng’weno [the 85-year-old doyen of Kenyan journalists">: “Too old! No interviews!”

JOHN GITHONGO: Ever since he left the media … he’s a shy man.

RON SINGER: His main interest now is history, I understand. He had an illustrious career in journalism, didn’t he? I understand that he was the best thing going, under Moi.

JOHN GITHONGO: That’s true. I’m not a journalist, you know. My background is in economics.

RON SINGER: I did know that. I read Michela Wrong’s book about you. Oh, and please accept my greetings from [press critic and former journalist"> Chaacha Mwita. I interviewed him the other day.

JOHN GITHONGO: Oh, yes, very good.

RON SINGER: He told me about the 2006 raid on the Standard’s radio station. [Mwita was then The Standard newspaper’s managing editor."> He said they did it to teach them a lesson, to shut them up before the election.

JOHN GITHONGO: I was in exile by that time. Chaacha was there, so he knows. Yes, they did it to teach them a lesson. That was a volatile, confused time. The government seemed to have a laissez-faire policy. But despite the apparent freedom Kenyans have to speak out, repression has increased in a host of extrajudicial, subtle and insidious ways.

RON SINGER: I’ve also asked everyone why there isn’t more investigative journalism in Kenya. My best understanding so far is that it’s not really a matter of resources, but of conflicts of interest. The same people sit on the boards of the media companies as on the companies they would be investigating.

JOHN GITHONGO: True.

RON SINGER: There’s the ethnic factor, too. For instance, I understand that the Nation’s stance is influenced by the fact that Kikuyus run it.

JOHN GITHONGO: That’s the perception – correct – that it’s the government’s mouthpiece. That has damaged The Nation’s reputation.

RON SINGER: In the appointments business that has dominated the papers since I’ve been here, three weeks, the press wrote many articles critical of the government, but I understand that they took their lead from parliament. In other words, parliamentary opposition provided cover for the media.

[The government tried unsuccessfully to rush through several key appointments in order to circumvent the International Criminal Court indictments of the Ocampo Six, leading political figures, for instigating the 2007–08 post-election ethnic violence.">

JOHN GITHONGO: That’s accurate. The newspapers have pretty much been in decline.

RON SINGER: What do you mean?

JOHN GITHONGO: Since I returned, in September, 2008. When I got back, I took the time to travel around the country, living in villages for a year, 2009. Then I wrote about what I had found. Then, in the middle of last year, I set this [the INUKA Foundation"> up. But going back, in my opinion the news desks, the foundation of any newspaper, where a ton of information comes in. At the news desk, where it is sifted, the news editor … What I found broken, was the news desk.

RON SINGER: What happened to it? Both major papers?

JOHN GITHONGO: All papers. Intimidation, instruction from above, polarised ethnically, stories get twisted. And that changed the kind of journalism we have. The focus became opinion.

RON SINGER: Yes, a lot of so-called news articles are really opinion articles. Even the best people, Charles Onyango-Obbo, whom I interviewed, writes articles that are heavy on opinion.

JOHN GITHONGO: Opinion has taken over, at the expense of hard news about what is going on.

RON SINGER: That also creates an imbalance. It’s very easy to have an opinion about judicial appointments, but harder to have an opinion about famine.

JOHN GITHONGO: Also, regarding Kenya’s ongoing crisis, we already have too many balls in the air: the appointments, the new constitution, elections coming up [in 2012">. What’s happening in North Africa and the Middle East is going to throw everything off. It’s a grenade for the political elite. If what’s happening causes the price of oil to go above a hundred dollars for a sustained period of time, combined with high food prices, then we have a very combustible situation.

RON SINGER: Not just in Kenya.

JOHN GITHONGO: Across Africa – it will be the game changer.

RON SINGER: Tell me, John, are you enough of a conspiracy theorist to believe it’s possible that all that talk about judicial appointments was encouraged as a way of masking other, deeper problems? A smokescreen? Or do you think they don’t go that far?

JOHN GITHONGO: They don’t have the brains for that.

RON SINGER: And it was very embarrassing for them.

JOHN GITHONGO: But, in some ways, the press is making a comeback.

RON SINGER: Not the news desks, though?

JOHN GITHONGO: No. But recently, all the editors met and issued a statement saying that they should stop their disagreements about the appointments. That was very positive… There’s also the irony of rapid press development that is very uneven, asymmetrical. People here talk about press freedom, how it’s wonderful, but if you have such inequality of opportunity among the media…

RON SINGER: …and that’s terrible for democracy. In the US you have press freedom, all right. You have these rags spewing out nonsense 24/7. Like Fox News.

JOHN GITHONGO: The first Gulf War made CNN. The second Gulf War broke CNN. Now it’s Al Jazeera, BBC.

RON SINGER: In Ethiopian hotel lobbies and bars, Al Jazeera on one TV, BBC on the other. Do you think there’s a prospect for a sub-Saharan equivalent of Al Jazeera? I’ve heard some rumblings. I also read allafrica.com, but that’s not quite the same.

JOHN GITHONGO: No. [JG mentions some pan-African media efforts elsewhere in Africa, including in South Africa and an online source in Nigeria."> So you have growth, inequality, and at the same time, you have more journalists in trouble in Kenya than in the years before.

RON SINGER: Yes, the latest Committee to Protect Journalists’ report says so…

JOHN GITHONGO: When I was in exile, I went into Marks & Spencer to buy food. The lady tried to get me to take out a credit card. I said I didn’t like debt. What struck me was how pushy she was. This business – the taking on of debt – is happening everywhere. In the States, very strongly. I watch Fox News.

RON SINGER: The bad guys.

JOHN GITHONGO: What I notice is the extent to which Fox is driving CNN.

RON SINGER: What do you mean?

JOHN GITHONGO: The flashiness, the colors, the rise of opinion.

RON SINGER: So you’re talking about the marketing of news?

JOHN GITHONGO: Yes, and Fox is pushing CNN to the right. People like Lou Dobbs have changed.

RON SINGER: A Fox guy now. There’s a lot of that going on, a move toward conservatism. The New York Times is still in balance, I’d say.

JOHN GITHONGO: I listen to NPR when I’m in the US.

RON SINGER: So what you’re saying is that certain big media players are driving the markets in Kenya and the US?

JOHN GITHONGO: Across the world.

RON SINGER: And that’s what you mean by inequality: the big boys swallow the small boys.

JOHN GITHONGO: Yes. Also in the print media. There is an insidious convergence between commercial and political interests, more than ever before.

RON SINGER: The Wall Street Journal sold to Murdoch. The Times is getting smaller and smaller and more and more expensive.

JOHN GITHONGO: Yes.

LAST WORDS

RON SINGER: Well, okay, I think I’ve asked you everything I can think of.

JOHN GITHONGO: If you do think of any more questions, please send me an email.

RON SINGER: Thank you very much.

JOHN GITHONGO: I’ll be waiting for your book. I’m invited to speak at a meeting of politicians in Pretoria, South Africa. My brief is to speak about corruption.

RON SINGER: Are you going to mention the Zuma family empire?

JOHN GITHONGO: No, no, I’ll speak about Kenya, as a cautionary tale.

RON SINGER: That’s the way to do it, you don’t want to point a finger at your hosts… Well, again, thank you so much. A pleasure to meet you.

JOHN GITHONGO: A pleasure to meet you too. I wish you all the best with your work. It was good that you got to see what we were doing today.

RON SINGER: Yes, that was wonderful, very lucky!

JOHN GITHONGO: So now you know the kind of thing we do.

CONCLUSIONS

An over-riding theme of this wide-ranging interview was Githongo’s multi-pronged critique of global capitalism. He analysed the economic roots of the press’s troubles today in both Kenya and the rest of the world: how markets drive the news, and how big, market-driven media outlets crowd out smaller ones, and set the tone and agenda for all of the media. The unfolding News of the World scandal gives particular point to this analysis.

Githongo also spoke about economic development in poor countries, praising the Ethiopian economy and describing INUKA’s efforts to combat ethnic divisiveness by means of grassroots economic development. Githongo’s ambitious, visionary idealism is illustrated by this project, which would use honest economic development to supplant ethnic patronage. To coin a cliché, Githongo thinks globally, acts locally.

Also of interest was our discussion of the existence of a network of African pro-democracy activists, of which I had only been vaguely aware before the interview. The fortunes of Nuhu Ribadu, Nigerian corruption fighter, parallel Githongo’s own. Both men had a government mandate to fight corruption, but, when they acted upon the mandate, they were menaced and driven into exile.

Finally, there is the continuity between Githongo’s earlier whistle-blowing and his current work with INUKA. Since ethnicity fueled the corruption he exposed, and since ethnicity is still a root cause of corruption and other problems in Kenya, it seems totally logical that he is now working for national unity. The positive reference to Nigeria’s controversial zonal presidency highlights the importance of ethnicity in John Githongo’s thinking.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Parts of this interview will appear in chapter six, ‘Kenya: How Free is the Free Press?’ in Ron Singer’s book ‘Uhuru Revisited: Interviews with African Pro-Democracy Leaders’ (Africa World Press: Red Sea Press).
* For more about the Kenyan press, see "How Free is the Free Press in Kenya?" opendemocracy, August 19, 2011:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ron-singer/how-free-is-free-press-in-kenya
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.