By Michael Ochula
Kenya is at that point where more and more appear to be conniving to cheat or take advantage of one another. We have constructed a society where integrity is punished with inconvenience, sabotage, demoralisation, frustration, and exclusion.
The writing is huge on our wall: Be honest at your own risk. Trust at your own risk. But what is a society without trust? What good can be achieved without honesty? What business can run under mutual suspicion?
More people today want to cut 'deals' from the service they are already being paid to render: The foreman, the insurance broker, the procurement officer, the head teacher, name it. Each is ready to waylay a client as a target!
This decadence has eaten up the moral fabric of families, religious institutions, government offices, private organisations, and even social life.
We had an interesting discussion recently after I informed some of my friends that a worker I trusted had disappeared with 10 of my goats. One of them wondered whether the theft was due to a need or just a habit. Interestingly, several of them shared similar frustrations, saying they often found themselves having to closely supervise employees to prevent being cheated or robbed.
The discussion showed that as a society, we have entangled ourselves into a web of deceit, and now we are all suspicious of one another, never really sure that someone won’t cheat us.
That is why some of us are often restless when we make online orders for goods and services. We find it hard to believe that a foreigner who knows nothing about us can receive our money and send us a car, an iPhone, or whatever goods we have ordered. This anxiety reveals what we are used to: Deception. It is worrying that honesty now appears more of an exception.
My friend, a land valuer, shared an experience of a client he attended to, who pleaded with him to hike the value of the land which her husband was to buy, to Ksh3,500,000, instead of the market value of Ksh2,800,000. She said it was her opportunity to make money from her husband.
The culture of what we call ‘deals’ is nothing but normalised stealing.
Many a time, your construction plan will take ages to be approved when you stick with integrity. Suddenly, ordinary formal processes become complicated. They will ask for things after things in the name of requirements. They will measure every quarter of a millimetre on the plan and fault you for this and that, until frustration creeps in.
And to win a contract, it is almost standard practice, both in the public and private domains, that you have to throw back some of the money they give you to offer a service, even if it means compromising on quality.
Kickbacks are asked for without a blink, just like one would ask for an entitlement. The common phrase is: “We are a number of us in this ‘deal’. I have to ‘cater’ for their interests in order to speed things up.”
In the end, we have created a thick ecosystem of ‘eating’ what we shouldn’t; thick like a gigantic cobweb to a point of inescapability, if one is to avoid running mad. To put it bluntly, we have become a blood-sucking, parasitic, sick, society. Outright theft is now euphemistically being referred to as deal-making.
Today, many office workers spend their work time on the phone monitoring what’s taking place at their homes, side businesses, and construction sites.
If it’s about having crops on your shamba harvested, blink once and a couple of bags are gone. If it’s a bar, the staff will replace the beer and liquor stock they have sold, and announce that they made no sales. At a car wash, it might be necessary to sit there and watch until your car is cleaned, lest you find they have siphoned out some of the fuel.
You need similar caution on a visit to the car garage, perhaps having to ask someone to camp there until repairs are done. Otherwise, if they don’t switch some of your good car parts with fake ones, they will exaggerate what they will have fixed, confusing you with part names that you can hardly decipher.
In a nutshell, dishonesty has become one of the biggest risks to doing business in Kenya. You either start a business you will be able to tightly supervise, or get into one that doesn’t require supervision.
