A Tale of Two Citizens

It is a far, far better thing they did than any we have ever done…


Do YOU know who David Munyakei is?


Let me tell you a story that has already been at least twice and much better told. *
Perhaps, after all, fate will be kind and make the third time lucky, however inferior this telling is to its two predecessors. I assure you it is; I am not given to false modesty.

Director Judy Kibinge has a film out (which by the way was screened at the 2005 Zanzibar International Film Festival) called “A Voice in the Dark.” Writer Billy Kahora, assistant editor of the fabulous Kwani? has a piece himself in the latest issue, “The Story of a Goldenberg Whistleblower” which was co-authored with J. Kibinge the director. What unites these two pieces (actually three pieces, as Kibinge’s written piece is a story within a story, or a story about a story) is firstly, that their overriding theme is the corruption that eats away at the fabric of our society like moths in a fur-lined closet, like maggots in a freshly-dead corpse or like nymphomania in a Catholic nun. Secondly, that the dominant and most charismatic character in each of these works is one Mr. David Sadera Munyakei, formerly –very very formerly—an employee of the Central Bank of Kenya. I shall bring in as a supporting character the recent quake-making actions of one Mr. John Githongo.

This is actually the death of irony. On the one hand, we have a man, David Munyakei, who risked his all for his country, was fired from his job as a result, and now wants it but cannot get it back. On the other hand, we have John Githongo, who risked his all for his country, resigned as a result and is urged to take back a job he doesn’t want. No-one finds this somewhat perverse?

Yes, a tale of two citizens, both of whom we used up and discarded like so much flotsam and jetsam. Do we Kenyans have some sort of obsessive compulsion to destroy the best of us? Or is it merely that we have such a surplus of extraordinary people that we can afford to be extravagantly wasteful of them? Hapa, maumivu yamezidi kabisa! Hata daktari hawezi kutusaidia. I’m serious. This is a terminal dysfunction. And we are responsible for it.

What is required for evil to flourish is for men [and women] of good will to do nothing…

What is required for corruption to flourish is for men and women of integrity to do nothing and to say nothing…

Once upon a time, 1992 A.D. to be quite exact, in the putrid wasteland that was Daniel Allocations-R-Us Moi’s Kenya, where the stench of graft, and cronyism, where repulsive politics, where reptilian politicians, and where policies too diseased and suppurating to ever have any adjective do them justice filled every pore of the Kenyan body politic, there lived an honest man. Not only was this man honest, but he also had been cursed with the virtue of courage. Please, never allow this to happen to you. The fate that befell this honest and brave man may be visited upon you.

His name is David Munyakei, and he saved your country for you. His name is David Munyakei, and he may be the single reason that all of us Kenyans did not throw our passports away during the nineties, and apply to Chad for citizenship. His name, I repeat, is David Munyakei.

In 1992, David Munyakei was working in the lower hierarchies of the Central Bank of Kenya’s bureaucracy. David Munyakei, whose job in the CBK was to process documents and to file documents and to shut up, did the unimaginable and the shocking. He did the sublime. He thought for himself, and he selflessly, heroically, acted for all of us. He broke the Goldenberg Scandal wide open. It doesn’t matter how young you are, surely, you remember that?

Surely you remember the scenes of our distinguished MPs exchanging fisticuffs in parliament? They were dancing like butterflies and stinging like bees. Such are the glorious careers in pugilism that have sadly been lost to us. Surely you remember the floods of accusations and counter-accusations, the attempted acts of intimidation and cover-up, the increasingly incredible headlines, the shock as the country realised that amounts of money too large actually to fit on your calculator screen had been systematically, consistently and cynically stolen from the public treasury? Our money. Ours. Surely you remember that the personages involved were very important, very rich, very connected and very dangerous?

Please remember that this was during the waning but nevertheless significant period of Moi’s most repressive tendencies, when overly-honest or overly-popular ministers and other public figures had developed the amazing capacity to commit suicide by first setting themselves on fire, secondly amputating their own limbs, thirdly shooting themselves in the forehead and finally driving themselves into the forest in order to leave the various bits of their charred corpses lying untidily about. Very talented suicides, these were.

This was that time. This was the time when people spoke in whispers in bars, because the person on the barstool on your other side was probably a government informant. This was the time when “detention” meant that your family would have no idea where you were, what you had been charged with, if you had been charged, which you probably had not, if you were alive or dead, if you required medical treatment (which you certainly did, after our government finished with certain tender ministrations upon your person), if you were lying maltreated and untreated in some dingy prison cell (high probability; say 99%), if you would survive (depends) or if they would ever see you or even your body again (depends some more.). This was the time when your family had no means of having any of these questions answered, and indeed, had no means of even the possibility of asking them. This was that time.

Munyakei, whose job, you will remember, was to process, to file and to shut up, in the due course of his processing, filing, and shutting up, noticed something odd happening at the Central Bank of Kenya. It became odder and weirder. Then it became so absurd that he realised that he was witnessing an incomprehensibly vast, structured, panoramic robbery. The Central Bank which, as you know, keeps our money, was being bilked of billions of shillings. Munyakei realised that he was witnessing possibly one of the greatest scams in the history of 20th Century scams. Really, I think even the Nigerians would have bowed down with respect to this one, it was that good and that big. We, the Kenyan public, were the victims, the idiot “Johns”. We, the Kenyan public, whose money, I must keep emphasising, was the money in question, or rather in theft. We were being taken for a ride, being divested of our last dime, being conned, bamboozled, tricked, lied to, played, done wrong, being robbed, denuded, mugged, screwed up, screwed over, just screwed, dissed and dismissed. We didn’t even know. We would never have known, except…

Except for the staggering integrity and valour of this one man. David Munyakei weighed in the balance his job, which in times of stratospheric unemployment is something to think about very hard, his life, which is one of those things that once you give up you really cannot get back, and his wellbeing, another valuable asset which suggests retention whenever possible. Against this, he weighed the future of his country, the wellbeing of his fellow Kenyans, his sense of morality and integrity, and his sense of outrage. Morality and outrage won. Munyakei smuggled out and put into the right hands, where they were copied and made public, the documents that would be the primary evidence in the Goldenberg case, whose explosively incriminating nature went on to create political havoc, and outraged, even aggressive, public cries for accountability. Years later, indeed, two years ago, he stood up in court and gave incontrovertible evidence. Yes, you remember that.

Munyakei, by this one act of unparalleled, unasked for, and unprovoked courage, woke us up out of our hypnotised stupor of apathy and abject submission, our fugue of fear and fatalism. Munyakei, in his extraordinary ordinariness, his “everyperson” demeanour, the moral obligation he imposed on each of us to do our part, however small, saved our country, our civic souls and our sense of agency. Munyakei, in his humility, his intelligence, his heroism and his victory, made us see that the implacable “gods” had feet of clay. He made us believe that difference and difference-making were possible. In the simplicity and ineffable complexity of his act, he made us understand that we need to save our country; you, me, and the person sitting next to you on the bus, in the matatu, in the office. He made us understand that we are each individually responsible as well as collectively accountable for the state of our state. All of us. Munyakei, in throwing down his gauntlet of simultaneous disgust and decency, set a new standard for us. He made us see that even the most powerful are only as powerful as we allow them to be. Munyakei, in what he gave up, in what he gambled, and in what he endured, made us a little braver, a little louder, and a little more demanding. He made us understand the nature of courage, the texture of hope, and the fine grain of our own power.

It was ten years in the making, but the Munyakei moment was the beginning of the end of the Moi regime. The Moi regime was, in the long duree, toppled by a lowly clerk in the Central Bank of Kenya, whose name, I repeat, is David Munyakei.

Tell me, in other countries, what do they do for their heroes? Forget about that, what do they do for their favourite soccer players? Their favourite actors? Their favourite musicians? What price would you put on the salvaging of your national pride? In your calculation, what do we owe the man who allowed us to hold up our heads in the world again? If you had the power, what would you give this man as his just reward? To what is he not entitled? Our gratitude, a lifetime annuity, statues and plaques and schools and hospitals in his name, a national holiday just for him, songs composed in his honour, fame, fortune, and the respect and remembrance of all who understood how much he risked and for whom? More? Would even more be enough? What do you give a man who has done this for you and for your sons and daughters and for their sons and daughters? What do you do for the man who gave you your Kenyan groove back, who made you remember who you were and what you could do, who reminded you that you walked upright and that you had rights, who made your spirit whole again? What do you do for such a man?

If you are Kenyan, the answer is…..nothing. You give such a man… nothing. You do for such a man….nothing. Did you hear me? I said ZERO, ZILCH, NADA, RIEN!!

What kind of people are we that we can achieve and maintain this degree of nothingness?
What kind of people are we who cannibalise our own conscience?
To what pass have we arrived, when this is possible and happening in real time, in the now, as I write?
What kind of people are we?

For this Dedan Kimathi lived and died?


Who are we that we glorify and protect the avaricious, the gluttonous, and the ostentatiously, graspingly corrupt, the liars and the tyrants (why isn’t Moi in jail?). Who are we that we do this in order precisely to make the shabby, cringe-making, shame-amplifying nature of our complete disregard of those who guard and rescue and restore our sense of self more marked by contrast, more significant by difference? Just so we can underline the dichotomy, in case someone had missed it? To sum: you need to f**k Kenya up, not pluck it out of the lion’s jaws. This is the correct trajectory to follow to fame and fortune; failure to which, you will not even be a footnote in history.

As a career and lifestyle choice, I highly recommend that you strike OFF your list the idea of doing something good for Kenya, since we Kenyans assure and guarantee you that no good deed done for us will ever go unpunished.

David Munyakei, at the time the scandal broke, (surprise!) was immediately arrested and subsequently fired from the Central Bank. He was detained, accused of breaching the Official Secrets Act, and in general enjoyed all the perversions of the law that the government could think up. Whilst Munyakei was in remand, his mother died from the shock and sorrow of what was happening to her son. He was released (possibly because of public scrutiny, or he would have been one of those talented suicides) and had to go into hiding for fear of his life. Could life get any better for him? Ten years later, bloody but unbowed, post-Moi, he voluntarily gave evidence to the Goldenberg Commission. And then…he went home. And we forgot him.

He doesn’t ask for much. He doesn’t want much. He wants his job back. He wants the CBK to acknowledge its wrongful dismissal of him. I, WM, want them to pay him he is ten years when he should have been working worth of salary (plus compound interest, of course). Instead, he got two awards—no doubt quite beautiful, but awards don’t pay rent and they certainly don’t buy food. It isn’t as if you can sell them, either. Yes, he got two awards, lucky, lucky man. And nothing else. And then? Nothing.

David Munyakei is living in poverty. He does not have a regular source of income, since he does not have a job. He has a wife and three children to support with this non-existent job. As you remember, he was fired from the CBK and never reinstated, even when he had been vindicated and validated several times over. He did not get his job back. He farms a little, to survive. He walks in the anonymity of abandonment. We have made this man, our conscience, our catalyst and our courage, into a pauper. We have betrayed and disowned him. WE are a crime against humanity and especially against ourselves.

Nina maswali:
WHERE IS THE DAVID MUNYAKEI FUND?
WHERE IS IT?

Did I blink and miss the pleasant fact that the people of Kenya, in an act of gratitude for Munyakei’s heroism, had decided that for his actions and his courage and his example he should be awarded 0.001% of the enormous sums of money he saved from being stolen? Remember, OUR money. How much more would we have lost if Munyakei had not risked his all? Really, even garden-variety robberies often have percentage rewards attached to the recovery of the stolen value. Was I taking a short nap when the flood of financial support for David Munyakei and his family swept in like the tsunami? Did I happen merely to be uninformed when all our captains of industry offered Munyakei jobs on their boards, made him an officer on the anti-corruption commission, paid him salaries that reflected his past and continuing symbolic importance to us? He was PROMISED his job back. By our government i.e. by US, by you and me. He has been waiting twelve years to get his due. What kind of people are we?

I am writing this and I am ashamed to say that I am a Kenyan. I am thinking about the possibilities of Chad. I do not want to belong to a people, a political community, which so excels in its callousness and its cruelty that we punish those we should applaud, and reward those we should revile.

Tell me, if you were another Munyakei, aware of massive corruption, aware of the documentary evidence of such corruption, and also aware of Munyakei’s fate, this time, would your morality win? After Munyakei, would the scales weigh in favour of the right thing, or in favour of the sensible thing? Clearly, in Kenya, these are not the same. The right thing is the moral thing. The sensible thing, post-Munyakei is to know that silence is golden. Let us not forget also, that we had an anti-corruption czar appointed by the government whose most prominent pledge was to end corruption. This, the most important anti-corruption official in our government, resigned—overwhelmed by corruption. He not only left his job, but he also left his country. Now, why do you suppose he found it necessary to go into self-exile? Do you hear any echoes of Munyakei running for his life ten years earlier? Is it possible for us to embarrass ourselves further? We say we want to end corruption?

Don’t make me laugh.
There is not enough contempt in the world to give us the measure that we deserve.
Today, this moment, to be Kenyan feels like a curse to me. Even my passport burns to the touch. Phtuh!

Until we do right by David Munyakei, we will have no moral authority, no integrity, no historical force (no matter how many books are published about the Mau Mau), no values, no worth. Until we do right by David Munyakei, we will be as formless and as pointless as the nothingness we have created for him. Until we do right by David Munyakei, there is no politician too vile, no government too corrupt, no society too broken to be ours. Until we do right by David Munyakei, we will have no soul. History remembers.

What do we want to be remembered for? The single biggest act of betrayal in the history of Kenya, or…..

[Edit] this, I feel, I must dedicate this to Ciru Wainaina, who has believed in me when there was no reason to. Ciru, yes, YOU are one of my peeps, famous brothers or not. Anyway, it's all about how you look, darlink, and you look like several billion dollars. While we're doign "c"s...Ceci, if you ever read this, this is what I became. I hope it is okay.

*I should mention also that both the Nation and the Standard have done stories on Munyakei, but I have not seen these.