What would we (in Kenya; in Africa) do if we got hit by a typhoon (hurricane) hurtling through our slums, towns and villages at 162 km per hour, twisting and swirling up mud and debris high into our skies?
Well, hurricane preparedness would require that we have a functional weather service able to issue reliable warnings and advice, safe shelter spaces, evacuation mechanisms and money to fund both weathering the storm and restorative requirements. To put it bluntly, we don’t have any of these.
What would we (in Kenya; in Africa) do if we had to endure a six month winter spell, freezing our fields, homes, offices and roads to minus 10 degrees C?
Well, winter preparedness would require that we install weatherstripping and insulation, heat our homes and offices for six months and seal off air leaks to keep warm. Oh, and install heat-traced water piping to keep our water flowing. Ah, and grow enough food in one season to feed ourselves for nearly six months; and find adequate quantities of salt to liberally spread out on our roads to melt the snow so we can go to work in convoys conducted by a grader, clearing up the snow and all else that would obstruct our snowy ride to work. Again, sadly, we don’t have such capacities.
Thankfully our geography is in our favour(?); we are not prone to these threatening natural occurrences. Whew! Shall I venture to guess that had we been we would have risen to the occasion and built these capacities?
I hope so. I really do! Because preparedness is the key to long term survival for any nation or individual.
But my hope is dimmed heavily by our apparent inability to learn from or rise to the occasion when we are confronted by comparably lesser challenges. Like the occurrence of drought every three years or so; like weathering a normally anticipated and regular rainy season that nevertheless overwhelms the drainage system in Nairobi and spews out disease from sewers; like our failure to manage and maintain our silos so we can store grain through a season.
So what ails us? My take: a unique drought of a human nature; a drought of good leadership.
Granted, leadership is hard. It involves visionary perception, good planning, patient execution, and, above all else, self-less devotion to public good services.
So how come others (in the developed nations) and the likes of Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore have it but such are hard to find here. My take, again is that such leaders can indeed be found here. The problem is that the electorate is not yet ready for them. When ‘our man’ does get into a position of trust, our demands to him are for favors, even of an illegal nature. When ‘our’ man/woman is appointed into a position of leadership we expect them, and counsel them to steal, and if they don’t we consider them fools!
And so our leaders loot without shame, knowing fully well that they will never face a wrathful public. But consider God’s reckoning on the matter: The Lord tests the righteous, but the wicked and the one who loves violence, His soul hates (Psalms 11:5)
The cost of wickedness and the failure of righteous leadership is huge. In my very limited experience in leadership positions I have seen the evidence. In one position I held for a brief three years, I was appalled by the spending of as much as four times the real price to procure a particularly critical and expensive service. So I stepped in, regularized the costing, managed to secure the service at 1.5 million shillings instead of the corrupt awards of 6.5 million. We bought 700 units instead of the budgeted 200, to the delight of those that needed the service, and to the consternation of the corrupt. My reward: I got really hated; and threatened!
Imagine how much harder and colder it must be higher up in the leadership ladder. So most leaders find themselves opting to flow with the stream; dance with the rhythm; sing along… to be willfully wicked, for personal gain. Filthy lucre.
The Bible has a rather somber comparison of the outcomes in the rule of wicked vs that of the righteous. It’s in the second clause of Proverbs 29:2 “…but when the wicked rule, the people groan” in contrast to the rejoicing that characterizes the rule of the righteous.
Oh, how we yearn for the strengthening of the hand of those fighting corruption today; how we yearn for the proliferation of the rule of the righteous. Then we would drive on our roads without being wrongly punished by corrupt policemen. We would obtain certification marks for our goods from the bureau of standards; yes, we would win tenders fairly from the government, which dispenses up to 70% of business deals in our country. Ah, and so that the qualified, deserving young people could secure employment!
Only then shall we, as a nation, start building the critical capacities that we need to adequately face the adversities of an increasingly hostile physical environment and to survive and thrive in a world that is fast shrinking into a digitally interconnected and extremely competitive village.
Haron Wachira 