 DEVELOPMENTS Corruption is at the heart of news from Kenya these days. Last week, President Mwai Kibaki suspended eight senior officials for three months pending investigations into two corruption scandals. In one, auditors from Price Waterhouse Coopers revealed that over $26 million had been lost through a program to give impoverished Kenyans access to subsidized maize. The second scandal, brought to light late last year, concerns the loss of more than one million dollars from the Ministry of Education during a short period. In response, both the British and U.S. governments suspended millions of dollars in education assistance in December and January. Now Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Kibaki are at loggerheads over their respective authority to suspend senior officials in connection with the scandals. In early 2008, the two men had joined together in a power-sharing coalition government following a disputed presidential election that resulted in over 1,000 deaths and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. One Kenyan newspaper identified the bloated 40-member cabinet as “one of the most highly paid group of advisers in the world,” with salaries alone costing taxpayers $1.5 million per month. Annual per capita income in Kenya is less than $800. How can such damaging behavior come to pass? Distinguished journalist and author Michela Wrong explores this question in her recent book, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower. Despite efforts to limit its circulation in Kenya, the book is having an impact on public discourse regarding corruption in the country. The whistleblower is John Githongo, a prominent anticorruption activist appointed as Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics following Kibaki’s 2002 presidential victory. Githongo’s frustrated efforts to investigate high-level corruption expose the factors that enable dishonest activities to flourish. His story also highlights important lessons for how the international community and individuals can prevent corruption and its devastating effects.
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Interview by Katherine Southwick, Africa Regional Editor
February 2010
 In 2002, Mwai Kibaki was elected the third President of Kenya on an anticorruption platform. He promptly appointed John Githongo, a prominent anticorruption activist, as Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics. Githongo’s dogged efforts uncovered high-level corruption, notably the Anglo-Leasing scandal, which involved hugely inflated contracts, arranged without parliamentary oversight, that were valued at between $750 million to $1 billion. By 2005, Githongo resigned in frustration and went into exile in London, taking damning documents with him. For two weeks, he hid out in the apartment of his friend, author and journalist Michela Wrong. A year later, he exposed the scandal and the culture of corruption in Kenya to the world. Michela Wrong describes this culture in her recent book detailing Githongo’s experience, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower: Whether expressed in the petty bribes the average Kenyan had to pay each week to fat-bellied policemen and local councilors, the jobs for the boys doled out by civil servants and politicians on strictly tribal lines, or the massive scams perpetrated by the country’s ruling elite, sleaze had become endemic. ‘Eating,” as Kenyans dubbed the gorging on state resources by the well-connected, had crippled the nation. Foreign Policy Digest spoke with Michela Wrong to discuss her book, John Githongo and corruption in Kenya, and the implications of the story for the international community.
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 DEVELOPMENTS
The ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has uprooted millions of people from their homes. In North Kivu province however, one of the areas in eastern DRC worst hit by violence during the past decade, there are some early glimmers of hope. Despite continued fighting in many parts of North Kivu, improved security in some areas allowed an increased number of people to return home in 2009. This development is positive, but it is by no means a signal that peace has finally come to the DRC. Although many more people are going home, they are doing so cautiously and with little assistance. The reality remains that violence in eastern DRC is still forcing civilians to flee. In the mean time, Congolese people who are now trying to rebuild their lives amid the chaos will need more long-term assistance and support.
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Developments Emmerson, one of Sierra Leone’s most popular artists, recently launched a new album, titled “Yesterday Betteh Pass Tiday?” The politically charged album queries whether Sierra Leone has actually improved since its civil war ended eight years ago. Working with the international community, Sierra Leone has been hard at work since 2002 trying to remake its image in terms of good governance, human rights, and rule of law. These are areas wherein the citizens of Sierra Leone have been in longstanding conflict with the State, and when left unchecked, create a fertile breeding ground for revolutionary ideology and a wide-spread conviction that change is necessary. Discontent with a corrupt political system is ultimately what sparked the “self-reliant struggle” of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in 1991, yet change still proves elusive. Sierra Leone’s justice sector is particularly rife with corruption, mismanagement, bureaucracy, and delays, leaving the most vulnerable members of society, such as women, even more disadvantaged when they find themselves in conflict with the law. In recent years, numerous post-conflict, transitional justice initiatives, such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone (UNIPSIL), and the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission have highlighted the need to reform the judiciary in order to properly consolidate peace.
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 DEVELOPMENTS Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai ended his boycott of the government last week, raising hopes for the survival of the global political agreement – the country’s fragile coalition. Trvangirai and other Movement for Democratic Change cabinet members left their posts on October 16 citing a litany of grievances with Robert Mugabe and the ruling ZANU-PF. Tsvangirai and the MDC agreed to the power sharing arrangement with the ruling ZANU-PF party after disputed presidential elections in March 2008. Since then, relations between the two parties and their leaders have been highly contentious, and the country has continued to suffer hyperinflation, food shortages, and a devastating cholera outbreak last year. Zimbabwean politics are fraught with ethnic issues, with divisions between Zimbabwe's indigenous groups being a longstanding source of contention in the country. Meanwhile, Mugabe has used the country’s small white minority as a scapegoat during three decades of authoritarian rule. The recent dispute stemmed directly from the governments prosecution of Roy Bennett, a white MDC official, for terrorism charges.
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Africa
