In her book, It is our turn to eat, Kenyan journalist and best-selling author, Michela Wrong, tells the story of a whistle-blower, John Githongo, who exposed corruption in his country’s new administration led by Mwai Kibaki, who took over from Daniel Arap Toroitich Moi after ruling Kenya for 24 years. Kibaki’s victory in 2002 was heralded as marking the birth of the Second Republic in Kenya and was expected to usher in a new dawn of democracy, transparency, prosperity, and free of corruption. Githongo, who had been appointed by Kibaki to be that country’s corruption czar, something which was well received by Kenyans because of Githongo’s credentials as a man of integrity and principle, was hounded by that country’s security agencies until he skipped the country and went to exile in England.
In the last two weeks since the fall of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) government, reports of allegations of corruption have surfaced in various government departments and parastatals. “Whistle-blowers” are suddenly coming out of the woodwork to expose the rot that is taking place in government departments and the respective agencies. While this is a welcome development, some of these allegations should be taken with a pinch of salt because they might be vexatious and malicious, peddled by vindictive malcontents in the system intent on settling old scores. We have always known about grand scale corruption taking place in the government enclave. We know that senior government officials including Permanent Secretaries and Ministers are involved in this corruption. Corruption did not begin with Mokgweetsi Masisi’s administration. It has always been there even during the Sir Seretse Khama administration. However, as the country’s economy grew over the years, opportunities to steal, deceive and extort increased dramatically. Corruption is a cancer that has metastasised over the last 58 years, and as a result, the health of the state is compromised. Following a protracted spirited debate between civil society, opposition parties and the media, on the one side, and government on the other side, in 1994 the late Sir Ketumile Masire, established the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) to deal with the problem of corruption. The DCEC was formed in response to several corruption scandals that rocked the country involving senior officials in the then ruling BDP. The scandals had caused public outrage and threatened to harm the country’s reputation as an African model of good governance. Unfortunately, it became apparent that the DCEC did not have teeth. Some even argued that the government was ticking the “good governance” box by creating the agency because the agency was not given full autonomy. Although the Corruption and Economic Crime Act (CECA) that established the DCEC, looked progressive, the powers that be sabotaged the work of the agency through political interference. This was to be expected because the DCEC is under the Office of the President. Especially over the last two regimes of Ian Khama and Mokgweetsi Masisi, the nation watched as heads of the DCEC were changed willy-nilly one after the other in quick succession. If the head of the agency was not pliant they were removed. The latest case in point is that of Tymon Katholo, who was one of the founding officials of the DCEC.
