The Cemetery Scam is Kenya continues to be in the limelight both in Kenya and abroad. So what’s the real issue we’re dealing with? The city of Nairobi bought the land for a cemetery for 3.6 million dollars. As it turns out, the market value for the land in question was not higher than 10 percent of that. However, I believe it would actually be safe to assume that, in fact, the land was not worth even 360,000 dollars but somewhere around 250-270,000. Now, the land sale backfired and the local authorities had to take some action to deal with the pressure coming from both the civil society and the international donors.  10 public officials have been accused of playing a part in this scandal. Two of them were arrested on Wednesday just to be released the following day on bail.

Let me make it clear: the nominal value of this scam is insignificant. What is four million dollars in a country where the secret service gets a budget of more than one billion dollars? What is four million dollars where only in the last five years we have heard of other unresolved scandals totaling at least hundreds of millions of dollars spent on questionable transactions?

That being said, I believe that the attention this particular deal has gathered is worth analyzing. Why? First, in the light of the global meltdown, Kenya has become much more dependent on foreign donors than the officials would like to admit. This means for example that the local authorities are more likely to respond to international pressure than they were, let’s say, ten years ago.

Second, the local civil society and the opposition are also more on the fence than they were in the past. The 2007 presidential elections and the violence associated with it was, most likely, a wakeup call for many people living in the country. And that includes a significant amount of politicians who are no longer interested in turning their eyes away from such a scandal.

Now, I would like to believe that the reason why other politicians demand justice has to do with their sense of morality and crave for justice. Instead, I think it has to do more with the arguments behind a famous book still unavailable in Kenya called “It’s our time to eat The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower” by Michela Wrong. Mrs Wrong suggests that one of the main reasons why the post-election violence was so widely spread had to do with the expectation that a Luo would win the elections. In stealing the elections, the Luo and many other Kenyans believed that Kibaki robbed Odinga and his clientele from getting what was rightfully theirs: the right to lead the country and “eat”. Coming back to the case of the cemetery scam, I don’t necessarily believe that the opposition is so upset with the scam itself but with the fact thatthey weren’t behind it.

Whatever their reasons are, politics as usual is no longer something that can be done as easily as in the past and the ten culprits have just realized that on their own – the hard way. At the same time, the political clientele of president Kibabi is still in control of a significant percentage of the economy which means that the ones who will take the hit will not be among Kibaki’s darlings but the ones who were at the bottom of the food chain. For example, the only people arrested on Wednesday were a city clerk and a senior official in the local government ministry. Whereas this is a good start, it would be foolish to assume that the people behind this – that is the real fish in the local politics – would suffer too much. At worst, they will return the money to the government and the whole story will be forgotten.

But even if that is the case, it’s still an important success. At least for now, some of these highly-placed thugs will think twice before getting involved in a similar gig. Or, of course, they will just engage in more subtle cases of corruption which are more difficult to detect.

In 2010, the fact that such a disgusting corruption deal is no longer tolerated is reassuring. The big question is whether this type of societal watching will keep happening or it will lose momentum. I’m not going to make any predictions but I can definitely say one thing with a huge smile on my face: the fact that some people are finally telling the local political crooks “no, no, bay, I don’t think so” surely makes my day!!!

List of those reported to have taken a part in the cemetery scam:

Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministry of Local Government

1.       Mr. Sammy Kirui – Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Local Government

2.       Mr. Reuben K. Rotich  – Senior Deputy Secretary

3.       Mr. Boniface Misero  – Director of Procurement

4.       Mr. Herman Chevera – Chief Financial Officer

Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministry of Finance

5.       Mr. Paul Ngugi – Director of Budget City Council

6.       Mr. John Gakuo – Nairobi River Project Coordinator & Former Town Clerk (arrested)

7.       Mr. Geoffrey Katsolleh – Deputy Town Clerk

8.       Mr. Kanyi Njambura – Director of Procurement

9.       Ms Mary Ng’ethe  – Director of Legal Affairs

10. Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi

Also, check out my previous article on Kenya. It surely seems to be prescient in many ways. (NB: this is, of course, self-promotion)