{UAH} Pojim/WBK: Pin striped suits cannot make a Dane out of an East African - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Pin-striped-suits-cannot-make-a-Dane-out-of-an-East-African-/-/434750/2616562/-/l1orq5/-/index.html

Pin striped suits cannot make a Dane out of an East African - Comment

I refuse to be shocked by the rot in Arusha, and I am not alone. I doubt if you heard that many gasps of shock after the release of the report that said financial mismanagement could be rife at the headquarters of the East African Community and its various agencies.

So what if the staff in Arusha spend a couple of million dollars on air tickets in a year? I don't know of any of the five East African governments that has not been accused spending extravagantly on air travel. Don't our leaders fly by private jets to go meet donors who fly on commercial airliners?

And then the compilers of the report express surprise that the East African Court of Justice officials also jumped onto the gravy train spending a hundred thousand dollars on a meeting unnecessarily held at some funky place. Who said judicial stomachs should only take in ugali and sukuma wiki?

It is fine to investigate, probe and establish that EAC officials in Arusha are eating millions of dollars without rendering equivalent value for money. And then so what? I thought these people are recruited and seconded from the five East African countries. They are not from Mars or Denmark where corruption is near zero according to the 2014 Transparency International Corruption Index.

They are East African and naturally, behave like East Africans. Most of our languages have a saying to the effect that a snake begets a snake. Did you expect a snake egg to hatch into a duckling?

At least, Uganda does not deny being a haven for thieves. No less a personage than our president has said so explicitly, and on foreign soil too. So did you expect us to send angels whom we don't have to Arusha?

What about Kenya, with its spectacular record of corruption? They have pulled off some of the most creative heists in Nairobi, including Goldenberg, when they ostensibly exported more gold than gold-exporting countries, and Anglo Leasing, which does not exist and therefore cannot be killed.

And then you have Tanzania, where they say they graduated from having sharks to whales. Yes, a few guys in Dar es Salaam can swallow a million people, while those with smaller throats head north to Arusha.

But, you say, Rwanda is very tough on corruption. Well, if you can't do it in Kigali, why not head to Arusha? As for Burundi! I think they have enough issues in Bujumbura to occupy them and scrutinising whom they send to Arusha may not be an urgent priority.

Let us put it this way. A criminal bred and trained in Kampala cannot become clean by being bathed in the glaciers flowing down Mount Kilimanjaro. A graft merchant from Nairobi does not turn into a saint by going to Arusha. And a Mswahili from Dar remains a Mswahili even if he goes to Arusha.

As for Rwanda, for two decades some of its worst criminals have been undergoing trial in Arusha. All the ghosts of the people they butchered must have accompanied them and could have taken up residence in the heads of some of their compatriots working in Arusha. And for Burundi, as we said, no comment.

So please, stop expecting the East Africans in Arusha to behave like Danes. They are East Africans.

Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International Fellow for development journalism. E-mail: buwembo@gmail.com

Pin striped suits cannot make a Dane out of an East African - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Pin-striped-suits-cannot-make-a-Dane-out-of-an-East-African-/-/434750/2616562/-/l1orq5/-/index.html

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