Source : University of California Press African Successes
Chapter Eleven—
The Unofficial Lives
The behavior of most African public servants cannot be understood if we confine our observations to the office place. The demands of private life have an especially profound effect on the official actions of African administrators.[1] Of course the informal has a significant effect on the way formal roles are performed in American organizations too, as we have known for over half a century.[2] But the ideal of the separation of personal and job roles is very strong in the West, and it is possible to describe official actions there without referring to administrators' private obligations. Africa simply does not permit such a narrow, focused view. Kinship duties frequently impinge on work roles, and unless we understand how our four administrators handled the unofficial demands on their lives, we will not unlock some of the most important secrets to their official successes.
To appreciate fully the behavior of the four men we have been studying we have to put it in the context of what was going on around them. The stereotype of African bureaucrats would be something like the following: They are overwhelmingly concerned with the welfare of their family and ethnic brothers and sisters. Considerations of the broader public or national interest have distinctly lower priority for them. They have private businesses on the side, and these occupy a good deal of their attention during official working hours. The story is told of the official who has two jackets so he can hang one over his office chair and then leave for most of the day to handle his business. More commonly, they come to the office late, leave early, and are slow to answer messages. What does motivate these bureaucrats in their official duties is the prospect of personal gain. Contracts routinely require a 10 percent kickback to the responsible official. Vital permits are more easily and quickly ob-
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tained through the payment of a bribe. Much of this income will be used to support relatives and community projects at home. Officials may hope to become popular enough in this way to run for Parliament someday. Outside the bureaucrats' offices will be knots of petitioners from their home areas, hoping to use their influence to secure government jobs. As a result of this patronage, the ministry's offices and halls will be filled with junior staff who have little to do and whose conversation interferes with the work of those who are needed. Patronage leads to much incompetence in the public service, and there seems to be little ability to get rid of it. This stereotype is precisely that—an exaggeration. But it does have its grounding in reality. Only a minority of civil servants fit all the parts of this stereotype, but the behavior of a large number conforms to at least one of its components. John Montgomery comments in his study of managerial behavior in southern Africa that this "personalistic interpretation . . . is perhaps oversimplified [and the corruption part of it exaggerated], but [it] turns out to be a recognizable explanation of observed realities."[3] Jon Moris, using his Tanzanian experience, would agree.[4] David Gould, writing about Zaire, Nigeria, and Ghana, would even reject the qualification about corruption.[5]
Workaholics
As we seek to differentiate the four administrators from the stereotypical African bureaucrat, let us begin, as we would with a manager anywhere in the world, by asking how they handled the pressures of their jobs. All four men held extraordinarily demanding positions and reveled in their work. Ishmael Muriithi spent so much time traveling, both internationally and domestically, that his wife "used to joke, 'You only come here [in] passing.'" When Simeon Nyachae was chief secretary, each day he got up at 5:00 A.M., arrived at the office by 7:00, had a meal sent in so he could work through the lunch hour, and did not leave the office until 7:00 P.M. Harris Mule needed only four hours of sleep and frequently did professional reading until two in the morning. He often did not leave the office until 8:00 P.M. Charles Karanja was infamous with his family for his inability to sit still and his need to be always at some kind of work. All four men had the stamina to put in more hours on the job than most of their colleagues and the powers of concentration to make that time highly productive.
For relaxation Ishmael Muriithi was an avid tennis player until late in his career. When Simeon Nyachae was a provincial commissioner he used to walk regularly; as chief secretary he had a squash court installed at his home and would play by himself and do exercises every night, retiring regularly by 10:30 P.M. His entire life was run with a military-
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like discipline. Harris Mule was able to turn off the pressures of work quickly and relax into conversation. He used to enjoy going to bars with his friends when he was a young man—the usual relaxation for Kenyan men. But as his responsibilities increased he reduced his alcohol consumption and no longer frequented bars. He often spent the evening talking with a couple of very close friends instead, usually in a room at the back of his sister's Nairobi shop. None of the four administrators used alcohol to relax. Charles Karanja's drinking was very modest. Nyachae abstained completely and would not even take coffee, remnants of his Seventh-Day Adventist upbringing.
Sons of Their Villages
The character of risk in the agricultural systems of preindustrial society causes small producers to invest heavily in personal relationships as a hedge against adversity. Not only do close ties with social equals, such as relatives and neighbors, provide help when one experiences calamities such as drought or illness; bonds to one's social or economic superiors can also result in personalized assistance. For these latter, unequal types of relationships, the recipient promises support in return for the help that he or she receives. This social dynamic lies at the root of the patron-client relationships that pervade preindustrial societies and dominate most of their political processes.[6]
Men such as Karanja, Mule, Muriithi, and Nyachae were valued "sons" of their villages. Their upward mobility gave them access to resources that could make a large difference to the life-chances of their parents' neighbors and kin, most of whom were relatively poor. Their communities would not let them go. Relatives and neighbors gave these "sons" great status, insisted that they still belonged to the village (no matter how long they had lived away from it), and did everything possible to help them protect their positions. One senior official told me: "Once you reach that level, there will be so many people from your home and tribe helping you. They will not want to see that position of influence lost to them, so they will inform you and warn you of what they hear, even coming to your house at night." In return the villagers expect contributions to community projects, assistance with jobs, help with school fees, and emergency aid. If unchecked, these expectations can suffocate the financial well-being even of the well-to-do. How did this book's four "sons" manage these village ties?
The first expectation of adult males is that they build houses in the communities of their birth to reaffirm their membership, even if they are living elsewhere. Furthermore, for those in senior positions, these houses have to be "modern" and substantial—houses that reflect their
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status and to which they might plausibly retire someday. Three of the four men accepted this obligation; only Mule did not.
For Nyachae the decision was straightforward; two of his wives continued to live in Kisii after he left, and he needed housing for them. He provided it in a particularly impressive manner. The home consists of three large buildings, only one of which is used by his wives. On the spot that Chief Nyandusi had indicated his son should build, Nyachae constructed a round house of several rooms with a peaked roof. The design is striking and distinctly modern, but its shape evokes the filial piety and tradition out of which it was built. (See plate 26.) The home as a whole is impressive, enough so that President Moi has stayed in it when visiting Kisii. The buildings are a strong, visual statement that Nyachae's "home" is Kisii. (However, Nyachae lived most of the time in his large and extremely elegant Nairobi house.)
Charles Karanja built a house at his birthplace of Karatu in 1961. (See plate 27.) He was interrupting his career to go to Canada for further studies and needed a place for his wife and children while he was gone. He bought a farm in upper Kiambu in 1964, after his return, and lived there until 1974, a considerable distance from Karatu. He then bought a coffee estate in the same administrative division as his birthplace and built a very large house there, where he now lives. (See plate 28.)
Ishmael Muriithi built a house near Nyeri town on land given to him by his father. He rented it out, however, and never used it himself. This action was sufficient to meet community expectations, but he never developed real ties to the property. Instead of his being buried there when he died, as would have been traditional, his grave was placed higher up in the Aberdares at his mother's house, where he was born. (See plate 12.) (Muriithi lived outside Nairobi in a modest stone house that had been built by the European from whom he bought his farm.)
Karanja, Muriithi, and Nyachae were able to make reasonable use of the houses that they built at home. But this should not obscure the fact that these houses also fulfilled the important symbolic purpose of affirming their community memberships. Many other Kenyan men build such houses without having any practical use for them, lending them to relatives or using them for vacations a few days a year. They are nothing but monuments to the strength of their communal ties.
Harris Mule was alone among the four in not building a house in his place of birth, although he bought a farm there and visited it at least once a month. He identified with the community and assisted it, but he did not see the practical purpose in constructing a house there—it was too far from Nairobi for commuting yet close enough so he could make day visits to it when he had business to conduct. In any case, his mother had a good house in which he could visit if necessary. He put his money
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into the purchase of a moderate home in Nairobi instead. People in Mbooni were troubled that he had not built there, and it was one of several things about Mule that the villagers could not understand.
Patronage
One of the basic forms of assistance that villagers expect from their well-placed "sons' is jobs. Outside the doors of the influential there frequently will be long lines of those seeking an "in" to employment. Most of these petitioners will be modestly educated, looking for entry-level jobs. But a few among them will be well credentialed and in pursuit of plum positions.
The administrators in charge of public entities in Kenya generally have complete discretion in hiring their most junior staff and
therefore have considerable scope for the exercise of influence there. If they have openings at this level, they can easily employ those who have direct or indirect claims on them and can trade appointments with other senior managers with the same authority. (Thus an administrator's own hiring may result in a reasonable ethnic mix and still be an instrument for favored employment for his kinsmen throughout the government.)
The weak controls on the exercise of patronage at the junior level creates great temptations for the expansion of this part of the public payroll. During the period in which President Moi was consolidating his presidency, the numbers of junior staff in the government may have doubled. For example, the National Cereals and Produce Board increased its employees from one thousand to three thousand in order to staff the new buying centers created for the 1980 season (when Nyachae was chairman). Many valuable patronage opportunities were thereby created in localities around the country,[7] although Nyachae emphasizes that "at no time, during the period I served as chairman of the Wheat Board of Kenya and the NCPB did I request the management to recruit any relative or friend from my home district or any other area."
Senior appointments, however, are strictly controlled. The Public Service Commission, a parastatal board of directors, or some other control body will be involved in employment and promotion decisions. As demonstrated in Appendix A and discussed in chapter 4, the processes at this level are much more difficult (although not impossible) to manipulate.
Favoritism in employment is an important and highly emotional issue in Kenya. When people obtain positions for which they are not best qualified, they may perform poorly or treat the jobs as sinecures and do little at all. Productivity will suffer as a result. Villagers are innocent of these consequences, however, and are unrelenting in the pressures they
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apply to their relatives and "sons" for help. Other employees are alert for signs of favoritism, are demoralized, and speak bitterly of "tribalism" when they see it, and warmly praise an administrator who resists it as being "a nationalist."
The four administrators clearly deviated from this norm of patronage, although to different degrees. Ishmael Muriithi handled the pressures for patronage in the manner of a proper Weberian bureaucrat, strictly distinguishing between his private and public roles. The career of Dan Mbogo was probably hindered rather than helped by having his brother as his director. Muriithi was anxious to avoid even the appearance of favoritism. He instructed his family members not to send him job applicants. "If there is work, let them apply" through the proper, regular channels. Conversations with those close to him at his birthplace of Ihithe did not reveal a single case in which he had helped a person find employment. Many of those questioned had difficulty understanding why a man who was generous in other respects should have failed to help in this way. One relative, referring to Muriithi's farm near Nairobi, speculated, "You know that person has stayed as if he is a Kiambu man and [maybe] that is where he has helped much." If those in Muriithi's home village didn't appreciate his probity on employment matters, his professional colleagues in the Ministry of Livestock Development did. They considered him a "true nationalist."
Charles Karanja's record in this area is intriguing. On the one hand, some of those working with him felt that his employment decisions sometimes involved favoritism. Karanja holds that "in order to enhance faith and confidence in government [among the large numbers of unemployed], I have always deemed it my duty to see job seekers and to help where possible. The process is straining and time-consuming in a busy office, and . . . I have only been able to help a small fraction." He stresses that those employed were qualified and that the "record shows that I helped all on the basis of first come first served." Still, those who had some personal ties to him, either by kinship, by hailing from his parents' village, or by having been at school with him, would have felt more able than others to approach him. When he helped these people, it was possible for others to interpret this as favoritism, even though the ethnic mix of his employees is reasonable. By and large, the positions involved were junior ones, either at the KTDA headquarters or on his own farms. (The latter were not what the petitioners usually had in mind, as such work is hard.) He did not control the hiring of senior staff, but if someone about whom he had favorable personal knowledge seemed qualified, he would try to put them on the short-list for a board interview.
On the other hand, Karanja insisted on excellence on the job. He
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himself did not see any bias in helping those who came to see him and would have abhorred it if he had.
I maintain that to obtain the best results . . . , one must hire the services of the best-qualified people and show no favor, as to do so will always discourage the other workers. . . . If appointments were made on the basis of favoritism rather than merit, efficiency and performance would have been seriously jeopardized.
Whatever favoritism he did exercise did not hurt the effectiveness of his organizations. He strongly believed that work standards should be high and that his personal obligations ended with giving someone a chance at a job and did not extend to keeping them there. When he did hire people with whom he had a personal link, he would hand them over to someone else to supervise and would urge that they be fired if they did not perform adequately. There is no doubt that he meant this. He let one of his own sons be dismissed from one of his businesses. With respect to senior positions, Karanja's help ended with getting someone to the job interview. Once there, they were on their own and strict merit criteria prevailed. Promotions too were governed by performance alone.
Patronage, in the sense of helping someone with whom one has personal ties, has a radically different meaning if it is tied to strict performance criteria. In some circumstances it may even be conducive to superior organizational performance, for not only are those doing the work good people with strong incentives, they also have distinct feelings of personal obligation to their superior that can lead them to perform beyond the formal requirements of their roles.[8] But Karanja's methods sometimes cost him the loyalty of those few who felt outside the net of his patronage. These people contributed to his troubles when his political problems erupted.
Simeon Nyachae was politically astute in his appointments. The nature of his positions gave him little direct control over junior staff hiring. Thus to the extent that people in his home district of Kisii talked about his assistance with jobs, the reference was generally to employment in his businesses, not in the government. During the years that Nyachae held the confidence of President Kenyatta, he learned to work well with Kikuyus. When he emerged on the stage of power in his own right, he maintained a preference for working with a multiethnic staff. His professional staff in the office of the chief secretary reflected a wider ethnic mix than that of his predecessors in the position. He regarded the civil service as too important to the nation for ethnic meddling. University students from Kisii sometimes criticized him for not helping the careers of fellow Gusii.
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Nyachae had a reputation for working his staff hard, getting rid of those who were lazy or untalented, and rapidly promoting those who served him well. Thus, though he did exercise patronage in the civil service, it was meritocratic. Those he helped were those who had been skilled at anticipating and meeting his wishes for action. Similarly, when he was angered with a decision, a career that he had previously accelerated could be suddenly stalled.
Nyachae was not above using patronage in its more classical form, but it appears that he restricted it to domains that he considered political and thus more appropriate. Several relatives and associates (including a former schoolteacher of his) received positions on parastatal boards through his influence. Not all of the beneficiaries of his patronage in this domain were Gusii, but certainly many were. These appointments were highly visible, and in some cases the qualifications of the recipients could be questioned. In this way he gained a reputation among the wider public as one who could take care of those close to him. However, these board positions had long been used in Kenya as political sinecures, and they had little practical effect on the operations of the parastatals they nominally oversaw. Nyachae appears to have distinguished areas in which he felt that traditional patronage would damage the performance of public organizations from those in which it would not and to have confined his favors to the latter. It is symptomatic of the difficulties of administration in Kenya that the general public and some civil servants could not appreciate the distinction.
Harris Mule also seems to have made fine but principled distinctions about patronage. There was not even a hint of favoritism in his appointment and promotion of professionals. In a wide range of interviews with Mule's colleagues, some of whom were very critical about certain aspects of his handling of personnel, no one ever suggested that he was anything other than scrupulously fair. Such was his reputation for being above ethnic and family considerations that one senior official remarked, "I would be surprised if he helps people [from his home] with work, for I have never seen a job seeker in his office."
The view in Mbooni, from which he hailed, was quite different. There many people remarked on the aid he had given people in finding employment, sometimes citing specific cases they knew well. It was known that he did not like to see job seekers at his office, but villagers found him sympathetic when they approached him in Mbooni. Much of the help that he gave was simply the advice that the well informed can provide to the uninitiated, steering them toward the places where people with their qualifications are most likely to find success. Instances were also reported in which he had taken a petitioner's qualifications
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and called the person when he had found an appropriate spot. It appears that these positions were never in Mule's ministry.
Evidently Mule succeeded in a remarkable balance. His open personality and genuine desire to help people convinced supplicants in Mbooni that he was doing everything he could for them. At the same time he was keeping this assistance sufficiently far removed from his office that his fellow professionals saw him as a model of integrity.
Harambee, Patronage, and Politics
Kenya has a distinctively strong tradition of community self-help.[9] Rooted in customs of mutual assistance and communal labor, self-help began very modestly in the colonial period as a means of raising the resources needed for school classrooms beyond those that the missions and the government would provide. After independence self-help was raised to the level of an ideology. President Kenyatta dubbed it harambee (Swahili for "let's pull together") and exhorted communities to help themselves first if they expected government assistance and challenged politicians to demonstrate their value to their constituencies by mobilizing such efforts.[10]
Gradually harambee shifted from a vehicle for self-help to one for patronage. When it began and in the early years after independence, the sums raised were modest and comprised large numbers of small contributions. Often a measure of coercion was applied by the local chief and subchief to get these "gifts," but they did come primarily from those living in the community itself. As the matajiri class emerged, however, many harambee functions took on a distinctly different cast. Rural residents were transformed from the prime actors into appreciative audiences as their leading "sons" vied with one another to show who were the most generous patrons and to claim the prominence that followed. Peasant contributions may have been as great as before, but their significance as a percentage of the whole declined dramatically.
Ishmael Muriithi's role in this heady competition was an unpretentious one, as befitted his modesty and lack of claim on community leadership. In the first decade after he became director of Veterinary Services, Muriithi made the expected K.shs. 100 to 200 ($11 to $22) contributions to school projects in his home area and was visible only on livestock harambees. Grade dairy cattle need to be dipped regularly in acaricide to protect them from tick-borne disease. The Ministry of Agriculture was encouraging smallholders to form community groups to build and maintain cattle dips, and some donor funds were available to match locally raised money. Muriithi personally promoted this endeavor in the areas around his home in the early 1970s. Then, when asked, he
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would come in person to add his resources to the fund-raising effort. For the dip at Hubuini, near his birthplace in Ihithe, he matched the K.shs. 7,000 ($1,000) raised locally with an equal amount of donor funds that he controlled as director. On occasions like this, he himself would donate about K.shs. 1,000 ($111 at the time), some of which he would have collected from others in his office in Nairobi. A few times he served as guest of honor for these harambees, and he would then bring K.shs. 5,000 to 10,000 from himself and his associates in the capital. When Muriithi participated in opening these cattle dips he would donate a five-gallon can or two of acaracide, which probably had been given to him by the suppliers. There were approximately thirteen dips around his birthplace that he supported in these various ways.
In 1976 Muriithi raised his harambee standing in Ihithe. He was invited to a fund-raising event for a new Presbyterian church at Hubuini. Isaiah Mathenge, his friend and a former provincial commissioner, was the guest of honor and brought K.shs. 12,000. Muriithi surprised everyone by presenting K.shs. 18,000 ($2,570). The total raised that day was K.shs. 54,000, with the two patrons responsible for over half. Had both men had political ambitions, Muriithi's upstaging of the guest of honor would have represented a serious challenge. As it was, it seemed to cause no rancor.
Muriithi became known as a special patron of the churches in his home. He traveled too much to attend church regularly; very few of the matajiri do. But the Presbyterian Church of East Africa was central to the lives of Muriithi's parents, and he had a deep emotional tie to it.
In 1979 the Hubuini church was ready for the next step in its building program. A delegation went to visit Muriithi at his home in Nairobi, led by a church elder who had been to primary school with him. They asked Muriithi to be guest of honor for a harambee, and he promised to think about it. A month later he gave his consent and spent about five months on personal fund-raising endeavors in Nairobi. On the appointed day he brought two other prominent people from the area and K.shs. 14,000 ($2,000) of the K.shs. 44,000 raised that day.
Muriithi was asked to be guest of honor again in 1981, but this time after reflection he declined and recruited Mathenge to take his place. On this occasion, of the K.shs. 52,000 raised, Mathenge brought K.shs. 10,000 and Muriithi, K.shs. 4,000 ($400 by then). It is likely that Muriithi was careful not to upstage his friend this time and may even have redirected some Nairobi contributions to him. Over the years Muriithi donated K.shs. 36,000 to the Hubuini Presbyterian church, or about 18 percent of its completed cost. (See plate 29.)
The reputation Muriithi gained for his endeavors at Hubuini earned him an invitation to be guest of honor for a harambee for another Pres-
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byterian church at Kariguini in 1984. The place is about fifteen kilometers (ten miles) from Ihithe, but a cousin of Muriithi's who was an elder approached him twice on behalf of the church. Muriithi finally said that since this was a church of God he would come and help, but he did not have much money, as he had contributed to other harambees recently. Such protestations are common among guests of honor, who try to contain inflated rural expectations. It did not work. Muriithi brought K.shs. 31,000 ($3,100) and only K.shs. 3,000 more were raised locally. This was the epitome of "self-help" as a spectator event. Muriithi's efforts on behalf of this church had raised its stone edifice to the top of the walls before he died. The community was hopeful that the family might consider it a memorial to him and help to complete it.
During the last decade of his life, Muriithi probably contributed about K.shs. 100,000 to his community, about K.shs. 10,000 ($1,000) a year. Of course the large contributions that he brought were not only from himself but from his friends and associates as well. Since he would have been expected to reciprocate these gifts by his peers, our assessment of the final, net outlay would remain much the same. These annual sums were more than double the average family income of the villagers they benefited, but they seem feasible, if generous, for Muriithi's.
Harris Mule entered the world of harambee prominence in 1977. He was asked to be guest of honor for the Kiumi Water Project, which would bring piped water to farms in four sub-locations, including his own. The event raised K.shs. 30,000 ($4,300), of which about K.shs. 15,000 was brought by Mule from himself and his friends. Some large donors like to enhance their reputations by blurring the line between their own contributions and those of their associates and thus have their gift announced simply as coming from themselves "and friends." Mule is one of those who insists instead on enumerating the sources and amounts of the funds he has raised. At least as important as the immediate cash that Mule gave was the promise that he secured from Lois Richards of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide a matching contribution through CARE. This ultimately resulted in about K.shs. 100,000 in materials for the project. Many donor representatives were fond of Mule because of the ease with which they were able to talk with him and because of his reputation for personal integrity. He was the sort of government official they liked to help. USAID's promise had an amusing side effect. In announcing it, "I told the harambee that I would bring a woman who would match whatever they raised. The Kamba word for woman and wife is the same and the women [in Mbooni] thought she was my second wife. They mobbed her in excitement when she came [to make the presentation]." After another harambee this water project was ultimately taken over and com-
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pleted by the government's District Development Committee.
Mule used his contacts with donors to assist with two other small projects in his home. For the Kikima Farmers Cooperative Society he helped get Dutch funding for a community center, a dairy, and a revolving loan fund for the purchase of grade cattle. He also gave advice on how to get American assistance for over forty women's poultry-keeping groups in the location.
Philip Mule, Harris's father, had helped to build both a church at Tawa in 1938 when he was working there and the Mbooni Boys High School after independence. Philip served on the board of the school until he died in 1980, and Harris "inherited" his place on it. The school library is named after Philip. Harris was guest of honor at a harambee in 1979 at which the school raised K.shs. 102,000 ($14,500) in cash and materials. Harris was responsible for about K.shs. 70,000 ($10,000) of this sum, a large part of which were materials from CARE, which he had secured through the good offices of the Canadian embassy. He also found guests of honor for subsequent harambees for the school and obtained foundation scholarships for some of its poor students.
Harris Mule became chairman of the new Utangwa Secondary School in Mbooni Location in the mid-1970s. In 1985 he persuaded Chris Musau, a prosperous Kamba businessman near Machakos town, to be the guest of honor for its harambee. By the standards of smaller, struggling schools, this was a very successful event. It raised K.shs. 193,000 ($12,000) in cash and K.shs. 300,000 ($18,700) in materials. Musau brought contributions of K.shs. 56,000, and Mule, of K.shs. 40,000 ($2,500), both in cash. Mule's gift had been obtained from a British American Tobacco fund. Mule subsequently remarked: "I created a big problem for myself in bringing [such a large gift]. In self-help the more you do the more they expect. . . . In my next harambees they then were disappointed by my K.shs. 2,000 to 3,000."
The scale of Mule's personal gifts to various harambees was modest, for so was his personal wealth, and he was unwilling to sell favors at the Treasury for contributions. He was well liked for his assistance, however, because he knew how to tap into donor resources and had a generous, open spirit. The community's way of expressing this popularity was to insist that "he would get 95 percent if he were to stand for this seat in Parliament." It did not distinguish between the patronage roles that were appropriate for a politician and those for a civil servant.
Charles Karanja's involvement with harambees began in 1964. Their scale at that time was very modest. "We then might collect K.shs. 100 ($14) in a meeting. At one I offered to match anything they gave and they came up with K.shs. 371 ($53). I wouldn't dare do that today."
His earliest and enduring interest was in primary and secondary
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schools. In 1964 and 1968 he became chair of the boards of Mururia Secondary School, in Gatundu, and Kanunga High School, in Kiambaa. He was made board chairman of Loreto High School, Limuru (a Catholic girls school from which his wife had graduated), in 1969 and continued in that position through the end of the 1980s. For a time he served as the chair for the Loreto Teacher Training College in Kiambu as well. These schools are scattered widely in his home district.
Later Karanja added Catholic churches and some independent ones to his list of favored projects. In the area around his birthplace he was known to support "virtually every [church and school] project." (He himself would claim only "many.") But he did not accept involvement in harambees that concerned any sort of business. "It must be in the public interest." Similarly, although he obviously was dedicated to schooling, his sympathy with requests for the educational expenses of individuals was limited.
For the types of projects he favored he was exceedingly generous and active. Once established at the KTDA, he never gave less than K.shs. 1,000 ($143) personally to a project and averaged a couple of these a month. Most of the harambees he supported were within Central Province, and he would travel as far as Kirinyaga to attend one on a great many weekends. During his years at the KTDA he would be guest of honor at up to four harambees each year. After his retirement he accepted up to three a year. These would be mainly in his home division of Gatundu, with some others elsewhere in Kiambu District.
When Karanja was at the KTDA the highest contribution he brought to a harambee as guest of honor
was K.shs. 140,000 [$20,000], but then my personal contribution was less then than it is now. . . . I delivered more money then, for I would have my officers to collect money [for me]. Also business people give you more when you are in a position like that where they expect that you may be able to help them in return. Once I get K.shs. 20,000 to 40,000 [$1,250 to 2,500] I stop collecting now, although I gave K.shs. 60,000 [$3,750] last time. Normally you reach K.shs. 60,000 to 80,000. . . . I always ask those involved what the target is. I [have] never brought less than K.shs. 25,000 [$1,600].
I always read the names of friends who gave [contributions through] me. . . . The type of people I ask will almost always give K.shs. 1,000 [$63]. I rarely have to read [the names of] more than thirty people. . . . In recent years there has been a tendency for people to give publicly and not announce where the money is from. I don't like it when people say only "myself and friends." . . . You don't know where he got it from, nor whether he has given it all.
The particular harambee game in which Karanja was playing was one with high stakes. Many times he was giving more than his salary at the
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KTDA; this was possible only because the income from his businesses was always at least as great as that from the KTDA after 1969. Even at this level, the volume of giving and the newly amassed wealth in Kiambu were such that Karanja was considered to be only in the top two or three for generous contributors in his home place.
Simeon Nyachae began to play the role of guest of honor in harambees shortly after independence, as his meteoric rise to provincial commissioner gave him resources and influence with businessmen which relatively few possessed at the time. Much of this harambee activity was conducted in his official capacity and therefore benefited government-blessed projects in the areas in which he was working. Those in which he did participate in Kisii were close to his home and attracted little attention in the rest of the district. His contribution to one harambee, which he conducted at home in the 1960s, was big enough to make the then member of Parliament for his constituency, James Nyamweya, feel threatened by it. It seemed to him to be challenging his position as prime patron for the area and to portend a challenge by Nyachae for his seat. In fact Nyachae had no such ambitions, and it was two decades later before Nyachae expressed any interest in elective office. He seemed instead to be driven by a diffuse sense of responsibility for the welfare of the people his father had served.
Nyachae's pattern of harambee activity changed significantly after Kenyatta's death and his move to the Office of the President in Nairobi. He no longer had responsibilities for a particular province, and he did not have to worry about appearing to neglect the welfare of the Kikuyu he was governing for the benefit of his fellow Gusii. He continued to be a prominent and generous participant in harambees "in very many parts of Kenya, which shows the breadth of his friendships." Such spread earned him the praise of some as "a true nationalist." But his activities in Kisii also became more visible and eventually widened to cover much of the district. For example, in 1985 he was guest of honor for four harambees in different Kisii constituencies.
His harambees became very substantial affairs. For instance, the one that he conducted in the Majoge Bassi constituency in 1986 benefited 202 primary schools and raised K.shs. 6,000,000 ($378,000). Nyachae brought K.shs. 136,000 ($8,500) from himself and his friends and delivered a contribution of K.shs. 20,000 ($1,250) from President Moi. The M.P. from the constituency, Chris Obure, brought K.shs. 86,571 ($5,410).[11]
Nyachae's Political Downfall
Nyachae's efforts were widely known and appreciated in Kisii. At the same time they were seen as a bid for leadership: "He is trying to make
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his influence felt with the people." Once again, we see that citizens in Kenya do not distinguish between the roles that are appropriate for civil servants and for politicians. A small, rural shopkeeper in Kisii commented:
The difference between a cabinet minister and a chief secretary is that a chief secretary can give more in harambees. There is no other difference in the ways in which it is permissible for them to help.
But there are differences in the roles. A senior government official remarked of Nyachae:
It is not an asset as chief secretary to be so visibly political. . . . It is a powerful position with defined positions of chief adviser to the president, control of the civil service, [management of] security, etc. That in itself draws resentment, and if one is politically visible in addition, the resentment becomes too much. . . . I believe that in Nyachae's case he is not in harambee because of political ambition. He does it because he likes it. He likes to be appreciated; he likes applause. . . . [But it creates jealousy.] Politicians, including cabinet ministers, resent the fact that they can't extract as much, and they suspect that you are up to something. . . . I don't think any politician likes to see other politicians do better.
Indeed, Nyachae did involve himself in political matters in the 1980s. He was known to have supported Omanga's successful bid for Parliament in 1979 in his home constituency. But many civil servants have done as much. More seriously, he became deeply involved in KANU party politics at the Kisii District level. This district had always suffered from factionalism, and Nyachae sought to promote greater unity among its M.P.s so as to give them greater bargaining power at the national level. To this end he suggested in 1985 that the KANU branch chairman for Kisii not be a sitting M.P., and Lawrence Sagini, who had been Kisii's first M.P., was selected for the post. Many Gusii, however, did not interpret this as a neutral action on Nyachae's part. Sagini, a brother-in-law of Nyachae's, had been displaced from Parliament by Zachery Onyonka, who was then the sitting district KANU chair. Onyonka had been compromised with a murder charge arising out of the 1983 Parliamentary election campaign (although the courts ultimately found him innocent, placing the blame on one of his supporters). The scandal persuaded Nyachae that it would be wise to replace him. In acting on this conviction, he sealed a feud with Onyonka and made the other M.P.s uneasy that his influence might be eclipsing their own.
As long as Nyachae remained chief secretary and had the support of President Moi, his position was unassailable. After his retirement, however, he reversed his oft-repeated disinterest in elected office and declared himself a candidate for Parliament. Many former provincial com-
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missioners have attempted election in Kenya, but only one has ever succeeded. The frequently heavy-handed, authoritarian behavior that goes with the role of PC does not go over well at the polls. Nonetheless, informed observers not only considered Nyachae the favorite but gave him a good chance at carrying allies in surrounding constituencies to victory with him.[12] But he never got to try. Kenya is a one-party state; although elections are contested, candidates must be cleared by KANU in order to stand. Nyachae's "papers disappeared mysteriously at the KANU Headquarters," and his candidacy "did not therefore reach the executive committee for [the required] clearance." The president declined to intervene in this and thirteen other similar cases elsewhere.
How could such a powerful man fall so suddenly and so far? Onyonka's opposition to Nyachae was a foregone conclusion, and it is understandable that the other Kisii M.P.s may have been reluctant to yield primacy of place to him. Because Kenya is a one-party state, significant policy disputes cannot be resolved by elections, and highly personalized factionalism frequently takes their place. Nyachae himself attributed some of the antagonism to his attempts to get some of the M.P.s to account for harambee funds that were collected under their leadership and may have been misappropriated.[13] These are insufficient explanations. President Moi had the power to intervene on behalf of Nyachae's application to stand for election. Furthermore, Nyachae's businesses suddenly began to have severe difficulty getting the various government permits that they needed to operate; this trouble had to be coming from somewhere in Nairobi. Moi appeared to have turned his back on Nyachae for reasons that have never been made public.[14]
Although many details in Nyachae's "fall from grace" are not clear, some general observations can be made. His career had been built by always putting the interests of his president first. Although his loyalty to President Moi never shifted, he violated this principle in minor but important ways in his tenure as chief secretary. First, he was highly visible. This is standard for a provincial commissioner, who is representing the president in a purely local setting. But civil servants in the capital are expected to be invisible. The attention Nyachae was receiving in the press could have been seen as detracting from the stature of Moi and therefore would have been unacceptable.
Second, as chief secretary Nyachae was head of the civil service and of the cabinet secretariat. As such he felt obliged to represent the interests of the public service, to defend individual bureaucrats from unwarranted political attack, and to protect the integrity of basic governmental procedures. If this representative function were perceived to have conflicted with service to the president, it could have strained Moi's favor.
Third, Nyachae was outspoken and willing to take risks. These attri-
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butes first brought him to Kenyatta's attention and aided his advance to the post of chief secretary. But it is possible that they also led him to advocate some policies that finally tried the president's patience. Paradoxically, great careers cannot be built without taking risks, but in the end they can be undermined by such gambles as well.
Finally, a civil servant is not likely to be successful in the long run if he challenges elected politicians for their constituency support. Several times Nyachae in his role as provincial commissioner confronted members of Parliament, but he was seen as doing so on behalf of President Kenyatta. His activities in Kisii in the mid-1980s threatened to take him across a vague and invisible boundary and strained his effectiveness. After his retirement he attempted to convert the immense power he had exercised on behalf of the president into an elective political base. This is extremely difficult to do, for power that is delegated from the top is radically different from that which comes from popular support. The combination of an electoral base with high civil service experience in sensitive positions also can be threatening to senior politicians, who may find themselves suddenly challenged on their own ground. If Nyachae had succeeded in his campaign in Kisii, he would have dominated his district's politics in a way that no new Kenyan politician has been able to do since independence. In other words, he would have gone from being his president's "most obedient servant" to one of the powerful "peers of the realm." There were many who would have found that menacing.
Ill-Gotten Gains?
The wealth of men such as Karanja and Nyachae, and the substantial sums that are sometimes dispersed in Kenyan harambees, immediately raise the question of where this money is coming from. There can be little doubt that much of what is gained and given in the country has been corruptly obtained. It would be remarkable if it were otherwise. The political system is based on patronage. Citizens do not ask their elected leaders to deliver national policies; they ask instead for immediately tangible benefits delivered to themselves and their communities. This patronage is dispensed in the form of jobs, individual gifts, and harambee donations. Nor do voters inquire where the money necessary for this largess comes from; they ask only how much, not how.
Corruption has grown steadily in Kenya over the past twenty-five years. Although it still is not as pervasive as in West Africa, it is confronted in many aspects of public life. Rumors of 10 percent kickbacks on government contracts and purchases are frequently mentioned by usually well-informed people. Permits of various kinds also are said to be obtained often by bribes. The incentives for ill-gotten gains are pow-
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erful and the disincentives quite limited. The police find it difficult to keep up with all but a fraction of the corrupt activity, and the powerful most often are prosecuted only if they "fall from grace." In most of Africa the indictments for corruption come after one has lost office; they do not precede and cause the loss of power, as they do in some other political systems. In any case, the boundaries on the legitimate pursuit of private gain are poorly defined in Kenya. During the colonial period senior civil servants were allowed to possess farms of up to fifty acres, thereby encouraging their solidarity with the white settlers. With the Ndegwa Commission report of 1971 a public servant was permitted to own virtually any business or property. The doors to conflict of interest were opened wide.[15]
How do the four men conform to these values of public life? Remarkably, their behavior has generally been quite different from the prevailing standards. The next chapter will argue that this is part of the reason for their success as civil servants.
It is easiest to certify the ethics of Harris Mule, because his personal wealth was so clearly limited and what he gave away came largely from foundations and international donors. There is no unusual cash-flow to explain. The belief in his integrity was widespread and unanimous.
Considerable search revealed only one instance of what might remotely be called conflict of interest on Mule's part. He had used the Ministry of Agriculture's Farm Mechanization Unit to clear and plow his newly acquired farm in Kibwezi in 1984 and 1985. The unit was created to provide exactly these kinds of services to farmers like Mule, and he paid for the work. Nonetheless, he had argued against its highly subsidized services in the past and felt that they probably would not have gotten around to helping him if it were not for his position. He did nothing wrong, but he had gained a kind of advantage from his office. In any case, Mule did not continue to use the unit's tractors. Though the charges were low, the slowness of its work in 1985 substantially reduced his yields.
Mule's relatively simple life-style, selflessness, and humility were appreciated by people at his birthplace but were incomprehensible to them. One remarked, "This person eludes us." He did not play the role that they expected of a "big man." His failure to take better care of himself lay outside their system of values. The same behavior evoked similar admiration from his professional colleagues, but much better comprehension. They understood that it greatly enhanced his ability to perform his duties well and felt themselves challenged by it to greater integrity.
Harris Mule's generosity and integrity were inspired by his father, Philip, but they were also greatly aided by the simple tastes and support
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of his wife, Martha Ngina. Unlike many wives of the upwardly mobile, she does not press him for expensive things or urge him to make more money. "She is not demanding," a relative remarked. "I think he was just lucky in choosing her; I don't think he saw it clearly in her" when they met.
This does not mean that questionable decisions never came out of his office. Such unbending integrity would lead to one's being kept from the centers of decision in Kenya. Mule
gives his professional advice on what should be done but he has been willing to accept and implement political decisions when they are given to him. He has proved accommodating in that respect. But unlike others who have long accommodated . . . he has retained a professional vision of where he wants to see public policy go.
In other words, he has not been overtaken with cynicism and become self-serving.
Ishmael Muriithi's values on private gain from public office were similar to those of Mule, but his image with his colleagues was slightly tarnished in the later years of his career. He came to the civil service with the stern moral values of his Presbyterian parents. At the time of independence he was the district veterinary officer (DVO) in Eldoret. There were multiple chances for him to have undertaken some private practice on the side, and, indeed, many of the British DVOs had done so. However, Muriithi adhered rigidly to the formal regulations and kept strictly to his public practice.
The position of director of veterinary services, which Muriithi held for eighteen years, would have offered him a vast number of opportunities for corruption. The profits earned on the marginal costs of the chemicals and pharmaceuticals used in veterinary medicine are substantial. (Some of the biggest costs in this industry are for research and development, which have to be paid up front. Because the actual costs of manufacture represent a modest portion of the price charged for each unit sold, the incentives to sell additional units are very high.) Thus, bribes and other inducements to purchasing officers are common around the world. Confidential inquiries with well-placed people in Kenyan pharmaceutical businesses did not reveal even a rumor of corruption on Muriithi's part in dealing with them or their competitors. In fact, he even declined to accept for private use on his farm gifts of returned drugs that could no longer be sold.
Muriithi's standing was somewhat tarnished with his professional colleagues, however, over an episode that was perfectly legal in Kenya. When the Government of Kenya ceded the land outside Nairobi on which the International Laboratory for Research on Animal Disease
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(ILRAD) was built, a piece across the road from the site was unneeded. It was divided into three parcels, and Muriithi bought one of them. As Muriithi was instrumental in securing the site for ILRAD, and as he was subsequently on its board, he obviously had advance knowledge that the extra parcels were going to be sold and, in this sense, may have profited from his position. (There is no suggestion that he paid anything other than the standard price for the land.)
Later there were serious problems at ILRAD, and the board (including Muriithi) felt that it needed to remove several of the top managers. In the midst of this controversy one of those removed accused Muriithi's wife of having sold hay to ILRAD from this plot. As ILRAD is an international organization, it is considered unethical for board members to have financial dealings with it and thus create a possibility of conflict of interest. This charge was not pursued, Muriithi did not have an opportunity to reply to it, and some people doubt that it was genuine. Whatever the truth of the matter, the incident did make the purchase of the land parcel more widely known in the veterinary profession and compromised the reputation for absolute integrity that Muriithi had had with his colleagues. As the charges did not involve anything that is illegal in Kenya, they passed unnoticed by the general public. They may have been one factor, however, in Muriithi's subsequent decision to resign from the ILRAD board. This incident highlights once again the great gap that exists in Kenya between societal and professional ethical standards over conflicts of interest.
That Muriithi had high personal standards of integrity is not necessarily to say that the organizations he was associated with had the same. There is only so much that the man at the helm can do when he lacks the support of society and the state's monitoring institutions. Informal extra payments to veterinary field staff for their services had become frequent by the end of his career.[16] There also were many rumors of irregularities around the purchase of livestock at the Kenya Meat Commission, including during the years that he chaired its board.
Charles Karanja's fall from power at the KTDA was occasioned in part by his being caught in a relatively minor conflict of interest. He probably would not have made this error in the early 1970s. During that time he had substantial private interests in trucking but was careful not to do any business with the KTDA, to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. However, the coincidence of President Kenyatta's declining health and acuity with the flush coffers of the coffee boom led to an explosion of questionable acquisitiveness among the political and administrative elites after 1976. Many were tempted into changing their ethical standards during this period; to a minor extent Karanja was drawn along with them.
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The Achilles heel in Karanja's ethical system was Africanization. He was passionate in his commitment to advancing African participation in the previously white and multinational bastions of the tea industry. Most often this involved extending the functions of the KTDA, but he was pleased to advance private Kenyan entrepreneurs as well. In domains where other Africans were offering their services to the KTDA, Karanja was scrupulous in not tendering his own, so as to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. But in the areas where Africans were not represented, Karanja came to feel that it was legitimate for him to involve companies in which he had an interest of his own, so as to promote Africanization of the economy. It was in this way that the compromising decision was made to place trainee managers in the Ngorongo tea factory, in which he had an interest. He persuaded the KTDA board that this arrangement would speed the training of African managers for the KTDA factories.
There were other decisions that also might have been questioned. A company of Karanja's had indirect shareholdings in a newly created Kenyan tea brokerage firm that handled some of KTDA's business. Combrok provided good service at the same prices as other brokerages, so KTDA was not harmed in any way. Nonetheless, some eyebrows might have been raised if the Karanja-Combrok connection had been known.
Again to promote Africanization, a Karanja company acquired an interest in a Mombasa warehouse that was to handle some of KTDA's tea. When the major shareholder tried to charge a slightly higher price than his competitors were offering to the KTDA, its business had to be withdrawn to protect KTDA's interests and Karanja's reputation.
Most of those close to Karanja within the KTDA felt that "when he helped his business it was in ways that wouldn't hurt the KTDA." But this point and the nuances of his Africanization ethics were not apparent to all, and this cost him support both inside and outside the KTDA. It is certainly true that Karanja's use of his position for personal profit appears to have been legal and minor by Kenyan standards. His businesses flourished after his "fall from grace," whereas those businesses built on the use of influence usually do not, for their profits depend on favoritism. Even though Karanja's breach of integrity was minor, it damaged his ability to manage his organization aggressively and autonomously.
Simeon Nyachae was a man of great wealth and power. The combination created recurring suspicions that the former came from his abuse of the latter. From time to time members of Parliament, the press, and the rumor mills of Nairobi have all made allegations of corruption and conflict of interest against him.[17] Nyachae has effectively responded to many of the public accusations, and there is evidence that some of the
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other rumors were false.[18] But it is beyond the capacity of a single investigator, lacking legal powers, to establish the full truth in such a thicket of innuendo.
Still, we can suggest why rumors of wrongdoing would have arisen even if Nyachae may never have made a corrupt decision. First, he was a political inside player. He did not get to the pinnacle of the civil service by being a neutral technocrat. On behalf of his presidents he skillfully managed the interface between the political and the administrative. Payoffs and questionable business deals are a regular part of Kenyan political life, financing the patronage networks that are essential to political survival. As so much of Nyachae's work touched on sensitive political matters, people naturally would assume that he was privy to its shadier side as well.
Second, Nyachae was a wealthy man. When offices or parastatals with which he was associated made questionable decisions, people simply assumed that he had received a bribe. After all, reasoned the public, how else could he have gotten his money? Yet the decision could have been executed under political orders or because of a bribe to someone else. Nyachae's prosperity is easily explained by his business acumen, his early entry into the highly propitious climate for African business at independence, and his father's wealth. When similarly questionable decisions were made around Harris Mule, people simply assumed that he had not been involved. After all, he had nothing to show for it.
Third, Nyachae most likely did derive some business advantage from his government position without necessarily having sought it. He argued that since he consciously took himself out of the day-to-day running of his businesses and was ignorant of the specific points at which the government might help them, his interests could not affect the way he performed his public duties. He congratulated himself on having refused to bid on projects where he was conscious of a conflict of interest. Others were not so sure he had enjoyed no advantage.
Once you submit an application with his name on it as a director, no one would give it any problems. . . . He never had to get on the phone. . . . His name was enough. He's benefited by his position without having tried to.
The mere fact that he is associated with a business leads it to get government preference without his having to ask for it. Of course it becomes more difficult if you ask for help, which he does in the same way as a normal [citizen would]. You can only be at par if you discriminate against yourself, which he doesn't do.
That Nyachae had a quick temper and great influence over civil service careers led bureaucrats to err in favor of his interests without his even knowing it. That he had held powerful positions without interruption
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since independence could have left him unaware of how difficult it can be to get permits and contracts if one is not connected. Such advantages, even if they were unintended, created great resentment. This partly explains why many officials sought to block his business interests after his "fall from grace."
Even as chief secretary, Nyachae was conscious that something was not working with the government's conflict of interest regulations. He did not believe that civil servants should be kept out of business. The civil servants of the previous generation, like his father, Chief Nyandusi, not only had been permitted to have parallel business interests but had been actively encouraged to do so by the British colonial government. But Nyachae did wish that the irregularities could be controlled and the rumors quelled. His solution would have been
a standing committee of well-respected, honest, professional people who would deal with individual investments of people in public office [both elected and appointed]. One should be required to submit to them a report [each year] of all one has and account for every single cent one has invested. They should have a staff to analyze returns and investigate where investment has been very large. That would curtail abuse.
But he was unsuccessful in getting his proposal accepted.
Class and the Next Generation
Most people are concerned to provide not only for themselves but for the future of their children as well. The four subjects of this study had stood on the shoulders of their parents and joined the small percentage of the truly advantaged in Kenya. It would be unnatural if they did not want to help their children achieve a similarly privileged status. As we are about to see, they largely succeeded. Their offspring differ considerably in how well they are doing, but most of them belong in the same broad status group as their parents. In their occupations, friendships, and social orientations they are part of the matajiri (well-to-do), although not yet in terms of their independent wealth. The successful transmission of this group membership to the next generation is one of the clearer indications that class formation is well advanced in Kenya.
All of Charles Karanja's six children went to respected primary and secondary schools in the Nairobi area, and four of them received post—A-level training. Karanja was a strong family man and was usually home to eat with his wife and children each night. He also was a passionate believer in the importance of education and was strict in his insistence on study and good grades. His wife, Philomena, gave up her teaching career to manage their farms and raise the family. This was somewhat
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unusual. Most educated Kenyan women stay in paid employment, as they have servants to run their homes and as they are not required to participate in the social side of their husbands' careers. Philomena put strong pressure on the children to succeed as well. But the traditional formality and discipline of the African father-child relationship did not work well for Karanja in the new affluence in which his family was being raised. He was careful not to spoil his children with too-ready access to money, but as they got into their teenage years they could not attach the same importance to school grades that he did. "He sees your report [card] and tells you off for one hour. It made me feel rebellious. The more he pushed, the less we did. . . . You felt you could never do enough for him." In short, the social setting was more like the one in which American middle-class families find themselves. It was not at all like the one in which Karanja had grown up, where a lapse in effort consigned one to a lifetime of farm work.
At different points rebelliousness undid most of his children. Two sons made it to the University of Nairobi but failed because of alcohol-related problems. Two other children insisted on setting their sights below the university level. One son went to Canada to pursue his B.A. but dropped out after two years to become a lay preacher.
Despite these educational disappointments the children were launched on careers that seemed likely to keep most of them part of the matajiri, at least when they inherited their father's property. One daughter was married to a successful businessman. The other children all eventually joined his businesses in various capacities. Karanja was struggling with learning to delegate enough responsibility to them, and it seemed likely that they would become good enough to at least hold onto their father's gains. Despite Karanja's best efforts, none of his children were yet as successful as he was, but they hadn't dropped out of their father's newly formed class either. All of them had their own cars, and they were quite urban and matajiri in their social lives and orientations.
Harris and Martha Mule have two daughters, Nthenya ("early morning"), born in 1971, and Ndinda ("stayed for too long"), born in 1983. Nthenya was in an elite Catholic girls high school in Nairobi—Loreto Convent, Msongari—when the interviews for this study were conducted. (See plate 30.) Although she was bright, she was doing only moderately well in school at that point. She remarked that with regard to her studies her father was
"cool." You know he wants you to do well, but he never shouts at you when you don't. He says, "I see you had a problem. What was it?" He always goes to parents' days, et cetera. You can talk to him if you need to. Mother is the one who applies more pressure. She's always saying how well she did and how I'm not studying hard enough.
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Her parents were uncertain how to handle Nthenya in the atmosphere of relative affluence in which she was being educated. Harris was pessimistic about the ability of parents like himself to surmount their children's privileged environment. He remarked:
The children of the old chiefs have not done well. (Nyachae is an exception—and is only one of his father's hundred-odd children.) [The] same will happen to the children of today's rich. They don't do well in school and are poorly disciplined, poorly motivated workers.
Nonetheless, the Mules did succeed with Nthenya. Martha had given up her job as a secretary to raise the two daughters. They found the marginal income tax rates on her earnings too great to justify the sacrifice. They regularly took Nthenya with them to work on their farm, hoping to keep her grounded in Kenyan reality by so doing. She also was taught to cook and liked it. She passed her O-level exam in the First Division, did A-levels at Kenya High, and went to Grinnell College in the United States with a scholarship.
Although Ishmael and Martha Muriithi lived right outside Nairobi, their children had a different experience from that of most matajiri offspring. They were raised neither in a housing tract, as were the Mules, nor on a large estate, as were the Karanjas. Instead, they grew up working a small, family farm.
From the start it was manual labor—feeding chickens, milking the cows, grazing the cows before [the farm] was fenced, [helping] to clear the new land [with] father. . . . There is nothing [we] have not done. . . . [He taught us] "The more you do, the more you get."
All four children were sold on farm life and wanted to work their own someday.
The Muriithis went to Hospital Hill Primary School, one of the best of the government schools. The two eldest then boarded at Alliance High School, where their father had gone. They went on to the University of Nairobi, and Ann Wangeci became a dentist and Elijah Waicanguru a medical doctor. These educational institutions gave them a peer group of upwardly mobile rural youth, not the children of the affluent. (Grace had gone to England to take a degree in music, and Munene was in Jamhuri High School when this study was done.)
It seems likely that the environment was more responsible for the success of the four than was their father. He cared about and advised them, but he was away a great deal. "He'd come [home] after you were asleep or be gone before you were up. [You] never knew when he'd be there." To compensate, his wife Martha also quit her job and worked the farm full time. The rearing of the Muriithi offspring took place in a
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setting more like that of their father's than that of the other matajiri children.
Despite his large number of children,[*] Simeon Nyachae devoted considerable time to them. They obviously mean a great deal to him. "When he works hard he says he is doing it for the children." Even when he was chief secretary he would be home at 7:30 each night and spend an hour playing with the small children. He then would dine with his wife and the older children.
He had observed that children in polygamous marriages usually pull away from their father, identify with their mothers, and are factionalized accordingly. Nyachae was determined that this should not happen to his family, "so he raised us together to give everyone an equal opportunity." Once they were in secondary boarding schools, rather than separating to their mothers' homes, they would spend half their holidays working on their father's farm near Nakuru and the other half with their paternal grandmother on the Sotik farm.
[Nyachae] has always been a disciplinarian [with us children. The farm labor that we did] was for the purpose of making us realize that everything one got had to be worked for. . . . We probably did more work on average than other well-to-do kids.
The discipline was particularly strict around education.
At the end of each school term he would read the [grade] reports in detail in front of all of us and reprimand us where necessary. He followed progress in studies very keenly. He followed Charles's reports closely even when he was in Britain as a graduate student.
Despite his demanding schedule Nyachae visited their many schools for their parent conferences himself. He did have the traditional African formality in his relations with his offspring. "At the same time he made an effort to understand us as individuals" and tailored his careful advice accordingly.
Nyachae's wives devoted full time to the family's affairs. Although educated Kenyan women generally do subordinate their careers to their husbands', it is unusual for them to give them up altogether. The fact that the wives of all of the four men did so speaks to the great strain that the men's workaholic devotion to their senior positions put upon their families.
Most of Nyachae's children went to rural secondary schools, thereby having the same kind of upwardly mobile peer group as the Muriithis.
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Five of them subsequently went overseas to Britain, India, and the United States for university. None of them attended Kenyan universities. They entered professions such as nursing, hotel management, law, business management, and insurance sales. Nyachae was disappointed in the performance of only one of his children, and he was having him trained to enter one of his businesses.
Thus most of the progeny of these four men entered the matajiri class with their fathers. It seemed unlikely that many of them would achieve the same prominence or startling increase in wealth. Yet the new class had succeeded in reproducing itself. There were two important differences between this second generation and the first, however. The second did not have its parents' roots in rural villages. The friends of these young people were primarily like themselves—urban and from affluent families. This generation would not have the same ties of obligation to the peasantry as their fathers had. And very few of these children went into the civil service, unlike their fathers and grandfathers. This phenomenon is general among the offspring of senior civil servants. What had seemed to be the beginning of family dynasties in the public service (similar to those on the continent of Europe) was not to be.[19] It appears that the civil service is to be populated, not with a hereditary administrative elite, but with new waves of upwardly mobile rural refugees.
Conclusions
By virtue of their senior positions in the public service, all four men achieved incomes and standards of living far higher than those of their parents. They also came under incomparably greater financial pressures. Village neighbors and relatives wanted help with jobs. Expectations for harambee contributions were on an unending escalator. And they had to provide for the education and future of their children. They themselves had worked their way up through publicly supported institutions and had won their own positions through intelligence and hard work. However, their very affluence often sapped their children's will to work. The four men were forced to pay for expensive private schools and universities and to worry about businesses that their children could enter, so as to pass on membership in the matajiri class they themselves had struggled so hard to create.
These pressures were distracting in themselves and made opportunities for extra income very tempting. Many of those in their positions succumbed and became corrupted. By and large, the four men we are studying did not, meeting the financial strains through either modest living standards or business acumen instead. The extent of this self-
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denial was an important factor in determining the degree of their success. It gave them the respect and cooperation of their professional colleagues and made them less vulnerable to damaging accusations in the rough-and-tumble of bureaucratic politics.
The unofficial lives that we have reviewed here illustrate how Kenyan senior public servants become patrons to their communities and secure matajiri class membership for their children, whether their careers accomplish something for the public good or not. These breakthroughs were easier and more lucrative for the first generation of African public servants because new business opportunities were so numerous. The later generations would be jealous of their wealth and, finding it harder to achieve, be much more tempted to cut corners to get it.
The patronage role civil servants played gave them local political status and blurred the distinction between administrator and politician in the public's eyes. Civil servants who were tempted to play political roles often did so at the peril of their administrative careers. Visible participation in electoral politics by Simeon Nyachae and Charles Karanja ultimately cost both of them presidential favor. The power that a civil servant exercises in Kenya derives from the person of the president. Attempts to amass support from the grass roots, far from contributing to one's influence, will be seen as threatening to the president's power and probably lead to one's "fall from grace."
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Source : University of California Press