Corrpt businesses in Kenya II

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Corrupt BusinessesPart II: Institutionlising corruption - a take on the private sector.Grooming new employees to become corrupt, how the system works.What you can do to stiffle corruption in a corrupt institution... andThe mask was unveiled: How I was schooled on the realities of my ill-advised attempts to expose corruption.

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Let’s suppose you have a business owner and that business is founded on or used to getting things done ‘the Kenyan way’. You want the business to continue in your absence and you want to also serve and protect the interests of those you do this sort of things with. This may be possible for a one-man shop, but what happens when you have five or more employees?

You induct them into the system: you show them the ropes of doing business ‘the Kenyan way’.

Welcome to part II of corrupt businesses in Kenyan, private sector chapter. Today, we shall look at how business owners nurture and mentor their upcoming employees into becoming corrupt and adapting to the ‘real values’ of the company.

The classic case of grooming.

Textbooks on grooming define its effectiveness in four stages: first the catch, then the hook, then the test-drive, and finally the climactic shift in values.

Grooming is defined as the influence of an experienced/older professional to organically turn the values of the younger/new, inexperienced person

Step I: The Catch:

The initial act is banal. Corruption happens on a daily basis in Kenya and there is no mystery to it. However, as a young, inexperienced person, it’s one thing to pay off a guard to access and office or to pay off a police officer on the road and quite another to deliberately alter invoices, quotations, and value to rob the government or other businesses and to do this in partnership with others.

The catch in this case is simple: set to them to fail. The first time this happens, it’s quite painful and the memories live on. A young/new will do everything they can to get the business according to the official templates. However, this is a rigged process and there will be no results. The impact on the person is usually painful and discouraging as they try to find out what went wrong… only to wake up and realise they were just ‘not lucky’ or some other issue.

The first time this happened to me, I was sent with a team to document a World Bank project in Western Kenya at work. At this time, the project team was also conducting a review with the client and the partners were in attendance. During our presentation, certain issues were

raised and as the rapporteur, I briefed the office on the same. The issues raised by the client were very small but significant: something that would be accomplished with a bit of diligence and teamwork.

However, with a disjointed team (see part I type of employees); the office felt that those could be ‘managed’ by simply having the ground team sign off on the project so as to force the World Bank’s hand into paying for it, rather than spending more time on it. In the end, the documentation never happened in that way because of these obvious shortcomings, and all the work put in place was in vain.

Now, imagine what happens when the work requires signing a deal and someone’s pay and commissions are dependent on this? It becomes frustrating, discouraging and very stressful. The employee becomes desperate enough to ‘learn from others’ and this is when we go into the next step.


Stage II: The Hook

So once caught up in the murk of frustration and ignorance magnified by desperation, turning or hooking or as we call it in Kenya, ‘kuingiza kwa box’ becomes very easy. [kuigiza kwa box means putting one in the box of fixing them.]

The hook is handled like any other triumph journey where the experienced person is able to successfully close the deal or make trouble disappear. From here, they start to behave like miracle workers. Their blanket hyperbole shows not the slightest hint of any unethical or improper conduct nor in some cases, criminal acts.

They incant words like “working smart, not hard”, “networks”, “experience”, and “know-how”, just to name but a few. Using targets and deadlines and invoking the massacre of previously unsuccessful [former] employees while name dropping successful “recruits” who followed the

master’s methods, the hook is complete. It’s a groomer’s wildest dream.

With the ground thus prepared, the new comer is ready to take test-drive based on the master’s way. Seriously, you can smell the admiration from the starry-eyed recruit from a mile away.

Stage III: The Test-drive

By this time, driven by newfound hope and confidence as the one instilled by the experts, it is time to be given a try. In the current times when reports suggest that over 60% of employees go work and expect or plan to do corrupt acts, it’s not a novelty.

This test-drive is what newbies and big businesses have to take new employees through in order to test their ability to ‘negotiate’ and keep to terms. It’s not for everyone. No matter how prevalent corruption is, big-business corruption is for a different league of people. Being ‘trusted’ to conspire to defraud,

steal or lie about millions of shillings is not as easy as overstating the expenses for a meeting. This is a business all on its own – and one must pass.

I admit, I failed my test drive and was ridiculed for lacking “marketing powers” to convince the procurement/finance to agree to take up a higher price, which the CEOs from both companies had agreed upon. In my very last project at my former place of work, I was arranging for a hastily-put training to happen within a few days and it’s a deal that involved millions of shillings.

This was outside my job description, but I was put upon to handle this because of a number of reasons: (a) this was being using a different company, which despite the CEO saying had been bought and was being managed by different shareholders was not really part of my job description (b) because of these circumstances, the briefcase company as it were, the CEO needed someone to give it a face. So, I was that face and having to peruse through old emails, send


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quotations e.t.c e.t.c, it ended up being a time consuming, waste of (human) resources as it were.

However, the fishy stench did not come until were send the quotation based on the fee structure for the training sessions and lo and behold… things got confusing very fast. An intern and myself had to navigate these murky waters as I listened to the CEO telling me to ‘push down’ the pre-arranged amount with that organization’s CEO. At one time, I simply said – this is not my job; and left it at that. Of course, the training never happened. The deal didn’t go through. That was my last official thing and it left me so dirty after getting over the confusion of the whole mess.

Final Stge: The climactic shift in values

Under a corrupt management, employees will eventually become desensitized to the effects of corruption and develop ways to mollify their ethical or moral concerns. It will not happen overnight, and it’s not for everyone.

Those who have to deal with clients and business development managers, commercial mangers and those in sales must simply develop a ‘thick skin’ to filter the word corruption. As in the hook up, they will call it the Kenyan way, the way business works and for the cold-blooded ones, it’s simply being effective. Over time, this will become the norm; it will

be accepted, talked about and simply ignored as just the way things are.

Reacting to corruption incidents otherwise, in ways that do not play into the leaders’ hands and company policy, will be hard. A freethinker will not last there for long: the environment is toxic to the soul and that cloying smell of ethical decay cannot be washed out.

The saying, The fish rots from the head applies here. For many years, corruption in Kenya was seen as something that happened in the Government and public insitutions. After all, the were no ‘known victims.’ However, the lure of big business and money in dealing with the private sector, it was only normal for corruption to spread in the private sector. While the same old methods were cultivated, businesses have adapted and created their own means to perpeturate corruption.

#TheSadStateofTheNation


And now, here’s how not to respond to grooming or being made to participate in corruption...

That it is hard to show restraint or to exist in a corrupt organization is no excuse for actively promoting corruption. It is very hard, at the same, to report cases on corruption. Everyone involved in corruption, from company to clients, to the police who investigate the matter, to journalists and politicians, has an interest in corruption. There is money, big money, to be made – the more ‘big and corporate’ it is carried out, the more money.

We can respond to events in offices with a quiet and dignified refusal, working harder and smarter, when it is impossible to avoid it, we can choose to ‘seek help’ from those who’ve taken that route before.

To downplay something is not to ignore it. #usetheweaponsyouhave

Corruption serves specific aims, spreading its tentacles for opportunistic recruits. If you don’t present yourself as a possible convert, you will be left alone.

There is no sensible defence, in a growing society as ours, against corruption. In a country where services are almost at a standstill, corruption has become a monster that eats its young and it has become the altar unto which lazy and incompetent but cunning, opportunistic and in some cases downright evil people sacrifice production and service delivery to make an extra coin.

It is greed, pure and simple. A glutton eating his way to death, but who cares as long as it tastes so well on the way going down.

But there is a defence against its spreading. It is to avoid desensitization, to show caution and a measure of courage, not to promote that its monstrous claws have no end or limit, creating public and personal fear to fight it. Corruption should be not be so worshiped as it alters our liberties, values and persecutes those who do not comply or agree with it.

Baby, I’ve been here before, I’ve fought this war and I have broken these chains... #Hallelujah by J. Buckley

During the more dangerous and consistent social movement against the Moi regime in the 80’s and 90’s campaigns, the KANU government insisted on treating those who opposed its autocracy as unpatriotic criminals, enemies of the state. They relied on the police and government sympathizers to guard against the threat of freedom of speech, national peace and ‘Nyayoism’.

All in all, it looked like a monster that could never be eliminated,

only cuddled and appeased in silent, painful ways. On the whole, the voices of one were heard by another, and within a few years, millions responded to this voice. Many died, others were tortured and exiled, but in the end, Kenya received its victory.

Those who live under this freedom know it demands a price, which is a degree of risk.

Corruption is our second/third yoke to overcome. It’s become our jailer, the monster we feed in the dark waiting to devour us sooner than later. We know that it is wrong, but it suits some people to pretend innocence… but that does alter the inevitable drop approach to the cliff we are driving into.

In my opinion, the threat to being consumed by corruption is not the siphoning of billions of shillings into the pockets of a few people. It is the danger of creating an amoral society with no values on right and wrong when money is involved and a spineless generation incapable of standing against their rights simply because an opportunistic parasite with money, media and menace chooses to drive them to their own deaths.

This concludes this series of corrupt businesses in Kenya. The #SilentMajority and #TheKenyanCitizen campaign focused on demystifying and exposing corruption in everyday lives of Kenyans will begin on Friday, 27th May 2016.


Updates...

On Wednesday 20 March 2016, I had another success or interesting encounter. That day, I came across the real face of a psychopathological act: a threat-evoking, fear-inducing meeting with my former boss at Garden City!

I spent 28 minutes in shock as he tried every possible trick in the book to cajole, threaten and eventually forced to declared that he was protected from people like myself who’d want to bring him down. This was in a meeting he’d called for, asking me to meet him so that he could pay off my final dues.

However, after insisting I shake his hand – because he’d previously met me and I refused to do so – he went ahead to rant about my bad behaviour, especially for a pregnant woman(!) and how, he, the good man he was, wanted to help me by paying my final dues. Interesting, he said it was okay for me to record those conversations because paying me off was not to stop ‘my crusade’ against corruption. He said he

was also recording. However, he was not willing for us to write down that he was clearing the bill, which are available in open court, where he recorded his statement.

Of course, being who he is, I predictably told him that he was not forgiven, because that meeting had been provoked by whispers of a media exposure – to which he told me that he had (a) a gag order waiting to be issued and (b) worked on the team at K24 to make sure nothing aired! He did not pay the whole amount. He gave 50,000 shillings and asked to pay on a weekly basis until it was done. Predictably, again, he did not turn up or pay the next payment for 27th March.

Immediately after this meeting, I went ahead and recorded that I was being bribed not to expose corruption; because that money was not intended to pay my final dues. It’s no wonder how the meeting happened. The guy changed venues three times and refused to meet me in the presence of my lawyer. He was late (as usual); but at least he allowed me to record this.

I totally understand his position: his ego was hurt – as he said and wrote to me – because I refused to forgive him and to return to work for him. Most telling, he was hurt that I did not want to shake his hand. However, he was frustrated that, as a woman, I was fighting him because, as he put it, he has a daughter and he bought me a Bible (knowing my views on religion) and so, I should submit. In short, he was unable to buy my soul and that, for a corrupt person (both in finances and values) is not something they can live with.

This is not a personal platform: but I will say this, I came across this face and it’s the face that can destroy and go to great lengths to avoid exposure. It’s the face of failure to groom and corrupt [former] employees. But this is the path that others have taken to expose evil and injustice in the world. It’s dangerous and risky: but this is what happens when you are driven from the heart and unbound by conventions. In the end, “It’s not how the mountain trembles, it is how steady one remains when it does.”


About Round Square Marketing Contacts

Round Square is an experientail market-ing firm offering consultancy, creative and campaign solutions for businesses.

We are focused on helping companies, brands and projects kick-off and offer speciallised solutions for mobilisation of funds.

Every year, we take on a campaign or two on social issues and have so far worked on non-profit projects on peace (2013); entrepreneurship (2014); corruption (2015). Starting April 2014, we shall be working on more entrepre-neurship projects to culminate in the Entrepreneurship Summit in August 2016. Our home page is www.rounds-quarem.com

This document is produced by consultants at RSQM as an opinion peace on a social issue. It is not intended to provide specific advice on your circumstances.If you require advice or further details on anymatters referred to, please contact us at Round Square Marketing or use the author’s contacts: email/blog/social media.

This document makes descriptive reference to trademarks that may be owned by others. The use of such trademarks herein is not an assertion of ownership of such trademarks by RSQM and is not intended to represent or imply the existence of an association be-tween RSQM and the lawful owners of such trademarks.

Copyright © 2016 RSQM All rights reserved.RSQM, its logo, andAweome are trademarks of Round Square Marketing

Grace Musyoka is a founding partner at RSQM. She’s a social entrepreneur and a Manchester United fan who runs the local fanclub, United Damu.

Grace is a Vision 2030 Champion and she’s passionate about fighting corruption and promoting national values. She has published several articles and featured stories on different issues.

You can reach Grace at [email protected] can also view her personal publications at Facebook/myawesomeblog.tipsYou can follow her on Twitter @GMutheu

Leadership & Management

Corrpt businesses in Kenya II