The donors who turn a blind eye to Kenyan sleaze

By Michael Holman

Not since an outraged German banker exposed the multibillion dollar fiddles Presdient Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire has there been such an authoritative account of sleaze in an African state as the revelations of John Githengo, Kenya's anti-corruption supremo.

Appointed in December 2002 to lead President Mwai Kibaki's promised purge of graft, the 40-year-old Mr Githongo personified the new Kenya. A former local head of Transparency International, the Berlin-based anti-corruption body, no one was better equipped to take on the toughtest, most dangerous job in Kenyan politics - that of permanent secretary in charge of governance and ethics. Two years later, Mr Githongo was in self-imposed exile in Britain, angered by cabinet solidarity in the face of the scams he had uncovered, disillusioned by Mr Kibaki's failure to act when confronted with the evidence and alarmed by death threaths from crooked colleagues.