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It's Our Turn to Eat |  | Author: Michela Wrong
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Category: eBooks
In Stock
Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 22,180
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.1323092
ASIN: B002BY778Q
Publication Date: June 3, 2009
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Product Description
In January 2003, Kenya—seen as the most stable country in Africa—was hailed as a model of democracy after the peaceful election of its new president, Mwai Kibaki. By appointing respected longtime reformer John Githongo as anticorruption czar, the new Kikuyu government signaled its determination to end the corrupt practices that had tainted the previous regime. Yet only two years later, Githongo himself was on the run, having discovered that the new administration was ruthlessly pillaging public funds. "Under former President Moi, his Kalenjin tribesmen ate. Now it's our turn to eat," politicians and civil servants close to the president told Githongo. As a member of the government and the president's own Kikuyu tribe, Githongo was expected to cooperate. But he refused to be bound by ethnic loyalty. Githongo had secretly compiled evidence of official malfeasance and, at great personal risk, made the painful choice to go public. The result was Kenya's version of Watergate. Michela Wrong's account of how a pillar of the establishment turned whistle-blower, becoming simultaneously one of the most hated and admired men in Kenya, grips like a political thriller. At the same time, by exploring the factors that continue to blight Africa—ethnic favoritism, government corruption, and the smug complacency of Western donor nations—It's Our Turn to Eat probes the very roots of the continent's predicament. It is a story that no one concerned with our global future can afford to miss.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
 A very good introduction to the politics of corruption July 9, 2009
Autodidact
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
Wrong's book is cast as a biography of John Githongo, the former Kenyan anticorruption czar who blew the whistle on the Anglo Leasing scandal and fled for his life. Using Githongo's story, Wrong is able to weave in a substantial amount of important background information on Kenya, on ethnic politics, on corruption, and on aid delivery. It's a lovely and readable introduction to these issues, if a bit long, and I'm buying another copy as a gift for someone who has no knowledge of Africa, aid or corruption issues. Although at the beginning Wrong's writing style dips into a maddening form of purple prose, she soon rights herself. She's at her best when explaining issues rather than engaging in cinematic story telling; and she has an excellent grasp of the issues, and of the human costs of the issues that comes through clearly.
The book suffers where Wrong makes herself a subject, with self-conscious self importance of her own role in what she sees as a Le Carre novel. What is unusual about the Githongo story is both that Githongo went public and that somebody (namely the donor community) cared. But the financing of politics (as well as personal consumption) through procurement fraud in the security and military sector is absolutely everyday stuff in low income countries (and even some countries that are not low income). People trip over it, talk about it, write about it, sometimes audit it and very occasionally are killed over it -- usually without feeling the need to consult Le Carre for advice. Fortunately there is not too much of this.
An argument of her book is that John Githongo, who is reportedly intelligent, and who was the head of Transparency International in Nairobi before working for Kibaki and whose father did bookkeeping and presumably money laundering for the Moi regime, entered the Kibaki government with an incredible amount of wide-eyed naivete. Without knowing any of the principals personally, however, I always found it difficult to believe that Githongo had managed to reach maturity with absolutely no idea of how politics is financed in his country -- or indeed in any low-income country -- and what that implies for the commitment to the fight against corruption for the head of an incumbent political party and his Minister of Finance. It should be noted that Wrong is a personal friend of Githongo, who apparently gave her substantial material for this book. I wonder if Wrong is a little too close to her story to ask the hard questions.
Both in this book and in her last, Wrong finds fault with any compromise with existing African political machines. Such compromise, she argues, implies that Africans are not worthy of good government or are incapable of it. But patronage politics are not simply the result of bad people in government -- there are social forces that drive it -- which is why it is relatively impervious to a change of administration. More, it is obviously not exclusively African, so it is hard to read an insult to Africans in a recognition of the resilient nature of patronage politics.
The naive "bad people" theory of government too often informs the actions of Western donors, who like Diogenes spend their time looking for honest champions with whom they can entrust their money. It also drives American foreign policy, as Americans spend time lopping off the heads of foreign governments. But political machines are Hydra-headed. As one wag said in Panama about Noriega, "They took Ali Baba and they left us the forty thieves." We would all be better off if we understood that political machines take time to change, and asked instead how reformers can address the social drivers that create them, and how the West can best deal with political machines where we find them. Neither the old Cold War shrug, nor indignant and self-righteous total repudiation are likely to be useful strategies.
 A wake up call for the west August 26, 2009
LM Charlton (Guilford, CT USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
It's not clear to me why other reviewers persistently recharacterize one of this book's strongest points as a negative. The author has brought to bear her considerable experience with the country, region, culture, and political landscape to tell a story that has long needed telling about Africa's failure to come to grips with the tyranny of corruption. As long as donor nations continue to fund the kleptocracies that exist only to serve and perpetuate themselves, we in the west will continue to be played for fools.
I found this to be a strong and engaging account of one of the more intractable problems I've run into. I wish it had left me feeling hopeful, but it was far too consistent with my own experience to permit such self-delusion. Instead, it left me filled with admiration for a hero who, thanks to the author's incorporation of her personal experience, can be seen as a human and not as the caricature that time will eventually make of him. I also appreciate the historical and political canvass she offered to illuminate just how audacious his actions were.
Yes, the book does have the occasional hyphen, but the prose is never dull and the account moves very briskly. I found the style refreshing and enjoyed reading a treatment that mixed the personal with the historical with the social with the legal with a touch of suspense in a package that showed some respect for the reader who is hoping for something more considered than what might be offered from the Live Aid stage.
Introductory to Michela Wrong's books July 13, 2009
A. Davis (Princeton, NJ United States)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The two Amazon reviews for her new book are complimentary but weighty for someone who is merely interested in whether to pick up her book or not. If you have read her previous two, then my answer is a resounding YES! In this book she explores the events that caused current Kenyan President Kibaki's aide John Githongo to expose the corruption in their government. She also explores the aftermath of his whistle-blowing, including the riots occurring late 2007 after Kibaki was sworn in for a second term.
It is the combination of Wrong's veteran journalist chops and her desire to tell stories of the scary truth beyond any fictional thriller that takes what has happened recently in Kenya from a lurid, sensational story to a nuanced, thoughtful and ultimately heartbreaking story with no easy answers.
I read Michela Wrong's books because they encourage me to think about a world outside of the one I live in.
Outstanding - a must read for anyone interested in African politics September 14, 2009
Richard J. Tren (Washington DC, USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Michela Wrong's third and latest book is an outstanding read. Having been the FT correspondent in Kenya for several years, Wrong has an excellent grasp of Kenya's history and contemporary political scene and it shows in her writing and analysis. Corruption is often lamented by commentators the world over and it usually just leads to people shrugging as though there is nothing they can do about it. This story explains what happens to one man who decided to try to do something about it and paid heavily for his courage. Yet Wrong explains just how complicit the international donor agencies were in the Kenyan debacle, to the extent that the World Bank tried to downplay the violence that followed the last election. There is something that ordinary westerners can do about the corruption in African countries - put pressure on their own donor agencies to stop funneling more and more taxpayers money into the corrupt governments. These funds become the life blood of corrupt regimes and allows them to continue to repress their own people.
This book helps us understand Kenya, corruption, development or lack thereof. It is a gripping read and highly recommended. Not for nothing the Kenyan govt. has tried to suppress it and almost every Kenyan I have spoken to is desperate to get a copy.
All You Can Eat September 9, 2009
Memusi
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
It's Our Turn to Eat is a real-life political thriller that lifts the curtain on the inner workings of an African government.
And where else do you get that? Most books by outsiders about Africa - the ones you see on the bestseller lists - trade in cliches and stereotypes. They divide the continent into innocent victims and venal dictators. At one extreme you get books that could be titled: "My Adventures in ..." (fill in the war-torn country). At the other, you get dry textbooks by people who spent years researching their subject but don't know how to tell a story.
This book is far smarter. It doesn't aim for an everything-you-need-to-know-about-Africa view of the continent. Instead it says more by saying less, focusing on the story of how John Githongo became a whistle blower at the heart of Kenya's government, why he blew the whistle and what happened next.
Githongo comes across as a visionary but if he's a saint he's a 21st century kind of saint. He makes silly decisions as well as brave ones. He infuriates his friends by constantly skipping appointments. He might have a true moral compass but by the end of the book it's not clear how he's going to get there and even he doesn't seem to know. In other words, he's a rich, rounded character: not a cliche, not a stereotype.
One other thing to like about the book: it has cool enemies. Michela Wrong shares Githongo's view of corruption and she writes with controlled outrage.
Yet the villains of the story aren't so much the looters themselves. They're the army of donors and diplomats who have invested so much in the status quo they can't really imagine Kenya - and by extension Africa - being any different. And she nails them: certain senior diplomats and aid donors will not enjoy this book.
But you will.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
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