Kenya Musician Targets Corruption
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Whenever Eric Wainaina denounces the rampant corruption in Kenya, most people don't just listen to him - they sing along.
Packed into the precarious minivans that comprise much of the country's public transport system, they join in whenever ``Nchi ya kitu kidogo'' blasts from the driver's boom box. They hum the catchy tune while waiting in line for student visas to the United States, and they dance to it in discos throughout this East African nation.
In Kiswahili, the title means ``the country of something small.'' In Kenya, something small is slang for a bribe or corruption in general. When a policeman stops a motorist for a real or imagined offense, he asks for ``something small to buy tea.''
``A corrupt nation is a nation of small people,'' the chorus goes. ``If you want tea, brother, go to Limuru (a major tea-growing region).''
Wainaina, at 27 already a seasoned musician, will complete a degree at Boston's Berklee School of Music next year.
His corruption song, the lead number on his U.S.-produced album, ``Sawa Sawa'' (It's OK), is the most-requested tune on Nairobi's five private FM stations. But in this country of 29 million where the average annual income hovers around $300, not many of Wainaina's fans can afford the $13 price.
The launch of the compact disc coincided with the latest in a string of official reports from the Parliamentary Investments Committee on the breadth and depth of corruption in the country's state-run enterprises.
And every year, the auditor general delivers a report to the Parliamentary Accounts Committee on widespread corruption in the civil service and in higher branches of government.
Everyone gasps, but nothing is done.
Although Wainaina personally delivered several copies of his CD to the state-run Kenya Broadcasting Corp., he said it has not aired on the only radio station that can be heard throughout the entire nation.
But he did manage to sing NKK, as the song is now popularly known, in front of Vice President George Saitoti and other assembled notables last week at the closing of a national school music festival.
``As I began the first stanza, one of the organizers beckoned at me to stop,'' Wainaina said. ``When I got to the second stanza, he moved toward me. But the crowd was already singing along, so there was nothing he could do.''
Saitoti, who has been implicated in one of the country's largest corruption scandals involving fraudulent payments by the government for nonexistent gold exports, didn't join in.
``I'm trying to say that the same corruption that has brought our economy down can't bring it up, and that we as citizens need to do something about it,'' Wainaina said.
On Aug. 14, the opposition in parliament defeated a bill introduced under pressure from international donors by President Daniel arap Moi's government. It would have set up an agency to investigate and prosecute corruption. Opponents said the bill had too many loopholes.
Wainaina, who started singing in a church choir when he was 7, was a member of Kenya's most popular boy band, Five Alive, from 1992 to 1996. He and two other members left to enroll at Berklee where he placed among the top 10 in the school's ``Singers' Showcase,'' an annual event in which more than 100 students compete.
The singer hopes to secure a recording deal in the United States before he finishes at Berklee and also wants to build a recording studio in Nairobi.
Wainaina, who sees singing as ``my duty to highlight social issues affecting the day-to-day lives of my countrymen,'' is, like many of his fellow Kenyan musicians, caught in the mesh of dominant Western popular music and the more well known sounds of West Africa and the Lingala rhumba music of the Congo.
``Having been exposed mostly to Western music, it took some time before I could decide on doing something that sounded more Kenyan,'' he said.
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On the Web:
http://www.ericwainaina.com
Originally published August 24, 2001.
