Over the past few weeks, avian symbols of avarice have been appearing by night on prominent public spaces in Nairobi's central business district. Accompanied by text condemning corruption and stating the preferred qualities of clean leaders, beautifully painted murals on prominent walls have featured caricatures equating Kenyan politicians with vultures. These razor-beaked, carrion-eating birds are portrayed in suits, sometimes with attache cases labelled “Stolen Loot.” As far as street art goes, this is some of the most overtly political stuff there is. I love the work – also, I openly admit harbouring a growing fascination with political street art – and I appreciate the anti-corruption sentiment. But I question the choice of symbols and the narrow focus on politicians. It is far too simple an attack to blame current and past leaders for Kenya's political troubles – doing so ignores how deeply entrenched patronage relations are in this country (and in many others), and overlooks the important role of clients who participate in the perpetuation of the politics of the belly and who must also be held responsible for reform.
To contemporary Western eyes, the
vulture is an immediately recognizable symbol of corruption and
greed. The link here draws on our association of vultures with death
and the consumption of deceased bodies – perhaps even human [what
desert Western would be complete without a flock of buzzards,
circling our protagonists thirst-ridden body collapsed in the sand?].
It hasn't always been so – New-Agey website What's Your Sign lists a number of noble traits, including loyalty, patience, and
renewal, based on both observation and interpretation and some
historical accounts of vulture symbolism in ancient cultures - Egyptian, Roman, Mayan. But in
this era of “vulture capitalists” and anti-greed sentiment –
even in America! - the implication is unmistakable.
These murals first came to my attention
at the beginning of March through the Daily Nation and they've been
hastily covered by municipal employees. The first mural, which appeared one night on the white wall of City Market, shows a
smirking vulture, enthroned in front of the Parliament building, with
a thought-bubble revealing that “I’m a tribal leader; they loot,
rape, burn and kill in my defence while I steal their taxes and grab
land, but the idiots will still vote for me.” Beside him a litany
of sins are listed – from land grabbing and assassinations to
well-known scandals such as Anglo-Leasing and Goldenberg. On the far
side of ominous looking Parliament, a crowd of protesting Kenyans
call their leader to account.
A second mural,
this time on the exterior of a public toilet, features a
gender-diverse trio of vultures and an assignment, “Describe your
MP vulture,” surrounded by a list of disparaging
terms, surprisingly (perhaps only to me) including “douchebags.”
According to a feature article in the
Lifestyle section of Sunday's Daily Nation, the statements are the
work of a group of graffiti artists, part of a project called Kenya
ni Kwetu (Kenya is Ours). The motivation is explicitly political. In
the story, project “coordinator,” CNN Africa Photojournalist of
the Year (2008 and 2010), Boniface Mwangi – who, by the way,
produced some absolutely shocking and compelling images documenting
the 2007-8 post-election violence – explains that: “This is
pointed at the ruling elite, the demigods who have taken advantage of
us and capitalised on every Kenyan weakness to have their way.” The
goal is to raise awareness and outrage, and to encourage Kenyans to
effect change with their votes, so that when they go to the
ballot-box they will not forget the pot-holed roads, grabbed land,
looted public institutions, and the violence that has been visited
upon them by self-interested leaders.
This message should play well among a
certain class – and I specifically mean the emerging middle-class –
of educated, upwardly-mobile, Nairobi-based young people. But it
simplifies the situation and ignores the social relations on which
the patronage state in Kenya has developed and is maintained. My
experience in this regard is in rural Kenya, in a marginalized
community characterized by hardship – i.e. grinding poverty and
persistent insecurity – but I am confident it resonates with the
experience of the urban poor. In the 2007 election campaigns, I was
fascinated by the ways that impoverished, disempowered voters sought
to make and cultivate connections with political aspirants, and how
they exhorted them to “bring development.” That is, they pleaded
with their potential representatives to redirect flows of state
resources back to the locality, to help gain security of land tenure,
build schools and dispensaries, obtain scholarships for students, and
improve roads.
This is a familiar demand in Kenya. MPs
sometimes justify their exorbitant salaries on the argument that they are required to contribute personal money
during Harambees [public fund-raising events] in their
constituencies, leaving them broke come pay-day – neglecting of
course to admit a) that they accrue tremendous political capital from
such events by performing as patrons and providing for their clients,
and b) that they are widely understood to be misappropriating
government funds and other resources to not only meet these needs but
to enrich themselves and build a base for personal investments.
Leaders of all sorts, from parliamentarians to county councilors to
the president, as well as appointed administrative officials, civil
servants, private-sector professionals, and even non-profit
executives and staff in NGOs and CBOs, are judged in part on how well
they support their constituencies – in this case not the residents
of an electoral district but rather a client base that may be
connected by blood, clan, ethnicity, language, or simply a history of
asymmetrical reciprocity. And the demands do not stop at those
services which a bureaucratic state is expected to provide for its
citizens; they may extend to the onerous, the absurd, or the
blatantly unjust.
The effectiveness of the vulture as a
signifier for corruption comes from our understanding that he is a selfish
bird – preying on the damaged or deceased, gluttonously consuming
as much as possible and vomiting semi-digested meat in self-defense,
and fighting with his own and other kinds to get a share of the
rotting carcass. But the weakness of this symbol – and this is the
problem and the power of metaphors: they suggest and they
approximate, but they never completely equate the targets of
comparison – is that it fails to capture the many smaller
scavengers who depend on, or at least benefit from, the Kenyan
politician's misappropriation of public goods and neglect for the
public interest. And until the needs of those clients are met, until
their expectation that good leadership constitutes distributing the
spoils of electoral victory is altered, simply targeting and
neutralizing members of the “ruling elite” will have little
impact.
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