Word: githongo
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...John Githongo is an unlikely hero. The son of a patrician Kikuyu family - his father was accountant to Kenya's first President, Jomo Kenyatta - Githongo grew up in Nairobi's leafy suburbs, went to the best schools and studied abroad. He enjoyed privileges that 95% of Kenyans can only dream of. In 2003, on the strength of that background, Githongo was appointed his country's anti-corruption czar...
...well-received account of the calamitous rule of Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, It's Our Turn to Eat - the title refers to the assumption in Kenya that winning elections confers a license to steal - is richly reported and reads, at times, like a thriller. Wrong's sketches of Githongo's sleuthing - when a hidden recording device starts playing back while he is still in the company of two top officials, he has to slip from the room coughing loudly - and the story of her own role in helping him when he is forced to flee Kenya for London...
...topic could not be more timely. Wrong was already writing when, in January 2008, Kenya descended into its worst bout of intertribal violence since independence - a jarring episode that left at least 1,000 dead and that Wrong attributes to the kind of tribally based corruption that Githongo seeks to end. Ultimately, he was not successful. But the real surprise of Wrong's book is that someone like him was willing...
...experiences as an entrepreneur in Africa that convinced him to set up his foundation and create a $5 million annual prize for the African leader who best personifies responsible and credible government, which he saw as the key to African development. So why are things changing now? "[As] John Githongo [Kenya's former anticorruption czar] says, 'The democracy genie is out of the bottle,' " notes Hania Farhan, the foundation's director of research. "There will be violent ructions and eruptions, like Kenya or Zimbabwe or Nigeria, but the trend is there, and it is remarkable. Africans want their rights...
...Githongo is Kenya's former anticorruption chief and a fellow at Oxford University