Complaint about Mombasa Port Authority

As a concerned foreigner, one who wants the best for East Africans, I can’t help but file a serious complaint against the new Mombasa Port Authority:

I have a friend who is trying to import a factory machine from China to jump start the coastal green economy. Six months ago, when he started the process, we read on Kenyan’s legal advice website that there was no customs or import duty on industrial machines from China. But Ruto has obviously changed that rule (he never studied economics I guess)

It was only after he had bought his custom-made machine in China and loaded it into a ship bound for Mombasa that he was informed that he would have to pay an extra $10,000 VAT. He had to beg and borrow this amount from his extended family (because not having the machine means that he cannot sell his finished product and NO KENYAN bank will loan to a foreigner, even at their usury charges of more 20% interest annually) He had not budgeted for this extra duty

Now arriving at the port the agents have been 100 percent obstructionistic! Its like they hate this man for being ‘uppity enough’ to try to start an honest business in Kenya. Perhaps they don’t think that he is paying enough in the way of bribes. Being a trained lawyer myself, I called his shipping agent, a Kenyan man who has spent time in a Chinese prison by the way, and had begged in tears for my friend to give him an unexpected bribe to keep operating out of Shenzen China. This man is not only a fool, but a lying, begging, prideful fool who considers himself above the law because of his connections (read tribal origin)

Next, the salaried customs agent refused to release the machine, although he had held it for a week without any effort on his part (despite a bribe on top of his government salary). So a Kenyan lawyer had to be hired to make sure that the port authority releases the machine from being held hostage (so that they can charge ‘parking fees’ of 150 USD while they do not work).

I studied international economic development forty years ago where we were taught that Kenya was “a country of 50 millionaires and 50 million starving people”. Since almost that time I have been working here in the education sector, and I have seen Kenya ‘develop’ into a country of 50 billionaires and 65 million hungry people. I have seen graft and corruption run rampant, partly because people are proud of their own tribe’s ‘big man’ stealing from other tribes. But that doesn’t work as a strategy for national development, because he also will be stealing from his own tribesmen as well, just to a lessor degree.

But most of all, I blame the education system of Kenya – brought to you by Eton no doubt – one in which rich kids don’t actually even have to pass exams or learn their material in order to be bumped up, while no matter how good they are as students or citizens, poor kids will be bullied. The means that the ruling class are generally stupid bullies and not fit for office.

 I saw this in action when the Head Mistress of a Kawangware High School stole a poor girl’s new school shoes so that the girl had to spend exam day getting her old shoes re-soled (nobody is going to re-soul that head mistress though).

Kenya – and each and every Kenyan – look into your hearts and realize that we are all on the same boat. We sink or float together! If we could only use our incredibly dynamic creativity to make Kenya a better place, we could do very well indeed. There is no hope for an economic system to work if the best and brightest become muggers, hackers and thieves.

Trust is the oil that makes the economic engine run. No nation can prosper if its citizens won’t try to actually ‘add value’ to the world, rather than just to steal from each other.

In the meantime, my friend may be taking his machine and its factory employment to Tanzania. Nobody needs Ruto’s thuggery.