Where did my country go? Just a few days ago I lived in a seemingly vibrant country that was going somewhere. A country that was attracting the attention and investment of the entire globe. A country that seemed set to resolve its differences through a properly conducted, peaceful ballot.

Today I find myself in a land of security trucks rolling across a landscape of burnt vehicles and looted shops. A place where bodies are lined up in morgues. A nation filled with hatred and vitriol which has retreated into its tribal kraals. A place of closed shops and closed minds, where fear rules.

How did we get here? Two things have led us to this awful place. One, the hatred that lies deep in many hearts which was uncorked by a disputed election; two, the lamentable state of our institutions, and the mistrust that that engenders. If we viewed our fellow Kenyans as our fellow human beings, we would not be here. If we had institutions whose authority and respectability we could believe in, we would not be here.

But we are indeed here, and we must find a way out. This is a time when temperatures are running feverishly high. It is difficult to get even men and women of education and reason to demonstrate any sense of balance. The smell of fear and anger is everywhere, and fearful and angry people do not behave rationally.

That is why, more than ever before, there is only one place to go to. We must return to that place in our hearts where our fundamental human values reside. Just because we are angry, let us not forget what it means to be human. Just because we are afraid, let us not forget that we still have to do what is right.

Each and every one of us knows what is right and what is wrong. For some, that knowledge is covered in dust, not having been used for years. For others it is closer to the surface, but hidden by a fresh layer of anger. That knowledge must be uncovered, and it must be used to save the nation.

We do not have to teach ourselves anything new. We know it is wrong to kill, and we should not kill anyone. We know it is wrong to deceive, and we must stop the deceptions. The fact that we have just come out of an election we did not agree on does not allow us to suspend all moral judgement. It does not allow us to become the beasts of the forest. We must reach for the compassion and decency that is the true essence of all of us; it is all we have.

Every person is given an opportunity to be great in his or her lifetime. There is a moment in every life where the right thing must be done. It is a time where a choice must be made: either we choose to do the bad thing, which is seductively easy; or we choose the good thing, which is painfully hard.

Many key individuals were faced with that choice in the past few days, and they chose to do the bad thing. Some chose to deceive and manipulate. Others chose to let anger blind them and strike down innocents. Yet others chose to walk off with the property of others. All of those choices will cost us all dearly. If we do not start doing the right thing anytime soon, we may rue the consequences for a generation or more.

We seem to have forgotten that we had only just stopped marking the anniversary of the birth of Jesus when we collectively lost our senses. Jesus, the epitome of compassion, gave us one very important lesson that will serve us well during this crisis: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

Only the truth will save us now. I have no idea what the truth of this election is, and neither do you. All we have are our suspicions and prejudices, our observations and hypotheses. That is not enough to warrant bloodshed. Let Kenyans stop taking sides and take shelter in the truth.

If this election was stolen, then that must be known by all. If this election was won fairly, then that must be shown to be true. In the absence of truth, we are led by conjecture and emotion. If our leaders truly have our well-being in mind, let them agree on a formula to uncover the truth of what happened. And after that, let us all accept that truth, forgive whoever we have to, and move on.

I do not know what the formula for getting to the truth is. But I do know that it does not involve machetes on one side and bullets on the other. Our leaders must stop seeing the people of Kenya as pawns in their power struggles. I urge them to see the people huddled in churches in fear of genocide. I urge them to see the tears on the face of the man who found his car – his only livelihood, which years of sacrifice and hard work must have allowed him to acquire – burnt to a shell through no fault of his own. I urge them to see the face of the little child whose mother has just been killed by a flying bullet outside her house.

Bad actions have real consequences. If we are not very careful, we are going to shatter this country. Once that happens, it will be very difficult to put the pieces together again. It will be very difficult for us to work together in our organisations again. It will be very difficult for us to sell the idea of a great and beautiful Kenya to the world again. It will be very difficult to have thriving markets and businesses again. Let us not get to that point, for it may be a point of no return.

The opportunity still remains for our leaders on both sides of the divide to become heroes. Heroism will not come from intransigence and belligerence. It requires something bigger. If key figures stopped to think strategically for a moment, they would realise that the hero will be the one who goes for peace. A tsunami of ill-will has indeed swept across the nation, and we are all seeking higher ground. But there is only one high ground worth heading for: the moral high ground.

History is likely to cast a very harsh judgement on some of the key players of December 2007. If any of them wish to be remembered kindly, let them still step forward and do the right thing. Let them push for the truth to be known, whatever it is. Let them place their inflamed egos to one side, and do something bigger than themselves. There is no victory in ruling a country reduced to ashes.

I pray that years from now, a history lesson will be taught in the classrooms of Kenya. That lesson will say this: that in December 2007, our country went to the edge of disaster. But it stepped back from the precipice, just in time. It stepped back because heroic Kenyans emerged, to save it. Those heroes were little and large; they were rich and they were poor; they were powerful and they were modest. But they all came to their senses and did the right thing. They recaptured the values of decency and righteousness. And so the country was saved.

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If there’s one thing guaranteed to excite Kenya’s chattering classes, it’s the issue of leadership. Our leaders let us down every time, they complain. We have such great things going for us as a country; we should be a Singapore or a South Korea (or at least a Botswana). But we keep voting in the wrong people, they moan. If only we could get the right people in, we would go places, they recommend.

Some go further. They argue that we actually need a “benevolent dictator” in Kenya: a no-nonsense, low-tolerance over-achiever who will grab the economy by the belt and haul it into the 21st century. This theory calls for a president cast in the mould of Singapore’s former leader, Lee Kuan Yew; Chelsea Football Club’s Jose Mourinho; or GE Corporation’s legendary former CEO, Jack Welch. We may have to forgo some rights and freedoms temporarily, but we will reap the rewards in the long run. Or so the argument goes.

Caution. Larger-than-life, heroic leaders are the stuff of everyone’s legends. We are an icon-worshipping species, and seem to need individuals to look up to and be inspired by: leaders, gurus, achievers, celebrities. But we need to look behind the myths to understand what underlies leadership and achievement before we offer bold prescriptions for Kenya.

The first myth to debunk is that heroes (or heroines) matter because they did it alone. Singapore’s Lee was no lone ranger; neither was Britain’s “Iron Lady”, Margaret Thatcher. Both cultivated strong teams of like-minded advisors around them: Lee had Goh Keng Swee and Hon Sui Swen; Thatcher depended heavily on Keith Joseph, Cecil Parkinson, Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe.

That is true in Kenya as well. What we remember fondly as “Kenyatta” may actually have been Mboya, Koinange, Mungai and Njonjo, amongst many others. We have a tendency to focus on the central individual and forget the team. Nelson Mandela was the iconic figure in the new South Africa of the 1990s, but there were dozens of very able senior figures working behind the scenes to pull off the political and economic transformation of that country.

Any leading CEO will confirm this: it is the highly motivated, unusually effective team that delivers transformations, not the chief. Yet the leader has a critical role: to keep this team on a high-performance trajectory; and to keep replenishing skills. Modern management thought backs this up: the outstanding leader must be a competent designer, steward and teacher – not a lead-from-the-front-and-die-with-the-troops headline grabber. And recent research has confirmed that those who lead companies that enjoy sustained success are usually of a humble mien – and no less effective for it.

So we are on the right path in Kenya when we demand a CEO-type leader; but let us understand very clearly what that actually means. The executive skills we need in our top men and women are these: the ability to conceptualise a lucid vision for the country; clear thinking skills to design the right high-level strategic initiatives; consummate communications capabilities so that the vision and strategy can be simplified and translated, for the great mass of people to embrace them; and the capacity to exemplify the behaviours and social norms needed in the nation.

Yet even an outstanding chief executive for the country will only be as good as the institutions that support – and monitor – that person. The world’s established economies are only able to survive the effects of the occasional poor leader because they are protected by robust institutions. The USA withstood Richard Nixon’s illegal activities in the 1970s precisely because its media, legislature and judiciary were able to provide independent scrutiny and countervailing power. In Africa, without good institutions to save us, we will suffer the effects of megalomaniacs and plunderers for decades.

Without effective institutions, great leadership will remain pie in the sky. And those looking for benevolent dictators should be worried: have we not seen enough amazing transformations during the Narc era, of the former champions of human rights and reform now becoming the reactionary enforcers of the old order?

Leadership cannot be evaluated independently of the moral fabric of the nation. George Van Valkenburg’s famous definition of a leader is the person who “does the right thing even when no-one’s looking”. Great leaders emerge from, and reinforce, great national values. Lee was able to draw upon his compatriots’ latent qualities of hard work and perseverance. Seretse Khama had the benefit of a Botswana people who valued peacefulness and traditional community spirit above most other things. These values provided the iron from which a national strategy was forged.

What do we value in Kenya that a future president will utilise? The way forward for Kenya will very likely require values such as thrift, hard work, tolerance, a national outlook. Do we have these things? If not, let us not hold our breath waiting for a leader to deliver us from under-achievement. If ethnic suspicion, apathy and get-rich-quick dreams are all that we have to offer, then no leader can help us.

Great leaders flourish where there are strong institutions, good human capital and robust values. If we do not build these things, not even a combination of Bill Gates and Mother Teresa will make a difference here.

Lastly, let us never forget what leadership is for. The famous economist John Kenneth Galbraith remarked that great leaders have always had “the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time”. The great anxiety of Kenyans in our time is undoubtedly the failure of economic development. We have failed to tackle widespread poverty.

That is the challenge facing anyone stepping forward to offer themselves for leadership: to have a vision and a plan to lift the people out of crippling poverty; and to have the management skills to deliver results. That is what we must demand of leaders, and that is how we must measure their success.

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It’s nearly over. When the counting is done, we will know whether Kenya voted ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ for a new constitution. The absurd campaigns, the squandering of billions on hot air and empty rhetoric will come to an end, and we must thank heaven for that. Until the next time.

Meanwhile, a strange thing was happening. We know that the last cabinet meeting was held many months ago. We know that no minister could conceivably have given any meaningful attention to his or her official duties for several weeks. And yet the economy seems to keep humming along. The corporate world, whilst muttering about the imbecility of politicians, is busy producing goods and services and selling them at a profit. The informal sector is hustling and bustling as normal. And you’d be hard put to find an analyst who thinks we won’t pass the 5 per cent mark in GDP growth this year.

So we have to ask ourselves: do politicians and their loud shenanigans even matter in issues economic? Is there a model by which we can allow our ego-maniac leaders to continue their kelele, while the rest of us get on with the serious business of earning a living, investing in productive capacity and running profitable businesses?

To glean an answer, let us take our gaze elsewhere for a moment. Japan and Italy have faced political turmoil for decades. Their voters routinely elect unstable coalitions that totter from one political crisis to another. During one remarkable 12-month period in 1993-94, Japan gave us the spectacle of four different prime ministers. Italian politics is perpetually characterised by high-decibel squabbling, short-lived factional groupings and intense bickering over political appointments. Both countries have been rocked by serious corruption scandals at various points in their history. Yet Japan and Italy are both amongst the world’s largest economies, and have delivered a consistently high standard of living to their people through all the tumoil. How do they pull it off?

Let’s look at Italy first. This is not a country rich in natural resources or energy sources, yet it is one of the world’s most powerful economies. What it does have is a natural entrepreneurial zeal. Its people are natural traders and producers who have vast reservoirs of energy for business. Indeed, Italy’s economic strength comes from dense clusters of small, family-owned business: the average enterprise has fewer than 4 employees. This, coupled with liberal trade policies followed by successive governments, has allowed Italians to become world leaders in fashion, foodstuffs, motor vehicles, machinery and chemicals.

Successive Italian governments may appear shambolic, but they have succeeded in maintaining fiscal austerity since 1992. Italy has enjoyed a primary budget surplus for many years now. Tight monetary discipline by the Bank of Italy has also kept succeeded in reining in once-rampant inflation. Privatisation of government-owned enterprises is another initiative that has been consistently maintained, regardless of who happens to be in power. And so Italian businesses have been enjoying relative stability in key economic indicators: interest rates, inflation and GDP growth.

Japan, at least on the surface, is a quite different kettle of fish. Its economy requires no introduction: its huge global business houses straddle the world stage and are household names everywhere: Toyota and Nissan, Sony and Matsushita, Nippon Steel and Fuji. But what is often not appreciated about the Japanese economy is that it is two-tiered: in addition to many huge and powerful multinationals, it has a vast number of small, family-owned enterprises. In fact, Japan’s own estimates suggest that 99 per cent of enterprises are small or medium sized.

Japan’s economic success is often put down to heavy government intervention. Direct state participation is very limited, however; throughout the 1980s and 1990s the government privatised key institutions. Nevertheless, the government’s control and influence over business is probably stronger than most free-market economies. This control, crucially, is not exercised via coercion or interference, but rather through consultation. Joint committees of bureaucrats and business leaders set targets for and monitor the performance of all key economic sectors. In addition, special government agencies staffed by experts keep tabs on international trade, investment and prices, and work closely with the banking and corporate sectors. The result is mutual understanding and respect between government and business, and very strong long-term planning.

So what can we learn from these politically messy, economically productive countries? I think we must pick up three very important lessons.

The first is to continue “ring-fencing” the economy to keep it free from the whims of politicians. The Narc government started off very well in this regard: the strong management teams installed in key institutions like the Kenya Revenue Authority and the Central Bank of Kenya, coupled with the relative autonomy allowed to them, has produced unprecedented growth in tax collections, an economy showing the first signs of sustained growth, and stability in key indicators.

Yet the bizarre ‘State House Economics’ witnessed throughout the referendum campaign threatens to undermine these very gains. Land deeds, district boundaries, pay-rises, agricultural prices mechanisms, universities – all seemed up for grabs in return for votes. This is indeed a remarkable way to conduct our economic affairs, where resources go not to their best uses and towards the long-term building of national competitive advantage, but to the alleviation of political pain. One can only hope that this was a short-lived loss of reason induced by political desperation; nevertheless, the repercussions will be with us for some to come.

The second strand is to recognise that Kenya has a very strong spirit of enterprise and a very robust and diverse base of economic activity. We, too, have bustling businesspeople and indefatigable traders. We must protect these people from the ineptitude and malevolence of politicians. The policy measures we once thought of for our small and informal businesses seem forgotten amidst the political din: organised business parks; tax incentives to aid their inclusion in the formal economy; measures to boost micro-credit; resource-pooling and training initiatives are just some of the things we should have done by now. Our vast base of energetic small and medium businesses, if allowed to prosper and grow, will give us an economy for all seasons.

Finally, we must continue to get the heavy and bungling hand of government out of enterprise. Privatisation must roll on and accelerate. Rail privatisation is a great achievement, but we must ensure that our power generators, communications providers and roads managers are run by business-minded people who allocate resources intelligently and manage operations efficiently. Only the pressure of shareholders and competitors can allow us to produce world-class infrastructure in this country. Let us not shirk the challenge.

So, those who have a stake in this economy (that is, all of us) must vote emphatically for, clamour noisily for and lobby intelligently for its continued shock-proofing. Our growth and development will come from an unimpeded, vibrant business sector enabled and supported by intelligently and independently run economic institutions that deliver economic stability. If we achieve that, we can leave the pompous, feeble-minded wastrels who purport to lead us to all the banana- and orange-throwing that their little hearts desire.

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What comes first: jobs or economic growth? Put another way, should we create jobs directly, so as to inject purchasing power into the economy and stimulate growth? Or should we put the right conditions in place to enable the economy to grow, and let more jobs be a desirable by-product?

It was lack of clarity on this issue that led to the populist “half-a-million-jobs-per-year” promise made by Narc during the run-up to the 2002 general election, and which has been used as a stick for the government’s back ever since it took power. We would do well to look logically and systematically at the whole issue of jobs now.

For a job to have meaning, it must have three characteristics: it must be real (where true value-adding work is done); it must be sustained (not just short-lived); and it must be proper (conducted in a good working environment and with dignity). Jobs that fulfil these three characteristics are the ones that promote our economic future. For too long, we have played the numbers game and had jobs that are unproductive by international standards (much of the public sector); transient, with no proper contracts and benefits (casual labour); and exploitative (in sweatshop conditions and toxic environments). Half a million jobs with these characteristics would provide new purchasing power, yes; but they would not allow us to build a modern, mature and productive economy.

90 per cent of jobs in the developing world are generated by the private sector. Big government is a thing of the past for most countries. The era of tens of thousands of jobs in ministries and state corporations must be consigned to history. These are joke jobs, empty shells with a pay check attached. They create the illusion of employment – but little value is being added to the economy. Often we are merely adding layers of bureaucracy, and therefore obstacles, to the true job-creating process. By keeping jobs in an inefficient arena – government – we are crowding out employment. And their ill effect is seen in productivity figures: Telkom Kenya, for example, has in recent years employed 65 staff per 1,000 lines, where the international average is 4. The cost is borne by the consumer (and the economy), because Telkom’s charges become cripplingly high as a result.

If government has any role in job creation, it is in encouraging self-perpetuating investment in productive capacity. It is in doing all the things that create a good investment climate in the country. These include: a stable macroeconomic environment, where key indicators such as interest and exchange rates are not subject to sudden shocks; stable politics, so that long-term investment is protected; supportive infrastructure, so that business transactions can be conducted smoothly and at reasonable cost; a clean system where corruption is kept at a minimum, and honest endeavour is rewarded; security of person and property; and an intelligent set of tax incentives that direct investment to productive uses.

Government’s role, in short, is to work on incentives and on regulation. Security, stability and good governance reduce the risks of doing business; good infrastructure reduces the costs. People have the incentive to invest and innovate, and job-creation naturally follows.

As things stand, we have a fairly peculiar structure of employment in this country. The majority of our people still depend on small-scale rural agriculture or pastoralism. Of our 33 million people, fewer than 8 million are in ‘recorded’ employment, and of those, close to 6 million are in the informal sector. That leaves fewer then 2 million wage jobs in ‘modern’ establishments – the ones who receive proper pay checks and pay taxes. And more than 90 per cent of the government’s proclaimed new jobs since 2003 have come from the informal sector.

That tells us many things. For one, we have a lot more to do before we can create the types of jobs we actually need. At the top level, we need many more successful companies that act as efficient engines in the economy. Their own direct employment base is modest, but they provide stable incomes for many thousands more: suppliers, resellers, distributors and retailers. Not to mention the vast contribution to the national purse. We also need to provide incentives for companies that take up thousands of low-skilled workers: manufacturers, service companies, agro-processors and the like.

Equally, we must take another look at that very successful employment engine, the jua kali sector. That is where most new jobs are coming from these days, and it is high time the sector was brought in out of the hot sun. Jua kali’s major winning feature is that its businesses spring up spontaneously in response to consumer demand. They are close to the customer, and will not survive if they fail to provide acceptable quality at affordable prices. The problems lie in their informality: they are low-tech, unstable and subject to sudden shutdown, and operate outside the tax net.

Is it not high time we rethought our approach to jua kali. This sector has never received encouragement, only suspicion and hindrance. Government appears asleep to the possibilities. Tax and legal reform would allow these businesspeople to lay claim to their assets, raise capital against them and enter the formal business system. An intelligent and comprehensive look at the issue of business parks would give them licensed, organised and hygienic premises. What stops us? Just the lack of vision.

Lastly, the rural sector where most people earn their daily crust. We cannot continue being a nation of subsistence farmers and nomadic herders for too much longer. It keeps us at a low economic base, detached from the modern knowledge economy and prone to famine. The answer is to provide alternative opportunity to the people out there. Here, it is a simple question of basics. There can be no alternative sources of income if rural people are not connected to the modern economy. Access roads, electrification, clean water, modern telecommunications: these are the things that bring people to market. We can no longer shirk the responsibility of providing these things to our country cousins – for everyone’s sake.

Regulation and incentives – that is the heart of the government’s role in job creation. Employment is both an economic and a moral issue. By leaving our human capital unutilised, we are throwing away potential national income. By leaving our young people imprisoned in a futile and unproductive existence, we are giving them a life sentence of frustration. It need not be this way.

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