Mr. Edward Clay, the British High Commissioner to the Republic of Kenya threw both pairs of his hands and feet into a serious controversy with the Kenyan government last week. In a memorable choice of words he blasted unnamed government officials for being corrupt and behaving "like gluttons" and "vomiting on the shoes" of foreign donors.

The truth is that there are many Africans in different countries who will recognise those graphic words and apply them to their countries. So if the diplomat had spoken true words why the furore? Is it because the truth hurts?

Many people including government ministers will admit privately that he was right but are angry that he spoke out. It is not in the nature and business of diplomats to be so blunt. After all it is said that a diplomat 'is someone sent abroad to lie on behalf of his country'. It should have been added too that the same person is not expected to be openly truthful to his hosts and is expected to be awfully nice to them at all times.

That is the code that Edward Clay had broken. The responses in Kenya depended on whether you are a supporter or opponent of the faltering NARC government of Kenya. There are many of us who are neither in both camps but are still caught in a dilemma as to how to respond to the Clay bluntness.
Only 18 months ago President Mwai Kibaki led the overarching multi party alliance to an unprecedented victory over KANU. It was a silent revolution that was welcomed and celebrated across Africa, promising people's power and peaceful democratic changes as opposed to violent military ones. Kenya showed itself able and willing to follow the democratic path and we were all thrilled. But in just under two years the illusions are clearing. It was an unrealistic, even if unavoidable, mass expectation that the new government will quickly transform Kenya from the corrupt and authoritarian KANU power structure it inherited.

However, ordinary Kenyans, while giving NARC the benefit of the doubt, had a right to expect some light at the end of the dark tunnel. This was not to be. They are harvesting more pain and misery from their would be liberators. The uneasy alliance is unravelling and bursting at the alter of ethno-regional politics and unbridled ambition on the part of the hydra headed leadership of the coalition.

The promised transparency, accountability and clean government have given room to KANU-type corrupt business as usual. Maybe this is not surprising given the solid KANU history of most of the leaders themselves. What can one expect from KANU refugees?

The ordinary people that were inspired to hope for a different Kenya now despair at the politicians who seem to care little about the country but a lot about their bank balances. Many of them went for the treasury like hungry lions in reckless abandon.

Things are so bad that many people are beginning to miss former president Moi and KANU. At least they are devils they knew for four decades and were predictable. The new hungry lot cannot just be second-guessed! The paralysed and paralysing leadership of the gerontocratic President Kibaki does not help the situation. Zimbabwe and Kenya's presidencies are unique on this continent. Between the President and his deputy there are probably more than 150 years! Are these the people to inspire the future: tired old men who are tiring the country!

So why are people complaining about Edward Clay for daring to say in public what many know to be true and opposition parties and CSO activists have been saying about the Kibaki leadership?

For someone who takes special delight in being irreverent to those in officialdom my instinct is with Clay. Yet I am still troubled by the politics of the bluntness. The man has a right to say whatever he wants to say without being hounded for it, whether he is a diplomat or not. The world can do with more outspoken ambassadors and other diplomats. We are surely tired of people just wearing suits whatever the climate and saying sweet nothings in the name of diplomacy.

But my problem with Clay and all the aspiring Clayites of Western diplomacy in Africa is the selective nature of their bravery and courage. They seem able to say and do things in Africa and other poorer countries that they wouldn’t dare to say in the West or North America. In fact, many of them behave in Africa like latter day colonial governors and bureaucrats. They have views on everything and our spineless media collude in their delusions of grandeur by giving all their whims and caprices saturation coverage. How many times has one seen lead stories on African televisions and other media of Western Ambassadors 'donating' ordinary footballs to one hapless school or the other? That is news! Many of them deliberately cultivate the image of being 'the opposition' to the government hosting them.

But more importantly I will accept the opinionated interference of Western diplomats in Africa if and when African diplomats in Europe or America are also able to do the same about the countries they are sent to. How would the British take it if an African Diplomat to the court of St James were to express his or her view publicly on the various failings of the hypocritical Blair regime? Can you imagine an African diplomat in Washington just repeating some of the more moderate stupidities that daily emanate from Bush's white house?

The fault is not that of Western leaders or their diplomats but our own colonial mentality that makes us accept from Westerners what we cannot take from our own compatriots and fellow Africans. We need a mental revolution, 'by any means necessary', as Malcom X would have said.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa ([email protected] or [email][email protected])

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