It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower, by Michela Wrong
Once, when I was crossing Mali by bus, it took three days to go 100 yards. This was not because of the condition of the road, but because three sets of officials — the army, the police and the douaniers — insisted upon extracting their pound of flesh from the passengers (except for me), and would not let them go until they had duly paid up.
The passengers took it all with a good-humoured resignation that both surprised and moved me. Perhaps their resignation derived from an understanding that, had the boot been upon the other foot, they would have behaved in the same way. Such a degree of self-understanding is rare in the world.
Perhaps this also explains why, when dictatorships and presidencies for life are overthrown in Africa, the successor regimes, nominally more democratic, seem often to be not much better, at least in point of corruption.
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