Kenyan Seeks to Bring Order to the Civil Service

The man charged with rescuing Kenya’s civil service from the depths of mismanagement and corruption has been praised as an industrious and efficient administrator--and slammed as an arrogant son of white colonialists.

Richard Leakey, the famed paleontologist and conservationist who was recently appointed to head Kenya’s public service sector, will need all those character traits in his new job. Supporters believe that Leakey has the medicine needed to cure the country’s economic ills. Skeptics doubt that he will ever be allowed to administer it.

His appointment comes at a time when this east African nation is plagued by political and labor unrest, hampered by economic turmoil and dogged by financial scandals that have robbed the country of millions of dollars and implicated senior government officials.

Leakey and his team have three months to devise a plan for reforming a sector that is bloated with extraneous staff members notorious for their bad attitudes and even worse work ethics; rife with bribery and graft; and propped up by nepotism and cronyism. While acknowledging the difficulties ahead, Leakey--renowned for his no-nonsense approach--has insisted that he will not compromise on the need for accountability.

“I come from a tradition where I think public service is one of service,” he said shortly after he was named to the post last month. “We are not here to puff out our chests and beat them and demand sycophancy and fear. . . . We are here for service.”

Leakey, 54, has refrained from outlining his specific intentions, arguing that tangible results will speak louder than words.

“The public and the international community have come to accept action rather than promises,” he said.

The hope is that Leakey’s appointment will again bring donors knocking at Kenya’s door. Many had cut their assistance, or completely pulled out, following the 1997 suspension of a $205-million loan by the International Monetary Fund, which cited the nation’s lack of vigor in combating corruption.

The World Bank and other donors have recently agreed to finance the cost of activities of the new public service team through credits borrowed by the government.

Harold Wackman, the World Bank’s director for Kenya, praised the appointment of Leakey and his new team as “a positive step” that he hopes will lead to reforms in public sector management, better budgetary controls, a strategy for tackling corruption and enforcement of the general rule of law.

“Dr. Leakey enjoys a well-deserved reputation for being a very able manager and a tough, no-nonsense person,” Wackman said. “That’s true of some of the other people too.”

But Wackman warned that “just because there are some new and important faces doesn’t mean we’re going to start lending more money to Kenya.” That would be determined by evidence of concrete results.

And the fact that Leakey--who is white--is likely to be acclaimed for restarting the flow of outside financial aid has irked many here.

Some critics slammed the appointment of Leakey--whose formal education never went beyond the 10th grade--as an insult to qualified Kenyans of African descent. One opposition politician described the move as being “tantamount to handing Kenya back to the British.”

Plucked from his position as director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, Leakey was also named Cabinet secretary. His was the highest-profile appointment in a major reshuffle of the public service by President Daniel Arap Moi, who brought in five Kenyan managers from the private sector and international organizations.

Many are optimistic that Leakey and his new team have what it takes to succeed.

“They are people who are doers as opposed to talkers,” said a Western diplomat based in Nairobi, the capital. “Mr. Leakey is clearly a doer, evident from the work he has done at the wildlife service.”

Even Moi, who once dismissed Leakey--a third-generation Kenyan of British descent whose opposition party Moi refused to legalize--as a racist, foreigner and an atheist, now praises him as “a man of determination and integrity . . . attributes which are greatly needed at this time.”

Ayang Ngongo, a respected Kenyan opposition politician, found himself agreeing with Moi, saying that Leakey “is a very straight talker, quite often telling it as it is. I think that is important. You sometimes need a tough and ruthless person to get things going.”

But Ngongo noted that Leakey’s appointment would be meaningless unless it was accompanied by radical changes in the Cabinet, which harbors politicians who have allegedly participated in looting the country’s public wealth. Other critics predicted that those same politicians would interfere with Leakey’s ability to do his job, as they go all out to protect their sources of illegal enrichment.

“Corruption in this country begins at State House, and the president does little to punish those involved in [it],” said David Gitari, a prominent, politically savvy Anglican archbishop. “Leakey cannot succeed. If he is going to touch people who are close to the president, he is going to be sacked.”

Local newspaper columnist Gitau Warigi noted: “The sacred cows he is liable to cross . . . are a lot more dangerous than the elephants and cheetahs whose fate he has been directing--especially if he does not learn fast to navigate the waters with the kind of tact he has frequently been accused of lacking.”

What Leakey may lack in savoir-faire, he makes up for with grit. The survivor of an operation for kidney failure, and an airplane crash that claimed both his legs, Leakey has never given up the will to live, or let live.

Encouraged by his parents’ achievements in the study of the origin of mankind, Leakey became famous for his own fossil discoveries and for having transformed the Kenya Wildlife Service--where he had two stints--from a disorderly and dispirited department into the pearl of Kenya’s public sector.

With the introduction of a highly effective paramilitary force, poaching of wildlife significantly declined as Leakey led a winning battle against ivory trafficking.

Donor funding began to pour into the wildlife service, bolstering this all-important section of Kenya’s tourism industry.

But Leakey’s decision to deal directly with donors and his desire to take over the administration of game sanctuaries nationwide led to clashes with senior politicians, who claimed that he favored the betterment of animals over that of humans. Leakey resigned in 1994, outraged by the mismanagement and greed of officials he accused of being bent on making money out of the public corporation. He snubbed Moi’s quest to keep him on but accepted reappointment to the financially troubled service late last year.

Analysts said the fact that Leakey has European ancestry will spare him the obligation of playing the destructive game of ethnic patronage that is so common here.

“I believe that he is on the right track,” Philip Leakey, Richard’s brother and a former Cabinet member and ruling party stalwart, recently told a local newspaper. “He is now in a position to do something for his country. I am confident that he will be successful.”

The conservationist says of the task ahead of him: “Can the job be done? I say yes. Will it be easy? I say no.”