Literary salon

Michela Wrong: It's our turn to eat

Date: 10 February
Time: 15:00 - 16:30
Bergen Resource Centre for International Development

CMI and U4 invites you to a literary salon around Michaela Wrong’s
latest book which is a gripping account of both an individual caught on
the horns of an excruciating moral dilemma and a continent at a turning
point.

When Michela Wrong’s Kenyan friend John Githongo appeared one
cold February morning on the doorstep of her London flat, carrying
a small mountain of luggage, it was clear something had gone very
wrong in a country regarded until then as one of Africa’s few budding
success stories.
Two years earlier, in the wave of euphoria that followed the election
defeat of long-serving President Daniel arap Moi, John had been
appointed Kenya’s new anti-corruption czar. In choosing this giant
of a man, respected as a longstanding anti-corruption crusader, the
new government was signalling that it was set on ending the practices
that had made Kenya an international by-word for sleaze.
Now John was on the run, having realised that the new administration,
far from breaking with the past, was using near-identical techniques
to pilfer public funds. John’s tale, which has all the elements of a
political thriller, is the story of how a brave man came to make a
lonely decision with huge ramifications. But his story transcends the
personal, touching as it does on the cultural, historical and social
themes that lie at the heart of the continent’s continuing crisis.
Tracking this story of an African whistleblower, Michela Wrong seeks
answers to the questions that have puzzled outsiders for decades.
What is it about African society that makes corruption so hard to
eradicate, so sweeping in its scope, so destructive in its impact?
Why have so many African presidents found it so easy to reduce
all political discussion to the self-serving calculation of which tribe
gets to ‘eat’? And at what stage will Africans start placing the wider
interests of their nation ahead of the narrow interests of their tribe?

 

Michela Wrong is a distinguished
international journalist. She has
worked as a foreign correspondent
covering events across the African
continent for Reuters, the BBC
and the Financial Times. Based
on her experiences in Africa, In
the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz, her first
book, won the PEN James Sterne
Prize for non-fiction. I Didn’t Do
It for You focuses on the African
nation of Eritrea.