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045Investigative journalism· 2009· United Kingdom

It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower

Michela Wrong

An anti-corruption czar blows the whistle on his own government.

Wrong tells the story of John Githongo, the Kenyan anti-corruption official who fled into exile after exposing the Anglo Leasing procurement scandal reaching to the top of government. Her title captures the ethnic logic of patronage, the expectation that each community's turn in power is also its turn to eat. The book put a human face on grand corruption and the machinery of impunity, and it became a lightning rod for debate about accountability, ethnicity and power in Kenya.

Its legacy. Kenyan bookshops initially hesitated to stock it for fear of libel suits.

Author
Michela Wrong
First published
2009
Genre
Investigative journalism
Theme
The Postcolonial State and Its Discontents