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 ... more