The Roman historian Tacitus perfectly captured a paradox of governance with his quote: “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”
To a casual observer, a mountain of legislation looks like a government hard at work fighting crime. In reality, a hyper-regulated state is often a smoke screen. When a state is corrupt, it doesn’t create laws to protect its citizens; it creates laws to create bottlenecks, extort bribes, protect cartels, and maintain a facade of compliance to satisfy international donors.
Kenya’s legal history offers a vivid masterclass in this paradox—and a look at how we are trying to dismantle it.
1. The Proliferation of “License and Permit” Corruption
In a corrupt state, laws are intentionally multiplied to create regulatory checkpoints. Each checkpoint requires a permit, a license, or an inspection. This is what economists call rent-seeking behavior.
Historically, if a young Kenyan entrepreneur wanted to open a simple restaurant in Nairobi, human-made laws forced them to navigate an absolute labyrinth of legislation:
- The Public Health Act (food handling licenses)
- The Liquor Licensing Act (if serving alcohol)
- The Music Copyright Society rules (for playing music)
- County Government bylaws (single business permits)
- The Environmental Management and Co-ordination Act (NEMA audits)
- Fire safety inspections, signage fees, and advertising laws
This mountain of laws did not make restaurants safer. Instead, it created an overwhelming regulatory burden where the average business owner could not possibly comply with everything. This was intentional: when compliance is impossible, bribery becomes the only way to survive. The sheer volume of laws gave rogue enforcement officers a endless arsenal of technicalities to use for extortion.
The Legal Correction: The Business Laws (Amendment) Acts
Recognizing that an excess of laws breeds corruption, Kenya has spent the last few years passing Business Laws (Amendment) Acts and pushing for regulatory harmonization. The goal is to collapse multiple laws into single, consolidated omnibus permits and automate registries (like the eCitizen platform and the Business Registration Service). By shrinking the number of interactions a citizen has with a bureaucrat, you shrink the opportunity for corruption.
2. Tokenistic Legislation: Creating Laws to Please Donors
A highly corrupt state loves passing new laws because it is the easiest way to perform “integrity theater.” When international bodies like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the World Bank, or the IMF threaten to flag Kenya for corruption or money laundering, the state’s immediate reflex is to draft a new piece of legislation.
We have laws covering almost every conceivable angle of public ethics:
| The Piece of Legislation | What it Theoretically Mandates | The “Tacitus” Reality |
| Public Officer Ethics Act | Every public officer must declare their wealth, income, and liabilities every two years. | These wealth declarations are kept highly confidential from the public. Without public scrutiny, the law becomes a toothless paper-pushing exercise. |
| Leadership and Integrity Act | Enforces the strict moral and ethical standards of Chapter 6 of the Constitution. | Political coalitions routinely clear individuals with active corruption cases to run for high public office, using legal loopholes to bypass the law’s intent. |
| Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act | A massive, complex legal framework meant to ensure fair, open, and transparent state tendering. | Despite hundreds of pages of rules, public procurement remains the primary engine of grand corruption in Kenya through rigged tender specifications. |
The problem in Kenya has rarely been a lack of law; it has been a lack of political will to enforce the laws we already have. Adding more laws to an unverified pile simply creates a dense thicket where corrupt actors can hide behind legal technicalities.
3. The Weaponization of the “Statute Book”
In an authoritarian or corrupt regime, new laws are frequently manufactured to target whistleblowers, journalists, and political opponents while leaving the ruling elite untouched.
We saw this during the single-party era with sedition laws, and we still see remnants of it today when lawmakers attempt to introduce overly broad clauses in laws like the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act. These clauses often criminalize “false information” or “cyberharassment” under definitions so vague that they can be used to arrest bloggers or activists who expose state corruption online.
When the state creates five different laws to police how citizens express dissatisfaction, the laws are not there to maintain order—they are there to protect the corrupt status quo.
The Constitutional Antidote: Article 10
The authors of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 understood Tacitus’s warning. To prevent the endless multiplication of bad, corrupt laws, they anchored the legal system in Article 10 (National Values and Principles of Governance).
Now, any new law passed by Parliament must incorporate public participation, transparency, and accountability. If the government tries to sneak a convoluted, rent-seeking law through Parliament without genuinely involving the public, the High Court will strike the entire law down for violating Article 10.
Quality, clarity, and uniform enforcement of a few good laws will always beat a mountain of bureaucratic rules designed to be bypassed.
