On the day James Githii Mburu took over the corner office on the 3oth floor at the Kenya Revenue Authority’s Times Towers headquarters in Nairobi, he says he found a newspaper cartoon that summed up the organisation he was inheriting — a big dilapidated, weather-beaten, old land cruiser vehicle perched on stones, the engine billowing dark smoke, which would require more than just a mechanic to get it roaring back to life.
He framed the cartoon and placed it on top of his drawer, perhaps as a reminder of the agency inherited. Today, the former intelligence chief says it is time for a new caricature to be drawn, depicting the KRA as the latest V8 in town, on a full tank, running tax cheats out of town.
