WHY MIGUNA COURT DECISION IS NOT A 7 MILLION SHILLING QUESTION

Oduor Ong'wen

Miguna Miguna, the self-proclaimed general of the National Resistance Movement Kenya, won an important case against the State this last week. But the significance of that ruling was lost in the inordinate focus the Kenyan media and public trained on the quantum of compensation – Seven million Kenya Shillings – rather than the upholding of Miguna’s right to citizenship, being one by birth. Kenyans love money, dream money, kill for money, live for money, and worship money. 

Without downplaying the role of money as a medium of exchange and store of value, it becomes worrying when everything is reduced to monetary worth. But I am not begrudging the man from Nyando his award – in fact he merited much more given, the persecution he has been subjected to.

Three weeks before this landmark ruling, the Technical Committee of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM)’s proposals to be presented to the Building Bridges Initiative Task Force were widely reported by the local media. Among other proposals, the ODM team proposed the addition of a clause to Article 16 that states that a citizen by birth does not lose citizenship by acquiring the citizenship of another country. The Orange Party seeks a new clause to categorically assert that citizens by birth who may have lost such their citizenship before 2010 Constitution shall be deemed not to have so lost their right to citizenship. This clause shall ensure that the right to citizenship of a person who is a Kenyan citizen by birth is not subject to any condition or discretion of any person or authority. 

Of course, I agree with Miguna when he avers that Kenya is ripe for a revolution. Yes, as witnessed during the January 30 inauguration ceremony for Raila Odinga as the People’s President, the objective conditions do obtain. However, my views are at variance with Miguna’s regarding subjective factors. His interpretation of these subjective factors is wanting, in my observation. V.I. Lenin, whose worldview has so inspired Miguna, is categorical that even though objective conditions for a revolution may exist, a regime cannot just tipple over if subjective forces to topple it over are absent. Hurling insults at Raila Odinga who has been more consistent in trying to shape those subjective factors is where, in my view, Miguna misses the ideological boat and rides on emotions, ideals and Narodnik motivation.

But Miguna and I agree politically on much more than the things we see and react to differently. That’s the reason I cannot agree with the action of the State to abrogate his citizenship just because he took a position, which those exercising the authority of State illegitimately considered treasonous. Citizenship by birth cannot be conferred – not even by the Constitution. The Constitution simply guarantees it. One does not choose where one is born. No law made by humans can erase the fact that Miguna Miguna was born in Nyando, Kisumu County, which is part of the Republic of Kenya.

Between 2011 and 2013 when Miguna Miguna was pillorying Raila Odinga – the vendetta that culminated in a very subjective book, the very forces that recently elected to declare him non-Kenyan pampered him. He was even cleared to run for the position of Nairobi Governor. Since he then had indicated the “correct” presidential preference, he was a “patriotic citizen.” But when his conscience couldn’t allow him to watch as electoral autocracy took root and decided to join Kenyans in resisting, he became a non-citizen. 

We have seen this country grant citizenship to all manner of characters. The most notorious ones were the Artur brothers. These shadowy figures were not only conferred with the citizenship of our country, but were also allowed unfettered access to our national security system, donning as they did the ranks of Deputy Commissioners of Police. I know many Kenyans of both African and Asian extraction that have for eons held dual or triple citizenship but since they have not been seen as threats to State Security, they are not only tolerated, but feted.

But Miguna’s case is not unique both in this country and elsewhere. Dictators always feel they hold the key to citizenship. In 1997, Sheikh Ahmed Balala, a radical Muslim preacher, was stripped of Kenyan citizenship by the Moi-KANU regime and was stateless for more than three years. Because he was a thorn in the flesh of KANU oligarchs, he had to be declared non-Kenyan.

Elsewhere, we may want to recall former US President Bill Clinton’s address at the 2016 Democratic National Convention where he sought to reach out to the Muslim community, a group that had been profiled, targeted and demeaned by Donald Trump’s campaign. “If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together,” Clinton offered.  Everyone in attendance applauded. Many Muslims received the speech very favourably across America and beyond. But behind the rosy rhetoric, the clear implication was that Muslim’s rights were conditional on their support of U.S. security commitments and that such support was how Muslims earned and cemented their status as American citizens. The implication of this statement was that Americans Muslims that would declare opposition to US military misadventures around the world do not deserve citizenship even if they were born there.

Recently, when the Movement for Black Lives unveiled its vision after a spate of racial killings and police brutality targeting Blacks, it was roundly condemned by the [white-owned] mainstream media as being unpatriotic.  No part of the vision statement received as much immediate mainstream pushback as its stinging repudiation of U.S. foreign policy. Its demands, which included a call for military and security divestment, permanent opposition to the War on Terror, and a declaration of solidarity with Palestinians, generated criticism about specific policies (especially with respect to Israel and Palestine) and about the perceived disconnect between police brutality toward black citizens and U.S. military practices in distant lands. The implication was that by extending their vision beyond the national borders, black freedom activists were combining issues that were not inherently connected and better left to the security experts.

Moreover, critics were uncomfortable with the statement’s rejection of one of the most common mechanisms for outsider groups to gain inclusion in the U.S. life: national security citizenship. By this is meant the idea that one shows one’s worthiness for membership by supporting—and being willing to fight and die for—the security policies of the American State. To this day, the idea that oppressed groups earn inclusion through sacrifice on behalf of the American State remains a potent one.

By contrast, in linking black freedom to opposition to the U.S. foreign policy orientation, the Movement went beyond Black Lives Matterstatement to repudiate the classic assumption that the objectives of the securocratsand the goals of oppressed communities coincide and should be thought of as being one and the same.  Instead, it affirmed the oppressed communities’ right to articulate their own independent foreign policy grounded above all in the interests of other marginalised groups nationally and internationally. As the document reads, “The Black radical tradition has always been rooted in igniting connection across the global south under the recognition that our liberation is intrinsically tied to the liberation of Black and Brown people around the world.” This independent orientation emphasizes solidarities abroad (between poor or colonized peoples) and, as a consequence, directly challenges the security state’s prerogatives. Suspicious of any harmonious “we the people,” freedom activists instead see a shared community emerging, not with fellow co-nationals, but with the oppressed, exploited and marginalized people everywhere.

By emphasizing the tie between the foreign and the domestic as well as the need for a distinct black foreign policy, the authors of the vision statement carried on an essential element of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s own political legacy that is often deliberately forgotten. King isn’t ordinarily thought of as an exemplar of a black and radical internationalism, but in the last year of his life, he went much further than simply declaring his opposition to the Vietnam War. He also declared his hostility to U.S. militarism in all its forms and asserted that such hostility was integral to his account of black freedom.

King saw the war as emblematic of a general U.S. approach to foreign affairs that treated local, often non-white communities as means to the end of national ambitions and as instruments for the perpetual extension of global power. The logic that justified subverting anti-colonial independence movements in Southeast Asia was the very same logic that maintained structures of racial and class subordination at home. It is why he argued that one could not coherently promote black freedom while supporting the war. The two issues, he contended, were inextricably intertwined.

I am of the strong view that Miguna’s support or opposition to electoral theft or the handshake should not determine his citizenship status. His insults of and innuendos directed at Raila Odinga notwithstanding, I know – and Miguna knows too – that Raila Odinga cannot and will not support pegging the citizenship of any Kenyan on the support of state policies. Indeed Raila would defend unto death Miguna’s right to criticize (not insult) leaders – him included.

Wishing you the best this festive season.

December 22, 2018

RESISTANCE IS IN OUR DNA, “HUSTLERS” AND DYNASTIES BEWARE

(Part 3 of 3)

Oduor Ong'wen

[In this last instalment of a three-part discourse on our resistance against exploitation and domination, I look at resistance to neo-colonial rule] 

The lowering of the Union Jack at midnight on December 12, 1963 marked the end of orthodox colonialism directed from London. But it marked the beginning of a new form of foreign domination – neo-colonialism – in which other imperialist powers competed for the country’s wealth with the weakened Great Britain but under the oversight of local watchmen led by Kenyatta. What KLFA had warned against during the 1961 KANU Conference had come to pass. 

The Kenyan people were hugely disappointed as they watched in disbelief the hijacking and betrayal of their heroic struggle by pro-imperialist demagogues. Within just its first two years in power, the Kenyatta government was already a minority government that couldn’t risk facing the Kenyan people in elections. The workers, peasants, youth, students and other patriotic Kenyans saw it as a sell-out clique. Progressive nationalists led by Odinga, Kaggia and Pio Gama Pinto were among the first to sound warning bells and put the Kenyatta government to task for reneging on pledges that KANU had given Kenyans, more so with regard to the promise to restore the stolen land to the people of Kenya; to guarantee democracy; and to contribute to liberation struggles of other African peoples. Kenyatta’s response was a brutal purge on his erstwhile comrades. Government-sponsored murderers assassinated Pinto on February 24, 1965. It is widely held that his assassination was intended to paralyse the progressives ideologically as Pinto was believed to be the chief ideologue of the nationalist wing of KANU and was a great intellectual worker. Soon Odinga, Kaggia and all progressive nationalists in government were purged out and former KADU stalwarts invited into the cockpit of the State vessel through the infamous KANU-KADU merger of 1965.

Signs that little had changed with “independence” were manifest at Uhuru celebrations at Ruringu grounds where General Bamuinge showed up with 10,000 guerrillas and announced that the soldiers would not leave the forest unless and until the goals and objectives of the liberation struggle were realised. Barely one year later, Kenyatta made an executive order for the army to launch a “search and destroy” operation into the forests of Nyandarua and Kirinyaga to eliminate the remnants of Mau Mau. 

To neutralise the nationalists, the reactionary elements in KANU in cahoots with their newly co-opted KADU collaborators engineered a coup de grace at the infamous Limuru KANU Conference of 1966 where the Party’s constitution was amended to water down the powers of KANU Vice President (who at that time was Odinga), thus contributing to Jaramogi’s resignation from the country’s Vice President post and the formation of the Kenya People’s Union as the new opposition party. In spite of spirited efforts to portray KPU as a “Luo affair,” it emerged as a popular national party with Kaggia as its Vice President, Oyangi Mbaja from Kakamega as the National Organising Secretary and Peter Young Kihara from Kiambu as his deputy.  Among the leading members of KPU were Wajir MP Khalif, the one-time Mombasa Mayor Msanifu Kombo and Kenyan poet Abdilatif Abdalla. Some of the most active branches of KPU were Machakos, Embu and Kwale.

In its Interim Manifesto, the KPU condemned the entrenchment of neo-colonialism in Kenya under KANU leadership through the Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 cheekily titled “African Socialism and Its Application to Planning in Kenya.” It pointed out that the policies articulated therein were neither African nor socialist but the continuation of colonialist satellite economy where Kenya would remain a raw material production ghetto for European economies and active consumers of second-class industrial goods produced in the West. The manifesto did not mince words on Kenyatta regime’s betrayal and promised to implement KANU’s pre-independence programme including free and compulsory education, free healthcare, address the matter of land distribution and youth unemployment; and establish a self-sustaining and integrated national economy as opposed Kenyatta regime’s looting economy. The formation of KPU was greeted with excitement and patriotic enthusiasm from Kenya’s workers who constituted itself into its social base in the major urban centres and contributed some of their leaders to become organisers and activists of the new party. 

The Kenyatta regime answered popular opposition with unprecedented state terror. Between 1964 and 1967 there was a ruthless military offensive, led by British military officers, to crush the remaining Mau Mau guerrillas once and for all. To stem the overwhelming popularity of KPU, the KANU minority regime resorted to brutality against KPU branch officials, crude tactics to incite backward currents of negative ethnicity, cultic oathing ceremonies and other forms of fear mongering. By 1969, when it was clear that KPU was going to pose a formidable challenge for power during the General Elections, the Jomo regime resorted to a series of repressive actions including the banning of the Kenya War Council, the Kenya Ex-Freedom Fighters Union and the Walioleta Uhuru Union, culminating in the arrest of Jaramogi Odinga and other key leaders of KPU following stage-managed chaos and consequent massacre in Kisumu. The events gave Kenyatta regime an excuse to ban KPU. Kenya was by fiat made a de facto one-party state. The next ten years Kenya was a gangland with Kenyatta as the gang leader. But the main target for neutralisation was the organised workers movement. Kenyatta detained progressive trade union leaders, banned their organisation and created a puppet centre, the Central Organisation of Trade Unions. 

From 1969 the KANU regime did not even attempt to hide its dictatorial character, with power concentrated in the Executive. Kenyatta greedily amassed wealth in all sectors of the economy as he surrounded himself with land grabbers and corrupt tycoons. He quickly peeled off the veil of a freedom fighter and acquired the manners and demeanour of a tribal monarch. He created a fertile ground for development, expansion, growth and prosperity of a comprador bourgeoisie that thrived in a sinister climate of lawlessness, corruption, robbery, extortion and political repression. Kenyatta disregarded the due process of law and resorted to rule by arbitrary decrees. The assassination of Tom Mboya on July 5, 1969 jolted the nation to the reality that even the regime’s insiders were not safe. The beast’s thirst for blood and increased manifold and had to be quenched even if it meant by its own children’s. The nadir of this slide to tyranny was the murder of J.M. Kariuki on March 2, 1975. 

1975 was a watershed that marked a turning point in the country’s history of resistance. As the culture of fear became entrenched in the Kenyatta regime, the popular struggle shifted away from overt parliamentary battles, which had been stifled through the growing repression of the de factoone-party state. Organising of political resistance shifted into the subterranean terrain. In the process, the struggle acquired a more radical and anti-imperialist orientation. Above the ground, the university became the bedrock of major democratic struggles. Progressive lecturers and radical students mobilised and transformed the campuses from the ivory towers into workshops of national democratic revolution. In 1977, the second African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC ’77) was held in Nigeria, where two Kenyan plays depicting the neo-colonial political reality of the country and corruption in high places won accolades. The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, co-authored by Micere Mugo and Ngugi wa Thiong’o in 1976 stood out. Equally lauded was Francis Imbuga’s Betrayal in the City. The University of Nairobi’s Traveling theatre took the message of nationalist to the people all over Kenya as they performed to full social halls wherever they went. Similarly, the community theatre started by Ngugi at Kamiriithu home village near Limuru thrived. In reaction, Kenyatta detained Ngugi without charge or trial in 1977. The old despot finally expired on August 22, 1978 and was replaced by his loyal understudy. Daniel arap Moi had been a keen student of Moi’s autocratic methods for twelve years as his Vice President and Minister for Home Affairs – a portfolio charged with policing.

Moi began his inheritance of Kenyatta’s “political estate” on a populist note. A former herds boy and primary school teacher had risen to power, hail “the hustlers.”  He was tall on anti-corruption rhetoric, ordered free milk for primary school children and released all political detainees. He spent most of the time on the road presiding over fundraising events to construct school buildings and other infrastructure or attending church services every Sunday all over the country. But progressives and keen political observers were not fooled. Immediately he was sworn in as acting president and confirmed in that position at an unconstitutional ceremony two months later, Moi stated categorically that he would follow in the footsteps (nyayo) of the departed despot. This was a clear message to the Kenyan people not to expect any departure from the rampant human rights abuses, corruption and economic exploitation by the local bourgeoisie and foreign interests. It did not take long before the mask slid and fell. In October 1979, the KANU leadership barred Jaramogi Odinga, George Anyona and other progressive nationalists from being candidates in the General Elections scheduled for the following month. Many Kenyans were alarmed. The Nairobi University Students Organisation, under the leadership of Rumba Kinuthia staged a public procession against these anti-democratic moves. The students were granted “early Christmas vacations” and the entire NUSO leadership including Kinuthia, Mukhisa Kituyi, Otieno Kajwang’, Josiah Omotto and Wafula Siakama expelled.  In the absence of official opposition following the ban on KPU in 1969, the 1970s saw the Kenyan people identify, campaign for and vote in progressive nationalists and radical democrats like Koigi wa Wamwere, Mashengu wa Mwachofi, Chibule wa Tsuma, Abuya Abuya, Lawrence Sifuna, Martin Shikuku, Chelegat Mutai and James Orengo, whom they could rely upon to raise in parliament issues affecting Kenyan workers and peasants and confront the corrupt individuals in the corridors of power.

KANU under Moi became even more intolerant that by 1981, many Kenyans were loudly demanding for the formation of other political parties. Attempt by Jaramogi, Anyona and other progressives to form Kenya African Socialist Alliance (KASA) made KANU panic. It moved with alacrity to change the Constitution in 1982 making Kenya a de jureone-party state. This enraged Kenyans even more and culminated in members of the Kenya Air Force staging a short-lived coup d’etat.

The coup provided Moi with the opportunity to crack down on lawyers, authors, activists, scientists, and (especially) university lecturers perceived to be critical of his authoritarian rule. Most were detained for what the State called “over-indulgence in politics” and having “Marxist leanings”. Among these were Prof Edward Oyugi, Al-Amin Mazrui, Kamoji Wachiira, and Mukaru Ng’ang’a. Former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, then a University of Nairobi law lecturer, had earlier been detained for having “seditious” literature purportedly advising “J M Solidarity. Don’t be fooled. Reject these Nyayos”. Other university lecturers did not fare any better, such as Mau Mau historian Maina wa Kinyatti, who was jailed for six years for allegedly possessing a “seditious publication titled “Moi’s Divisive Tactics Exposed.”  Prof Micere Mugo, and Dr Kimani Gecau, fled to Zimbabwe. The University, which Moi called a “den of dissidents with foreign backing”, was closed for almost a year after the coup. It was never the hotbed of “intellectual pyrotechnics” thereafter. He later had to institute the biggest purge in the history of Kenya in the guise of fighting the MWAKENYA underground resistance.

By 1988, even the regime’s most ardent supporters could not stand the tyranny anymore. Opposition grew within KANU, from the religious fraternity, lawyers and other civil society entities. This culminated in the removal of Section 2A of the Constitution and reintroduction of political pluralism. 

This history of resistance to oppression, exploitation and tyranny continues. It manifested in 2002 when Kenyans thought they had broken free by electing NARC; it again temporarily triumphed in 2010 with the promulgation of the new Constitution. 

Kenyans always unite in resistance against their oppressors. It matters little whether those oppressors wear the dresses of dynasties or they put on the masks of hustlers and chicken thieves. It is in our DNA to resist the bad and fight for the good.

December 8, 2018

RESISTING COLONIALISTS AND SEEDS OF BETRAYAL

(Part 2 of 3)

Oduor Ong'wen

[In this second installment of three-part discourse on our resistance against exploitation and domination, I look at resistance to colonial rule and how colonialists hijacked it] 

The social oppression, political repression and economic exploitation that afflicted the Kenyan people in the post-independence era had had its roots firmly planted in more than four centuries of foreign invasion and imperialist domination and four centuries of patriotic resistance by the people determined to defend or regain their freedom. However, the “national” History that is being taught in our schools and colleges is custom made to glorify forces of occupation, oppression, repression and exploitation against our people and to ignore, distort or demean the gallant efforts of the peoples of Kenya from the Indian Ocean Coast to the shores of Lake Victoria and for close to five centuries. But the real history reveals to us that every effort to subjugate and oppress our peoples was met by equal determination to repel and reverse. Sometimes our people were victorious while other times the forces of domination, occupation and exploitation had through their superior weaponry, organisation or mere treachery, been able to prevail over our people. But even in their temporal triumph, they were unable to extinguish the flame of freedom in our peoples.

While the British colonial authorities had seen peasant revolts as a nuisance and had always devised ways to contain them and succeeded, the swell in the ranks of the Kenyan trade union movement, the revolutionary content of its goals and the growing political stature of its radical leadership presented the colonial government and settler community with waking nightmares. This was exacerbated by the intensifying nationwide discontent against imperialism and covert organisation and mobilisation for armed struggle. The workers affirmed their power on the May Day Parade of 1950 held in Nairobi that drew tens of thousands of workers and the general public. The people were thrilled and excited by the radical and fiery speeches by the leadership and their clear demands. Barely a fortnight after this rally, on May 15, 1950, EATUC was banned and its General Secretary Makhan Singh as well as its President Fred Kubai arrested and jailed. Makhan Singh, seen by colonialists as the ideological brainpower of the trade union movement, stayed behind bars for ten years. The workers were not cowed. They immediately responded by organising a nationwide strike to demand the immediate release of their incarcerated leaders Makhan Singh, Kubai and Cege Kibacia. Their other demands included new minimum wage, the abolition of repressive taxicab byelaws, an end to arbitrary arrests of workers and total, immediate and unconditional national independence for Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. Involving more than 100,000 workers, for nine days the strike in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru and other towns brought the colonial economy to one of its greatest tests so far. The colonial authorities resorted to their tired script. They rounded up hundreds of workers, including strike organisers and other activists and jailed them for long periods. 

If the colonial authorities were deluded that the repressive response to the workers struggle would quell the restlessness for freedom, they were in for a shocking reality. Banning workers’ organisations and incarcerating their leaders was like adding petrol into a raging fire. It was like the 1950 General Strike was the Launchpad for Kenya’s Liberation Struggle. After it, Kenya’s workers became more militant and involved in the ongoing national political struggles. During the June 1951 KAU elections, radical trade unionists captured most of the key leadership positions in the Nairobi branch and immediately transformed the branch from a dull outfit into a vibrant mobilising force which recruited members raised funds for KAU. Some of these leaders formed the nucleus of the clandestine Mau Mau Movement. The void created by the banning of workers organisations, the imprisonment of their leaders and growth of anti-imperialist consciousness aided by KAU’s failure to champion the immediate demands of the Kenyan people led to phenomenal increase in underground political organising. The radical KAU leaders in Nairobi coalesced around a more covert grouping called the “Forty Group” (Anake a 40) and apart from Kaggia and Kubai, its other members included Isaac Gathanju and Eliud Mutonyi. It is this group that formed the Mau Mau Central Committee. The Committee became the nerve centre of anti-colonial armed struggle. Comprising twelve people, the Mau Mau Central Committee initiated and coordinated a recruitment drive during which anti-colonial oath of unity was administered. The oath was to bind members to uphold discipline, secrecy, solidarity and commitment to the cause. Eliud Mutonyi was the Committee’s chairman and Gathanju secretary. Workers’ leaders like Kaggia and Kubai were Central Committee members, although held no official posts. By 1952, a crisis situation had developed in Kenya with the downtrodden masses exhibiting unprecedented restlessness for political change. Incidents of open defiance against colonial authorities became the order of the day and civil disobedience a regular occurrence. The British colonialists were staring at the prospect of an open insurrection.

Internationally, revolutions had broken out simultaneously in China, Korea and Vietnam and the British were determined to forestall similar situations in Kenya. They decided on a pre-emptive strike against the nationalists with the declaration of a State of Emergency on October 20, 1952 and unleashing Operation Jock Scott – arresting hundreds of national leaders, banning all political organisations and instituting martial law. The War Council of the Mau Mau Central Committee responded to the British declaration of war by mobilising the Kenya Land Freedom Army for a military counter-offensive. From its strongholds of Kirinyaga and Nyandarua forests and mountains, KLFA led a sustained armed struggle using sophisticated tactics. Between 1952 and 1955, the Mau Mau forces scored strings of victories that were attributed to the coherence of the movement’s political vision, commitment, sacrifice and discipline. The Mau Mau Charter outlined the movement’s immediate political programme which included the demand for an African government in Kenya; the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of foreign troops; rejection of foreign laws; demand for major commercial and economic activities to be put in African hands; and for immediate stop to the harassment, imprisonment and rape of Kenyan women. Kenya Defence Council was born at the Mwathe Conference, held in August 1953, at which Dedan Kimathi wa Waciuri was elected President of KDC and Field Marshal of KLFA. The Conference divided KLFA into eight armies under semi-autonomous commands. In February 1954, the Kenya Parliament was formed with objectives of intensifying military campaign while separating the military and political aspects of the struggle but remaining under the overall direction of the Mau Mau Central Committee. The Kenya Parliament had a national character and comprised twelve elected members with Kimathi as the first Prime Minister. The feat of setting up a military edifice comprising eight armies and sustaining it with little outside assistance for over seven years of ferocious guerrilla campaign technically superior military machine attests to Mau Mau’s level of discipline, determination and commitment. The fact that the Mau Mau Central Committee was able to see that engaging the colonial authorities needed complementing the armed struggle with other forms of resistance like the highly successful Bus Boycott of September 1953 revealed that not only was the leadership flexible and mature but also the massive popular support it commanded. 

Women played a pivotal role in the struggle. They gathered and supplied intelligence, coordinated the supplies, and engaged in full combat activities. No prior organisation had involved Kenyan women to the extent that Mau Mau did. Indeed there were many women commanders, including Field Marshal Muthoni. But the biggest tool of colonial penetration was not the gun. It was the Bible. The missionaries fiercely and violently fought against the indigenous peoples’ customs and traditions in a clearly well orchestrated cultural onslaught that was aided by missionary-sponsored schools and settler controlled mass media. This bred an upsurge of cultural resistance. As early as the 1930s a vibrant patriotic indigenous press had emerged. Newspapers like Sauti ya Mwafrika, Ramogi, Mugambo wa Mu Embu, Wasya wa Mukamba and Inooro ria Gikuyuwere some of the more established titles. As a direct antidote to the missionaries, the Kenya independent churches movement emerged and acquired a distinctly anti-colonial flavour. In Mount Kenya region, a religious movement known as Andu a Kaggialed a cultural mass movement that aimed at creating a “purely African movement” diametrically opposed to and divorced from Eurocentric theology. It did away with European customs and replaced them with a new doctrine emphasising African customs and traditions: all converts had to be baptised or re-baptised in their mother names and weddings conducted in the African customary tradition. Andu a Kaggiahad a mirror parallel in Marandamovement in Nyanza. Marandawere determined to prevent missionary penetration and to reverse their foreign cultural influences. 

The most controversial of the independent churches to emerge was the Dini ya Msambwaled by Elijah Masinde. Beginning early 1940s, it became locked in one confrontation after another with colonial authorities in Elgon Nyanza (now Bungoma and Trans Nzoia counties) where it developed strong taproots amongst the poor peasants and agricultural workers. Masinde and his followers refused to carry the hated kipandeor be conscripted into forced labour. They mounted massive protests when the colonial authorities attempted to requisition their cattle for the British war effort. They later called on African people to start manufacturing guns in preparation for armed struggle against continued colonial rule. On February 10, 1948, colonial police opened fire on a peaceful rally called by Dini ya Msambwaat Malakisi where they killed eleven and wounded not less than sixteen. Six days later, Elijah Masinde was arrested and deported to Lamu. Dini ya Msambwa’smilitant followers were not deterred by these acts of state terrorism. They simply retreated and reorganised underground and continued with the liberation struggle. 

The struggle for independence in Kenya, led by Mau Mau, was not an isolated nationalist uprising. It fit to the global confrontation between progressive social forces and desperate imperialist regimes being forced to beat hasty retreat. It was the same period South Africa was witnessing the Defiance Campaign, the Algerian war for national independence, the Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam and the beginning of the Cuban revolutionary insurrection. Fearing the struggle in Kenya acquiring internationalist character, British colonialists devised a “carrot and stick” approach. The carrots were neo-colonial reforms that would devolve a little muscle to the local puppets while the British colonialists retained the real power. Under the Lyttleton Constitution of 1954, the colonial government increased the number of African seats in the settler-dominated Legislative Council and permitted the resumption of organised political activity but restricted this to district associations and excluded districts that were predominantly Gikuyu, Meru and Embu from this partial relaxation of the ban. The increased African representation in the LegCo had its unintended consequences. It brought on board patriots like Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, who effectively used the colonial House to denounce the evils of colonialism, demand the immediate release of all political prisoners and push the colonialists to concede to more constitutional reforms to the dismay and frustration of pro-colonialist members led by Gikonyo Kiano. Odinga stunned the LegCo membership and irked the colonial authorities when he declared that “in the heart of hearts of the African people, their true leaders were those in detention, jail and concentration camps.” The Synnerton Plan created a rural petty bourgeoisie with interest in commercial farming drawing its membership from the scum of homeguards, colonial chiefs and other collaborators.

The stick was the intensification of military operations in Mt. Kenya region, rounding up of thousands of people and herding them into concentration camps, forcing peasants into fortified villages to deprive guerrilla fighters of a support base and supplies network in a genocidal attempt to annihilate the Gikuyu community. Land and other property of those detained or carted away into concentration camps were confiscated and given to collaborators. Supporting the liberation became a very painful and expensive affair for people.

The banning of the militant EATUC and imprisonment of its entire leadership created a crisis of leadership among the working class and colonialists, in alliance with US intelligence, embarked on grooming a new reactionary trade union leadership. It was with this backdrop that the Kenya Federation of Labour was formed. Led by the articulate and indefatigable Tom Mboya, KFL quickly emerged as the national labour centre. KFL drew the Kenyan working class away from such political issues of land and national independence and restricted their demands to narrow shop floor issues like minimum wage, worker housing and workman compensation.

In 1961, KLFA produced a document titled Struggle for Kenya’s Future that was circulated at KANU Conference. The document identified the neo-colonial character of the regime that was poised to replace British colonial one, observing that the British Master Plan was “to carefully relinquish political control to a properly indoctrinated group of the ‘right kind of Africans’ so as to ensure they left in ‘political form’ so that ‘its capitalist sponsors might remain in economic content.’” It in the alternative proposed that the people of Kenya should struggle to “a socialist society … which unlike capitalism concerns itself with the welfare of the masses rather than the profits and privileges of a few.”

When KANU was formed in 1960, it had as its base the former membership of the banned KAU, the Kenyan workers in Nairobi, Central Kenya, Nyanza, and Rift Valley. Many of the recruits to the new party had participated in or supported the struggle in one way or the other as combatants in the armed struggle, strike and boycott mobilisers or organisers, pamphlet or leaflet distributors, recruitment of combatants, supply of food, medicine or ammunition for the fighters. It therefore represented the aspirations of the most radical of the nationalist movement at the time. The original KANU manifesto articulated the wishes and aspirations of the staggering majority of the Kenyan people, unlike KADU, which even though ostensibly championing more or less the same goals, was in reality an opportunistic settler-controlled lobby of collaborators. The KADU leadership worked hand in glove with leading settler ideologues and leaders like Sir Michael Blundell, Havelock and other reactionary elements who fought desperately to keep their obscene privileges.

The settler community had seen the danger signs of what to expect in the wake of inevitable KANU victory. Its radical programme was not what they were ready for. They, with the connivance of the colonial administration worked overtime to ensure their interests would be safe in post-independent Kenya. The main parties – KANU and KADU – were therefore manipulated in the name of “capacity building” to negotiate a constitution that would favour the interests of settler community and foreign commercial interests in the name of being “pragmatic.” Kenyatta was a big disappointment. Never before had a people invested so much faith and hope in one man and ended up with despair and dejection. After he was transferred from Lodwar to Maralal, the colonial authorities organised cleared delegations to visit him and apprise him of the political situation in the country. While radical nationalists like Jaramogi Oginga Odinga or his former inmate Kaggia could not be cleared to go and debrief him, the likes of Daniel arap Moi were facilitated. If old Jomo had any little nationalist traction left in him, it was wiped out at his half-way house in Maralal. The New Kenya Party of Sir Blundell, representing settler economic and political interests and deeply engaged in real politik, emerged from Lancaster talks as the real winner. The Lancaster House Conference strictly followed NKP recommendations both in form and content and KANU and KADU delegates were content to cross the t’s and dot the i’s. “Independence” was negotiated in series. Private property (mainly of the settler community) was protected; foreign military bases remained intact; and all the progressive demands listed in the KANU programme were shunned. Blundell and his NKP cronies managed to enlist the support of the entire KADU reactionary clique and, more painfully but significant, the right wing of KANU party, including the arch demagogue, Jomo Kenyatta. The KANU that emerged post-Lancaster was not recognisable. It was more like an Africanised version of the New Kenya Party.

December 1, 2018

KENYANS WILL RESIST HEGEMONS, IT’S WIRED IN OUR DNA

(Part 1 of 3)

Oduor Ong'wen

[In this first installment of three-part discourse on our resistance against exploitation and domination, I recall how our people have in the past risen against “messianic” hegemons] 

William Samoei Ruto wants to save Kenyans. Since the conclusion of last election cycle that ended with Uhuru Kenyatta practically running against himself last October, the Deputy President and his supporters have repeatedly reminded Kenyans that we have for far too long been under the hegemony or spell of some dynastic families but that is about to change as Messiah has been born – and the Messiah is a hustler. I have consulted three dictionaries and all give me the two meanings of the word “hustler.” The first meaning is one who makes money by selling or peddling illicit goods. Examples they give include drug peddlers, dealers in contraband goods and pimps. The second meaning of a hustler is prostitute. I don’t know whether the DP belongs in the first or second definition. What matters is that he has confessed to being a hustler.

Every hegemonic or exploitative enterprise masquerades as inspired by something other than domination or theft. The General Act of the Berlin Conference in 1885, under which the European powers cut Africa, like wedding cake into slices of formal colonial possessions, claimed that their purpose was “furthering the moral and material well-being of the native populations  - and bringing home to them the blessings of civilization.”

Similar rhetoric has attended all such seizures. Colonial establishment was presented as a liberating act to save native people from their enslavement to the Devil, or the Arabs, or each other, they had to be forced into general servitude, while their land and natural wealth were transferred to more enlightened people from over the seas. Preposterous as such propaganda may seem to most of us today, it was taken very seriously. In some quarters, it still is. But not everyone was duped. The resistance against Portuguese invaders at the Coast in the 15^thCentury was the earliest manifestation of Kenyans’ resolve against the duplicitous forces.

In the 1890s, there was a massive mobilisation of the people along the Indian Ocean coast to take up arms and resist British and German imperialist invasion. Between 1895 and 1896 a broad patriotic alliance of the Kenyan coastal peoples led by Mbaruk Al Amin Mazrui waged guerrilla warfare with such ferocity that forced the British to deploy a special task force from India to quell the uprising. Besides the armed struggle, our people also engaged in cultural resistance that produced some of the most inspiring and patriotic Swahili poetry and songs ever. The struggles delayed the construction of the Uganda Railway for long periods because the people saw this “Lunatic Express” as a sinister symbol of foreign invasion. All along the railway route, and at the administrative posts created to facilitate the construction, several armed engagements between patriotic peasant forces and the British forces of occupation were witnessed. 

In Central Kenya, the resistance against the I.B.E.A. Company was organised around the leadership of Waiyaki wa Hinga and Ngunyu wa Gakeere. With their ingenious military organisation, the British troops were no match for this “ragtag” force of the Kenyan peasants. It was not brought under control until the British captured Waiyaki after many battles and buried him alive on August 17, 1892 at Kibwezi. Further North West along the rail route, the Nandi patriots led by Koitalel arap Samoei sustained a decade-long guerrilla campaign against the British colonialists between 1895 and 1905. These wars severely disrupted British administration and frequently halted the progress of railway construction. The raids by the Nandi were coordinated and executed with the level of discipline that baffled the colonialists. Having failed to subdue Koitalel’s forces in the battlefield, the British resorted to treachery. They lured Koitalel into a duplicitous “peace talks” meeting at which they shot him in cold blood on October 19, 1905. Further west, the nation was in revolutionary mood with the Luo, the Samia, Bukusu and Tiriki people waging sustained resistance to the establishment. Between 1894 and 1900, British military officer C.W. Hobley led several “punitive” expeditions to subdue the Kager clan in Ugenya and parts of Alego, Bukusu militants, Abasamia and Tiriki warriors. In 1904, another expeditionary force was deployed in Kisii where it massacred villagers, burnt people’s houses and food stores and engaged in a looting spree, stealing cattle and confiscating grains. But this did not dampen the people’s spirit of resistance. In 1908 there was an uprising in West Kitutu, North Nyaribari and East Wanjare (or Bonchari) that led to a company of the 3^rdKings African Rifles being sent for a second expedition to Kisii where it repeated the earlier atrocious acts. At the end of this campaign, the British captured one of the leaders, a young woman called Moraa, and exiled her to Kismayu.

The fire that Mbaruk Al Amin Mazrui had lit at the coast was not extinguished. From 1913 to 1914, Me Katilili was Menza and Wanje wa Mandoro effectively mobilised the Giriama peasants to fight against the theft of their land by the British. They took an oath not to pay taxes to the colonial authorities and to desist from complying with forced labour regulations. Me Katilili was captured and deported to Kisii where she was put under restrictions. Determined as ever, she escaped from the colonial detention in January 1914 and walked back 700 miles to Kilifi to rejoin her comrades in the struggle and advance the resistance. She was recaptured on October 17, 1914 and died soon after. The roles of the likes of Me Katilili and Moraa – and Mary Nanjiru later on – also brought to shame the sexists who always would want to see a woman’s place as the kitchen and bedroom.

By 1920 when Kenya was declared a colony, there had already developed a sizeable Kenyan working class. The next two decades beginning 1920 marked a new and important stage in the development of anti-imperialist struggle in Kenya. The workers, who were divided along racial, ethnic and religious lines at the beginning gradually came to realise that as a working people, they had common class interests and their collective advancement depended upon their unity of purpose. They began to organise at national level and sought to link trade union struggles with the overall national political struggles. They pitched their struggles around such issues as the wanton exploitation, poor housing, poor working environment as well as more political ones like the notorious kipandesystem. Militant workers’ organisations were created. These included Labour Trade Union of Kenya, the African Workers Federation and the East African Trade Union Congress and produced brilliant, courageous and astute national trade union and political leaders like Makhan Singh, Chege Kibacia and Fred Kubai.

Colonial authorities were getting terrified by the day as workers organised on a national scale. Fearing the explosive potential of political organisation at the national level, the colonialists tried all tricks in the book to prevent the formation of nationwide political associations. Nonetheless such organisation as the Young Kikuyu Association, the Young Kavirondo Association, the Kenya Highlands League, the East African Association, and later the Kikuyu Central Association, the Taita Hills Association, the Ukamba members Association and the North Kavirondo Association acquired national character. They consulted closely and coordinated their activities. At the tender age of 25, Harry Thuku had in 1920 become a recognised national leader with considerable following among the workers in Nairobi. He played a leading role in the formation of the Young Kikuyu Association and the progressive non-racial East African Association. Thuku was active in the famous Dagoretti meeting of June 1921 that exposed the atrocities against young Kenyan women workers forced to work on settler farms, denounced the kipandesystem, protested strongly at the proposed wage reduction and coordinated the drafting of a petition that was sent to the Governor.

On March 14, 1922, Harry Thuku was arrested and detained at Nairobi’s Central Police Station. This sparked off one of the most massive protests ever witnessed in the streets of Nairobi. On March 16, 1922 as the protesters gathered at what is now University of Nairobi’s Great Court, mounted troops assisted by inebriated settlers that had been drinking alcohol at the nearby Norfolk Hotel opened fire on them killing 200 people in cold blood – including their heroic leader, Mary Muthoni Nyanjiru. YKA was banned.

As workers mounted one onslaught after another on the hated colonial government and its settler captains of industry, various Kenyan communities in their locales engaged colonial authorities with resolve. In Machakos, Ndonyo wa Kamiti led the Kamba people in demands for immediate end to forced labour and taxes. In Nyanza, Simon Nyende, Reuben Omulo, Ojijo Oteko, Jonathan Okwiri and other patriots organised a popular struggle against the kipandesystem and high taxes, land alienation and demand for clear explanation on the exact status of the new “Crown Colony.” The struggle, under the banner of Piny Owacho([people of] the land has said) articulated these grievances through a series of mass rallies between 1922 and 1923. One such rallies held at Lundha in Gem in 1922 made a declaration that the land had said that colonial occupation was inimical to people’s welfare and freedom and had to end. 

Following the proscription of the YKA, a new organisation, the Kikuyu Central Association was formed to pursue the cause YKA had initiated. It instantly became the single most powerful legal outfit operating in the colony. Under the leadership of Jesse Kariuki, Joseph Kang’ethe and James In 1928, Beautah who was the secretary and employee of the East African Postal Services was transferred to Kampala. The need for someone to keep records and write letters became dire. It was then that its leadership approached Johnstone Kenyatta, a meter reader with Nairobi Municipal Board, who readily agreed to the offer but at a fee of a bottle of whisky for every letter or set of minutes written. This was such an expensive demand given that Africans were not allowed to drink pre-bottled alcohol.  But KCA needed the services badly and agreed to the terms. Arrangements were made with sympathetic Asian businessmen to smuggle out the liquor. A year later, KCA raised money and sent Kenyatta to London to plead at the Colonial Office the case of alienated African land. Kenyatta was articulate in his presentation of the KCA demands to the Colonial Office. He was also able to link up with Pan African activists like Kwame Nkuruma, Marcus Garvey and W.E. DuBois. On return in 1930, Kenyatta convinced the KCA leadership on the need for a longer and closer engagement with the Colonial Office. It was on this understanding that KCA sent him back to London in 1931 where he ended up staying for eight years. Kenyatta’s stint in London had both gains and pain for the KCA organisation. He spent most of the time at Hyde Park making demagogic speeches. In the process, he was able to expose the Kenyan people’s case to the international community and attract solidarity from other struggling people from other parts of Africa, Caribbean, Irish, Latin America and Asia. On the other hand, he is said to have led a reckless life – excessively drinking, womanising and travelling – at the expense of the peasants who had to send him cash regularly. It is recorded that he defaulted on rent often and had to shift residences often. 

The Ukamba Members Association was initially a wing of KCA but became autonomous and full-fledged organisation during the campaign against destocking in the late 1930s. It’s members comprised peasants, workers, policemen and soldiers. Its leaders, including Muindi Mbingu, had cut their political teeth through a long apprenticeship in the militant working class movement and national politics of Nairobi in the 1920s. The massive and radical anti-destocking campaign of 1938 led by UMA was a broad-based political movement. The UMA won a sweet victory when in December 1938 the colonial government acquiesced to the demands of the people and halted compulsory culling of livestock and returned more than 2,500 heads of cattle that had been confiscated. All over the country, there were peasant resistances and even though a nationwide political organisation was proscribed, national resistance movement emerged and prospered in various communities across the length and breadth of the colony. 

November 24, 2018

(Next week: Fight to kick out "kaburus")

WHY UHURU’S FOOD SECURITY AGENDA IS MISPLACED

Oduor Ong'wen

Uhuru Kenyatta is committed to what has become known as “The Big Four” agenda as he serves his second and final term as the President.  These comprise food security, universal healthcare, affordable housing and manufacturing. Today I wish to focus on the Food Security agenda and declare that it is misplaced and is destined to fail. From the onset I aver that the problem facing Kenya and other Third World countries is not food insecurity. It is lack of Food Sovereignty. As such I would have been happy if President Kenyatta and the framers of the “Big Four” had focused on Food Sovereignty instead.

I have studied government policy documents of Food Security and found very many worrying propositions.  Two fundamental assumptions are particularly worrying. These are that the adoption of neoliberal economic policies would lead to greater food security; and the country’s food security can be rather adequately be indicated by aggregate food availability per capita.

In pursuit of neoliberal economic policies our policy makers have vested faith in the Washington Consensusthat gives primacy to “market forces,” “free trade” and “privatization” in development strategies. These policies are assumed to be necessary and sufficient conditions for assuring sufficient food production, adequate access to food by the poor and for good governance. Experience since the wave of liberalization nad privation in the mid 1980s tell a different story.  Indeed our current situation where the stores of the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) are full while maize farmers are stranded with their harvests of the last season is telling. These policies make it easier to move maize from “Mexico” to Mombasa port in a record four days while we cannot move the produce from North Rift to Makueni County even in six months.

There is little in the history of the now rich industrialised countries, or of the relatively successful developing ones, to suggest that this is the course that these nations followed.  Indeed a historical review of the development strategies and especially of the food and agricultural policies followed them is instructive. Western European countries, Japan and the United States have highly subsidized agricultural sectors, as well as an array of institutions and policies designed to protect poor food producers and consumers.

With regard to over-reliance on quantitative indicators of food security, obtaining comparable quantitative estimates of trends in under-nutrition as an indicator of the absence of reliable access to adequate food and equity in its distribution among different social groups is much more difficult. Secondly, quantitative indicators of the autonomy of food systems and their long-term ecological and social sustainability are equally partial due to the qualitative nature of these concepts. Neglecting these crucial dimensions of the issues – as the authors of Kenya’s Food Security policy have – is not only misleading but also extremely dangerous.

The policy places inordinate faith in commercial farmers. Many of these own large farms or ranches. Obviously, a landowner could set a large tract of land aside as a natural area, and in so doing, be a good steward of a "very large farm."  But such a farm or ranch would not generate much income or produce much of economic benefit to society.  If land is to generate income and create a good place to live, the land must not only be "used" but "used well."  And thus, most farms and ranches must be "smaller" than they are today.  The emphasis on the "commercial" purpose of farming has encouraged – essentially forced – most farms to become so large that farmers can no longer "use the land well."  Each farmer can only know and love so much land.

The relationship between farm size and farm "lifestyle" is similar to that of size and stewardship.  With respect to the physical environment; open space, fresh air, scenic landscapes, etc.; residence farms may be any size, and up to a point, larger may seem better.  Beyond some point, however, farms or ranches get larger at the expense of their neighbours and their communities, regardless of whether the motive for expansion is commercial or residential.  And, the quality of the farmer or rancher's relationships with his or her "neighbours" ultimately affects the quality of "the place they live."

If our rural communities are to remain healthy, desirable places to live, they must preserve the health and productivity of people, their physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing; the people, that is, must be treated well.  A further requirement is that if people are to treat each other well, they must know each other well, must be motivated to treat each other well, must have time to treat each other well, and must be able to afford to treat each other well.  If our rural communities are to remain good places to live, we must have communities of people who love each other.  And, we cannot have communities of people who love each other if some feel that they must drive others away so they can own more land.

This brings us to another purpose for farming, farming for sustainability.  Sustainability requires that farmers be motivated by the purposes of economic viability (commercial), ecological integrity (stewardship), and social responsibility (lifestyle).  If farmers or ranchers focus on any one of the three, without giving conscious purposeful consideration of the other two, they inevitably threaten the sustainability of their farming operations.  Farms or ranches that focus on economic viability, i.e., commercial farms, eventually will become too large to "use the land well" and inevitably degrade their relationships with their neighbours.  Similarly, farms that focus only on individual lifestyle, excluding concern for neighbours, productivity, or the natural environment may threaten sustainability.  And, farms or ranches that focus solely on stewardship do nothing to support healthy community relationships or to provide for the food and fiber or employment needs of people.  In all three cases, by focusing on a single purpose, they threaten sustainability.  Largeness is not the cause of the lack of sustainability of a farm, but instead, is a symptom of a narrow focus on a single purpose of farming – most typically, on commercial farming.

This is in no way a glorification of tiny farms and ranches. Of course, farms and ranches can also be too small to be sustainable – they can't generate enough income, can’t take care of the land, nor provide a good place to live.  But, farmers who rely on “alternative” farming methods – reduce input costs, market in the niches, build relationships, etc. – can generate more net income with fewer acres of land and less money invested.  Still, farms that are "too small" do relatively little harm to the economy, the environment, or to the community, and thus, to the sustainability of agriculture. Why do small farmers farm for sustainability?  They are farming for quality of life. In other words, they are farming to perpetuate quality livelihoods for the living and yet unborn.

There are five intrinsic characteristics of farming for sustainability that are either absent or not sufficiently canvassed in the policy. First is the development and promotion of a food system that offers security for its participants by ensuring the capacity to produce, store, import or otherwise acquire sufficient food to meet the needs of its members at all times.

Second is a food system that provides maximum autonomy and self-determination, thus reducing vulnerability to market fluctuations and other social and political pressures.

Third is a reliable food system that is not amenable to seasonal, cyclical and other variation.

Fourth, a secure food system should be equitable. This means that as a minimum it should guarantee dependable access to adequate food for all individuals and groups both now and in future.

Finally, it should be socially and environmentally sustainable so that the ecological systems on which all societies and food production depend are protected and enhanced over time.

Our national Food Security policy has tried to compress everything into food availability, stability and access. It is my position that de-emphasising the questions of autonomy, equity and long-term ecological sustainability makes it a tool for profiteers lurking in the shadows to unfairly benefit from the troubles of small producers and consumers. But I am not surprised. Uhuru Kenyatta has never slept hungry due to lack of food. If he ever slept without eating, it was perhaps because he didn’t have the appetite or over-indulged, as we are sometimes wont to. 

November 17, 2018