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

WHY WE MUST SUPPORT UNIVERSAL MEDICARE PLANS

Oduor Ong’wen

Disease ranks alongside poverty and ignorance among the three most dreaded enemies that our founding fathers vowed to fight and vanquish. Fifty-five years down the line, the war is far from won. Indeed, these enemies appear to have gained the upper hand in the recent years.   

State-funded funded healthcare programme was one of the first bold moves by the newly independent government in the early 1960s. However, gradually but steadily – almost unnoticed by the Kenyan public – there has been a major shift in healthcare strategy in the recent years. This culminated in the now infamous cost-sharing system in public hospitals and health units.

Thanks to the Washington Consensus, the shift has placed the responsibility of healthcare provision from the state to the “market forces.” The defining feature of this shift is many deaths from otherwise preventable and treatable diseases, resurgence of diseases that humanity thought were already conquered like tuberculosis and detention of decomposing corpses in village bandas christened “private clinics.” Not to mention quacks defiling patients in the so-called clinics.

David Werner, the author of the best selling book, Where There Is No Doctor, is very clear on why the public should be worried about the shift in global and national health strategies. Werner, a guru in community health practice and a consultant for the World Health Organisation (WHO), recalls how the celebrated concept of universal primary healthcare had been adopted by virtually all governments at the landmark 1978 WHO-UNICEF global health conference that endorsed the Alma Alta Declaration.

To advance toward ‘Health for All by the year 2000’, the Declaration promoted the principles that all people are entitled to basic health rights and that society ( and thus the government) has a responsibility to ensure that the people’s health needs are met, regardless of gender, race, class, relative ability or disability. 

The centerpiece of the Declaration was primary health care, a comprehensive strategy that included an equitable, consumer-centred approach to health services and also addressed underlying social factors that influence health. It called on ministries of health and health workers to be accountable to the common people, and social guarantees to ensure that basic needs (including food) of all people are met.

Any examination of the impact of the relationship between macro-economic change, including SAPs, and health should be informed by a historical and contemporary understanding of the economic, social and technical factors influencing health outcomes. 

The disease burden and pattern experienced by the people of Kenya today are strikingly similar to those of 19^thcentury Europe, i.e., they are primarily diseases of under-development and poverty, not a feature of warm climates in the tropics. Urban areas experience disease patterns more akin to those dominant in the industrialised countries.

Historical and contemporary experiences have shown that there is a definite but complex relationship between economic growth on the one hand and health status on the other. In general, sustained economic growth over the long run does lead to improved health and nutritional status: in the now-industralised countries the large and sustained decline in mortality has been accomplished by reductions in morbidity (disease) and malnutrition, and largely preceded any effective medical interventions. 

Factors influencing health outcomes include economic and environmental influences as well as direct health sector interventions. Thus, it is useful to categorise these factors into two broad groups - those originating inside the health sector and those that do not. 

Most observers now accept that adjustment has had a negative impact on infant and child mortality. There is evidence that non-adjusting countries with low levels of debt in Sub-Saharan Africa have succeeded in accelerating the rate of improvement of their infant mortality rates during the 1980’s; that the rate of progress in severely indebted, non-adjusting countries has remained broadly unchanged; and that progress in severely indebted, intensively-adjusting countries has slowed markedly. UNICEF cites evidence of increases in infant and young child mortality in several SSA countries over the past few years.

The likely causes of these reversals derives from declines in incomes; increases in food prices; and reductions in health sector spending, which have led to the imposition of user charges for health care, cutbacks in preventive programmes’ budgets and interruptions in supply of pharmaceuticals to public health care facilities. These have in turn resulted in deterioration in both the quantity and quality of diets, and reductions in immunisation coverage and in utilisation of health services for acute conditions, as well as weakening of disease control programmes. 

Consequently, the incidence (and possibly the severity) of the vaccine-preventable diseases has probably increased together with mortality from diarrheal disease, respiratory infections and malaria. There has also been a resurgence of certain communicable diseases which were previously substantially under control, particularly malaria, tuberculosis and cholera. All of these have contributed to increased morbidity and Presumed Mechanisms

In addition to the negative impact on women’s health associated with the general decline in communicable disease control and health care provision, there is evidence that morbidity and mortality associated with pregnancy has also been aggravated. 

The introduction of user charges for antenatal and maternity care has been associated with an increase in deliveries conducted at home, as well as those occurring in hospital without previous antenatal care or assessment. The rising costs of transport together with the lack of money on the part of poor women have been other contributory factors. 

Finally, there is evidence, mainly of qualitative nature, that deteriorating economic circumstances, which have forced an increasing number of women into commercial sex activity have influenced risk behaviour in relation to HIV transmission. The above factors have undoubtedly resulted in a sharp rise in already high maternal mortality rates, especially in poor countries and amongst lower socio-economic groups.

To ensure that the quest for universal and affordable healthcare succeeds, the government must rethink the Washington Consensus policies.

November 10, 2018