WHY BBI MUST ADDRESS DISPARITIES IN KENYA

By Oduor Ong'wen

The Building Bridges Initiative, Kenya’s latest attempt at nationmaking is in the final stretch. While many Kenyans have welcomed it, a number of them led, by the Deputy President William Ruto, have dismissed it with contempt. The refrain for those contemptuous of the initiative is that it is about creating political positions for bigwigs on the backs of Mama Mboga. It could as well turn out to be if we just focus on political settlement but ignore three of the most important issues in the nine-issue initiative. The three are Shared Prosperity, Ethnic Competition; and Inclusivity. The remaining six issues including the lack of national ethos, runaway corruption, divisive elections, safety and security as well as responsibilities and rights depend on how we tackle these three.

Extreme inequality and skewed access to opportunities in both public and private sectors is out of control in Kenya. Despite impressive economic growth numbers we have been fed with annually since 2005, poverty still affects millions of people’s lives. It appears that a minority of wealthy individuals and investors are creaming off the yields of the country’s economic performance. While this minority of super-rich Kenyans is accumulating wealth and income, the fruits of economic growth are failing to trickle down to the poorest. The rich are capturing the lion’s share of the benefits, while millions of people at the bottom are being left behind. 

The gap between the richest and poorest has reached extreme levels in Kenya. Less than 0.1per cent of the population (8,300 people) own more wealth than the bottom 99.9 per cent (more than 46 million people). The richest 10 per cent of people in Kenya earned on average 23 times more than the poorest 10 per cent.

The poverty in Kenya has a face, gender and address.  The top 10 per cent richest households in Kenya control more than 40 per cent of the country's income. The poorest 10 per cent control less than one per cent. Currently, less than 10,000 people control 6 per cent of the Kenya’s national wealth. Poverty has the face of a young female Kenyan. For instance, in the 20-24 years age group, there are 274,000 unemployed women compared to 73,000 unemployed men. Nearly every child in the former Central province is enrolled in primary school. One out of three children in the North Eastern region go to school.

According to Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), the northern part of the country has lowest income inequality. For instance, Turkana has 0.28 per cent, Wajir 0.321 per cent and Mandera 0.332 per cent. The coastal regions especially Tana River, Kilifi and Kwale have the highest income inequality in the country at 0.617 per cent, 0.597 per cent and 0.565 per cent respectively using the Gini coefficient. Income inequality in the coastal region is linked to historical injustices where large tracts of land were allocated to nonresidents, leaving the locals as squatters. This inequality has led to severe poverty in the region leading the squatters to live impoverished lifestyles with minimal access to basic amenities such as schools and healthcare facilities.  This has also led to increased levels of insecurity in those areas due to high unemployment rates especially in urban areas. In the former Nyanza province, twice as many children die before their first birthday than children living in the Rift Valley – that's 133 to 61 deaths per 1,000 live births, respectively.

Poverty levels in different regions vary greatly. The percentage of people living below the poverty line in Nairobi is 44 per cent. However, only eight per cent of the population living in Woodley, Kibera Subcounty, live under the poverty line while 87 per cent of the population in Laini Saba in the same sub-county live under the line.

In a country where employment in the public sector is key, the bias in hiring of those who work in the civil service and other state agencies is mirrored in poverty profiles. In its report published in 2012, the National Cohesion and Integration Commission, brought out the glaring disparities in access to government employment opportunities. More than half of Kenya’s ethnic groups are only marginally represented in the Civil Service – the country’s largest employer, where only 20 out of over 43 listed Kenyan communities are statistically visible. Some 23 communities have less than 1 per cent presence in the Civil Service 

The report shows that only seven communities – the Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luhya, Kamba, Luo, Kisii and Meru – have a representation above 5 per cent in the Civil Service. All the other communities’ representation is below 5 per cent. Five of these communities – the Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luhya, Kamba and Luo – occupy nearly 70 per cent of Civil Service employment. Although they are the most populous, their numbers in the Civil Service are at variance with their population size. 

But the above global figures still hide the disparities. A keener look reveals that there is a variance between a community’s share of population and share of civil service posts. Where some communities have a greater share of civil service jobs than their population, others have a lesser one. The Kikuyu and the Kalenjin have a disproportionate share of civil service posts compared to their population. Their proportion in the Civil Service exceeds the size of their share in the national population. The Kikuyu, who account for 17 per cent of Kenya’s population holds 22.3 per cent of civil service jobs – giving a variance +5 per cent. They are followed by the Kalenjin at 13 per cent but comprising 17 per cent of civil service (+4 per cent variance); the Meru at 4.4 per cent constituting 5.9 per cent of the civil service (+1.5 per cent); and the Embu, who are 0.9 per cent of the national population but hog 2 per cent of civil service jobs, giving a variance of +1.1 per cent. 

This contrasts with communities whose presence in the civil service is lower than their share of the population. These are the Luhyia, comprising 14.2 per cent but holding 11.3 per cent of civil service jobs, giving a variance of – 2.9 per cent; Luo, at 11 per cent but constituting 9 per cent of the government workforce (-2 per cent);  Somali, Kamba, Turkana and Maasai. 

There are many explanations for these variances, including disparities in access to education, proximity to the location of Government offices as well as willingness to seek employment in the public service. Be that as it may, it is remarkable that a service once dominated by Europeans and Asians has so dramatically changed in its composition over 40 years. The emerging patterns of staffing suggest that power and leadership influenced the ethnic composition of the public service. 

The Kikuyu constitute the largest single dominant ethnic group in all ministries and departments, except in the Prisons Department and the Kenya Police. The Kalenjin are the second largest group in the Civil Service. They are also the most dominant group in the Prisons Department, and the Police Force. These two groups alone make up close to 40 per cent of the entire Civil Service. Their numbers in the Civil Service suggest a direct relationship with the tenure of the presidency, in that they have both had a member as President for over 20 years. 

Lack of access to education has been cited as undermining equitable hiring for the Civil Service across communities. Yet, the skewed recruitment into the Civil Service cuts across all job groups, including those that do not require high educational qualifications. In the lowest job groups – ABCD – the same seven major communities account for over 80 per cent of Civil Service jobs. Again, the number of those hired from each community is at variance with their population size. The communities that statistically insignificant remain outside this civil service group. 

The Constitution calls for ethnic diversity in the Civil Service. Article 232 (1) (h) requires ‘representation of Kenya’s diverse communities’ as one of the values and principles of the public service. 

Article 232 (1) (i)(ii) requires “affording adequate and equal opportunities for appointment, training, advancement, at all levels of the public service of the members of all ethnic groups.” 

A recruitment policy based purely on merit or competition may not give Kenyans a public service that represents the face of the country. Disparities in education infrastructure and imbalances in development generally mean that some communities are more likely to produce highly skilled people than others. It is these disparities in regional development and basic services that the country should have addressed in the past 50 years of independence. 

The disparities noted point to the country’s failure to identify ethnic inequalities as a challenge to national cohesion. There is a need to develop and implement policies that can reduce these inequalities. 

At the core of the BBI recommendations to enhance inclusivity are proposals that recognize that different regions of the country present different economic and cultural opportunities. It further proposes gender-sensitive budgeting as an essential component in eliminating obstacles that marginalise women in key spheres of development. While this is welcome, it merely scratches the surface of the problem, especially as far as skewed ethnic employment in the civil service is concerned. Countries that have experienced similar challenges of ethnic/racial exclusion like ours have resorted to constitutional instruments. This is what Singapore did. 

Singapore’s model of managing ethnic relations has been described as interactionist, rather than integrationist or assimilationist. This model acknowledges social heterogeneity and views the population to be composed of separate, distinct "races". In public policies, education, employment, housing, immigration, defence and national security policies are designed to ensure that each race retains and perpetuates its distinctiveness within a general framework of national interest.  The abortive OKOA Kenya constitutional amendment bill had proposed two amendments to cure ethnic exclusion: to ensure that each ethnic community does not exceed its share of national population in every cadre of the public service; and to ensure that at least 30 per cent of all civil service jobs are taken by ethnic minorities. In its referendum bill, the BBI steering Committee is advised to look at this proposal.

On shared prosperity, the report proposes a raft of measures that would promote entrepreneurship and put good cash in the pockets of young people, women and other groups surviving on the margins of the economy. The most outstanding include granting a 7-year tax holiday to start-up businesses by the youth. While this is welcome, there are hurdles faced by the young entrepreneurs that if not addressed will see many young people still unable to avail themselves of the incentives. One of these hurdles is lack of skills and mentorship. The other is pressure for loan repayment. For us to help our youth, the first intervention should be training and skills development; the second should be start-up grants to those who have acquired such skills as they are mentored in the world of business; and finally, those who have been successfully weaned from the foregoing interventions given credit facilities to expand their chosen lines of business. This would minimise the rate of failure of these enterprises and defaulting on loans even if the rates were concessional. 

Biashara Mashinani policies and incentives, which are aimed at promoting village-level businesses, are a welcome proposal. However, the challenges faced by the youth similarly apply and should be address through both policy and administrative interventions so that Mama Mboga, persons with disabilities and village artisans and urban hawkers may benefit.

Regarding lending to priority sectors, the government would provide legal and regulatory guidelines for banks to lend a part of their portfolio to priority sectors. These are micro, small and medium businesses, export credit, manufacturing, housing, education, health and renewable energy. It also includes sanitation and waste management, and agriculture including livestock and fishing.

In a very timid manner, the report proposes that the State be held accountable on opening markets for labour-intensive manufactured Kenyan goods in EAC countries. This would result to more business opportunities for women and youth, taking into account the government’s support of women and youth-led enterprises through Uwezo Fund and Women Enterprise Fund. This matter needs to be given prominence and call for the fast-tracking on East African regional integration, including exploring “federation of the willing” option.

The taskforce has also suggested a Kubadili Plan intended to lift marginalised wards out of underdevelopment. It would identify the wards and establish a framework of building the social and economic infrastructure to facilitate development. This should not wait for the anticipated referendum.

Finally, the BBI report proposed making Kenya a 100 per cent e-service nation by digitising government services, processes, payment systems, and record keeping. While this is welcome, the danger lacks in “communicative capitalism.” This refers to a phase of knowledge- and technology-based commodity production in which information on a massive scale is produced, gathered, and sold for profit. What we now call the “information society” or “knowledge economy” sees the large-scale proletarianization of often highly-educated people in low-paying (often low-skilled) jobs, precariously scraping by to pay student loans, and living pay cheque to pay cheque.

Another more insidious feature of communicative capitalism is the role of technology companies in exploiting the participatory features of the knowledge economy (especially social media, digitized personal information archives, search engines, and online shopping) to harvest, store, organize, and sell consumer information to other companies. We all know something happens to the information we share on Facebook, input into Amazon or Google when we search, and are rarely surprised anymore when we see ads in our feeds and email for commodities that are similar to what we’ve searched for.

This aspect of the knowledge economy as free labor producing commoditized data for technological capital. Whenever we participate by watching the latest hit on Netflix, buy something from our favorite online store, or add information to our LinkedIn account, we are producing bits and pieces of our lives and interests that are transformed into products by technology companies. We do it for free and spend hours and hours on it. Technology companies are able to construct significant digital images and profiles of consumers, their needs and desires, their work and habits, their movements, alignments, and affiliations. I know it sounds like a scary science fiction movie, but it is true. 

The “knowledge economy” is most effective at using our desire for connection, for collectivity to promote the commodities that we help to build back onto us in ways that promise, but fail, to make up for the lack we experience under alienating capitalism. It successfully tweaks our desires and needs to negate our yearning for collectivity and convince us that our individuality is most important for a healthy life. It uses this false belief to divide us one from another and to absorb our dissent or criticisms or desire for political actions into its commodity-building software.

One dimension of this commodity-producing information behemoth is higher education. Once the domain of elites who transmitted the culture and civilization of the wealthy, higher education, by the mid-twentieth century had become a domain of working-class struggle and class mobility.

Nairobi, 18 March 2020

45TH ANNIVERSARY OF JM KARIUKI’S ASSASSINATION: DOWN THE MEMORY LANE

By Oduor Ong'wen

Today is a red-letter day. On this day, forty-five years ago, Josiah Mwangi Kariuki (popularly known simply as JM), a freedom fighter, politician and successful businessman was murdered. His badly mutilated and decaying remains were discovered a few days later dumped in the Ngong Forest, a place then known to be roamed by hungry hyenas every night. But why would someone or some people want to eliminate the Nyandarua North legislator so badly that he or they would liquidate him in this most heinous manner?

The events leading to this gruesome murder were the kind of stuff that would attract Hollywood movie producers or fiction writers of crime thrillers. According to the evidence that was pieced up then and later enriched over a period of time thereafter, somebody had decided well before that fateful Sunday of March 2 that that JM had to be eliminated. President Kenyatta was old and not enjoying the best of health. Many hangers on around the President, having eliminated Tom Mboya in July 1969, believed that JM had his eyes on the presidency and was therefore the next piece of nuisance to be got rid of. Besides, JM had a dashing style and struck a powerful chord with the masses. This earned him bitter enemies within the Kenyatta State House. 

The scheme to do away with JM is said to have been developed well before the first post-independence general elections in 1969. For JM, these elections provided him a chance to demonstrate his organisational capabilities and the respect he commanded among colleagues. The elections came not only some five months after the elimination of Mboya but barely six weeks after the Kisumu massacre, the banning of the increasingly popular Kenya People’s Union (KPU) and the detention without trial of the entire KPU leadership led by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. It was the beginning of the increasingly radical JM projected through word and deed, snipping at the Kenyatta government at every opportunity. Speaking during a student graduation at Highridge Teachers College in early 1970, he said that the Kenya Government had betrayed the vision of the freedom fighters. New black settlers had only replaced colonial white settlers. He told a dumbfounded crowd: "I believe firmly that substituting Kamau for Smith, Odongo for Jones and Kiplagat for Keith won't solve what the gallant fighters of our uhuru considered an imposed and undesirable social injustice". A few weeks later he received a standing ovation at the University of Nairobi when he declared: "It takes more than a National Anthem, however stirring; a National Flag, however beautiful; a National Court of Arms, however distinctive, to create a nation". Later, he spoke to Uganda's Makerere University and declared Kenya's policy on African Socialism a hoax. 

JM was now the man to watch. A GEMA delegation called on Kenyatta to complain about the MP. But it is reported that Kenyatta dismissed their worries, saying JM was "just a young inexperienced bull that doesn't know from which side to mount a cow". But clearly others did not think so. 

A scheme was put in place to slow him down by denying him permits to hold or address meetings. The restriction was extended even to innocuous gatherings like family parties. A birthday party he had scheduled for March 21, 1971,was cancelled at the eleventh hour by the State. And on January 1, 1972, a huge rally he had organised to be attended by a number of cabinet ministers and MPs was cancelled at the last minute. An incensed JM later told Parliament: "This anti-JM campaign is now bordering on stupidity". Denied a chance to speak outside Parliament, JM turned to the floor of the House to communicate. The then Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Dr. Munyua Waiyaki, would later recall that "JM would call and ask me not to miss Parliament as he was preparing a bombshell. He particularly liked the days when I was in the Chair as he knew I wouldn't deny him a chance to say whatever he wanted". 

JM's political enemies went on the offensive against him in the run up to the October 1974 General Election. All his campaign meetings, except one, were cancelled. He was virtually banned from visiting his constituency during the campaigns. In the meantime, Nakuru's Mayor, Mburu Gichua had camped in Nyandarua North with instructions to ensure that JM didn't go back to Parliament. To the great chagrin of his detractors, JM retained the seat with three times more votes than the combined total of his opponents. During the swearing-in of the new Parliament in November 1974, MPs gave JM a standing ovation. It rivaled the applause they had just given Kenyatta, who was in the Chamber. 

It was about this time that secret meetings began in Nakuru and in the city on how to stop JM. Taped speeches of his addresses were played to Kenyatta but it is said Mzee was not alarmed. He only suggested that the MP should be warned to change his ways. According to the late former Nakuru Town MP Mark Mwithaga, the State House clique that wanted JM eliminated was itself interested in keeping a hold on the presidency after Kenyatta. Which is why they held meetings in Nakuru and resolved that JM must die despite Kenyatta’s obvious reluctance.

JM's other strategy was to give generously to development projects. Not only did the debonair Nyandarua North MP give generously to charity, but his speeches were increasingly getting favour and approval with the Kenyan masses. His contributions to Harambees were also unsettling not only to Kenyatta’s courtiers, but to the King himself. For instance, he was known to have given the princely sum of Sh 80,000 to a public cause at a time when the President's highest known donation was Sh 3,000 to the Jomo Kenyatta College of Agriculture at Juja. The contributions aroused suspicion that foreigners who preferred him as a future president of Kenya were externally funding him. Propaganda was hatched and popularized that Chinese communists were behind JM's seemingly endless resources. But his widow Terry in a later media interview denied that JM had any foreign backer. "For all the time I lived with him, he never held a secret bank account. In any case, the government had the machinery to uncover such an account had it existed", she said. 

JM’s repeated harsh verdict on the growing inequalities and commentaries in favour of a more caring society founded on social justice did not help matters. On the 10th anniversary of Kenya's independence (1973), old Jomo joyfully extolled the country's achievements while JM remarked elsewhere that Kenya had become a country of ten millionaires and ten million beggars. 

In early 1975, the first bombs to strike independent Kenya exploded. In the month of February, there were two detonations in Nairobi’s Central Business District. The first blast was inside the lavatories of the then Starlight Night Club on Valley Road (the spot where Integrity House now stands) and in a Travel Information Office in front of the Hilton Hotel. The day after the second explosion, JM Kariuki revealed in Parliament that his car had been hit ‘by what seemed to be bullets’. There were rumours of a botched attempt on his life.  They were followed by a more serious bomb blast in a Mombasa-bound bus on February 28 at the terminus of the OTC buses long Nairobi’s Racecourse Road. The explosion killed 28 people and left about 100 people injured. Despite a massive public outcry and a police manhunt, no arrests were made. For several days thereafter, the city lived in fear, destabilised by numerous telephone bomb hoaxes. 

It was clear that someone or a group was creating a climate of fear and despondency. But the Kenyatta government took Kenyans on a diversionary path. The nation told that this bomb was the handiwork of a group called Maskini Liberation Organisation (MLO). In the months preceding these bombings, leaflets had been distributed all over Kenya claiming that JM, Charles Rubia and five other ‘dissidents’ were the trustees of the MLO. This disinformation campaign was followed by a series of bomb hoaxes in the form of anonymous phone calls to the police and media houses. None of them ever came to anything.  This was not until after there was an actual explosion at the popular Starlight club. The call to the Central Police Station was not treated with much seriousness given that they all ended up chasing a hoax every time they received these bomb alerts. Two hours after the call was made, a bomb did go off at the Tour Information Office. There is often no mention of any casualties or injuries at the second bombing, but it is likely that there were a few.

On March 2 1975, two days after the bus blast, top security officials, among them Ben Gethi, who was the Commandant of the paramilitary General Service Unit (GSU) of the Kenya Police, are said to have publicly accosted JM outside the Hilton. He had been followed by the police throughout the day, including police reservist Patrick Shaw. Gethi reportedly asked JM to accompany the Security officials into a convoy of cars and took him to an unknown destination. 

After JM’s disappearance, there was a lull of five days as his friends and family members tried to find out his whereabouts. Rumours began circulating that he had been detained without trial – a phenomenon that was the hallmark of Kenyatta dictatorship. Finally, on March 7, Vice President Daniel arap Moi who was also the Home Affairs Minister told Parliament that JM Kariuki was on a business trip to Zambia. All along, this was diversionary as top security honchos in his ministry were aware that JM’s partly decomposed body was lying at the City Mortuary. The police had sent the corpse to the mortuary as an “unidentified African male.” The same day of Tipis’ appeal, Kenyatta, on his way back to Nairobi from a month-long stay in Nakuru, made a thinly veiled speech that appealed for order, and warned ‘the government would have no mercy on any individual or group that attempted to disrupt peace and harmony in Kenya. It was then not obvious but Kenyatta apparently knew what was to come.

On Saturday March 8, the Daily Nation reported that JM Kariuki was in Zambia on a business trip, although the news desk already had sworn statements that the corpse in the city morgue was JM’s; editor-in-chief George Githii ordered a reluctant news desk to print this misinformation. On March 11, nine days after his abduction, a person who identified himself as “Israeli businessman” telephoned Terry Kariuki, JM’s third wife, and asked: “Have you checked whether your husband is lying at the morgue?”  Mrs Kariuki informed the anonymous caller that the family had been to the Nairobi City Mortuary twice. The caller said, “Just check again” and disconnected. 

After collecting herself following this terse hint, Mrs Kariuki called her two co-wives, Nyambura and Mwikali. Kariuki’s three wives met at the mortuary and had no difficulty identifying his partially decomposed body. Though the face was disfigured, the body was in the same green jacket and a dotted red scarf JM had worn on the morning he left home never to return. The widowed women screamed inside the morgue, after which armed GSU personnel sealed off the place. At the same time Vice President Moi was making a statement, reporting that Kariuki’s whereabouts were still unknown. On March 12, Police Commissioner Bernard Hinga finally confirmed that JM Kariuki was dead, killed by two bullet wounds. He claimed that the ‘partial decomposition’ of the body made identification impossible.

Hinga’s pronouncement was greeted by a mass outpouring of popular anger amid collective national grief. As soon as JM’s death became public, angry students at the University of Nairobi staged massive demonstrations, which were violently dispersed by the GSU. Large crowds gathered around street corners as the police tried to cordon off roads leading into Nairobi. Most shops and schools in Nairobi and environs closed down. The media reported that, fearing public attacks, several ministers removed the flags of office from their cars and fled in fear.

Kariuki’s death also roused the National Assembly into open hostility to and defiance of the Executive. MPs immediately demanded an investigation into the murder. Moi publicly subjected himself to ridicule before Parliament, swearing that he had had no idea that JM Kariuki was dead, and was only repeating what officials had told him: “I did it in good faith. I am sorry, I am sorry.” 

On March 14, parliament unanimously voted to appoint a  Select Committee to investigate the murder. The committee was chaired by Elijah Mwangale , the MP for Bungoma East Constituency, and it included Martin Joseph Shikuku of Butere, Jean Marie Seroney of Tinderet and other friends of Kariuki’s. The Kenyatta administration, infamous for exercising iron grip over the legislature, appeared to have lost control of Parliament completely; there was talk of the murder as being Kenya’s Watergate ( an eavesdropping scandal that had hit the US a few months prior, leading to the impeachment and resignation of President Richard Nixon).  In the meantime, Kenyatta, furious at the ministers’ weakness, had summoned an emergency Cabinet meeting, where, one by one, he forced each minister to declare continued loyalty to him.

The entire cabinet was to boycott JM’s burial. Mwai Kibaki was the only government minister that attended JM’s funeral in Gilgil, stressing he was there not in his capacity as a cabinet minister but as a friend of the late JM’s. Central Provincial Commissioner Simeon Nyachae bravely represented the government, but faced deep hostility and was unable to read Kenyatta’s condolence messages. Even the churches were roused into opposition, with a young Kikuyu Anglican cleric David Gitari (later the Archbishop), particularly outspoken in his criticism in a series of life radio broadcast, Kenyatta and senior ministers lay low, avoiding public events. There appears to have been hatched a plot of misinforming Kenyans over this matter with a shocking zeal. In a matter of ten days, Kenya was transformed from a nation of relative calm to a nation in crisis.

Although I was only a Form Two student, I followed very keenly the developments in the JM Kariuki inquiry, particularly the sharp analyses that Hilary Ng’weno and his team provided in the Weekly Review. For me June 3, 1975 was a day of great expectation - and overpowering tension. The team investigating JM's murder had completed its work and was due to table their report in Parliament. Elijah Mwangale, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee, according to Weekly Review, was in conference with his 13 members in Room 7 on the first floor of Parliament Buildings, going over the details of the 38-page report when word came through the Clerk's office that the Committee was required at State House, Nairobi. 

The Committee was reported to have made three copies of the report. Mwangale reportedly took one with him. The other two were each put in the "custody" of the then Butere MP Martin Shikuku and Diriye Amin, then MP for Wajir East. Their instructions were simple: They were not to leave the precincts of Parliament until the afternoon session of the House was over. Meanwhile, Mwangale left for State House with a few members of his committee, among them Starehe MP Charles Rubia and Lurambi North MP Burudi Nabwera. The two MPs with the other copies were "policed" by other MPs. Suspicions were high. Attempts to sabotage efforts to table the report could not be ruled out. The tension was aggravated at 2.30 p.m. when the afternoon session of the House started without any word on when the Mwangale team would return. 

It was reported that at State House, when Mwangale and his team faced Kenyatta, they were asked one question: Why were the names of Cabinet Minister Mbiyu Koinange and that of the president's bodyguard, Senior Supt of Police Arthur Wanyoike wa Thungu, in the report? 

Rubia: "Kama ni hivyo Mzee, tunaweza kuondoa hayo majina tu alafu tuipeleke bunge" ("If that is the case Mzee we can just delete the two names and thereafter we table it in Parliament"). 

Kenyatta: "Kama ni hivyo, sawa sawa"! ("It’s alright if you can do that"). 

Kenyatta is said to have given Mwangale a green pen. He made him delete the two names and sign against each deletion. Back in Parliament, Shikuku and Diriye entered the Chamber with their copies clutched under their arms. Without warning, Mwangale and his team entered the Chamber, eliciting sighs of relief, foot-thumping and loud cheers. Mwangale tabled the report minus the two names. 

As we mark this 45^th anniversary of JM’s brutal murder, I cannot help but marvel at how far we slaves have come!

Nairobi, March 2, 2020.