BUILDING BRIDGES AND OUR PROPENSITY TO FLY LIKE CHICKEN

By Oduor Ong'wen

Kenyans have learned, practiced and perfected the art of flying like chicken. Like most birds, chicken can also fly. But unlike other birds, they cannot soar high and only fly short distances. This is what Kenyans have done at every stage in our struggles for nationhood. We have gallantly fought to assert and defend our independence and forge a nation out of our many nationalities. But we have also undone these efforts with alacrity. The latest episode in this one step forward two steps back journey is being replayed in the Building Bridges Initiative conversation.

While it was gratifying to see everyone troop to Mombasa last weekend to declare their support for the BBI, it is not lost on keen observers that many of the politicians were and still are talking with both sides of their mouth. The Naivasha retreat by a section of Jubilee politicians underscores how skin deep our nationhood quest is. Every time we thought we had got it right, we have ended up shooting ourselves in the foot, thanks to our unwavering allegiance to sectarianism and self-aggrandisement. It happened immediately after the attainment of independence when the nationalist fervour was neutered less than two years later. There followed a long period of autocracy, repression and the emergence of unrepentant looting cabals in the formal and deep state. The nadir was almost three decades of, first de facto and later de jure, one-party, one-person rule.  It took the courage of a few Kenyans – workers, peasants, university dons and students, clergy and various professionals – to mobilise the nation and end the autocratic regime and return Kenya to democratic and accountable system of governance. But we once again flew too low and for a very short distance. The much-hyped Second Liberation was outflanked, encircled and aborted.

Another decade of sustained struggle marked by twists and turns spiced with arrests, teargas, extra-judicial executions and political chicanery finally led to a National Constitutional Conference at Bomas of Kenya that gave us a progressive draft constitution that was immediately nipped in the bud. It took a national madness of us slaughtering each other, burning people who had sought refuge in churches, ethnic cleansing and mass displacement of “visitor populations” in 2007/2008 for us to finally overhaul the Constitution – but ending up with the Bomas Draft being substantially diluted. Again, at this juncture in 2010, we thought we as a country had exorcised the ghosts that have always stood on our path to forging a nation. Once again we aimed high but flew low and a very short distance.

Why is it that our attempts at forging nationhood are always thwarted when every promise is there for all to see as happened immediately after 1963, in 2004 and in 2010? In my view, it is because we have not been able to give appropriate appreciation to the reality of being a socially diverse society. Unlike countries that found themselves in similar situations like South Africa or Tanzania that were able to forge nations out of ethnically diverse countries, here in Kenya were either quick to deny the motive force that ethnic diversity is or retreated and submitted ourselves to its most backward dictates. We either consciously or otherwise evaded confronting what has become known as The National Question.

We have naively assumed that a Luhya labourer at a construction site in Nairobi would stand in solidarity with a fellow Gikuyu labourer because their class interests dictate that they do so. In our romanticisation of class struggle, it is easy to lump the Kamba and Kalenjin policemen and assume they will collectively and in class solidarity confront the oppressor since “they have nothing to lose but their chains.” I aver that this would not happen unless and until we confront the National Question. A Luo worker would rather identify with a Luo manager as long as the promotions even at the factory shop floor will be based on the surname of the worker. A Digo petty trader is more comfortable defending a Taita parastatal chief accused of graft because they have been collectively oppressed as watu wa mwambao wa pwani.

We as Kenyans have over the last sixty years lived another lie. We aver that politicians will come and go but Kenya will always be there. Welcome to the fool’s paradise. The reality is that republics are the most delicate and potentially transient of political entities. Those who make this argument forget that barely two decades ago we had a country called Yugoslavia. Others were the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. These republics are no longer in existence. Closer home, we now have four neighbouring republics in the north fashioned out of two – from Ethiopia and Sudan, there now exist additional republics in Eritrea and South Sudan. At what cost do these people end up with these self-determining entities? More than three times, Kenyans have been at the verge of joining these cleavaged former “cohesive countries.” 

Let us remove our heads from the sand with alacrity. After August 2017, the threat of Kenya breaking into two or more republics was very real. As our politicians would say, it was going to be messy, noisy and I dare say bloody, and with consequences. But there are persons who call themselves leaders in this country but prone to mistaking threats of war for war games. I am not sure if President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga broached the National Question but the nine issues they identified in their Memorandum of Understanding form very good beacons for the discussion thereof. A look at contemporary history would make those of us that care for this entity called Kenya take the BBI-triggered conversation very seriously.

In both theory and practice, the national question was a subject that generated debate, controversy and disagreement within the liberation movement in South Africa. Despite widespread agreement that South Africa’s ruling class has cynically promoted tribalism and racialism, as well as fraudulent types of nationalism, in order to divide the oppressed and exploited majority, there is no consensus over how to define the nation., national identity, and nationalism. With the collapse of white minority rule and installation of a democratically elected government under the leadership of the majority this matter is far from settled if the recent xenophobic attacks against non-South African blacks is anything to go by.

As I have observed herein before, the national question lies at the heart of the creation of Yugoslavia in 1918 and of its destruction in 1991–92. A vision of national liberation and modernization brought the various South Slav nationalities together after World War I. However, seventy years later, a retrospective, mythical, antimodernist vision tore them apart. The appeal to the concept of self-determination was used to justify both.

At the center of China’s modernization drive as it concerns national minorities are four core issues: social equality, economic development, cultural autonomy, and national integration.

To establish the Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 at the high point of a revolutionary drama. Three aggregate forces soon contested Bolshevik power, whose future was far from secure. First, the Bolsheviks were faced with indigenous counterrevolutionary forces whose armies sought to overturn the revolution. Second, the armies of various Western capitalist states, including the United States and Japan, invaded the fledgling Bolshevik state. Finally, the Bolsheviks found themselves face to face, as the czars had been, with the problem of the non-Russian nationalities. By the mid-1920s, Soviet leaders had overcome the first two obstacles and firmly established state. The inability to conclude the resolution of the national question aided Soviet Union’s imperialist foes to undo the revolution.

Northern Ireland is a product of the opposing forces of imperialism and nationalism. Ireland was England’s first colony, and it has been said that the conquest of Ireland was the model for British imperialism. As a consequence of England’s attempt at domination, Ireland has been home to a variety of nationalist movements. The two nations’ mutual history offers many insights into the relationship between imperialism and nationalism, and the impact of class, ethnicity, social consciousness, and national movements on this relationship. 

As it has everywhere else, at least in Western history, the national question has evolved in Quebec in the context of the formation and transformation of the capitalist economy and the liberal democratic state. The internal market and wage relations that tend to homogenize economic practices within a social formation (money, weights and measures, salaries, free circulation of individuals and goods) were becoming institutionalized at the same time as the modem state was becoming the center of regulation of social relations and relations of power that are now administered in the name of the nation within the framework of popular. With its French heritage, Quebec has ad to fight to assert itself within the English speaking Canadian state, with intermittent threats of seceding. 

Even though more than seven decades have passed since India became independent, doubts remain in the minds of many regarding its future as a viable nation-state. Every now and again commentaries on the Indian political situation fill with speculation about how long Indian unity will hold. These speculations are inspired by Western notions of the nation-state where ideally language, religion, and political sovereignty have coterminous boundaries. 

A keen interrogation of the nine “Handshake Issues” at the centre of Kenya’s National Question. Can we develop and exhibit national ethos and ensure inclusivity and equality of opportunity without asking why we are likely to see a Luo slum dweller pelting a Gikuyu worker with stones as opposed to seeing these two confronting a Kalenjin industrialist to demand decent and dignified working conditions? From where I sit, it is impossible to eliminate corruption amongst us as long as looting of state coffers is seen as bringing home booties of conquest. State power will remain a trophy of victory – hence divisive and fraudulent electoral processes – to competing ethnic formations as long as the national question remains unresolved.

In the on-going discourse, the most fundamental question that has so far emerged was the proposal by coastal counties that Kenya should adopt a federal system. Let’s debate in earnest and develop the capacity to soar high and tenacity to go far. 

January 28, 2020

BBI CONSULTATIONS AND FIGHTING WASTE AND SLEAZE

By Oduor Ong'wen

Yesterday, leaders from six counties of the former Nyanza Province organized a leaders’ meeting at Kisii Sports Club to interrogate together contents of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) report that was launched at the end of last year. The meeting brought together close to 4,000 leaders drawn from grassroots and comprising religious leaders, CBOs, women groups, small business associations, elected leaders (MCAs, MPs and governors), fisherfolk, trade unions.

The meeting invited experts that took the delegates through the key recommendations contained in the 156-page report after which the delegates gave their feedback based on the presentations. Thereafter, each delegate was given a hard copy of the report to take home and read. Resolutions were then adopted of which in my view the most important was that the process of public participation and discussion of the report should be taken to ward level.

Even before the delegates arrived in Kisii, the gathering was already condemned as unnecessary and a drain of public funds. None other than our Deputy President William Ruto led the chorus of condemnation. I find this to be a public display of either hypocrisy or confusion. But I doubt whether Ruto is confused. It’s not easy to confuse a PhD holder. So, the former is more likely and this is why:

During the national launch at the Bomas of Kenya on November 27, 2019 speaker after speaker, Ruto included, called for the document to be taken to the grassroots so that Wanjiku may read for self and give feedback. Indeed, leaders allied to the DP were the first to organize the first consultative meeting on the report at the Great Rift Valley Lodge. It was highly publicized but nobody faulted it. Was that consultation fine because the DP’s brigade did it or because it excluded grassroots leaders?

The most hilarious observation from persons faulting the public consultations launched by some of our governors is that it was a waste of public funds. Did I hear right? Deputy PORK William Ruto a defender of public funds? Am I the only visitor in Jerusalem? May I try to walk down the memory lane?

On October 18, 2016, President Uhuru Kenyatta convened at the State House what he dubbed ‘Anti-Corruption’ Summit. During the event, the Head of State lamented that he was unable to deal with rent seeking, which has become the hallmark of his administration. The image of the Commander-in-Chief of our defence forces, raising his arms in surrender and saying, nifanye nini jameni (what do you expect me to do) endures. This was an explicit admission by President Kenyatta that corruption was rife but he lacked the mechanism and support to deal with the vice.

When they emerged on the steps of Harambee House on March 9, 2018 to famously shake hands with Raila Odinga, corruption was one of the nine issues they committed to confronting head-on. Since then, we have seen reinvigoration of graft fighting agencies, high profile arrests and attempts at asset recovery. We are yet to see big shots serving jail terms, but we have a rule of law that would rather be faulted on account of granting suspects full rights than for violation of the same. Graft suspects have fully used and abused the loopholes provided by our celebrated Bill of Rights to delay cases; interfere with evidence and witnesses; and be detained in hospitals as opposed to gazetted custodial facilities.

It has become clear that the President never attempted to slay the dragon of corruption in his first term because his principal partner Ruto was unwilling. The DP has been mentioned severally in suspected corrupt deals. Apparently after the “Handshake,” President Kenyatta discovered there is something he can do about corruption and is acting.

In the fifty-six months of Jubilee’s first administration, Kenya witnessed at least 29 cases of mega scams involving more than Sh. 2.6 Trillion. This translates into roughly one major case of corruption every two months. Herein below, we recall some outstanding cases. 

Number One is the scam of “Hustler Jet.” Hardly a fortnight after the Jubilee Administration was sworn into office, the new regime was entangled in an irregular expenditure of Sh. 100 million where the Deputy President had hired a private jet to visit four African countries. Mission?  To lobby African Heads of State to support President Kenyatta and him in dealing with cases of crimes against humanity that they then faced at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague. It is instructive that less than two months earlier, then candidate Kenyatta had said that the cases were “personal challenges.”

Number two, it is in the public domain that Sh. 21 Billion of public funds was misappropriated in the scam involving the proposed construction of two dams Arror and Kimwarer in Elgeyo Marakwet counties. What did Dr. Ruto say about it? It was “only” Sh. 7 Billion. Among the most interesting payments were Sh. 15 million paid to New Italico Limited to supply bed sheets, pillows, towels, duvets and other beddings. Of what relevance were these items in dam construction? It’s alleged that the items were delivered in Mombasa yet the dams’ locations are almost one thousand kilometres. Sh. 11 Billion is said to have been paid upfront for insurance yet government guarantee would cost zero shillings. Other questionable payments included Sh. 10.2 million to Tusker Mattresses for supply of foodstuffs even before the project started; Sh. 6.2 million to Long Rock Engineering Limited to supply furniture and transport services; Sh. 100 million to CMC Di Rivenna Kenya for unspecified services; and Sh. 19.4 million paid to Highland Valuers for relocation and valuation services even though the land where the projects were to take place is still occupied. To Ruto, these payments and others were not a waste of public funds. 

Number three is the much-hyped Laptop Project for primary school learners. The Jubilee Alliance was to provide laptops to all children enrolling in Class One by January 2014. Seven years later, the project is yet to be implemented as it has been dogged by one scam after another in the tendering process.  The tender was nullified by the high court because ‘tenderpreneurs’ inflated it by Sh.1.4 Billion from Sh. 24.6 Billion to Sh. 26 billion.

Conflict had arisen between tendering companies and the Ministry of Education following accusations that the ministry gave top listing to Olive Telecommunications, an Indian company. Competitors Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Haier Electrical Appliances of China accused Olive of not meeting the basic tendering requirements as stipulated by national regulations. It emerged that Olive is not a device manufacturer but uses Chinese subcontractors to manufacture their Olive-branded electronic devices, contrary to the tender project's OEM (original equipment manufacturer) requirements. Kenyan tender regulations required that only OEMs could participate in the laptop bidding, according to media reports. This rule would effectively rule out Olive from participating in the tender since it could not prove it was an OEM. The Kenyan government decided to add this tender rule after it emerged that brokers had participated in the first round of tendering, which led to an inflation of proposed costs. Despite this requirement however, Olive was assigned the top position, as it allegedly pitched the lowest bid of KSh. 22 billion (US$261 million) compared to the Ksh 23 billion bid by HP and 24 billion shilling bid by Haier. Both HP and Haier had offered to establish Kenyan assembling plants for the laptops. But Olive would not be manufacturing the devices locally, according to reports.

Fourth was the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project. This was one of the flagship projects of the Grand Coalition Government under Vision 2030. The exiting Kibaki-Odinga government had processed tenders for the project and awarded China Roads and Bridges Corporation (CRBC) at Sh. 220 Billion for the Mombasa- Nairobi leg. When it came to power, the Jubilee Government cancelled this tender, then awarded it to the same company, through single sourcing, at Sh. 334 Billion (Sh. 114 Billion more). It was later inflated to Sh. 1.3 trillion (US$ 13.8 Billion) for the entire course. The subcontracting for civil works immediately went to a local company APEC whose directors remain unknown. 

At number five, we have the Eurobond. In his report of the Special Audit of Eurobond in 2016, the then Auditor General Edward Ouko observed that his office was unable ascertain how Sh. 215 Billion Eurobond proceeds were utilised.  

Scam number six was a Sh. 63.5 Billion terminal tendering. The project, located at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), was designed eight years ago to make Nairobi a premier aviation hub for Africa. The contract, signed in 2013 between the Authority and Anhui Construction Engineering Group, was a variation of the original contract signed in 2011, with the introduction of a new inflated provision for Sh9.5 Billion. The first contract signed in December 2011 between KAA and the company was for an agreed sum of Sh54 billion (US dollars 653.7 million).

The government later abandoned the project in April 2016, exposing the country to a loss of Sh. 20 Billion. This Sh. 20 Billion has been used by to build the towering Global Trade Centre (GTC) along Chiromo Road. If Ruto is so concerned about prudent use of public funds, he should have been the first to raise alarm of such a colossal sum being siphoned from the Kenyan tax payer to fund a private enterprise.

Other public heists include the National Youth Service (NYS), which paid out millions to a company five months before it was registered; the Kenya Pipeline scams, Kenya Power; and the Geothermal Development Corporation mega scandals among others. We know whose surrogates head these parastatals.

Lastly, I still recall a scene reminiscent of the SOWETO massacre in Johannesburg, South Africa on 16^th June 1976, where Kenyan police tear-gassed, battoned and mercilessly kicked Langata Road Primary schoolchildren protesting against a move by a hotel owned by Ruto to seize their playground and turn it into a car park. After a long circus of denials and name-calling, Ruto admitted to both his ownership of Weston Hotel, and the fact that it is built on a piece of land acquired fraudulently from Kenya Civil Aviation Authority.

Governors have not hidden the fact that the money used for these consultations have come from county government coffers. Ruto chairs the Intergovernmental Budget and Economic Council (IBEC) and is aware that each county government appropriates money for public participation. He has just panicked because the contents of the BBI report are being taken to the ordinary citizen thereby denying him and his troops opportunity for disinformation. 

Indeed, panic is real.

 January 11, 2020

THE YEAR RUTO AND HIS CLOWNS DANCED LAME

By Oduor Ong'wen

The Year 2019 is behind us. And the year was marked by plenty of tragi-comic shows. Forget about Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko clowning as traffic Marshall at a train station in Paris. That one is now the new normal for the Governor and would not make a headline even of a student-training publication in some makeshift media school in the neighbourhood of Mua Hills. I know many are occupied with wonder of how we let a thug and clown like this to run and ruin the most important county in the nation with more than 4 million people. Indeed East Africa’s second largest economy after Kenya. But the arch-clown of 2019 remains one William Kipchirchir Samoei arap Ruto, who tragically also doubles as the Deputy President of the Republic of Kenya.

Unlike veteran scribe Philip Ochieng’, I do not wish to accuse the press. However, I know that in Kenya the profession is now heavily infested with lazy, rent-seeking quarks masquerading as journalists. So, when they refer to Ruto as “front-runner” in 2022 presidential race, I just nod in acknowledgement that the capture is indeed complete. All I know is that apart from Ruto, no [serious] contestant has declared their candidature for the position of President of the Republic of Kenya (PORK) in the August 2022 elections. So, Ruto is running against himself and leading.  Although uttered in a different context, Malindi legislator Aisha Jumwa was right when she declared that Ruto is not a front-runner but the only runner. I was socialised to regard a person who enters the track before the race to run alone as either insane or a clown. But I have no reason to believe that our Deputy President is insane. That would be a ground for his removal from that lofty office.

In the race against himself, Ruto has come to believe that he is running against Raila Odinga. This is crap even if it’s his obsession. Odinga has not said he will be in the presidential race when that time comes. Many have urged him to while a sizeable number even have doubts if he will. But that has not stopped Ruto from getting busy on the campaign trail against him. Clowns are made of this. 

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s advisors get cheeky at times. One of them must have counselled him that if you want to make Ruto go berserk then start talking and being friendly to Raila Odinga. The man from Sugoi took the bait and swallowed it hook, line and sinker – and it is working marvellously. What with the clowns’ choir conducted by the DP himself and comprising such crooners and poets like Kipchumba Murkomen, Aden Duale and Oscar Sudi?

Since the famous “Handshake” between Kenyatta and Odinga, Ruto and his orchestra had been practising two hits that they released in 2019. One is that Raila has been in politics forever and should retire. The other is that Kenya has been ruled by dynasties since independence and it was time for son of a peasant. Yes, it’s true that Raila Odinga has been in politics of resistance against dictatorship, looting of public coffers and impunity for a long time. Nine of those years he was in detention in such maximum security facilities as Kamiti, Manyani, Shimo La Tewa and Naivasha prisons while Ruto was stealing our money and land. If at all Ruto has set foot in those jails, it was as a minister where the inmates’ pain were increased manifold by being paraded like prize bulls for him to inspect. 

Another of those years in politics Odinga spent in exile when repressive forces that Ruto was then serving as Secretary of Youth for KANU ’92 (YK92) tried to assassinate him. Again, Ruto has never been a refugee all his life and cannot comprehend the pain and indignity that comes with it. As a matter of fact, Ruto has never done anything else other than being in bad politics, robbing the public and private citizens and being linked to gangs notorious for killing people. That is his resume and we have seen it “live live” for decades. It is going to be on the table come 2022. Stories have been told about the Kiambaa Church massacre in 2007 where we saw kids being thrown back into a burning church when they tried to escape. Many accusing fingers have pointed towards one direction and the International Criminal Court indicted Bill Ruto. Sad indeed.

Now, we take a look at Dynasty versus Hustler narrative. My dictionary defines a dynasty as a line of hereditary rulers of a country. Its broader meaning is a succession of people from the same family who play a prominent role in business, politics or another field. A hustler, on the other hand is defined as a person adept at illicit dealing e.g. a drug peddler, pimp, or one who sells contraband goods. The second meaning of a hustler is a prostitute. Given these clear meanings, I am not sure whether this nation wants to engage in this Dynasty-Hustler diversion. Trying to be clever by half, Ruto wants to engage the country in a class debate, which to me is welcome. If we were to trigger a class struggle pitting owners of means of production (exploiters) on one side and providers of labor (the exploited) on the other, I have no doubt which side Ruto would be.

Ruto is a Botanist and so he might not be well versed with our country’s history. If he were, he would know that Raila was born to a schoolteacher who had to quit his teaching job in protest against racism and paternalistic attitude of white teachers against their African colleagues. He was Vice President for less than 16 months (December 1964-April 1966) and spent the remaining thirty years fighting alongside the people against land grabbing, entrenched human rights violations, assassinations, one-party dictatorship and corruption amongst other ills. This came with stints in detention and house arrests. These are by no means trappings of power associated with dynasties.

Ruto says he was born poor and went to school with no shoes. So was I. It’s all right to be born poor in an impoverished country like Kenya. Many of us can relate with that. It is also normal for persons from such backgrounds to rise, through sheer personal efforts, to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, accountants, teachers etc. and lead comfortable lives. 

But when Ruto boasts now that he is big and rich, the question is how he got there. Stealing public and private lands like those belonging to the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority or Ngong Forest or poor Muteshi’s 100 acres. That is the truth, simple and clear. Ruto is basically telling Kenyans that he has been a very successful thief his entire adult life and for that Kenyans should reward him with the presidency. Is he clowning when he tells us that he is a “hustler” because he sold chicken? Unless he was selling stolen chicken. Otherwise selling chicken is not hustling.

What should alarm Kenyans is that Ruto isn’t just running against himself. He is clearly sending us a warning on what to expect in the unlikely event that he becomes PORK. A public statement released by Duale, the Majority Leader in the National Assembly, cannot go unnoticed. In it, Duale delves into folklore about a shepherd who found abandoned lions in the bushes and brought them home to nurture them. Later, the lion cubs become a menace to his lambs, dogs and family.  The shepherd eventually throws the lions back to the bush where they “fade away.” 

Duale uses the story to warn that Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i and his Principal Secretary Karanja Kibicho and no doubt many others will face the same fate as those who enjoyed power during Jomo Kenyatta, Moi, and Mwai Kibaki presidencies when there is a change in administration. He mentions past public servants like Charles Njonjo, Kihika Kimani, Hezekiah Oyugi, Christopher Murungaru and many others. Duale’s message is unambiguous: civil servants considered nasty to his King Ruto will be dealt with once the “cycle” of power comes to the DP and his crew.

Now you can talk about whatever you want but threatening public officials that you will give them the Kihika Kimani treatment is ominous. Kihika worked with some rogue civil servants like Kim Gatende and Provincial Police Chief James Mungai as well as Nakuru Mayor Mburu Gichua to routinely harass Moi and was forced to run into exile as soon as Moi took power to save his life. Is that what awaits some Kenyans if Ruto were to take power from Uhuru?  We take notice that Duale’s warning is not some stupid speech made at a funeral in some village. It is an official statement released to the media.

Even Jomo Kenyatta didn’t do anything like that. He made nasty remarks and insulted people but did not issue official public warnings. He was even implicated in political killings and Moi did the same but this era of public warnings is a new thing. We shudder to imagine how many other people are in this list of those who will face the wrath of the assumed next regime?

Nairobi, January 4, 2020.

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