The Making of an Imperial Presidency,Uhuru

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: The Choices Facing Kenya and the Kenyattas

By John Githongo

Kenyans on Twitter (#KOT) – a fraternity not to be messed with on global social media – recently took on the IMF following the announcement that the Fund had approved another US$2.34 billion facility for the Kenyan government. The loan is intended to mitigate the fiscal crunch that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. #KOT’s concern was that the current ruling elite is so corrupt that not only have they stolen and misspent what they had previously borrowed, leading to a public debt portfolio of US$70 billion and rising, they will steal and misspend this new amount as well.

The IMF was forced to respond virtually – which was interesting – explaining the governance conditionalities attached to this latest facility. The Fund’s explanation did little to calm Kenyans and the debate still rages; for many, simply put, the IMF is being asked why it is serving whiskey to an alcoholic on condition that the alcoholic only takes a tot a day and imbibes “carefully”. Kenyans on Twitter believe they know their government better; they are likely right. Unfortunately, no matter how well intentioned, the IMF toolkit is limited – the austerity spanner, loan wrench, conditionality screwdrivers and advisory nuts and bolts, these have been used before, in the 1990s, but this time the consumer is far more sceptical, and with good reason.

We are in the middle of major political realignments as we head into the 2022 general election, with President Uhuru Kenyatta currently serving his last term but clearly keen on a transition that will leave his family’s influence intact. The overall behaviour of the regime, and the elite at its core, is imbued with an assumption of impunity; they have since independence eluded accountability. This impunity gene in our politics can be traced back to the creation of Kenya by the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEA), a group of businessmen with a royal charter to grab, tax, kill and essentially enslave the population at will. A combination of corruption, profligacy, incompetence, rapacious personalised accumulation, spiralling debt and now the devastating COVID-19 epidemic has – ironically – created the circumstances for the elite to think its way out of a crisis of its own making; as they say, never let a good crisis go to waste. Indeed, others have been here before.

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Some senior civil servants – and even the president himself, so I am told – are known to be fans of Lee Kuan Yew’s book From Third World to First: The Singapore Story – 1965-2000 and share it liberally among colleagues. If they have read it, it is not always clear that they have understood it. A number of Asian countries – notably Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and to a lesser extent Thailand and Malaysia – used the crisis conditions following the Second World War to change the behaviour of their elite and transform their economies and societies. As Ken Ohashi – one-time Senior Economic Advisor to the Kenyan Presidency – explained in a feature carried in The Standard, the East Asian success stories emerged significantly out of a shift away from an “elite-favouring, rent-seeking centred economy” to economies structured to advance when individuals and companies come up with new ideas and are spurred by fair competition. Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore in particular took a dramatic shift away from our elite’s rent-seeking model of business.

In South Korea, President Park Chung-hee, who came to power in a military coup in 1961, ended the Kenyan style of corruption-oriented business by the political and commercial elite. He called in leaders of the traditional, largely family-owned businesses (the chaebols) and essentially forced them to become internationally competitive manufacturers. Ultimately, the majority couldn’t survive in an environment where they could not manipulate government policy and fiddle the books. But the Samsungs, Hyundais etc., flourished and are global giants today. As Ohashi argues, “Corruption never disappeared, but it ceased to be the mainstay of business strategy . . . Taiwan and Singapore managed to revamp the fundamental business culture in a similar way and created an environment in which most companies focused singularly on producing competitive and increasingly higher-value products.”

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In Kenya’s history, the Jubilee regime has been the most sophisticated at managing the perceptions of its performance. Jubilee’s launches of bridges, roads, government programmes and other initiatives are slick and the speeches well written. This is true even when they are launching the same project multiple times. They have also spent more money than any other previous regime doing this. However, in the digital age, they have ultimately struggled and the narrative their media managers try to sell is so far removed from reality that the entire enterprise – even augmented by the likes of Cambridge Analytica – has collapsed in on itself.

This demonstrates the impact social media has had on the political terrain not only in Kenya but all over the world. As governments have become increasingly authoritarian and as the globalisation model has faltered, social media has become a space that is freer than the streets, particularly for the youth. As a result, more and more governments across the developing world have resorted to private intelligence, PR and other reputational management companies to manage this space while others, especially during elections, simply switch off the internet, a tactic that Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Benin, Rwanda, Morocco, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda have resorted to in the recent past. However, this is not so easy in economies with a reasonably developed service sector and a relatively high use of financial technology.

In Kenya we have several governance balls in the air at the same time: elections (traditionally our season of grand theft); President Uhuru Kenyatta’s transition as he serves out his final term amid talk of changing the constitution and even holding a referendum to effect the change; spiralling corruption and debt; and the return of IMF conditionalities of the kind last witnessed in the 1990s. This time, however, and as I mentioned above, the IMF is confronted with a totally new demographic across Africa. It is overwhelmingly young – below 35; increasingly interconnected by technology; mistrustful of the World Banks and IMFs of this world, and also more aware of the inequities that the elites have wrought in the pre-pandemic era of globalisation.

Kenya’s political elite: hardened and resilient mystifiers

Still, Kenya has one of the continent’s most experienced and resilient political elites. They have over 50 years of experience in political wheeler-dealing, skulduggery, deal-making and sharing the loot from public coffers – uninterrupted by coups, major social meltdowns or grand economic experiments. The odd thing about the corruption perpetrated by an even minimally coherent elite is that it produces a stagnating political stability so long as there is enough loot to share around. It is not an ideal situation and it is fraught with deepening inequality and declining public trust in governance institutions and in the politicians themselves. Still, the guys at the top can hold on and even sustain a hegemon on the basis of backroom deals, understandings and accommodations. And with the right foreign friends this job is made even easier.

Currently, there is considerable bewilderment about the Kenyatta succession as our politicians position themselves for the 2022 elections. Part of this is deliberate mystification. Newspaper headlines sometimes seem to derive from a single photo of politicians at a meeting posted on Twitter where it’s not at all clear what the discussions were about. The mystification is also in part caused by the fact that there are no ideological or significant policy differences between the different competitors for the presidency. Even COVID-19 – the disruptor of the century – hasn’t changed their modus operandi.

The odd thing about the corruption perpetrated by an even minimally coherent elite is that it produces a stagnating political stability so long as there is enough loot to share around.

The pandemic has stripped naked the governance models of all nations and it has been surprising to see what is hidden underneath all the constitutions, institutions, platitudes and political theatre. It has led to a resurgence of authoritarianism where democracy was already in recession globally and there is disquiet that some states will fail. Add to this the fact that China is now a risen power and for the first time, under President Xi, is directly marketing its technocratic/meritocratic authoritarian model as an alternative to liberal democracy which is noisy and free but which can, as a result, be slower in delivering public goods and has, in recent years, produced dangerously comical leaders in some of the most developed countries in the world. China will clearly play a significant role in defining the post-pandemic geopolitical reality.

For our ruling elite, however, the confusion is compounded by the 2010 Constitution which has placed severe limitations on their capacity to disrupt both each other and the governance institutions for their personal political ends. Indeed, the 2010 Constitution was written specifically because of the elite’s penchant to manipulate the previous constitution to their political advantage, as witnessed from 1964 to the late 1990s. Some have described it as a “rule book for naughty boys”, full of self-executing provisions and with a level of detail in terms of institutional design that betrays a lack of trust on the part of its drafters that the elite have any real fidelity to the spirit of the document.

Kenyatta Inc.

What our current elite does now will determine what Kenya will look like in the coming decades. It is thus that Uhuru Kenyatta, who should be a lame duck by now, continues to play an energetic role in his own succession – not necessarily because of his grip on political matters but because of the Kenyattas’ unique private commercial achievements. In fact, there is some concern that all the realignments and political shenanigans could make the 2022 polls more destabilising than previous transition elections. Traditionally, incumbency elections in Kenya – where a head of state is going into elections to compete for another term – are the most violent, as was the case in 1992, 1997 and 2007. Transition elections, on the other hand, when a head of state is serving his last term, as in 2002 and 2013, are far more peaceful.

The Kenyatta family enterprise, whose foundation is built on land acquired during President Jomo Kenyatta’s tenure between 1964 and 1978, is now a highly diversified fledging multinational, with Brookside Dairies as its flagship and significant international shareholding. These commercial interests have been expanded, diversified and consolidated during Uhuru Kenyatta’s tenure as president. Chapter VI of the constitution on Leadership and Integrity – especially those of its provisions that touch on conflict of interest – does not exist in our political reality.

Meanwhile, public debt has accumulated so rapidly under the Kenyatta regime – Kenyans believe that much of it has been misappropriated – that the mess in public finances no longer has a technical fix, only a political one. Indeed, the outrage expressed by Kenyans on social media at the IMF’s US$2.3 billion facility was caused by the belief among many that this money will also be stolen. Some of the conditionalities the IMF has insisted on in apparent good faith – such as the reform of key state-owned enterprises – were particularly controversial because of the conviction among some that this was a green light for them to be taken over by the very people who precipitated the debt crisis in the first place.

Chapter VI of the constitution on Leadership and Integrity – especially those of its provisions that touch on conflict of interest – does not exist in our political reality.

Local real estate company Knight Frank estimated that by last year Kenya had over 3,000 dollar millionaires. The question that looms over the succession and transition currently underway – and which may explain why it is so confusing – is this: a small group of families have emerged from the last eight years spectacularly wealthy; how do they protect this wealth going forward? Similar questions faced elites in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, etc., especially after the Second World War, but the elites in those countries ultimately chose a generally inclusive form of meritocratic governance.

There are many elites who, having accumulated wealth which they wish to protect in perpetuity, choose to securitise and militarise their politics – essentially throw liberal constitutions out of the window and hold on to the power to steal through a mixture of manipulation, bribery and force. There are those who would argue that the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) is a vehicle to politically engineer the elite out of the structures imposed on them by the current constitution and essentially emerge with a political deal that serves all their political and commercial interests. Others argue that the elite inclusivity that informs the Building Bridges Initiative – expensive as it will be – is just what Kenya needs. This is a considerably more uncertain model than, say, the Taiwanese or South Korean ones, where the elites fashioned a political and constitutional arrangement that served not just their own interests but those of the entire population as well. Securing the peace and prosperity of the masses is the surest protection for the wealth of the elite.

The combination of factors – the impact of COVID-19; upcoming elections with all the realignments they imply; a volatile region; increasingly unmanageable debt; and, most importantly, the demographic challenge of a now thoroughly disillusioned youth who no longer believe politicians or trust their own governance institutions – will force some of the most consequential choices our hardened elite have ever made. Multinationals like the Kenyattas’ need political predictability and policy consistency unless they are in the extractive sector, selling alcohol, drugs or cigarettes rather than perishables like milk and yoghurt.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: The Choices Facing Kenya and the Kenyattas

By John Githongo Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

By John Githongo

Two days to the third Sagana State Lodge meeting, called by President Uhuru Kenyatta in the absence of his deputy William Ruto on 30 January 2021, 41 central Kenya MPs sent a no-holds- barred letter to Uhuru. The Sagana meeting came hot on the heels of a “state of the nation address to the Kikuyu people” at State House, Nairobi, on 18 January.

The 51-minute question and answer session — in reality a monologue from President Uhuru — was broadcast live on all the Kikuyu-language radio stations. The president was for the umpteenth time beseeching the Kikuyu voter to unquestioningly and unequivocally accept the logic of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), whose latest moniker is Building Billionaires Initiative.

The Building Bridges Initiative was birthed immediately after President Uhuru and Raila Odinga shook hands on 18 March 2018. Three years into the handshake, President Uhuru’s backyard has shunned the document and basically ignored the President’s pleas to support it. The exclusively ethnic meeting with the Kikuyu radio and television presenters and the Sagana State Lodge baraza were a concerted effort to bring the Kikuyu rank and file to his side. Among the salient issues that were contained in the MPs’ 12-page letter, four stood out for me:

“In Nyamakima, Gikomba, Kamukunji and on Taveta and Kirinyaga Roads, businesses have closed as besieged traders relocate to the rural areas to dress their wounds.”

“In the bitter cold of a freezing July [sic] at the height of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, hardworking Kenyans in Ruai and Kariobangi were woken up in the terrible turmoil of heavy machinery pulverising their homes, businesses and little hustles.”

“It has also been noted that you’ve never visited any part of Mt Kenya region to say thank you.”

“For eight years, between 2011–2018, you consistently and persistently cautioned us that Raila Odinga was Kenya’s foremost problem and pleaded with us to send him home for the country to move forward. The successful effort you made to persuade the people to render Raila Odinga unacceptable in Mt Kenya cannot be undone in your lifetime.”

That letter specifically addressed the Kikuyu people’s economic problems after the 2017 presidential elections that saw Uhuru’s win on 8 August 2017 cancelled by the Supreme Court of Kenya on 1 September only for him to win a pyrrhic victory 56 days later, on 26 October. Sworn-in on 28 November, Uhuru’s victory could not hold – hence the handshake just three months later. President Uhuru would later tell his Jubilee Party members that he could not have effectively ruled the country with Raila still in the opposition.

Kikuyus are the largest ethnic community conducting business in Gikomba, Kamukunji and Nyamakima and on Taveta and Kirinyaga Roads. The “hardworking Kenyans in Ruai and Kariobangi” referred to in the letter to Uhuru are Kikuyus. The “you cautioned us” statement also refers to the Kikuyu. But did not the president himself address an ethnic matter in an ethnic language, couched as a national question? The MPs might as well have written their letter in Kikuyu.

Three years into the handshake, President Uhuru’s backyard has shunned the document and basically ignored the President’s pleas to support it.

The Nyamakima debacle was reported in The Elephant in 2019. In July 2020, The Elephant published a piece about the Kariobangi North evictions. The brutal, state-sanctioned demolitions – the letter speaks of a “freezing July” but the evictions actually took place during a very cold month of May — were visited on the hapless impoverished ghetto dwellers. Thoroughly embarrassed, the government asked the Internal Security Principal Secretary’s office to identify all the victims of the evictions and indemnify them quietly away from the glare of the public and the press.

The 41 MPs were not invited to Sagana because they do not belong to President Uhuru Kenyatta’s wing of the Jubilee Party, dubbed Kieleweke, but belong to Tanga Tanga, a tag that connotes a loiterer. The MPs’ letter was a deft move by politicians who have detected dissent from rebellious peasants against President Uhuru and smelt a rat on a waddling president who is serving his lame- duck years and could therefore afford to tell him off without fear of recrimination. (In October 2019, The Elephant published a story titled The Rebels Within: The politics of Kieleweke and Tanga Tanga in Central Kenya.)

Immediately after his December holidays in his Murang’a County, on 30 December 2020, Senator Irungu Kang’ata penned “a letter to my president”. The long winding letter was just about one thing: “Mr President, you’re unpopular and not wanted in Mt Kenya region. And you know why. Period.” A month and a half after the letter was leaked to the press, Kang’ata was replaced as Senate Majority Whip by Kiambu County Senator Kimani Wamatangi on 9 February 2021. Kang’ata had replaced Nakuru County Senator Susan Kihika in May 2020; she was removed because she belongs to the Tanga Tanga team.

The address to the Kikuyu nation boomeranged on the beleaguered President, even as he hoped to frame his monologue as an “us vs them”, “us” being the Kikuyu and “them” being the Kalenjin. “How could the President have the audacity to tell the Kikuyu poverty stricken fellow that the government loses KSh2 billion every single day?” posed Stanislaus Njogu of the Kĩama Kĩa Ma (the Truth Council).

“The Kikuyus were very furious; if Uhuru thought he was impressing them, he had scored zero points,” Njogu, an elder from Kiambu County said after listening to the president calling them andũ aitũ (our people), Kikuyus decided that “Uhuru nĩ kwĩyarĩria ekũĩyaragĩria na kũoguo ecokeria.” President Uhuru had been talking to himself, therefore, he can as well answer himself. Njogu said many Kikuyus wanted President Uhuru to desist from using the royal “we” when referring to them, “we are no longer together”. The mzee said that is what some of the council members had told him.

The MPs’ letter was a deft move by politicians who have detected dissent from rebellious peasants against President Uhuru.

Kĩama Kĩa Ma, which is led by engineer Patrick Mwiru from Gatundu South, is a much bigger and more credible organisation than the Wachira Kiago-led Kikuyu Council of Elders. It is more active, more broad-based, has both a youthful and an older membership, the majority from Kiambu County.

The statement on the daily theft of KSh2 billion had particularly infuriated ordinary Kikuyus: “Gũtirĩ mũici na mũcũthĩrĩria,” there is no thief and onlooker, said a middle-aged man who had just paid his dues – a sacrificial lamb – to the Truth Council in order to be initiated as a junior elder. “So, Uhuru’s aware of the exact cash that is being pilfered daily from the state coffers? Therefore, he knows who does it? What has he had done about it? That money is probably stolen by himself and his cronies. He can’t keep telling us Ruto is a thief – did we elect Ruto or Uhuru?”

Mũtahi Ngunyi, nowadays a State House operative, recently told me that Ruto being referred to as a thief by Kikuyu political barons was a shot in the dark: “Kikuyus grew up being called thieves, big deal, the word thief to a Kikuyu is not an abomination, to tell them that Ruto is a thief is to remind them that, indeed, he’s one of them. Try something else.”

The junior elder said President Uhuru had failed the Kikuyus miserably and for that they were hell- bent on punishing him. “Gĩathĩ kĩa ngũha gĩthiragĩra gũtũ.” The resolve of a tick (a parasite) to draw blood from a cow ends up at the ear. “It seems the Kikuyus’ resolve to seek revenge on Uhuru is total,” said Njogu. “Right now, they are behaving like the proverbial tick: they won’t rest until they draw blood.” Njogu said the leadership of the Truth Council will not publicly voice their dissent against the BBI, but it is not happy. It doesn’t want to pick a fight with Uhuru, not now, but the followership which is mostly made up of middle-aged men was taking no prisoners.

“After ruining our lives, Uhuru now wants to impose Raila on us,” said the junior elder. “The hatred for Raila among the Kikuyus is total: we’ll never accept him. I’m a true Kikuyu and will never vote for him. If Raila is such a fanciful idea to [Uhuru], how come he has yet to bring him to us? It is because he is unsellable – now more than ever before. Ruto’s a thief, uh huh? We like thieves. Kaba gũciara mũici gũkira kĩrimũ.” It is better to sire a thief than an idiot, said the junior elder.

The junior elder said President Uhuru’s association with David Mũrathe leaves a sour taste in the mouths of many Kikuyus. “Murathe is a scam, he’s a loudmouth and no sane Kikuyu pays attention to his utterances.” He alleged that Murathe had sold the Gatanga seat to Kanu in 1997, and for that, Kikuyus, especially those from Murang’a County, had not forgiven him. Kanu – then led by President Daniel Moi – is anathema to Kikuyus.

One June evening last year at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Murathe went for a drink at Castle Inn in Garden estate. Some Murang’a moguls who patronise the club found him seated at the counter alone. Once ensconced in their corner, they summoned the manager and told him to evict Murathe. These tycoons are the kings of downtown Nairobi, overseeing multi-million shilling businesses that include real estate and major distributorships of both alcoholic and soft beverages, among others. The moguls, who on a quiet evening, in a single sitting, can write a cheque for tens of thousands of shillings, call the shots at the club. Murathe was asked to leave immediately, his unpaid bill notwithstanding.

Maina Kamanda, a nominated MP and a vocal BBI proponent who has accompanied Raila several times as he tries to make inroads into the hearts and minds of the Kikuyu, is also held in contempt, especially by Kikuyu traders in Nairobi. “They consider him selfish and a sectionalist,” said Njogu. Although he hails from the greater Murang’a, Kamanda’s home is today in Nyandarua County, near Ol Kalou town, where he bought land and where he is mostly to be found when not engaged in politics.

“Kamanda is a spent force, he neither speaks for Kikuyus in Nairobi nor Murang’a,” said a street vendor from Murang’a County. “If he is still interested in politics, he should run in Nyandarua. We’ll never elect him here in Nairobi, and he can’t be voted in Murang’a after dissing his ancestral home.” Njogu said it was odious that President Uhuru should ask Kamanda to accompany Raila to address Kikuyu rallies: “Kamanda draws only scorn and distaste from Kikuyus.”

President Uhuru had treated Merus recklessly and shabbily, said a Kĩama Kĩa Ma Meru elder. “I’ll tell you this, Merus are very annoyed with Uhuru for taking us for granted. Even after some of us voted for him thrice, he hasn’t found it fitting to at least say thank you. He hasn’t visited the area, he just moved on with his life after getting the Meru votes.” He could not but be nostalgic about President Mwai Kibaki’s days. Kibaki was Kenya’s third president between 2003 and 2013. “Kibaki was an honourable old man, he knew how to say thank you and we loved him. How we miss the days he was President.”

The notion that President Uhuru had “neglected” the Mt Kenya region, especially the region occupied by Embu, Meru and Mbeere people, was also echoed by Joseph Nyagah in a conversation we had weeks before he died on 11 December 2020.

If President Uhuru’s radio interview was a “car crash”, the outcome of the Sagana State Lodge meeting was even less soothing to struggling Kikuyus. “You mean Uhuru has just acquiesced to the greedy MCAs?” said Muchiri, a Nairobi businessman. “He can find KSh4 billion to give to politicians to buy cars, but he can’t find money to stock medicine in hospitals? We’ll be waiting for these MCAs next year, 2022 is not a century away and for Uhuru and his BBI, he can bribe the MCAs all he wants, we’ll not pass the damn document.”

Njogu said Kikuyu hatred for President Uhuru had gone grassroots. “The angriest are those that voted for him twice in 2017. They cannot now believe that he’s wining and dining with Raila.” The mzee said that Kikuyus consider this to be the ultimate insult. “After poisoning them against Raila for such a long time and to now tell them that he’s the man they should work with was just mindboggling.” Faced with the threat of being taken to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2012, Uhuru Kenyatta whipped up ethnic Kikuyus in a well-choreographed tribal mobilisation the likes of which had not been witnessed in modern Kenya. By election day on 4 March 2013, Kikuyus were so filled with anti-Raila venom that they could have died or killed for Uhuru. “Uhuru succeeded in dangerously balkanising the Kikuyus, telling them that Raila was planning to send him to the ICC once he takes over as President of Kenya,” said a lawyer from Kiambu County that I interviewed in 2012. That lawyer is one of the writers of the BBI (II) document that proposes a powerful presidency.

Thiya ndĩthũire mũmĩũragi ta mũmeanĩrĩri. An antelope hates those who expose it to danger more than it does its predators. “Kikuyus have always been wary of Raila’s intentions if he ever took state power,” said Njogu, quoting to me the above Kikuyu idiom, “They have a lot of misgiving about him: from truly believing that he will revenge against them for the sins committed against his father [Jaramogi Oginga Odinga] by [Jomo] Kenyatta to weirdly believing that when he says he will fight institutional corruption, he actually means that he will ensure they are cut to size, that is, crash their businesses and riches.”

If President Uhuru’s radio interview was a “car crash”, the outcome of the Sagana State Lodge meeting was even less soothing to struggling Kikuyus.

Njogu said Kikuyus like reminding themselves how Raila crafted the narrative of “‘41 [tribes] against one’, inordinately exposing his malicious intentions against the Kikuyu people.” In the lead-up to the hotly contested 2007 presidential election that pitted President Kibaki, running on a Party of National Unity (PNU) ticket, to Raila who was running on an Orange Democratic Party (ODM) ticket — with Ruto as Raila’s de facto running mate — the 41 vs 1 came to be viewed as the opposition’s official mantra.

During Raila’s recent meet-the-Kikuyu-people Githurai Market tour, the wary Kikuyus could be heard saying “tũramuonera eitini,” meaning, “we are aware of Raila’s dubious intentions”. Raila arrived at the Market at 10.30 a.m. on 28 January 2021 and went straight to the Migingo area. The market is divided into several areas such as Posta and Family Bank. Migingo is now ring-fenced because it had encroached on railway land, but it is still expansive and it can hold a meeting.

At Migingo Raila was welcomed by the market leaders led by Joseph Wanyoike and Peter Kamau. They told him about the need to construct a bridge to connect to the railway line area that was separated by the fence. Ever since the fence was erected, people have to walk a long distance to cross over to the other side. Raila promised that the government would build the bridge. It was a short meeting and he moved on to the roundabout area where the masses was waiting.

Raila spoke to the crowd atop his vehicle, cautioning them not to be confused by the “wheelbarrow” narrative as he extolled the virtues of BBI. “Will you allow that man of the wheelbarrow to sow his retrogressive politics here?” Raila upped his rhetoric. The waiting crowds answered him by chanting Ruto’s name interspersed with shouts of “wheelbarrow”. The crowd did not allow him to continue speaking, with some yelling, “you cannot feed on rhetoric.”

The crowd exasperated Raila and he accused Jubilee Party-nominated Senator Isaac Mwaura of inciting them. On 9 February Mwaura was demoted and stripped off his senatorial position by the party. Mwaura had indeed visited the market area on the eve of Raila’s visit and incited the people. “Nĩmwakĩmenya rũciũ nĩagoka, mũkĩmenye ũrĩa mũkamwĩra.” You are aware (Raila) is coming here tomorrow. I hope you’ve planned what to tell him.

Mwaura, whose entry into the political limelight was through the opposition ranks when he was nominated as ODM MP in 2013, was to shift gears and join the ruling Jubilee Party in 2016, where he was rewarded with yet another nomination in 2017. Keen to enter elective politics, Mwaura seems to be preparing to contest the Ruiru constituency seat in Kiambu County. He has defected once more – this time within the Jubilee Party ranks – and thrown in his lot with the Tanga Tanga team. His bashing of the BBI has greatly displeased the president, who must have sanctioned his sacking.

In October 2020, Ruto too had gone to Githurai Market. The market is a catchment area, which represents a cache of votes because of its huge population that straddles Nairobi and Kiambu counties. The deputy president came along with 500 wheelbarrows and 100 mkokotenis (push carts). He had certainly done his “market survey” (pun intended). The wheelbarrow is the most sought-after piece of equipment at the bustling market. Because of this, it is also the most stolen item. Traders who do not have their own wheelbarrows hire them for KSh50 a day and in the evening, they pay an extra KSh20 for storage overnight. Each of the wheelbarrows that Ruto delivered came with an umbrella to protect the trader from the vagaries of the weather.

“Detractors of the wheelbarrow can say all they want,” said 30-year-old trader Peter Mungai. “For all the 10 years I’ve lived in Nairobi, I’ve earned my keep from this wheelbarrow.” Mungai started hawking watermelons on a pavement next to the market. Then in 2019, a brutal eviction by Nairobi County askaris led to the loss of goods and equipment including wheelbarrows and push carts. Mungai bought a new wheelbarrow and now hawks sugarcane.

“Hawking sugarcane has a much wider radius than melons,” explained Mungai. “I’ll tell you this: I voted Uhuru two times in 2017, but look at his gratitude. I don’t want to know about BBI, its promises and lies, I’ve no need for it. Make no assumptions, I went to school, I can read and comprehend. In the 10 years I’ve lived in Nairobi, I started a family, all because of this wheelbarrow. In 2022, I’ll be voting for Ruto, because I’m a wheelbarrow hustler.”

“Uhuru and Raila and indeed anybody else can criminalise the wheelbarrow. What have they ever given? I don’t want to speak much, some of my friends were lucky to get a wheelbarrow from ‘thief Ruto’. They can hustle and deliver something to their families in the evenings. Meanwhile ‘thieves Uhuru and Raila’ can continue selling BBI, telling us it will bring us [Kikuyus] goodies. It is good because our children will feed on something called promises hidden somewhere in the BBI, which must wait to be passed by a referendum.”

The story of the wheelbarrow, in the words of Mungai, indeed cannot be spoken about much here. It is a story for another day. Suffice it to say that at Githurai Market I met a 27-year-old Kenyatta University BA graduate. From an impoverished peasant family, he did not waste time looking for a non-existent job after graduating with an upper second in economics. He landed at Githurai Market and started carrying the market women’s goods as a kua, a man who carries a load on his shoulders.

“Look at me, I’m a lanky fellow, but was I going to further burden my mother with my survival problems? She had already done much and I’ll be eternally grateful for ensuring I got some education. At the market, the women call him Ka-Waithira, son of Waithira, because that is how he calls himself. From kua, Ka-Waithira graduated to a wheelbarrow owner and made his work easier. “I’m now looking to investing in a push cart, because it carries much bigger and heavier loads.”

Ka-Waithira told me he had expanded his skills to include balancing accounts for the market women: “You’d be shocked to learn the kind of money these women handle. I was.” In his spare time he also explains simple economics to the women – supply and demand theory, economies of scale, the difference between macro- and microeconomies. “I really have no time for Uhuru and BBI. He has hugely let my mother down. She believed in him and it nearly killed her because of depression. Githurai, as you’ve seen for yourself is a ‘hustler nation’. Uhuru has only been interested in advancing his family’s fortunes and the Kikuyus have become the wiser. Do you think I’d be languishing here at Githurai Market if I came from a well-connected family or I schooled at St Mary’s?”

As President Uhuru Kenyatta plots how to woo the recalcitrant Kikuyus back into his political fold, it is evident that his work for in the next 16 months is cut out him. For now, he has to contend with a gleeful Deputy President William Ruto who seems to have effortlessly taken over his backyard.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: The Choices Facing Kenya and the Kenyattas

By John Githongo The day after “Super Tuesday” — 23 February 2021 — when the BBI constitutional amendment bill achieved the minimum 24 counties needed to call for a referendum, I was at the famous Gikomba Market by 7 a.m. and as usual, the day’s business had already started well before the break of dawn. But a lot has changed at the market in recent times: the coronavirus pandemic has gravely affected the flow of business, the economic downturn that started in 2018 has hurt many traders and the midnight fires have returned.

“Those fires are set by arsonists,” said one of traders that I had gone to see. “They are meant to drive us out from this area, but we’ve been resilient because we’ve refused to give up the land and business.” The last fire that completely gutted the traders’ goods was on 25 June 2020. Two days later, just after the traders had finished rebuilding their semi-permanent structures that are constructed with timber and iron sheets, they were “welcomed very early morning by rumbling bulldozers and the National Youth Service (NYS) brigade that supervised the destruction of the newly-built structures,” said the traders.

“The director-general of Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) Mohamed Badi (nicknamed Saddam Hussein) had ordered the demolition. It was clearly evident our endurance was getting on the nerves of powerful forces in the government. For the longest time, we’d always suspected that a powerful politician has been eyeing the piece of land that the main market sits on. Now he was determined to drive us out of this area,” said the traders. An L-shaped high stonewall fence had since been erected to curve out the coveted piece of land.

I had gone to Gikomba to find out from the traders what they thought of the second BBI report — now that it had been passed by the Members of County Assemblies — and its various recommendations and findings. Some of the traders had actually taken the trouble to read sections of the PDF version that had been circulated around. “Look at what happened to us in the midst of COVID-19. Some of the people who have been planning to grab the market are the same people selling us a poisoned chalice. Who do they take us to be? Tell us, how do you claim to be building bridges by destroying people’s livelihoods?” exclaimed the traders.

In November 2020, a fierce fire gutted half of the remaining Ngara open-air market in downtown Nairobi. “I got a call past midnight on the morning of a Monday and was told the market was fire,” said Kihara, 22-year veteran of the market. “By the time I arrived at the market in the dead of the night, the fire had burnt all my goods.” The traders had to start all over again. In 2017, 17 acres of the market were forcefully fenced off with a high perimeter stone wall, displacing hundreds of traders. “That land was grabbed by a relative of the most powerful political family in this country,” alleged Kihara, “and you dare talk to me about BBI.”

The Gikomba and Ngara traders said BBI was about one thing only: “Uhuru’s plan to hold onto presidential power. For him to do that, he had to rope in Raila Odinga and lie to him that this time round he would make him king. Our businesses, which are our sole livelihoods, have been destroyed several times, Uhuru has mortgaged the country and his government is made up of thieves. Instead of him dealing with the urgent matter, that of resuscitating the economy, he’s been plotting how to stay on.”

“The MCAs may have passed the bill and we know why they passed it – I mean, what was expected of them after the car grant deal?” asked Gilbert Kanyi, a 71-year-old trader and one of the pioneers of Ngara Market. “We’ll be waiting for them. Is 2022 an eternity? The MCAs have just kissed their political ambitions bye bye. In central Kenya, where I come from, we’ll not be re-electing them. Let them enjoy their goodies while they can.”

Soon after the central Kenya MCAs passed the bill, an MCA from Nyeri stopped at Sagana town to catch a drink. No sooner had he sat down than patrons who recognised him accosted him. They took all their bills and dumped them on his table and walked away: “You recently received a bonus, pay those bills!”.It was a harbinger of what the MCAs, at least in central Kenya, will be facing in the coming 16 months. They are marked men; they will hardly be able to move around without being constantly taunted by the electorate.

“We didn’t vote for the bill because we liked it. It is because we were arm-twisted and blackmailed and even threatened with being hauled to court,” a central Kenya MCA told me. “You know many of the county tenders are given to MCAs; corruption, scandals and cutting corners are never far from an MCA. We had to toe the line.” The MCA said governors supervised the voting procedure. Apart from the promise of a car grant, it is alleged that each MCA received a “sitting allowance” of KSh200,000.

The traders said if the referendum is held, they will troop to the booths early to defeat it. The mitumba (second-hand clothes) businessmen said that Kikuyus were not talking much. “They are quiet because they’re decided on what to do: reject BBI. How many votes do the MCAs have? Will they also bribe all of us to vote for it?”

In the lead up to the 2017 presidential elections, both Gikomba and Ngara were the bastions of Jubilee Party support, and more so its candidate Uhuru Kenyatta. Scarcely three years after President Uhuru made his supporters go to the polls twice in 80 days (August 8 and October 262020), the mere mention of President Uhuru in a conversation among the traders oftentimes leads to heated debates and near fist fights. “We’ve said in this market [Gikomba] we don’t want Uhuru’s name mentioned. It leaves a bad taste in our mouths,” said one of the traders. At Ngara Market, the traders had ostracised one of their own for irritating them with his continued support for President Uhuru.

Apart from the promise of a car grant, it is alleged that each MCA received a “sitting allowance” of KSh200,000.

“It took us a long time to realise that the Kenyatta family has always been interested in their self- promotion and self-perpetuation. We the rest of the Kikuyus have been cogs in a wheel, to propel the family to economic and political power. This time round we’re saying loudly that we are tired of the Kenyatta family,” said Kihara. “In all the years that I’ve been at Ngara Market, this road next to the [Nairobi] River had never been repaired, you wouldn’t even have known a road existed, it had completely chipped away, but the other day it got a face-lift. Why? Because the family has bought two properties, which it has been developing and which Uhuru comes to supervise, often at night”.

Kenyatta fatigue

Kikuyus are currently experiencing Kenyatta fatigue. They are craving for a clean break from the domineering family, said a 70-year-old businessman from Murang’a County. “For 50 years, the Kenyattas have lorded it over the Kikuyus, but the Kikuyus could be waking up to the realisation that they don’t have to be their serfs forever. The apparent selfishness of the family, economic hardship, wanton theft in the government, a political handshake that had nothing to do with their welfare, had finally dawned on the Kikuyus that they are pawns in a chessboard.”

The BBI is a ploy by the Kenyatta family to continue maintaining a stranglehold on national politics through deceit and subterfuge, said the old man John Njoroge. “My father was detained at Manyani detention camp by the British for six years because he was fighting to see a free Kenya of the future for his progeny and not for that progeny to be latter-day slaves of the Kenyatta monarchy. How the Kikuyu people wiggle out of the Kenyatta family iron grip will not be easy, but an opening has been created, they must now seize the moment.”

“It took us a long time to realise that the Kenyatta family has always been interested in their self-promotion and self-perpetuation.”

“The President has been saying that the handshake is about peace and unity, that it is important to unite Kenyans who every cycle of five years fight over election results,” said Njoroge. “Really? Why, since 2007, is there always a propensity for violence after elections? Is it not because of electoral theft? And how do you deal with the theft? By creating an imperial presidency? Right? Tell me, how does increasing the powers of the presidency solve the theft of votes? Maintain peace? Of course, by appeasing the tribal lords…”

The BBI plan is nothing more than a power rearrangement by the status quo. Its grander scheme is to ensure presidential power does not slip from the political dynamos that have ruled the country since 1963. The document is about the expansion of the presidential executive powers,” said an insider who is a BBI constituency coordinator for Kiambu County and cannot be named because he is not authorised to comment on matters BBI. “I may not for sure know who the imperial presidency is for, but I can tell you for sure who it is not for – Raila Odinga.”

The garden path

“Raila Odinga is being led on. I mean, stop and think about it – do you really believe the Kikuyu political barons would dream of doing such a thing? Creating a powerful position for their eternal political nemesis? Power is not something to be handed over to someone like a gift. The son of Jaramogi is about to learn – if he hasn’t learned already – that he has yet again been led down the garden path.”

President Uhuru’s apparent thirst for greater political power and how to play power games was cultivated and inculcated through his association with President Daniel arap Moi, his political godfather. “It is Moi who put in Uhuru’s head the notion that he would be too young to abandon power,” alleged the insider. But for Moi, he had a greater scheme for Uhuru, even as he was socialising him with power play.

“Moi had always wanted Gideon to be at the core of the matrix of governance in Kenya and the person to help his favourite son is Uhuru Kenyatta.” Part of the BBI’s unspoken mission is to sneak Gideon into that matrix of power, said the coordinator. “Although Gideon was his favourite last born son, Moi pampered the boy too much, he doesn’t know how to do anything for himself – especially where his father thought mattered most: politics.”

The insider shared with me the content of a tête-à-tête he once had with President Mwai Kibaki: “Kibaki one time summoned me to his private office at Finance House in the city centre. After the usual pleasantries, he delved into the heart of the matter – ‘listen so-and-so, you never ever cede power under whatever circumstances. Is that clear to you?” After Kibaki assumed the presidency in January 2003 through a coalition of parties, among them the National Alliance of Kenya (NAK) and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), murmurs began to be heard of a Memorandum of Understanding that had not been honoured.

Not long after, said the insider, Njenga Karume also summoned him. “’My dear friend, power is never given away, do you get it?’ Remember Mzee Njenga was Kibaki’s bosom buddy, but in the general elections of December 2002, Njenga had miscalculated and backed the ‘wrong horse’ –. Uhuru Kenyatta who lost to Kibaki. A remiss Mzee Njenga quickly collected himself, reworked his networks with Kibaki and went to pledge his loyalty to a recuperating Kibaki at Nairobi Hospital.”

For who is intended the creation of an imperial presidency more powerful than the presidency enshrined in the 2010 Constitution? Why was it furtively sneaked into the document if its intentions are noble? If we can answer that question we may begin to unravel the mystery of the real BBI agenda, said the insider.

The BBI is a ploy by the Kenyatta family to continue maintaining a stranglehold on national politics through deceit and subterfuge.

“The Kikuyu populace maybe cross with President Uhuru now, but at the appropriate time, he knows which buttons to switch and they will be turned on for his bidding. God forbid if Uhuru presented himself once again as a presidential candidate after a referendum that changes the constitution, with the imperial presidency clause intact. Who do you think the Kikuyus would vote for? The recent dissonant choruses from one Raphael Tuju and some evangelical pastors about Uhuru staying on after 2022 did not come out of the blue.”

In November 2020, Tuju, who is the secretary-general of the ruling Jubilee Party, made an off-the- cuff remark about the party extending President Uhuru’s term beyond the expiry of the mandated two-term limit which ends 2022. “I want to state there’s consensus especially from those of us holding senior positions in the party that it still needs Uhuru’s passion to bring this country together,” said Tuju.

“The BBI I [first report] which was presented to the public on November 27, 2019 at Bomas of Kenya had a weakened ceremonial presidency with an executive prime ministerial position. The switching of the executive powers between the newly proposed president and prime minister positions and their deputies in BBI II [second report] is geared to serve a certain purpose for a certain person. The BBI II document is about one thing: how to retain executive powers by the powers that be. The rest of the issues purportedly discussed in the report are decorations; they are sugar and spices to give the document a palatable taste,” said the Kiambu County coordinator. “They don’t matter and anybody looking for any meaning from them is looking for a mirage.”

Nested games

Major (Rtd) John Seii, a BBI team member, opened a can of worms soon after the release of the report to the public, when he claimed that some of them had been duped into signing the document without re-reading it. It is unfortunate that some of the members of the team took for granted other members’ gullibility to pass the now contested document, to paraphrase the words of the former army man.

The second BBI report was allegedly written in a boardroom by President Uhuru’s innermost loyalists, said the constituency coordinator. “There was nothing like a second time validation; these are the people who changed the section on executive powers. Who are these Kenyans whose views were that we increase the powers of the president? I’d really like to see the notes detailing these facts, but of course, there are no notes.” The authorship of that report apparently divided the team, albeit away from the prying public, with some members hinting that it might be just a matter of time before the beans are spilled.

The BBI team members were called on 16 October 2020 and asked to travel to Nairobi for the signing of the final document. “There’s no roadmap for growing or revamping the battered economy,” said one of the members to me. “It is all about recapturing state power. Kenyans will soon discover that for themselves and it will be a huge anti-climax. They will not support the document. If the proponents of the BBI document were serious, they would be addressing the political-economy ills of the country. The clamour to push for the signatures’ campaign in the wake of the dangerous and devasting coronavirus was both immoral and insensitive; the locusts never went away, Kenyans’ dwindling economic fortunes have seen some of them unable to afford food. Today many of them cannot afford healthcare.”

For who is intended the creation of an imperial presidency more powerful than the presidency enshrined in the 2010 Constitution?

“If you read that document – from the front to the end, then backward to the front, it leads you to one thing – presidential powers. If you remove the section on national executive powers from the report, it ceases to be BBI,” said the team member. “These three things: a deteriorating economy, food insecurity and lack of affordable healthcare have crippled Kenyans’ capacity to participate in the national affairs of the state. Since 1963 till now, the political class has been typically interested in self-aggrandisement and self-perpetuation. The people have always been on their own. They have never been so alone, especially with this BBI.”

“The real architects of the BBI are involved in nested games. All that effort and money thrown around the report is about one thing – containment. Containment of one man: Raila Odinga,” alleged my BBI source. “President Uhuru and his team realised that for him to preside over a fractured country, nearly torn asunder by ethnic animosity, he needed to tame Raila. ‘Keep your friends close, keep your enemies even closer’, is a Mafioso dictum, but one that also applies well in realpolitik.”

Raila’s isolation

President Uhuru reckoned that as long as Raila was allowed to play his politics outside of the state unchecked, he would not finish his second term in peace. “The whole idea was isolate Raila from his National Super Alliance (NASA) fraternity brothers, shower him with perks and presumed power and then bargain with him directly and personally. Today Raila is ostensibly all alone: he has fallen out with Kalonzo Musyoka, Moses Wetangula and Musalia Mudavadi. His western Luhya support base is cracking, he no longer commands the loyalty he did barely three years ago. The same with the coast region.”

On the eve of the collection of the one million referendum signatures, President Uhuru held a conversation with his deputy William Ruto and the ceremony to start off the collection of the signatures at Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) was called off. For the Orange Democratic Party (ODM) brigade that was keen to kick off the exercise, this was not good: it signalled a false start.

Ruto’s loyalists in the divided ruling Jubilee Party, who view BBI as a calculated machination poised against the deputy president who will endeavour to capture state power come 2022, interpreted the temporary truce between their man and President Uhuru as a victory of some sort. So much so that, Ruto himself called off his troops and asked them to go easy on their opposition to BBI because he was working on a consensus with the president.

A couple of days later when the two BBI principals, President Uhuru and Raila, were ready to launch the signature campaign, the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill had been somewhat altered. For instance, the ombudsman would now be appointed by the office of the Chief Justice as opposed to being appointed by the President. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) members would not be appointed by the political parties as earlier suggested. The establishment of the national police council and independent policing oversight had been scrapped and the creation of 70 additional constituencies was included, among other changes.

What was the reason for the abrupt changes to the amendment bill which seem to have caught Raila by surprise? Is it the Kenya Conference of Catholics Bishops (KCCB), who in their “pastoral letter” to Kenyans castigated the BBI II document? Said the bishops: “To give the President the power to appoint the Prime Minister and the two deputies risks consolidating more power around the president thereby creating an imperial presidency. This amendment could be creating the same problem it set out to solve.”

All that effort and money thrown around the report is about one thing – containment of Raila Odinga.

On the politicised IEBC, the KCCB pointed out that, “the proposal to have political parties appoint members of the IEBC is a dangerous one since it will politicise IEBC compromising its independence. This proposal will turn IEBC into a political outfit with partisan interests. The question will arise on how fair the elections will be.”

The tone of the bishops’ letter was one of dismay and disappointment with the second BBIreport. Listen to them: “In the wake of the persisting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that has hit families across the country, is this the time to subject Kenyans to heightened political activity to undertake fundamental constitutional reforms? Can the country afford to spend its very limited resources in a referendum when there is a struggle in the education and health sectors to provide for urgently needed support due to the effects of COVID-19 pandemic?”

Is it because of the Kenya Muslim ulama, who through their spokesperson said: “It is shocking that in just 10 years the political leadership of this country has forgotten that we struggled for 20 years to put the 2010 constitution in place. And all of a sudden, they [President Uhuru and Raila] have assigned themselves the powers they don’t have even within the constitution, that two individuals can come up shake hands and believe they carry 40 million peoples’ opinion . . . we’ve to be candid enough to say the truth, and what’s the truth? Neither Raila nor Uhuru for that matter can make decisions for 48 [sic] million Kenyans.”

Or is it as a result of the conversation that the President had with his deputy William Ruto? Is the amended bill a result of the consensus arrived at by the duo? It seems Ruto was so enchanted with the conversation that his sudden turnabout on the document must have taken his troops by surprise when he hinted that after all, it was not worthwhile to oppose the document. One of Ruto’s confidantes told me that for all the DP’s opposition to the President, he has always been careful not to be seen to oppose the president publicly if he can avoid it. “This is not the time for a bareknuckle fight. Our time is coming. For now, we must be patient and play the game.”

Raila had categorically stated that no changes would be accommodated in the BBI II document other than punctuation marks. Of course, the changes in the document went beyond the said punctuation marks.

Whatever the outcome of the BBI document’s true agenda, 16 months to the 2022 general elections, Kenyans will witness political brinkmanship at its worst even as the BBI II document is shaped and re-shaped to fit the needs of its heavily invested architects as they play out their nested games.