A Judas Moment: Betrayal in Nyamakima

By Dauti Kahura

The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.” ― Søren Kierkegaard

About a month before the 8 August 2017 general elections, the business community of the famous Nyamakima area in downtown Nairobi sealed the lower (southern side) of Charles Rubia Road that connects with Kumasi Road and part of the lower side of River Lane for a private function. All the people who conduct their business in this area were asked to close their premises as a gesture of goodwill, and primarily because they were all invited guests at the function.

The private function was a pre-presidential election party held in honour of Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, the presidential candidate of the Jubilee Party who was going to face Raila Amolo Odinga aka Baba, the nominee for the opposition outfit, the National Super Alliance (Nasa).

Goats had been slaughtered and crates of “Ruaraka Waters” aka East African Breweries Limited (EABL) beer had been carted there and flowed in plenty. Those who preferred brandy and whisky were also taken care of. The afternoon weather was super, the participants were ecstatic – lots of cheer and laughter rented the air as the Kikuyus – both men and women – danced and waltzed to mugithi and one-man guitar lyrics. The bash went on till late into the night. “Nimekumenya ni mahoya na ti urogi.” They will know its prayers and not sorcery, shouted the crowd. The revellers were prepping themselves for a second stab at Uhuru’s presidential two-term uncontested win. “Nimekumenya matioi.” They will know, they hardly know. They were referring to Raila’s fervent supporters and Raila himself. “Reke Uhuru aingere…tugutonga mamake,” Kamwea, one of the younger businessman, was later to excitedly tell me. Let Uhuru bounce back into State House…we’ll really grow rich, we’re going to astound them. To prove their loyalty to and undying support for Uhuru Kenyatta, the businessmen and women had come together and collected money for the Jubilee Party presidential kitty worthy of Nyamakima’s name and fame.

Later, when jolted by the Supreme Court of Kenya’s “adverse” ruling on 1 September 2017, which revoked Uhuru’s win (which they viewed as a temporary setback) they doubled their efforts: they printed loud banners and hung them mostly on roads in downtown Nairobi. “Nyamakima Business Community supports Uhuru Kenyatta,” read one banner…. “Gaberone Road Business People supports Jubilee Party’s President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta,” read another. Still, Du Bois Road Business Community Says Tano Tena.

The Supreme Court set the second fresh presidential election for 26 October 2017, a date that fell on President Uhuru’s birthday. “Kai atari Jehova…muthamaki aumaga kuri ngai.” It’s the workings of the Almighty God, they mused. (How else could you explain this coincidence?) A king is anointed by God.

Befuddled and shaken by the Supreme Court’s unprecedented decision, the Nyamakima business community nonetheless rallied – now more assiduously than ever before – for Uhuru’s second presidential cause, which they took personally to be their own. “Ngai ndatiganagiria andu ake.” The good Lord doesn’t forsake his people, they consoled themselves.

“Nikumera ta thuraku,” (this time around) we must come out like safari ants, the Nyamakima traders exhorted the Kikuyu traders and every other Kikuyu. “Tano Tena” five more, hollered the business people moving around with loudspeakers in downtown Nairobi, like possessed preacher men. In the intervening period between 1 September 1 and 26 October, Tano Tena become the standard greeting of the Kikuyu people in Nyamakima and practically everywhere else they lived. High-fiving in the air on the streets of downtown Nairobi became the norm.

Nyamakima is a Kiswahili word meaning minced meat. In the 1950s, during the colonial emergency period that lasted for seven years – from 1952 to 1959 – there was an African restaurant in the present Nyamakima area. But the old women who sold cereals in the area…could not eat bone meat either because they did not have strong teeth or they did not have teeth at all. So the restaurant owner came up with a plan: why not mince the meat for the old ladies who could chew it with their gums?

Nyamakima traders are not averse to holding bashes: in January 1988, on hearing that Kariuki Chotara, the combustible Nakuru Kanu politician, had died, they momentarily closed their businesses, stormed into pubs, drank themselves silly and toasted to his death. They reminded each other, “gutiri utuko utakiaga”, which meaning every night has its dawn.

But what the Nyamakima Kikuyus (as indeed Kikuyus in Naivasha and Nakuru, where they also celebrated Chotara’s death) were observing is that nothing lasts forever. If Chotara thought he could torment his fellow kinsmen forever, he had another thought coming. Chotara had been the Nakuru District Kanu chairman, who took over from Kihika Kimani, a man who had tormented Vice President Daniel Toroich arap Moi in the 1970s. Chotara, who became President Moi’s political courtier and a court jester, was much loathed by Kikuyus countrywide.

Little Murang’a

Nyamakima is a Kiswahili word meaning minced meat. In the 1950s, during the colonial emergency period that lasted for seven years – from 1952 to 1959 – there was an African restaurant in the present Nyamakima area. But the old women who sold cereals in the area – many of whom were from the Rwathia area in Murang’a District – could not eat bone meat either because they did not have strong teeth or they did not have teeth at all. So the restaurant owner came up with a plan: why not mince the meat for the old ladies who could chew it with their gums?

Hence, Nyamakima, over and above everything else, is famously and popularly known for these Murang’a women whose specialty for the last 60-plus years has been trading in cereals. Today, those cereals come all the way from the border of Malawi and Tanzania, in the Mbeya region and Kabale, Soroti and Tororo regions of Uganda. In the 1950s, the women thrived in business because they were too old to be arrested, unlike their sons, many of whom were arraigned and harassed by the colonial police. When the emergency ended, the young men joined the old ladies to do what they knew best: engage in trading hardware businesses.

The Murang’a folks were not generally interested in land per se, but in commodities’ businesses. That is why their women came to Nairobi and would buy the merchandise, then as now, from wherever they could get them. Likewise, the Murang’a young men have been socialised to believe in business and not so much in acquiring land or even advancing or excelling in academic and formal education, unlike their counterparts from Nyeri and Kiambu. That is why so many of the electronic and hardware shops in Nyamakima are run by Murang’a lads.

Nyamakima also become a famous and popular stage for Kikuyus from South Kinangop because many of them who were settled in the area hailed from the greater Murang’a area. The only place they knew in Nairobi was Nyamakima because that is where their kith and kin lived and worked. So, when visiting their families and friends in Nairobi, they would ask to be dropped at Nyamakima. To date, Nyamakima is the terminus for people travelling to Kinangop, Molo, Naivasha, Ng’arua, Njoro, Nyahururu, Nakuru, Narok and Sopili.

It is a wonder that Charles Rubia Road was not named after Kenneth Stanley Njindo Matiba. Although both were great friends and both came from the then greater Murang’a District, it is the mercurial Matiba, the better known of the two politicians, who used to frequent Nyamakima (the bastion of his political support in Nairobi) just after the country returned to multiparty politics in 1991. He even used to get his hair cut in a barbershop at Nyamakima area, which was called “Little Murang’a”.

No more Tano Tena

Last week I visited Nyamakima, where I walked the length and breadth of Charles Rubia Road, ending up at River Lane, where I ate kamuchere na tuchahi (rice and turtle beans) at Wa-Michelle’s ramshackle joint. “Nii ndiuwe tukurora nako.” I tell you I don’t know where we’re headed, Wa- Michelle told me. “Biashara ni gukua ira kua….tarori kutire andu akuria irio.” Businesses are slowly dying off…look, for example, there are no people to eat my food.

It was lunchtime but there were only two customers (including me) at Wa-Michelle’s place. “Barely two years ago, by 3.00 pm, I’d sell all these food and more and I’d be out of here to go and engage in another business…Now I make little food, because I can’t afford to make losses,” said the food seller. “The price of foodstuff has gone up: I used to buy white flour for ugali at Sh80, now it’s Sh120, Wheat flour at Sh110, now it’s Sh130. The price of grains such as white and yellow beans have equally gone up. When I pushed some of the burden to the customers, they didn’t like it, but what could I do? That’s also why some of them stopped coming. I don’t fault them.”

I asked her what had been happening to the famous Nyamakima businesses. “We don’t know…we don’t know…business premises are just closing down…didn’t you walk up River Lane to see for yourself traders who have closed shop and vacated the premises?” (I had.) Once thriving electronic business premises have closed shop and now all one can see is white paper notices plastered on the grill doors announcing premises for letting out and “no goodwill asked”.

Nineteen months after the second presidential election that handed Uhuru Kenyatta the presidency with even less votes, the Tano Tena mantra has been reduced to a whimper, a sob story. For most of the Nyamakima traders on Charles Rubia Road and River Lane, businesses having gone south. It is a far cry from the scene of the “Uthamaki ni witu” (political leadership is ours [Kikuyus’] bash, where the traders dined and wined liberally, wiggling their bottoms in unbridled ecstasy.

Two years ago, it would have been unheard of that a Nyamakima business premise – whether on the ground floor or inside a building – was being rented out and that the landlord did not demand goodwill. But the traders have fallen on hard times; they can no longer afford the rents which are between Sh80,000 and Sh100,000 per month for strategically located premises, mostly on the ground floor. If by happenstance a renting trader was vacating a premise, the owner of the premise would ask the next tenant for a goodwill fee ranging between Sh1 million and 3 million and the place would be snapped up like a hot cake.

“Thuraku cia itererio maguta ma tawa,” (after we voted for the second time), the safari ants met their calamity, Wa-Michelle said to me half in jest, half in sadness. “Uhuru arateng’eria aici aa njugu agatiga aa ruwa.” President Uhuru is apparently busy chasing petty thieves, while the real thieves are walking scot-free. Wa-Michelle spoke to me in idioms. Metaphorically, she was saying that the president had resorted to harassing Nyamakima traders who dealt in small-time businesses, while neglecting to deal with the real corrupt Kenyans who were pilfering the state coffers.

In Kikuyu culture, a person who stole ruwa (animal skin), as opposed to the one who stole njugu (grains), was considered a more dangerous and vicious thief because he was stealing your entire livelihood. A grains thief most likely stole your grains because he or his family was hungry and therefore did not steal to spite you.

The shops owners whose shops had wound up, said Wa-Michelle, belonged to young Kikuyu men, who basically dealt in electronic goods imported from China. Now the goods were being confiscated by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), ostensibly, because they were considered counterfeits. “Realising there was a loophole to make a killing, the KRA officials had turned to blackmailing and preying on the electronic goods’ traders,” opined Wa-Michelle. “They have been haunting the traders to pay up humungous bribes, failure to which, they raid your shops.” Prayers had turned into witchcraft, the anointed one had turned to tormenting his people and it has turned out that, in fact, it is the Kikuyu people who actually did not know that they indeed did not know. ‘How can Uhuru do this to us?’

I looked for Mwangi, who has been a trader for many years in Nyamakima. For many years, he ran a hardware shop but around 15 years ago, he also started importing electronic stuff from Guangzhou, China. His story sounded both bitter and confused. “I’ve been in this business for long, possibly longer than many of the traders in this area, but I’ll tell you this, I don’t remember business being so difficult and so down,” he said.

“As we speak, my goods have been detained at the government’s Embakasi warehouses, because KRA alleges they are counterfeit,” bemoaned Mwangi. “The goods are in a 40-foot container and it has been at the warehouses since December 2018. I don’t know when it’s going to be released, if it’s going to be released at all. Everyday the goods spend a night at the warehouse and I’m surcharged $40 (Sh4,000). My clearing agent has been telling me that the KRA officials have been sending mixed signals about the release of the goods, which he tells me, he can’t clearly interpret.” Mwangi said that there are about 2,000 40-foot containers of 70 cubic meters volume detained at the warehouses.

He admitted that he was among those businessmen who had contributed money to the Jubilee Party, but President Uhuru’s second term was turning out to be a nightmare for the Nyamakima traders. “I frankly don’t know what’s happening, we are at a loss. How can Uhuru do this to us?” Mwangi thought aloud as I spoke to him outside his shop. It was a clear testament that business was doing so badly that he could even afford to find time to speak to me. “My friend had business been flowing the way it did two years back, trust me, I’d not have found time to talk to you. Look, how many customers have you seen coming to the shop since we stood here talking?”

“President Uhuru’s government is telling us traders that we are importing counterfeits as well as contraband,” said Mwangi angrily. “Hell knows we’ve been importing these goods from China all these years. Yes, it true, the goods we import are cheap and not of great quality – they are meant for mwananchi. But this new government story that the goods are counterfeit is boggling our minds.” Mwangi said that by the time traders were importing the goods, the government was aware because the declaration form they fill indicates all the types of goods they are bringing into the country.

“If the government doesn’t want us to be importing goods from China, it should set up its own factories. We’re always ready to do business, because that’s our life,” pointed out the businessman. “These goods are also used by the Chinese people…but it seems to the government…what’s good for the gander is not good for the goose. We’ve been asking ourselves how and when the government decided the goods are fake. It cannot be that the government has just woken up to the fact that we’ve been bringing in substandard goods for all these years. Why it has decided to punish us we’re yet to comprehend.”

The businessman said that the irony of this government exercise is that if after one year your goods remain uncollected at the warehouses, it can auction the goods to interested bidders. “On the one hand, the government says the goods are fake, but on the other, to offset the charges and create room at the warehouses, it offloads the goods to a willing buyer – to do what with them?” Many traders unable to pay the mounting KRA fees waited for the auction to take place,in order to buy back their goods, said Mwangi. It was an irony, but one that the businessmen have to contend with. The more he talked about their plight the more Mwangi was getting furious. “This is a government that is telling us not to import goods from China, yet it is borrowing from the same country…Why is President Uhuru very quick to receive Chinese money, but won’t allow us to import their goods? President Uhuru has been talking about Agenda Four; he seems to be consumed with an imaginary legacy than working for the people. Who, for example, told him we want to be built houses?”

The businessman observed that “the government had now come up with a scheme that nobody understood what it was all about. This Huduma Namba is very suspicious: the government has already messed up with our businesses, now it wants to mess up with our privacy. Why does Uhuru want to know about our private details? So that he can create more avenues to eke out more money from us?”

Mwangi, just like Wa-Michelle, had confided to me that many Nyamakima traders had kept off the Huduma Namba registration. “We’ve got more urgent matters to attend to than be preoccupied by insidious people who want to mine our personal and secretive details for their use.”

Kamau, a property owner in the Nyamakima area and a staunch supporter of President Uhuru, has been suffering panic attacks off and on: He simply cannot believe that his beloved President is killing their businesses. During President Mwai Kibaki’s tenure, he acquired three buildings, did some clever renovations and soon he was in good business. He could afford to service his bank loans and business life looked very promising. In the past one and half years, he confessed to me that his real estate business has never received such a beating. “Traders have been vacating my premises because they simply cannot afford the rents because their goods have been confiscated and so they also have nothing to sell.” He said if he doesn’t regularly service his loans, the banks would come for him.

Both Mwangi and Kamau could not bring themselves to lay the blame squarely on President Uhuru: “It is the people surrounding him that are advising him wrongly,” they both separately said to me. It was an argument with its obvious weak strand that explained the true dilemma of many Uthamaki believers – they will not be openly caught criticising President Uhuru. To do that is to go against the grain; it is to accept that they made a wrong choice in their voting; it is to repudiate the cardinal rule of their tribal teaching on electoral voting: you must always vote for one of your own – irrespective. But more significantly, is it not true that a muthamaki is chosen for the people by God? Is this not what their Christian faith teaches them? Is this not what they have been repeatedly taught by their church leaders? If they criticise muthamaki, would they not, by extension, be finding fault with the almighty God?

One businesswoman told me that Kikuyus are of the view that they would rather suffer under a brutal leader who is their tribesman rather than be ruled by a good leader who is not of their ethnic group. It is God who gave them that leader – it is also the same God who will know how to deal with him, they argue. “We leave everything to God, in the meantime. Ours is to pray and ask God to not forsake us,’ said the businesswoman. Wa-Michelle told me Kikuyus could be suffering (even after twice voting for their man) because they had turned their back to God. “We’ve really sinned and come short of the glory of the Lord. We’ve forgotten that we live and prosper because of his dutiful mercies. It is incumbent we rediscover God.” Mwangi said Nyamakima and the downtown Kikuyu businesspeople in general are planning to demonstrate and protest against President Uhuru’s draconian measures against their businesses. “President Uhuru seems only to understand the language of protest. Last year, we organised ourselves and marched to Harambee House and the Office of the Deputy President and presented them with our memoranda of grievances. For some time, the harassment eased off, but not for long.”

In the meantime, the businesses in Nyamakima will continue to suffer losses.

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.

A Judas Moment: Betrayal in Nyamakima

By Dauti Kahura

Seeing is believing. And first-hand witnessing clears all falsehoods and half-truths, and separates facts from fiction.

I had to travel more than 200 km north-west of Nairobi through Laikipia and Nyandarua counties to see for myself how hunger has been stalking the Kikuyu people in their own land of plenty. As difficult as it is to believe, a section of the Kikuyu people – who are considered the most prosperous, the most exposed, and the most resilient of all the 42 ethnic communities in Kenya – are playing dice with starvation and have been abandoned and left alone to fend for themselves in whichever way they know how.

The mainstream Kenyan media have peddled the narrative that famine and food shortages can only be found among (backward) pastoralist people (who do not know how to cultivate land), and not among the agrarian, sedentary Kikuyus, whose land of milk and honey is endowed with rich soils that can practically grow any crop this side of the planet. It has been a false narrative that masks the true state of affairs.

As famine threatens to devastate vast regions of the country (largely because of delayed or failed rains) the stories and pictures that the Kenyan media has been relaying – and has always relayed – are those of the Turkana people, emaciated old men and women and dying children. If not the Turkana people, it has been the Akamba people, who like the pastoralist Turkana, happen to come from some of the harshest semi-arid regions of the country. Their starvation is always implicitly blamed on their topography, which according to geography is susceptible to drought – a natural calamity that human beings have little control over. But what about the Kikuyus who happen to occupy some of best arable land you can find anywhere in the country? Why would they be threatened with food shortages? As fate would have it, there has been a silent hunger going on in the Uthamaki kingdom, not just in the semi-arid plateau or less arable lands, but also in some of the most fertile lands in the country.

I arrived at Makutano, a camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) that looks like a United Nations refugee camp with its blue iron sheet roofs scattered over the 4,600 acres of land in Ngobit, in Laikipia County, 20 km from Ndaragwa town, which is in Nyandarua District. I had gone to the settlement area to see for myself how starvation was threatening to emaciate the people as they fought to keep biting hunger at bay by receiving tiny rations of foodstuffs from well-wishers.

It was about 1.00 pm, when we found Lucia Wanjiru Njoroge in her makeshift dwelling. She was lying on the floor on her “bed” made of a reed mat and a worn-out blanket. “My tooth has really been aching, so I’ve just been lying down the whole morning because I cannot do anything,” explained Wanjiru, as she ushered in me and my minder. We sat on the black cotton soil floor. (There were no chairs or stools or anything that could be sat on.) “This toothache (it was the lower molar tooth that was aching) is driving me crazy: it has given me a terrible headache and incapacitated my movements.”

Wanjiru, who is in her mid- to late-60s, told us that she could not remember her exact date of birth, “but I can remember very well when we got independence in 1963, because I was already a young girl and could understand what was going on.” It was evident that she had shrunk in size and she looked much older than her actual age. Times were hard; times had always been hard, since she left Rongai, in Nakuru County, a dozen years ago.

‘They survive on one meal a day’

It was lunchtime and Wanjiru had no food to eat: she lived with three of her grandchildren, two girls and a boy, but recently her fourth-born son had come visiting. Word had reached him in Nakuru that his mother was down with fever. Outside, a black pot rested on a three-stone hearth, the fire embers having died out. “I’ve been boiling dry maize for the children to eat – that’s all we have to eat,” said Wanjiru. She told us the kids had last eaten the same food 24 hours earlier. “They survive on one meal a day. That’s what I can provide. It helped when the school provided the kids with some meals, but since January, there hasn’t been any food in the school either.”

It was a Friday when I visited Wanjiru. The schools had reopened for the second term, but I found her grandchildren at home doing odd jobs around their house. “The head teacher had asked them not to go back to school until they paid examination fees,” said their granny. By examination fees, she meant the opening continuous assessment test (CAT) that is done at the beginning of the school term. “How much was the examination fee?” I asked her. “Thirty shillings for each. I can’t raise a hundred shillings because I haven’t worked for some time. It’s the tooth, but also work has been hard to come by these last couple of weeks. I wish the head teacher would understand. But this term, he said he was going to be very strict.” Her grandchildren attend Shalom Primary School located in the camp. There I found teachers Jackie and Salome. “The situation in the school is dire. The school can no longer provide food for the pupils because it does not have any money to spare,” explained Jackie. “So parents have been asked to supplement the food ration by giving their children something to carry to school, but how many parents can afford any extra food. As it is, they don’t have any more food at home.”

The teachers told me that the children who brought some semblance of food to school were so few that it was creating a commotion at lunchtime. “The hungry kids without food will hover around those with food and demand to be given some. Hunger knows no bounds,” observed teacher Salome. “So what we teachers have been doing is to beg for food on behalf of the pupils who don’t have any food. We ask the children who have carried food whether they are willing to share. Then we put them into groups.” To be on the safe side, the teachers said they normally ask the pupils with food not to report to their parents that they shared their food. “The food’s already too little, and we don’t want parents who have provided their children with morsels of food to storm the school and accuse the teachers of forcing their children to share their meagre rations.”

Before heading to Makutano, I had stopped at Ndaragwa Primary School. Built in 1944, it is one of the oldest primary schools in the country. The original wooden class is still intact. “We’re struggling to feed the children here,” a board member said to me. “Parents whose children learn here are so poor, they can’t afford to give their children daily rations for their lunch.”

The board member narrated to me how one teacher had asked his class to record in their exercise books (as a form of homework) what types of food they had for lunch on different days. “Going through the exercise books, the teacher noticed that one of the pupils had not filled his book on several days for several weeks. ‘Why haven’t you filled in some days, did you forget?’ asked the teacher. ‘No, it’s because I didn’t eat on those days,’ replied the pupil. Many pupils are going hungry because they have nothing to eat,” said the board member.

‘It was hunger that was driving him nuts’

Wanjiru, a victim of post-election violence (PEV) of 2007/2008 came to Makutano in Ngobit in 2012. “One day during the controversial presidential election, we returned home to find everything razed to the ground. The house with everything had been torched…we escaped with our lives,” recalled Wanjiru. She had been a casual labourer on a white man’s sisal plantation in Athenai in Rongai division. “We were taken to the Nakuru showground, after which we were transported to Mawingo area in Nyandarua County.”

In March, 2012, after each family was given Sh10,000, they were settled at Makutano, 40 km from Nyahururu town on the Nyeri-Nyahururu highway. “To give Sh10,000 to each family was an insult. What were you supposed to do with the paltry sum, especially after staying in a camp for three years?” asked a solemn Wanjiru. The land the IDPs were settled on belonged to the family of Zachary Gakunju, the late Kiambu coffee plantation magnate.

The IDPs who came to Makutano were mostly from Burnt Forest, Eldoret, Kaptembwa, Kericho, Kipkelion and Molo. They were each given a quarter of an acre to put up a house and two acres for farming.

“The government bought the land known as Giani Farm from Gakunju. It has rich soils, but where’s the seed capital to engage in farming?” Wanjiru said many of the camp’s IDPs have been reduced to casual labourers, working in the neighbouring big and small farms for Sh200 ($2) a day, tilling land. Wanjiru’s husband was killed during the ethnic mayhem, making her the sole breadwinner of her family comprising her children and now some of her grandchildren.

The IDPs who came to Makutano were mostly from Burnt Forest, Eldoret, Kaptembwa, Kericho, Kipkelion and Molo. They were each given a quarter of an acre to put up a house and two acres for farming. The government provided each family with blue iron sheets for a 25 by 14 size house. The government erected the iron sheet roofing with four wooden props so that each family could complete the rest. Many did not have the money to actually put up the iron sheets with proper shelter, whether with extra iron sheets or plywood to seal the four corner spaces. Many of the ramshackle structures were thus sealed with cartons and hanging rags.

If Wanjiru can at least have the energy to fend for herself and her grandchildren, Cucu Alice Wambui is too old to even move around. I found her sunbasking outside her house. Her two male grandchildren were repairing the rickety reed fence. The boys, pupils at Shalom Primary School, like Wanjiru’s grandchildren, had missed school. Reason? “Cucu (grandma) does not have the Sh60 for exam fees.”

Wambui told me she was born in 1933. Because of going through long spells without eating anything, she had become emaciated and weak. “I’m too weak to do anything, so I depend on well- wishers to support me and my two grandchildren,” said Wambui, who correctly noted her age and said she was now 86 years old, and facing the sunset of her life. Next to where she was seated was a small bowl of dry githeri (a mixture of boiled maize and beans). “I can’t chew the maize, I’ve no teeth left,” said Wambui as she opened her mouth for me to see her gaping gums. When she eats, she cherry-picks the softer beans, which she crushes with her gums. “I don’t have long to live, but I would like to see my (grand) children continue with schooling,” said Wambui. The boys are in class four and five respectively, and they hang around their grandmother because she is the only parent they have ever known. “I took them in when they were very young…very young,” recalled Cucu. “That younger one would even try and suckle my sagging empty breasts,” she said laughing but with a touch of sadness.

One of the well-wishers that has been taking care of Cucu Wambui with her two grandchildren is Love in Action Mission (LIAM), a community-based organisation in Ngobit. “It has been challenging and heart wrenching,” said Pastor Isaac Kinyua Wairangu, who is charged with the daily operations of the LIAM. “We don’t know who to distribute the little foodstuff we have to, and who to skip. The camp people are all really badly off, but for Cucu Wambui, it is a self-evident case.” In any case, Wairangu said that the community-based organisation did not have enough food to distribute to everyone. LIAM also relies on well-wishers to give it foodstuffs to distribute around in Makutano camp.

“I’ve been receiving five packets of 2 kg of flour, 1 kg for porridge and a bar of soap every fortnight,” Wambui told me. “That’s what has been keeping us alive.” Wairangu said that his organisation evaluated which family to help on a need-to-need basis. “We can only distribute so much. Recently we decided to put Wanjiru in our programme. Her intermittent sickness was pulling her down and she was unable to work as a farmhand. She’s also really not that young and with her three grandchildren, all young, she needed help.”

Thirty-four year-old John Thiong’o, Wanjiru’s son who had come visiting from Nakuru, told me that tilling the land for a woman of his mother’s age was a daunting task. A labourer is supposed to dig an area measuring 15 by 15 piece of land. “This work is done with a hoe and spade, requires someone strong and who’s feeding well. With not enough food going around here…you can only expect so much from an old lady like my mother.”

Thiong’o himself is a labourer in Nakuru. He said that wage labour everywhere had been going down lately – the drought had seriously affected and disrupted the harvesting and sowing periods. “That’s when there’s work in the farms. Since late last year, there hasn’t been work. It is that bad.”

Pastor Wairangu told me that another person they had incorporated into their programme was Guka (granddad), an octogenarian, who lived alone and whose family was killed in the 2007/2008 ethnic upheavals. “Guka would go for long periods of starvation, recoiled in his hovel, where oftentimes he would weep on his own,” said Wairangu. “Then he started behaving like he had been possessed, talking to himself, like he was performing a soliloquy…when he was given food, he calmed down. It was hunger that was driving him nuts.”

‘This government has never done anything for IDPs’

Right in the middle of the highlands, with the Mt. Kenya and Aberdare Ranges close by, Makutano camp can be very cold and windy at night. When Esther Kwamboka Ambuya gave birth to her fraternal twins, her “house” was a hovel. The only thing it had was the blue iron sheets. The empty spaces were filled with cartons and hanging rags and sacks. But when I visited her, the house had been built with iron sheets all round and partitioned with plywood.

“LIAM one time came visiting. They found the twins very sick. They asked me what the problem was. I told them it was the windy chilly nights through the gaping holes, which exacerbated their sickness,” said a smiling Kwamboka to me.

“But the babies had also been underfed,” added Wairangu. “We elected to re-do her house and put her on a feeding programme to boost her milk production for the babies.”

Kwamboka, 28, could now afford a smile and for a good reason: The house was now shielded from the chilly winds and the floor had been spruced up by a thick black polythene sheet to help trap heat. This kept the babies warm.

This Jubilee government is the most useless that has ever ruled Kenya,” said Peter Kariuki, the national chairman of IDPs in Kenya…As we talked, he painted a grim picture of the lives of the Kikuyus living in the camps, not only in Makutano, but wherever IDPs were located. “There are 300,000 IDPs, 95 percent of them Kikuyus, still not settled and languishing in poverty. And this government since its inception has never, mark my words, never done anything for IDPs.”

Kwamboka, today a single mother, was in Form III when PEV happened. She lived in Soko Mjinga in Kaptembwa in Nakuru. When her family escaped to the showground, the family separated as they were being taken to the different IDP camps. When the twins were born, she could not continue working as a casual labourer. “Her hands were full and she was all alone with the twins. They almost starved, but we helped salvage the situation,” said Wairangu.

“This Jubilee government is the most useless that has ever ruled Kenya,” said Peter Kariuki, the national chairman of IDPs in Kenya. I found him in Makutano. As we talked, he painted a grim picture of the lives of the Kikuyus living in the camps, not only in Makutano, but wherever IDPs were located. “There are 300,000 IDPs, 95% of them Kikuyus, still not settled and languishing in poverty. And this government since its inception has never, mark my words, never done anything for IDPs.”

The IDPs in Makutano were settled during President Mwai Kibaki’s tenure, explained the 38-year-old Kariuki. “The iron sheets for roofing were acquired during Kibaki’s time. We fought hard to coax the Sh10,000 from the government. By the time people were being settled at Makutano, Kibaki’s term was coming to end.”

Kariuki said that the IDPs had hoped the incoming government of President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto would be sympathetic to their plight. After all, who could understand the predicament of IDPs better than these two comrades-in-arms? “But all they were interested in was canvassing for votes from poor and vulnerable people. They lied to them how once they got into power, the government would alleviate their miserable lot,” said Kariuki. “It’s really mindboggling how a government can ride on the susceptibility of its people tormented by the wicked political actions brought to bear on them by the very same politicians.”

Recently, said Kariuki, the government – out of guilt or shame, or both – brought 50 bags of dry maize as its contribution to the famine that is going on at Makutano camp. “Is this a joke of a government or how would you describe this insult?” posed Kariuki. “Makutano has a population of 9,600 people or around 1,600 families. How was that maize supposed to be distributed? Who was it supposed to feed? This is a shameless government devoid any feelings.”

Kariuki told me a dark cloud of a silent hunger was threatening the people of Makutano camp, menacingly circling around them, as a government obsessed with lofty ideals of constructing houses for the pretenders to middle class watched unperturbed. Kariuki is himself an IDP from Eldoret. “The IDPs who came to Makutano were poor, yes, but not desperate. They could afford their own food. They had their own animals and used to till their land until they were visited by the 2007/2008 political calamities.” It is the government that has impoverished them, he added. “These people have been turned into serfs, exploited for their blood and labour. The Uhuru government, said Kairuki, was busy splitting hairs and blowing hot air over its duties and obligations to the citizenry. “What the people of Makutano have always wanted was the government to, at the very least, provide water for them. Rain-fed agriculture has over the years become intermittent and unpredictable.” The IDP chairman said that the underground water could not be used because it was saline – “it can’t be used for growing crops.”

The black cotton soil is fertile, he said, and it could be used to grow a variety of crops – from carrots to cabbages, potatoes to tomatoes, maize and beans. “Yet, look at all that land lying fallow because of lack of water and capital.”

I left Laikipia and Nyandarua counties persuaded that food shortages, hunger and food insecurity were less about drought and famine, but more to do with having the capacity to afford food and to secure food security.

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.

A Judas Moment: Betrayal in Nyamakima

By Dauti Kahura “The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy so he can’t fathom the real intent.” – Sun Tzu (Chinese war leader, strategist and philosopher)

On New Year’s Eve 2016, President Xi Jinping of China sent a congratulatory message to the China Global Television Network (CGTN), which had rebranded and relaunched its former label, the China Central Television (CCTV).

“Tell China stories well, spread China stories as well, spread China’s voice well, let the world know a three-dimension colourful China and showcase China’s role as a builder of world peace,” extolled the president while inaugurating the channel’s newly enlarged and sophisticated production studios in Beijing.

CGTN, which is the biggest news network and production house in mainland China, sustained its operations by beaming and broadcasting news as CCTV, just like before, and therefore was not affected by the rebranding. It has continued to telecast news and make documentaries and news programmes tailored for local consumption that are sanctioned by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. CGTN is the equivalent of the state-run Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), but with the clout and financial muscle that makes KBC look like one of its many news production departments.

But it is the CGTN’s operations and manoeuvres geared to cast China as a global phenomenon in the 21st century and beyond that the Central Committee is really keen to see. It would like its wings to spread worldwide so as to, “showcase China’s role as a builder of world peace”, as President Jinping mildly put it more than two years ago. Delivered as a message to a world that is undergoing tumultuous political shocks, it was a statement that camouflaged China’s real and serious global expansionist intentions as we enter the third decade of the 21st millennium.

That statement, as innocuous as it sounded, is a characteristic of Chinese foreign policy lingo that deliberately seeks to not frighten or scare its neighbours, such as India, Japan and South Korea, into alertness (military or otherwise), or to not arouse suspicious feelings (which might lead to heightened escalation of global drums of war) among fellow world economic powers, such as Germany, Japan, the United States and the militaristic Russia. Such a statement also serves to calm and reassure countries in Africa and Asia that China hopes to extract raw materials from. It is a philosophical underpinning that was underscored by Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese post-modern reformist leader who ruled between 1978 and 1989, who famously stated in the early 1980s: “Observe development soberly, maintain your position, meet challenges calmly, hide your capacity and bide your time, remain free of ambition, never claim leadership.”

Yet, beneath the carefully crafted and worded statements by the president and the senior Central Committee members that portray China as a humble and benevolent Big Brother – whose only agenda is world peace and harmonious co-existence – is a hidden, subtle, and ruthless ambition and pursuit of global power that China hopes to use to conquer the world and re-establish China as the dominant civilisation that it once was in the centuries gone by.

It is a philosophical underpinning that was underscored by Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese post-modern reformist leader who ruled between 1978 and 1989, who famously stated in the early 1980s: “Observe development soberly, maintain your position, meet challenges calmly, hide your capacity and bide your time, remain free of ambition, never claim leadership.”

CGTN is a consolidation of six carefully picked foreign-language operations. Apart from Chinese, the channel broadcasts in Arabic, English, French, Russian and Spanish. It is a convergence of print, radio, TV, and online (new media) publication. In 2009, the Chinese government had already set $6.5billion aside for CCTV’s rebranding and expansion into CGTN. In November 2018, CGTN opened a state-of-the-art bureau in Chiswick, a wealthy London suburb. That bureau is supposed to cover the length and breadth of continental Europe.

The One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative is the combination of railway lines (belts) and (silk) roads that are supposed to link mainland China with the rest of the world, collapsing distances for a hungry China in need of raw materials for its economic quantum leap and eventually its world political power. It is China’s latest massive agenda, which it hopes will catapult it to an economic power house that rivals every other world economic power within 25 years.

Italy, Portugal and Greece are among Europe’s rancorous democracies that have bought into the idea of OBOR. China will be building a road and railway line into Italy and with that link, create trade routes and have access to continental Europe’s goods as it taps into its engineering and technological advancement. The newly opened CGTN bureau in London, one of the biggest financial hubs in the world, will, among other things, capture and tell the story of the entry and success of OBOR in Europe.

Nairobi and news out of Africa

However, it is the CGTN’s Nairobi bureau that continues to elicit excitement and which is being closely watched (pun intended) by Western powers who once totally commanded and controlled the information flow entering and leaving the country and region. The bureau officially started broadcasting from Nairobi on January 11, 2012 as CCTV. On December 31, 2016, the bureau launched its CGTN operations and was made the biggest bureau in Africa, whose operations cover the entire continent, especially in regions that China has a keen interest in. Just around the same time, Xinhua, China’s largest news agency, signed a pact with Nation Media Group (NMG), ostensibly to trade news, but really for Xinhua, to have access to tell its stories in the largest newspaper in the region.

“Nairobi’s geopolitical strategic location – its nearness to the Horn of Africa, the Great Lakes region, the Indian Ocean littoral and maritime connection, its physical infrastructure and communications advancement and the fact that it’s the diplomatic corps’ hub in the region, easily persuaded the Central Committee of the Communist Party to make Nairobi the centre of its media operations outside of Beijing.”

Other CGTN bureaus in Africa exist – in Johannesburg, Lagos, and Cairo. The other major bureau outside of Beijing and Nairobi is the Washington DC bureau. The Washington bureau gives the Chinese an opportunity to show the Americans that they can also operate on their soil. However, in terms of strategic significance, geopolitical importance and long-term plans, the Nairobi bureau far outflanks the Washington bureau.

The re-organisation of the state-controlled CGTN in Nairobi did not go unnoticed by the Western media based in the city. At just about the same time, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), another state-run media conglomerate, was also expanding and moving its Nairobi operations from the central business district offices at Norfolk Towers to the quiet suburb of Riverside Drive. Its first move was to raid CGTN’s experienced staff – editors, reporters and mainly producers – and to hike their salaries and remunerations as an incentive to luring them from the heavily-funded Chinese media house, where money was the least of its problems. In its expanded offices, the BBC Nairobi bureau, which has been reporting on Kenya and the East African region for the last five decades or so, employed 300 journalists (four-fifths of whom were locals) to boost its image and presence.

“Our most important investment,” opined the Director of BBC News, Francesca Unsworth, “will be training the next generation of African reporters and producers to world class standards.”

This dramatic shift in the BBC’s policy does not surprise Gray Phombeah, who was the BBC’s Nairobi bureau chief from 2006 till 2008. When he became bureau chief, the BBC’s Nairobi office was tiny, comprising only around ten people. By the time he left in October 2008, it had expanded to more than 30 staff members, the majority of whom were Kenyan journalists. “It was during this time that the BBC broadcast for the first time the Swahili programme, Amka na BBC, from outside its London headquarters,” he says.

However, Phombeah is aware that “Africanising” the BBC bureau in Nairobi does not necessarily mean that Kenyan or African stories will be told from an African perspective and without bias. “We have to remember that the BBC World Service is Britain’s soft power, and so who controls and manages its bureaus abroad is part and parcel of that. The fact that the BBC has recognised the importance of having African journalists telling the continent’s stories is a good thing, but we must also accept the fact that only those stories that are palatable or acceptable to the British ruling class and Foreign Office mandarins get told.”

Clearly CGTN’s serious rebranding and infusion of more money by the state for its expansion and penetration into the African continent merited the BBC’s re-evaluation of its operations in Africa – whether by default or design. The BBC also “relaunched” in November 2018 to position itself as the premier global broadcaster that takes the African continent seriously.

Two decades ago, in 1998, the BBC World Service had already opened its office in Nairobi. “The BBC began by moving its operations from Johannesburg to Nairobi,” said a senior BBC editor, who is not authorised to comment on the BBC’s Africa media plans. “Several things mitigated the shift: labour issues – the trade unions in South Africa are very powerful and strong – the worrying issue of escalating xenophobia and the fact that Johannesburg oftentimes is far removed (geographically and its heartbeat) from the continental issues that are central to the rest of the African countries.”

Africa is as important to the BBC as it is to CGTN. The BBC, in a project it is calling World 2020, in which its strategic expansion plans in Africa from its Nairobi headquarters are expected to have reached their zenith, is also expanding into Asia, building networks and partnering with local radio and TV stations to create as big a BBC audience as it possibly can.

“The Kenyan journalists working for CGTN have no say whatsoever on content development or editorial matters,” said an editor, who has since left the global television network. “That’s the prerogative of the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party.”

“Today, the United Kingdom’s best known and strongest foreign policy brand is the BBC,’ said the BBC senior editor. “With the Brexit imbroglio, the UK must look outwards and reach out to countries that it has had past relations with.” (Many of these countries, it goes without saying, are former colonies.)

The Propaganda Department

CGTN currently employs 150 local journalists who work as camera personnel, studio technicians, editors and producers, but the managerial and editorial decisions remain solely in the hands of the expatriate Chinese staff.

CGTN is not in the business of making profits, but countering what it considers to be the Western media’s distortion of the Chinese presence on the continent, said the former CGTN editor. “The major agenda for CGTN in Africa is propaganda, that is propagating China’s interests in Africa, through its own voice and medium.” To this extent, said the editor, “the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department heavily channels inexhaustible funds to CGTN as part of it global information warfare.”

But a senior assistant director of news at CGTN, a Kenyan, refutes the assertion that CGTN is an out-and-out self-censorship propaganda channel. “True the Managing Editor is Chinese, but his substantive editors are international staff, and they are anybody else but Chinese. CGTN only controls news that touch on Chinese interests and its foreign policy, its Asian neighbourhood, and major state conferences, like the just concluded One Belt, One Road International Forum that took place in Beijing last month…every other news is fair game.”

The most boring time to work for CGTN, said the director of news, is the month of March. “It’s the political season in China. That’s when the executive committee of the Communist Party meets and deliberates on issues. It also the time Parliament does the same, as it passes legislative laws deemed appropriate for the country. On these matters, nobody is better placed to handle them than the Chinese staff themselves. You easily could lose your job for ‘misreporting’ these events.” Misreporting here meaning reporting impartially and being critical, if need be. CGTN may not be as thorough as the BBC, but by and large it is building its content for its Africa coverage, said the director of news. “China has a 100-year-long term plan for Africa and a fully- fledged news coverage of Africa is part of the plan. When CCTV started in 2012, it used to have only 30 minutes of African news. Soon, it was broadcasting the one-hour lunchtime Africa Live. Africa Live soon had two editions – the lunchtime one between 1 pm and 2 pm and the 8pm one. Now, they even have Global Business Africa, a one-hour programme dedicated to African business news daily between 9pm and 10pm.”

Other programmes include the weekend shows, Face of Africa and Talk Africa. Face of Africa, a documentary, is shown on Sundays for 30 minutes, while Talk Africa is televised on Saturdays, between 8.30pm and 9pm. Talk Africa touched on various African issues, be they economic, political or social. There is also 30 minutes of African sports reporting on Saturdays. CGTN’s goal in Africa is to eventually sell China’s brand image to every corner of the continent, said the director of news.

In this current world of media explosion and Internet influence, if you can control the information warfare globally, you have half won the battle against your adversaries, said CGTN’s former editor, who added that China has taken this dictum extremely seriously. China believes that it is only by controlling and telling its narratives through its own kaleidoscopic lenses that it will achieve its own goal and pursuit of ultimate power and influence in the world.

But more than telling its own narratives and controlling what kind of news comes from its channels, the Chinese also realised that the Western media in Africa does not report positively about the continent. “They understood there is a gap they can plug in, even as they plot on how to maximize and rationalise their presence on the vast continent,” said the CGTN news director.

“In Africa, CGTN is competing with the Americans especially, whose media presence in the continent has been waning. The Cable News Network (CNN) and the Voice of America (VOA) are the only American news media outlets that report anything on Africa and when they do, it’s not all positive. Even then, CNN has one single correspondent dedicated to the whole of Africa.” The director of news said many American journalists consider being posted to Africa as a downgrade – in their minds Africa is still this backward, backwaters continent.

In the information warfare in Africa between America and China, “America has unfortunately been losing the (propaganda) war,” said the CGTN producer. “Today, when CNN wants to report on Africa, it relies on just one leanly-staffed bureau based in South Africa, and if it needs support, it flies in one of its various correspondents, who jet in in the morning and by evening have jetted out.”

For example, when David McKenzie, the CNN reporter stationed in Johannesburg, or Nina Elbagir, the Sudan-born CNN foreign correspondent, report on Africa, it is usually about a tragedy and generally bad news. “The only time CNN reports big time on Africa is when a calamity has taken place…CNN’s model on reporting Africa has remained the same since the days of Jeff Koinange – who was also the sole reporter from Cape to Cairo, Dar es Salaam to Dakar, Luanda to Lagos. Hence, with the exception of BBC, the Western media doesn’t have a major presence in Africa,” said the director of news.

Natural resources diplomacy

The decision by China to pick Nairobi as its continental operational base was a well- calibrated move and a “diplomatic coup” to bolster its grip on the country’s and the continent’s strategic extractive resource materials. China, through CGTN, views itself as a friend of Africa and enabler of its developmental progress and peacekeeping force, hence, its “favourable” reporting on its working relations with some of the countries it is directly dealing with. The producer observed that “CGTN will not do ‘human rights stories’…the kind of stories that Al Jazeera, BBC and other international media organisations are wont to doing in Africa because the Communist Party has a clearly spelt out non-interference [foreign] policy that states that China will not seek to influence any country’s domestic politics.”

“China opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti in July 2017 – People’s Liberation Army (and) Navy (PLAN) – from there it coordinates its peace keeping missions in Africa,” said the CGTN producer. “Nairobi is close enough to be reporting (positively) on the Chinese force working in trouble spots such as Mali and South Sudan, helping to stabilise those countries (peacefully) without China necessarily interfering with their domestic affairs.” According to the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think-tank, China in 2017 contributed about 2,500 troops and military experts to six United Nations peacekeeping missions in Africa.

The producer observed that “CGTN will not do ‘human rights stories’…the kind of stories that Al Jazeera, BBC and other international media organisations are wont to doing in Africa because the Communist Party has a clearly spelt out non-interference [foreign] policy that states that China will not seek to influence any country’s domestic politics.”

Hence, “China’s entry into Africa – with its value-neutral ‘natural resources diplomacy’ – has outflanked the West and forced a donor retreat from democracy,” recently wrote Wachira Maina, a constitutional lawyer.

To shut its (Western media) critics, CGTN has ostensibly been reporting good news coming out of Africa, such as innovation and technological advancement in relation to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and business concerns all over Africa, said the CGTN producer. “CGTN content is heavily slanted towards their investments in Africa – mainly in infrastructure and telecommunications, light industries (solar panels and green energy), mobile telephony assembly, mobile gadgets customised for Africa, and heavy commercial vehicle assembly in South Africa.”

China’s First Auto Works (FAW), the long distance truck engines and body works, opened its first plant in Johannerberg and CGTN never ceases to report about how China is partnering with Africa to build and develop its future production plants. Until Huawei, a Chinese telecommunication company, entered the African market in 1998, Africa’s telecommunication industry was controlled and dominated by Western multinational corporations, such as Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia. A dozen years later, the stiff market competition triggered by Huawei and other Chinese private companies have altered the terrain completely. The cost of telecommunications equipment and rates have gone down drastically.

Five months after CGTN was inaugurated in Beijing, in May 2017, Kenya launched a $3.2 billion standard gauge railway line funded by China, linking the capital Nairobi to the port of Mombasa, arguably making it the biggest infrastructure project in Kenya since independence in 1963. Popularly known as the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), the railway line is part of the OBOR project. That railway line is supposed to run all the way to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), passing through Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda. It is also supposed to divert to South Sudan and Ethiopia.

The East-West media war

“Under the One Belt, One Road initiative, China is investing nearly $900 billion in what it thinks of as a trunk silk-road. One trunk is an overland network of rail, road and power grids that link China’s industrial heartland to the vast oil, natural gas and mineral resources of Central Asia and on the market of Eastern and Western Europe,” observed Wachira. “The second trunk is a maritime silk road with two branches – an Indian Ocean link to sub-Saharan Africa and a Red Sea link to North Africa and Europe where ‘maritime road and overland belt’ converge.”

China, an emerging global power, and Britain, a retreating and politically troubled former colonial power, will channel their “media wars” from their bases in Nairobi. It will be a battle between a new Eastern power that hopes to gain a foothold in the continent’s unexplored extractive sector and a nostalgic Western power keen not to lose its control over African and Asian Commonwealth countries. Either way, both have decided to use the media as soft power to endear themselves to the continent.

In China in Africa: Power, Media Perceptions and a Pan-Developing Identity, Shubi Li and Helge Ronning argue that China’s media presence in Africa has increased in the last couple of years. “The country’s major media representative, Xinhua News Agency, added five more branches in 2011.”

The authors point out that 150 journalists and 400 local staff in Nairobi dispatch 1,800 pieces of news in English every month. “Radio has been an indispensable means of transmitting soft power, especially in a continent where half of the countries have a 30 percent illiteracy rate,” says the book’s authors. “In February 2006, China Radio International (CRI) launched is first overseas FM radio station in Nairobi with a schedule of daily programmes for 19 hours in English, Kiswahili and Chinese,covering China’s economic, social and cultural development.”

But China’s penetration of the Africa media scene has not been without criticism: “China has a record of jamming transmissions that it finds unpalatable,” said an editorial in the Zimbabwe Independent, which is quoted in the book. The editorial said that China also passes this technology to its (African) friends. Said the editorial: “China’s strict control of media and the Internet is not helping when it attempts to offer media aid in Africa.”

On the other hand, observe Li and Ronning in their book, “Chinese media following instructions from the Central Propaganda Department has been educating the public about the importance of building up soft power internationally and exporting the Chinese development model.”

China’s growing global dominance in the last quarter of a century has grown significantly. Indeed, the recently concluded One Belt, One Road International Cooperation Forum in Beijing further cemented Chinese dominance as a fast-rising global superpower. The country’s media presence in Africa is its latest strategy for global supremacy.

However, unlike that of other superpowers, the Chinese model of world domination is more subtle, as observed by the great Chinese war leader, strategist and philosopher, Sun Tzu, who said, “The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy so he can’t fathom the real intent.”

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 Dauti Kahura

Sometime in mid-2017, Deputy President William Ruto led a team of Jubilee Party MPs, senators and some governors deep into the Arror forest in Marakwet West. It was a big team because it was ferried in three helicopters. The Deputy President had taken the team to the forest to show them where one of two anticipated dams – the Arror hydroelectric power station (HEP) – would be located. The other dam that was to be built was Kimwarer-Talaal, which was to be on the Kimwarer River in Keiyo South, Elgeyo Marakwet County.

“We flew over the dense, thick forests of Arror and Kimwarer and from high above, we could see the mighty Arror River roaring down the plains,” said Beatrice Ilachi, then a nominated senator. “But some of us wondered loudly how the dam was ever going to be constructed. The landscape is not only very steep, it would also mean that a huge chunk of the gazetted forest would have to be cleared off.” Many in the group wondered whether the dams would further encroach on the country’s remaining dwindling forest cover.

When the choppers landed on some flat land, Ruto led the team into scaling the steep heights of the Arror forest. “We had not been prepared for the climbing – from our attires to the shoes – least of all, mentally,” said Ilachi. “Half way climbing through the thicket and scrubland, we gave up, many of us by then had even removed our shoes.”

“It was about two months to the elections [in August 2017], and so it was obvious that countrywide campaigns had commenced. On our way to Arror and Kimwarer sites, we had stopped at Tot in Baringo County to presumably check on the state of the county’s food security. After touring the supposedly dams’ sites, we flew to West Pokot for more campaigns.” said the former senator. “We didn’t hear of the dams’ story again until last December, when talk of an Italian company and visits to Italy were made by the DP and his team and now with the explosion of the magnitude of the scandal.”

The two multi-purpose dams were supposed to cost an arm and a leg. The latest sum given of between Sh63 billion ($630 million) and Sh38 billion ($380 million) for Arror and Sh28 billion ($280 million) for Kimwarer have generated so much heat within the ruling Jubilee Party that the Treasury Cabinet Secretary, Henry Rotich, had to be grilled for two days at the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) offices on Kiambu Road and made to answer some 300 questions relating to the dams’ financing. (Rotich arrived at the DCI at 6am on 5 March, 2019 and was questioned the whole day. The following day, the grilling was so intense that he requested for his favourite liquor drink to be delivered to him in the afternoon to cool his nerves.)

The Deputy President’s front line brigade, led by the cantankerous Kapseret MP Oscar Sudi, have cried foul, accusing the Jubilee wing of President Uhuru Kenyatta of opening a succession war to bar Ruto from succeeding the President come 2022. Seemingly addressing the DCI boss George Kinoti, he recently lambasted and accused him of being used by some “crooked” forces within the government to destroy Ruto by waging a smear campaign against the person of the Deputy President. In his characteristic war-like utterances at a public rally in his constituency, Sudi lunged at President Uhuru and asked him to state categorically whether he was also engaged in a mendacious campaign to mudsling his deputy.

“This dams’ saga is not about fighting corruption, but fighting William Ruto,” wailed Sudi. “If you [President Uhuru] don’t want William Ruto, just state it openly instead of engaging in purportedly phantom-like corruption wars all over the county, but in real sense your agenda is to sideline the DP.”

The beginning of a scandal

Ruto first talked of the construction of the dams in May 2016 at St Patrick’s High School in Iten. At the school’s function, he spoke of plans to build three dams: Arror, Embobut and Kimwarer (all located in forests), which he said would generate 125megawatts of power and would cost Sh80 billion. David Kimosop, the Managing Director of the Kerio Valley Development Authority (KVDA), who was present, said that construction of the dams would be completed “before end of year, once Treasury released funds.”

Kimosop even stated that a down payment of Sh4.9 billion (15 per cent of the total cost) had been made for the design of the Arror dam. “Construction work is expected to commence around September or October [2018], after detailed design plan is carried out.” The KVDA boss also stated that 400 hectares of forestland would be acquired from Kenya Forest Service (KFS) in exchange for 570 hectares of private land. Exactly two years later, in 2018, the chairman of National Land Commission, Mohammad Swazuri, said it had begun acquiring 8,000 acres of land for the construction of Arror and Kimwarer dams. Swazuri would go on to say that Sh63 billion had been set aside to buy land for people’s resettlement and to compensate about 800 families.

However, a month ago, the Kenya Forest Service pulled out of the deal, arguing that the project was ridden with controversy and corruption. “The matter failed to go through after the project was hit by allegations of corruption,” said Benjamin Kanyili, head of Kenya Forest Service North Rift Conservancy.

“One of the biggest lessons that is coming out of these mega scandals perpetrated during the first term of the Uhuruto presidency is the president’s lackadaisical attitude towards his deputy and sole responsibility of taking presidential charge,” said a former women’s representative who was also part of the Deputy President’s campaign trip to the dams’ site and who requested anonymity. “I remember early on in their dual rulership, we Jubilee Party Kikuyu MPs, having a sitting with the president and cautioning him against being too trusting of his deputy. But he brushed aside our concerns, claiming we needed to trust Ruto by giving him space to work and be in charge.”

“The dams’ projects were among the key drivers of the Jubilee government’s economic push and development, as captured in their first manifesto,” said the former women’s rep. “The other major project included the Galana-Kulalu Irrigation Scheme. Both of them were a total flop because there are some people in the government who didn’t see them as economic growth flagships, but as projects to rip off the state.”

The former women’s rep said that President Uhuru was now reaping the bitter fruits of having relegated his core duties to his deputy “who apparently took advantage of the president’s good- naturedness and his laid-back pose. Let us not kid ourselves – Ruto was the president in the first term.” In the initial days his first term, the president okayed the dams’ projects, confident in the knowledge that they were being handled efficiently and professionally by his deputy and the relevant ministries, said the former MP.

“The dams’ projects were among the key drivers of the Jubilee government’s economic push and development, as captured in their first manifesto,” said the former women’s rep. “The other major project included the Galana-Kulalu Irrigation Scheme [the one-million-acre agricultural scheme on Tana River that straddles both Tana River and Kilifi counties]. Both of them were a total flop because there are some people in the government who didn’t see them as economic growth flagships, but as projects to rip off the state.”

A former MP from Central Kenya told me he had “very early on raised the red flag about the Galana project and sounded the warning that it looked like some Jubilee functionaries were keen on using the project to siphon billions of shillings”. He said he was ignored by the presidency and in the process created some serious enemies within the Deputy President’s camp. “I became a marked man, and when the time for nominations came, they dealt with me.”

“When the dams’ scandal exploded, the president was very furious with his deputy,” claimed the former women’s rep. “He asked the DP why he had taken advantage of his good-naturedness and trust in him to bungle government projects. Of course, the president, in his fury, said that the state would get to the bottom of the scam and whoever was involved would be punished. But it is not always that easy. Fighting corruption is like walking through on tightrope; you must be very careful how you manage the politics.” President Uhuru was not only furious and supposedly embarrassed by the magnitude of the corruption engulfing his Jubilee Party government, but he was also shamed internationally. Last month, a British Conservative Party MP contributing to the Brexit motion in Parliament is reported to have cautioned Theresa May on how she managed Britain’s exit from the European Union lest the country found itself having to deal with mega corruption scandals “like the one engulfing Kenya right now”.

The Italian connection

In Italy, La Verita, a conservative-leaning newspaper, picked up the dams’ scandal in Kenya and reported that an Italian company had been fingered in the labyrinthine maze of the dams’ sleaze. “There’s a new investigation coming from Africa,” wrote the paper on March 9, 2019. “This time it relates to an Italian construction giant, CMC of Ravenna, rocked by major scandals in Kenya.” The paper stated that “the investigations affect also four minister of the government of Uhuru Kenyatta. In the middle of this scandal, there are three dams, for a total of value of 800 million Euros. Two of them are built with Itinera (Gavio Group).”

According to www.globalcapital.com, Cooperative Muratoi Cementisti Di Ravenna filed for creditor protection in a court in Ravenna on December 4, 2018. (Around the same time that Ruto visited Rome.) “Distressed CMC Ravenna stokes HY’s Italian Fears,” read the headline story. (HYs stands for high yield.) Coincidentally, the company filed for bankruptcy just when it was about to take another construction job in Uganda – the UGSh500-billion contract work for the construction of the Busega-Mpigi Expressway. In Kenya, by the time CMC was filing for bankruptcy, it had pocked Sh15 billion ($150 million) as down payment and had done just half of the work at Itare Dam in Meru County, which had been valued at Sh38 billion ($380 million).

The “historical” CMC Ravenna, as the La Verita newspaper describes the company started in the beginning of last century, had three jobs in Kenya: Arror, Kimwarer and Itare dams construction, all totaling about Sh150 billion ($1.5 billion). “That’s a whacking lot of money to give to one company,” said a government land economist who was involved in land evaluation for some of the intended dams’ construction. “It means a very influential person was behind the awarding of the contracts to this company. Do you have to be super clever to guess the name of that person other than the president himself?”

The paper listed the chronology of events leading to the contracts. “A contract in Kenya was obtained by CMC in 2014. The other two were signed in 2015 on occasion of a visit to Nairobi by our former Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, who was photographed together with President Uhuru Kenyatta wearing a bullet-proof vest.”

La Verita reported that CMC requested to be admitted to the so-called “arrangement with the creditors” procedure. The paper said the company “is suspected of having paid bribes to win bids related to three dams.”

The work of the company, said La Verita, was meant to be “part of a wider project to redesign the water distribution in Kenya, which was one of the electoral promises of Mr Kenyatta himself.” The paper wrote that a sum of Sh4.9 billion ($49 million) was deposited in a bank in Westlands, “the Nairobi neighbourhood where the [Italian] expats live and international companies have their offices”. The newspaper mentions four cabinet secretaries in connection with the scam: Henry Rotich, the Treasury Cabinet Secretary, Mwangi Kiunjuri, the Agriculture Cabinet Secretary, Najib Balala, the Tourism Cabinet Secretary, and Simon Chelugui the Water Cabinet Secretary.

“Once it was clear that the project had been given the go-ahead, Rotich allegedly bought Elgeyo Sawmills owned by some South Asians through proxies for Sh1 billion,” confided a land economist working at the Treasury. (This is part of the land where KVDA had planned to build the dam.) “In 60 days, Rotich had offloaded the saw mills for Sh6.6 billion. What the CS did was to resell the land to KVDA for a killing.”

The newspaper speculated this could be one of the biggest misappropriation of public funds ever experienced in Kenya. In February, reported the newspaper, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Noordin Haji, visited Italy, to, among other things, establish Rotich’s alleged association with Rita Ricciardi, the chairperson of the Italy-Kenya Association. The paper concluded by saying that “in reality, the 2015 negotiation with CMC was managed by the Ministry of Treasury,” clearly placing the onus of the scandal at Rotich’s feet.

Conflict of interest

The Treasury Cabinet Secretary, Henry Rotich, is alleged to be markedly neck deep in the dams’ saga. Sources at the Treasury, who asked that their names not be revealed because they are not authorised to speak to the media, spoke of a person who knew precisely what he was doing in relation to the Arror and Kimwarer dams project.

This is where the real murkiness begins, added the economist. “This is illegal. Rotich technically paid himself in a clear case of conflict of interest, abuse of office and negligence of duty,” said the economist. “The Evaluation Act is very clear: Such a sale of a huge going concern cannot be sold in at least under 90 days. The sale must appreciate for at least six months for it to be resold at 25 per cent of the appreciation.”

Three weeks ago, the former Attorney General, Prof Githu Muigai said at the DCI offices that he had advised Rotich against entering into a deal with CMC Ravenna. Githu said that due diligence had not been done on the Italian company and both Rotich and KVDA ignored his pleas to first conduct a thorough legal/financial status of the company.

The dams’ saga gets murkier when three senior government officials (Susan Koech, Principal Secretary, East African Community and Regional Development, David Kimosop, KVDA MD and Henry Rotich CS Treasury), all coming from the same village in Arror, are alleged to have been involved in the scam. It is alleged that Susan Koech, who was once the North Rift Regional Manager for Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), arranged for payments to be made to the CMC. “By then the dams had been transferred to the EAC ministry for easy follow-up because the scam’s perpetrators’ person was there.”

This is not the first time such shenanigans – of shifting or retaining projects in certain ministries to either follow their minders or stay with them – have taken place. In 1986, Kamau Ngotho, writing in the Sunday Nation, last month said: “So personalised was the Turkwel (Gorge Dam) project, that when the Ministry of Regional Development, under which KVDA fell, was carved out from Mr Biwott’s Ministry of Energy and Regional Development, President Daniel arap Moi issued an executive order that the parastatal be retained in Mr Biwott’s docket.”

Peter Munya, the former Meru governor, who is the current Cabinet Secretary for Industrialisation, served at the East African Community and Regional Development (the ministry in charge of constructing the phantom dams) for six months. “Munya was very uneasy about the goings-on about the dams’ project, which was in his ministry,” said a senior bureaucrat at the ministry. He didn’t want to be suckered up in a mess that was clearly going to blow up sooner than later.”

The bureaucrat told me that there is no love lost between Ruto & Ruto Inc. and Munya. “Munya still smarts from the fact that Ruto organised for his losing of the Meru governor’s seat. He has never forgiven him for that defeat to his political nemesis, Kiraitu Murungi. “So when Rotich allegedly approached Munya and pleaded with him to hush-hush the dams’ murky ongoings, Munya ignored him.” Consider Munya the whistle blower of this particular dams’ sleaze, said the civil servant.

Dams and development

“Dams have long fascinated scientists and politicians alike,” writes Dr Harry Verhoeven. “In the post-independent era of the late 1960s and 1970s, dams become popular in the developing countries seeking to meet the triple challenges of state-building, nation-building and economic development.”

The professor of politics, who has worked in the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa, argues that Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India saw dams as the “modern temples of India, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty through spectacular multiplier effect in industry and irrigated agriculture”.

In Africa, Gamal Abdel Nasser, considered to be the father of Pan-Arabism and the second President of Egypt, viewed the building of the Aswan High Dam – the biggest dam in Africa built in the 1960s – as Egypt’s “second independence”. Aswan has remained Africa’s largest and most important infrastructure project. It is credited with controlling the Nile flood for the first time in history. Aswan Dam is considered to be Egypt’s greatest engineering marvel, possibly only comparable to the construction of the pyramids.

Dr Verhoeven, observes that “dams are believed to magically transform barren wastelands into fertile acreage, elevating the nation and integrating, through irrigation and electrification, the domestic political economy.”

From the 1950s through to the 1970s, the World Bank provided the ideological and financial backing for the construction of hundreds of mega dams across Africa, Asia and Latin America. “But from the 1970s dams as development instruments become contested sites,” reports the don. “They were exposed as huge corruption scandals that contributed to the systemic over-estimation of their benefits. But from 2012, dams seems to be staging a comeback.”

To be continued…

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.

A Judas Moment: Betrayal in Nyamakima

By Dauti Kahura

A year ago this month, an unexpected political commotion jolted unsuspecting Kenyans who were still reeling from the effects of two presidential elections that had taken place in a space of just 79 days. These elections had openly split the country into ethnic fault lines that were now threatening to plunge the country into an abyss of anarchy and civil strife.

The 9 March 2018 “handshake” between President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga – pejoratively referred to as “the handcheque” by cynics and Raila’s former front line and hard core supporters, who see the détente between the president and his main rival as the ultimate betrayal – took place against a backdrop of four months of palpable ethnic rivalry and tension that had been simmering since the 26 October 2017 presidential poll, in which Uhuru had essentially run against himself.

When he was sworn in on 28 November 2017, it was evident that President Uhuru did not seem to savour his presidential victory: In the first general election of 8 August, half of the total registered voters of 19.6 million people who cast their votes had voted against him, even as claims of rigging by the opposition outfit, the National Super Alliance (NASA) were rife. On 1 September, the Supreme Court of Kenya overruled the Jubilee Party win, and sued for a fresh presidential election in 60 days – a decision that to date rankles and startles President Uhuru, said a Jubilee Party MP from Central Kenya.

“In a country where the judiciary has always been malleable and at the beck and call of the executive since 1963, it was unheard of that a court would dare rule against the president’s wish,” observed the MP. “It had never happened, hence Uhuru was secure in the knowledge that the court wouldn’t ever dream of ruling against him, just like it hadn’t in 2013. And because African presidents don’t lose elections, at least not through the courts, he did not expect to lose his.”

So, when the Supreme Court ruled in favour of a repeat election, Uhuru Kenyatta hit the roof and swore against the court’s judges, threatening to “revisit the issue”.

In the repeat October election, Uhuru Kenyatta garnered far less votes than in the August election. Seven and half million people supposedly voted, a figure the MP, now with the knowledge of hindsight, told me was cooked. A majority of Raila’s supporters had boycotted the October election and apathy, fatigue and a don’t-care attitude among Uhuru’s support base ensured that the October election was even less credible than the August one.

The question that has been boggling many Kenyans minds is: What exactly led to President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, two of the bitterest of political rivals, who had left nothing to chance – as one fought to keep the coveted seat of the presidency to himself, while the other hoped to snatch it from the incumbent – to suddenly make peace? Was this a spontaneous reaction of two leaders who had suddenly been imbued with desire to save their country, which was on the verge of ethnic and geographical fragmentation?

The politics of handshakes is not exactly a new phenomenon in Kenya, so this was not a first. Ten years ago, almost to the month, on 28 February 2008, President Mwai Kibaki and his chief political nemesis, Raila Odinga, shook hands on the steps of Harambee House to the great relief of many Kenyans. The 2008 handshake had been occasioned by a hotly disputed presidential vote between Kibaki and Raila, which had driven the country on the precipice of ethnic warfare that had flared in the Rift Valley and in several other parts of the country.

The question that has been boggling many Kenyans minds is: What exactly led to President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga…to suddenly make peace? Was this a spontaneous reaction of two leaders who had suddenly been imbued with an undying desire to save their country, which was on the verge of ethnic and geographical fragmentation?

The truce between Kibaki and Raila was a negotiated peace settlement: both politicians had been encouraged by the chief negotiator, Kofi Annan, and his team to form their own respective negotiators, who then for weeks discussed the modalities of how they would accommodate each other in a government of national unity. And so it came to pass that a government of national unity with Raila Odinga as a non-executive Prime Minister was formed. The process was transparent and Kenyans were kept abreast of the proceeding by the media. The economic boycott and demands for secession

Fast forward to March 2018. The handshake between President Uhuru and Raila is mired in mystery and subterfuge. Days after the handshake on the steps of Harambee House, a working committee was formed on 24 March to cement the newly found rapprochement, thenceforth referred to as the Building the Bridges to Unity Advisory Task Force, also known as the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI).

The alleged behind-the-scenes secret talks, political manoeuvres and familial visits soon after Uhuru assumed his second term are as intriguing and interesting as they are revealing. Through wide- ranging interviews conducted through President Uhuru Kenyatta’s intermediaries, Raila’s close confidantes, Deputy President William Ruto’s associates and bosom buddies, Central Kenya and North Rift Jubilee MPs and through my own investigations, I culled an array of information that suggested a presidency in crisis, trapped in a paradoxical pyrrhic victory and a withering state. Then there was a defeated opposition leader who for the very first time in his political career was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and was faced with the devil’s alternative of either quitting politics altogether or re-engineering his ebbing political career. Add to this scenario a scheming deputy president who had already trained his guns on 2022 no sooner had his Jubilee Party won the presidential elections.

Looking back to one year ago, it is as if the clock was ticking and time was not on all of the three protagonists’ side. As one of Raila’s aides said to me: “Raila had come to the late realisation that he would never win the presidential elections as long as the Kikuyus were counting the votes. True, he would force them to spend billions of shillings, but that was just about it. It was about time he recalibrated his political career if he intended to keep it going.”

“Nothing had scared President Uhuru like the NASA’s economic boycott programme and secession talk,” confided one of the president’s friends. Like the Americans would say, Uhuru and his family were “scared shitless” of these two ideas. After opting out of the 26 October fresh presidential election, Raila and his team had come up with a raft of options that were meant to force President Uhuru and his Jubilee Party mandarins to listen to NASA. NASA supporters’ boycott of products made by certain companies associated with the Jubilee Party and resurgent demands for secession by some opposition politicians, particularly at the coast, threatened to tear the country apart – literally.

The most potentially lethal of NASA’s projects was the economic boycott, in which Kenyans of oppositional goodwill were asked to keep away from the Kenyatta family’s businesses and any companies that were either associated with them, or had, in one way or another, presumed to have abetted President Uhuru’s contested win. So, in addition to the family’s large business empire, Safaricom, the largest mobile network company in this part of the world, was on NASA’s radar of companies whose products were to be avoided. The second tier to the economic boycott was a proposal, through the creation of county assemblies in opposition strongholds, for people to decide, whether indeed they wanted to be part of Kenya.

The family business

The biggest Kenyatta family business visible on a daily basis in Kenyan homes is the Brookside Dairy Company. Plutocrats, as well as mainly urban proletariats, use one or more of the several milk products sold under the Brookside label.

Milky tea is consumed widely in Kenyan homes. Drinking a cup of tea is a habit so ingrained in Kenyans’ psyche that it has become second nature for Kenyan families to round off their supper with a steaming cup of tea. It is a habit they picked from the British colonialists, who encouraged tea growing as a cash crop.

With the onset of the boycott, Brookside, a market leader in processed milk, suddenly suffered a steep slump, so much so that Christina Pratt, President Uhuru’s sister, took to visiting various supermarkets, especially in Nairobi, to gauge the daily sales of Brookside products. (I confirmed this in December 2017 when I also did my own survey to measure to what extent the boycott was biting. The French consortium, Danone, had in 2014 acquired a 40 per cent stake in the milk conglomerate through the holding company Brookside Africa Holding Ltd, while Abraaj Group, the Dubai-based private equity firm, had staked a 10 per cent ownership in 2009. Danone is supposed to push Brookside products abroad, hence globalising the Kenyatta family’s business and leveraging its merchandise in a world of cut-throat competition.

“The boycott was a dangerously crippling idea as a political tool, because the Kenyattas’ best-known flagship was going down the drain, right in front of their eyes…something had to be done fast…and done very fast,” said my friend, who works for the Brookside Dairy Company in Ruiru, off the Thika Superhighway. “Let us cut to the chase,” added my friend. “Uhuru Kenyatta is not concerned with the Kenyan nation’s legacy but with the Kenyatta family’s legacy.”

“The family business had to be protected by all means, by any means necessary,” said a Central Kenya MP who is close to President Uhuru. “Instructions from the matriarch, Mama Ngina, to Uhuru and family was that the cardinal rule was to protect the business and not politics per se. In other words, use politics to shield your businesses from external interference or collapse.”

The other issue that terribly worried President Uhuru and his close-knit political cabal was the talk about secession. “It became a terrifying waking nightmare to them, that a section of Kenyans would even contemplate the thought of slicing off the country because of political dissatisfaction,” said the MP. “These were a different type of angry Kenyans, separate from the Kenyans who even when their votes had been stolen in past elections never contemplated going their own away.”

Apart from the Kenyatta family’s business agonies, Safaricom, which NASA and its opposition supporters countrywide had accused of providing servers to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) – servers the election commission to date has refused to open for public scrutiny – was seriously looking to the possible end of its close to two decades of mobile telephony monopoly. Kenyans allied to NASA were furiously opting for Safaricom’s competitor, Airtel. “The Safaricom management team was wailing in its boardroom, wondering what to do, as scores of Kenyans daily migrated to Airtel,” said a Safaricom senior manager to me. “The team called Raila and asked him why he was hell-bent on collapsing the company. Similarly, the team was also piqued by President Uhuru because he seemed impotent in the wake of the economic boycott. They were peeing in their pants, in a manner of speaking.”

The economic boycott, the threats of secession, a withering state, and pressure from Western governments became the push factors that drove the Kenyatta family to initiate a political rapprochement with Raila Odinga, confided an aide to President Uhuru. The people’s president

Raila, on the other hand, was also undergoing his own political catharsis. “Wherever he went, the people become cantankerous and difficult to calm down: “Hapana…hapana…kula Bible kwanza, kabla hujaongea na sisi” (Swear by the Bible first before talking to us), roared the crowds. Critically, his political career was on the cards, observed one of his aides recently in an interview. “The masses had run ahead of Raila and they were demanding he become their president, failure to which they would abandon him.”

The NASA brigade had decreed that in the light of the contested presidential elections, Raila Odinga would be publicly sworn in as “the Peoples’ President”. He had postponed this once on Jamhuri (Independence) Day on 12 December 2017, and the backlash from his supporters was unmistakable. “If he postponed it again, they were going to have him for supper and that would have been the end of his illustrious political career,” reminisced one of Raila’s aides. “On 30 January 2018, a reluctant Raila was publicly sworn in at Uhuru Park as the Peoples’ President to great aplomb by the throngs of the masses who attended the rally.”

Western countries’ ambassadors and like-minded envoys told Raila point black: “You’ve been appointed the peoples’ president, but know that you’re all alone.” They reminded him of his political stature as one of the country’s leading politicians, his international reputation, and his input of many years in national and global political arenas. They asked him whether he was willing to see all that credibility washed away because of his recalcitrant stance. “Separately, therefore, Raila Odinga was also having his moments of exorcising his demons and coming to terms with the political realities of the day,” observed the aide.

Raila Amolo Odinga has paid a huge price for dabbling in national politics: He has been detained for close to a decade by the state. In the 2007 general elections, he saw his presidential victory snatched. In recent times, he has also experienced personal traumas: His first-born son Fidel died in 2015; his daughter Rosemary is recovering from a debilitating sickness (both of these two calamitous situations have been energy-sapping, friends of Raila tell me); and real threats had been made on his life. At 75, Raila is also no longer the youthful adrenaline-driven politician who could pack public rallies and indoor meetings into 18 hours and still spare four hours of just enough sleep to see him through the next day’s political onslaught.

Although the same Western envoys did not rebuke President Uhuru, they nonetheless asked him to map out ways of accommodating and working with Raila. “It was a veiled threat because they let him know that if he failed to do so, they would institute economic sanctions on his regime and make his life as a president keen on a legacy difficult,” confided a foreign diplomat friend who works for the European Union (EU). Amid all this, his dutiful wife, Ida, has borne the brunt of his oppositional politics. While Raila politicked, she held the family together, ensuring that politics did not come in the way of the family’s private lives. “But the 2017 presidential elections, his swearing-in ceremony on January 30, and threats on his life had tested her great patience and worn her down,” said a friend close to the Odingas.

Impeccable political folklore has it that it was the Kenyattas who approached the Odinga family for a candid sit-down, said a Central Kenya MP. “With the ongoing threats to their businesses, a wobbly economy and a hollow electoral win, the Kenyattas were in a bad place: they had to reach out to Raila, but only through Ida,” said a source who was privy to the ongoings.

“Before the actual handshake on the material day, President Uhuru and Raila had met for several hours, haggling and going over issues of mutual convergence and interest,” revealed an MP from Central Kenya. BBI has nine points that President Uhuru and Raila agreed to work on. They are: ethnic antagonism and competition, lack of a national ethos, inclusivity, devolution, divisive elections, safety and security, corruption, shared prosperity, responsibilities and rights.

“I remember President Uhuru telling his deputy William Ruto: ‘We’ve to bring on board Raila Odinga, if we don’t, we’ll not be able to govern this country,’” said my source, who is known to both of them. “The only thing that Ruto was not told was when and where the handshake would take place.”

Ruto had run the country between 2013 and 2017, quipped the Central Kenya MP, “and it had been a disastrous affair. Yet both Uhuru and Ruto share blame for running the country down.”

BBI and the Kikuyu-Kalenjin rift

In 2014, a year after Uhuru and Ruto formed the Jubilee government, President Uhuru summoned all Kikuyu MPs to State House and told them that if they needed anything, they should go to the Deputy President. “We must ensure our people trust the DP…you know our people are conservative,” the President is purported to have told the MPs. The two had campaigned on a platform of being the victims of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and therefore had been “joined at the hip” as they canvassed for votes from Kenyans who had been ethnically and emotionally whipped to vote for them.

“In that meeting, Esther Murugi (former Nyeri Town MP) disagreed with the president,” recounted the MP. “‘In Nyeri, we’ve had IDPs [internally displaced people] at Kinoru. Mwai Kibaki [Kenya’s third President] ruled with these people [the Kalenjin] because he feared them,’” said Murugi to President Uhuru. “This is simply untenable.” Three years down the line, Esther Murugi was one of the first Central Kenya MPs to fail to recapture her seat because she did not get the Jubilee nomination.

“Ruto is very vindictive,” the Central Kenya MP reminded me. “He doesn’t forgive: all those people he suspects of having implicated him in the ICC case must be punished.” The MP told me that some of the MPs who failed to bag the Jubilee Party nomination tickets and eventually “lost” in 2017 elections are suspected by Ruto’s people of helping to compile part of the report that incriminated him and sent him to the ICC.

2014 was not the last time that President Uhuru summoned MPs to State House. In August 2017, he met with newly elected Jubilee Party MPs. “He was soaking drunk and he lectured us, as a headmaster would his pupils,” said a first-time MP from North Rift. “Rookie MPs who had never been to State House were excited to be called for the breakfast meeting. But when they were lectured by a drunk president, who was allegedly banging tables, cursing and swearing, they were dumbfounded.”

“Don’t joke with a president who’s not seeking a second term,” President Uhuru is reported to have told the MPs. “I dare anyone who will not do as I say to walk through that door,” he hollered to the now cowed MPs. “Why he was angry, we don’t know. When he finished ranting, the MPs stood up and instead of heading to the laid out breakfast tables, they hastily walked to their waiting cars, and drove off in a huff.”

As fate would it, a few days after that tense meeting, the Supreme Court nullified the election on September 1. “Uhuru once again quickly summoned us to State House: ‘You’ve seen what the court has done to our win’” said a now mellow and pliant president. ‘We need to put our heads together and strategise on how to win the presidential seat again.’ He was now speaking to us in collegial terms – ‘our win’ – the insults and threats had gone, he wanted our help so badly…that’s our President Uhuru.”

“A year later, BBI has not communicated the handshake properly to Kenyans,” said my Central Kenya MP friend. “There hasn’t been enough awareness about its real and true agenda and intentions.”

Unlike the handshake of 2008, which was witnessed by, among others, Tanzanian leaders, Benjamin William Mkapa and Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, and the Ghanaian statesman Kofi Annan, the 2018 handshake did little to reduce mistrust or to help build confidence and lend credence to the rapprochement. On the contrary, the 2018 handshake is shrouded in suspicion; many Kenyans believe it has an insidious agenda and most are hard put to explain what it means.

One of the very first things President Uhuru and Raila, now under the auspices of BBI, had planned to do was to visit Central Kenya, as the first entry point of selling the BBI agenda, said the Central Kenya MP. “It was a natural and obvious consequence that BBI seeks to build trust and confidence among these two warring communities, but the visit has remained on the cards, postponed several times.” The MP said Central Kenya has not been in the mood to welcome President Uhuru Kenyatta. “Right now, they don’t feel him, they feel let down by a leader who seem impervious to their economic tribulations. This is what the intelligence reports relayed to the president have been saying.”

But, said the MP, this could all be hot air: “Right now, it’s true they are angry and bitter with muthamaki, so, to project their anger they become emotional and end up saying irrational things like, ‘We’ll vote for William Ruto.’ Kikuyus are the most ethnocentric community in Kenya, and all this bottled-up anger melts on the D-Day [election day]. When they say they’ll vote for Ruto, they mean they’ll vote for him from their houses. No Kikuyu will troop to the ballot booth to line up and vote for a non-Kikuyu presidential candidate – Ruto included.”

Paul Mwangi, one of the joint secretaries (the other is Martin Kimani) to BBI, disputes the assertion that there has been a planned Central Kenya visit from the two leaders that has failed to materialise. “It is not true that the two leaders have been planning to visit Central Kenya. Remember BBI has been holding town hall meetings across the country and it wouldn’t be a great idea to start the visits. For two reasons: one, fear of raising political temperatures and two, fear of misinterpretation of BBI’s work by some MPs, who would want to hijack the BBI’s agenda for their own gain.”

Mwangi said BBI had already conducted 18 town hall meetings. “There 29 more to go, it is obvious we’ll not beat the stipulated one year deadline. We’re going to ask for more time from the principals.”

Even with less than half of the counties visited, the emerging theme in these meetings has been – punda amechoka…punguza mzigo (The donkey is overloaded and therefore fatigued…let’s lessen its weight). That is the literal translation. The interpretation is that the voter feels burdened and therefore fatigued by the seemingly overwhelming extra political seats created by the new constitution promulgated in August 2010.

With a ballooning wage bill, and mounting domestic and external debts that have apparently overwhelmed the government, the state has sometimes inadvertently been giving the impression that it cannot deliver development and services to the people because it is having to spend a lot of money paying political leaders.

Be that as it may, “BBI is nothing but an entrenched political cabal’s way of controlling national politics and state power so that they remain with the people who have always controlled the two. But more importantly, it is the cabal’s way of ensuring that state power does not land in the ‘wrong hands’’, said a Jubilee MP, who is a friend to both President Uhuru and his deputy. “The Kenyatta family would like to have a political stranglehold on Kenya, the way the Bongo family in Gabon has done.” (Ali Bongo, who has ruled Gabon since 2009, took over from his father, Omar Bongo, who was president for 42 uninterrupted years.)

“BBI’s town hall meetings are supposed to culminate in a referendum and this is where the catch is – it’ll not be by popular vote, but by delegates voting by acclamation,” opined the Jubilee MP. “All these supposed town hall meetings are a ruse: BBI knows what it wants, how it wants it…these meetings are dress rehearsals that are supposed to dupe the people to believe that their voices matter. Carefully selected delegates from 24 counties will be assembled at the Bomas of Kenya for a convention in which they will all unanimously agree to pass the tabled resolutions. That’s how it shall come to be.”

Yet, in a carefully worded rejoinder, Mwangi retorted to the contrary: “BBI has no position on whether or not there’ll be a referendum, that’s a matter that will be dependent on the solutions that BBI will recommend to the principals and where the holding of the referendum will take place will be part of those resolutions.”

The referendum is a must, my sources from Raila’s quarters said to me matter-of-factly. “Raila has indicated there’ll be a referendum this year, it must happen, if it could happen before the population census, the better and he is not bluffing…if it doesn’t take place, he walks away…it is a very serious matter to him.” (The Kenya population census is slated for August this year.)

“We welcome the referendum,” said a North Rift Jubilee MP and one of the DP’s close associates. “We’re not afraid of it. We are going to frame the question differently and better and we’ll be asking Kenyans – kama kweli punda amechoka, (if truly the people are overwhelmed, hence, the demand for a reduction of the constitutional stipulated seats), why then expand the executive? This not our first referendum to engage in…we have been there before and we know how to play the game.”

The Ruto factor

The MP observed that the machinations against Ruto by the so-called “Kiambu mafia” will not work. “Ruto is a hardened and seasoned politician, he has passed through many political tribulations and overcome them. Even this one, he’s going to overcome it.”

The MP pointed out to me that during the August 2010 referendum on the new constitution, in which the Greens supported the new constitution, while the Reds opposed it (with Ruto in the Red corner), “Ruto, even without having money to wage a proper campaign, still gave his antagonists a run for their money.”

Recently, William Ruto’s think tank has advised him to travel abroad and seduce Western countries’ audiences. At a Chatham House lecture on 8 February this year, he supposedly talked tough and even alluded to Raila as a professional perennial presidential loser. These presidential losers are the people who cause trouble in Africa, he is said to have told the audience. After the Chatham House engagement, on 12 February, he dropped by at the BBC’s London offices for the first of his planned media charm offensives – an interview with BBC Hard Talk host Stephen Sackur. Sackur was typically blunt and probing, even suggesting that Ruto was known to be among Kenya’s most corrupt people. The charm offensive obviously failed as Ruto struggled to make his case.

But BBI is not the only juggernaut the DP will have to contend with. “Ruto rigged many of the Central and Mount Kenya Jubilee Party MPs that he felt were not on his side, or would be difficult to control, or influence,” said the MP. “He ensured all loyal MPs from his side were handed the certificates easily. That was not the arrangement he had with Uhuru when he was tasked to take charge of the party nomination affairs after the fiasco of the first countrywide nominations trials.”

The MP said that all the former MPs who lost their seats and who are still smarting from their loss loathe Ruto, and are just waiting for the opportune time to strike back. “Yes, they also rail against President Uhuru privately; ‘the man has never been in control of anything.’ They, therefore, have sworn to not support any venture by Ruto. They are adamant they won’t stop saying Ruto rigged them out.”

Among the most hurt of the Mount Kenya politicians who accuse Ruto of rigging them out are: Cecily Mbarire (who ran for the Embu governor seat); Kabando wa Kabando (former MP, Mukurwe-ini in Nyeri County); Martha Karua (who ran for the Kirinyaga County governor’s seat); Mutahi Kagwe (who ran for the senator’s seat in Nyeri County); Ndung’u Gethenji (the former MP for Tetu, Nyeri County); Peter Kenneth (who ran for the Nairobi County governor’s seat); Peter Munya (who ran for the Meru County governor’s seat); Rachel Shebesh (who ran for Women Representative in Nairobi County); and William Kabogo (who ran for the Kiambu County governor’s seat). “Kagwe, Kenneth and Munya are still so angry with Ruto, they won’t even talk to him,” said the MP.

Some of these politicians ran as independents after forming the Kenya Association of Independent Candidates (KAIC) led by Kabogo and deputised by Gethenji. “These are the people who will form the bulwark of opposition to Ruto in the Mount Kenya region. Take it from me, the Jubilee Party, as currently constituted, will not be there in 2022,” said the MP. Hardly surprising in a country where political parties are vehicles for convenience and conveyance and where new parties are formed during every election season. The Mount Kenya MPs are not only privately accusing President Uhuru of political inaction, “they are also nervous and suspicious of him,” said the MP. “They know President Uhuru, on his own, cannot out-think both Raila and Ruto. They therefore cannot hitch their wagon in his current party. They are also scared of voters’ backlash: it cannot be that the country must be ruled by two communities, passing the presidential race baton to each other, back and forth…that at some point must stop, because it’s unacceptable by all standards.”

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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A Judas Moment: Betrayal in Nyamakima

By Dauti Kahura

“Chitap koret,” this is my ancestral land, a Kalenjin from the Sabaot community, one of the nine ethnic dialects that make up the Kalenjin nation, said to me at the foothills of Mt Elgon, in Trans Nzoia County. Sabaots are a pastoralist community and just like the Maasai people, believe in keeping cattle – even the poorest Sabaot must have a cow or two. “Kalenjin believe North Rift especially belongs to them and nothing will change that,” said Kip, my Sabaot acquaintance.

“These people (the Kikuyus) will always be tenants on our land,” said Kip. “They are here temporarily. It doesn’t matter whether the land they occupy has been bought legally or not, was dished out, bought from one of us or any other person, whether it has a title or not. One day they must vacate this land.” Kip said mutual suspicion between the Kikuyus and Kalenjin in the Rift Valley will always abound. “Mark my words,” said Kip emphatically, “just like the Kikuyu don’t forget, we Kalenjin don’t forgive – we will revisit the issue of land ownership in the Rift Valley. We will soon show them who the true owners of the Rift Valley are.” It was an ominous threat.

Every time there is a shift in the political relations at the national level, between the Kikuyu and Kalenjin elites, every time these elites engage in a public spat, the Kalenjin people of the greater Rift Valley allude to foreigners among them who should be ejected. Every time the issue of foreigners arises in the Rift Valley region, the first targets are specifically the Kikuyu people, some of whom have lived in the Rift Valley region for the last 70 years.

Kip said mutual suspicion between the Kikuyus and Kalenjin in the Rift Valley will always abound. “Mark my words,” said Kip emphatically, “just like the Kikuyu don’t forget, we Kalenjin don’t forgive – we will revisit the issue of land ownership in the Rift Valley. We will soon show them who the true owners of the Rift Valley are.” It was an ominous threat.

The genesis of the land quagmire between the Kalenjin and Kikuyus in the Rift Valley region, traces back to the 1940s, which the British colonial government exacerbated by settling the Kikuyus in the area. An annual colonial write-up of 1957 reported, “In common with other Kalenjin people, however, there is everywhere else, dislike of the Kikuyu settlement being established in what is regarded as their district’s sphere of influence in Uasin Gishu”.

Yet, the colonial government had, by the turn of the 19th century, sowed the seeds of discord, when it pushed many of the ethnic communities into reserve lands and squatter camps, to create room for cash crop growing by the European settler farmers in the White Highlands. Central Kenya, Rift Valley and Coast Province were the major culprits in this settler land colonial project.

A pastoralist community, the Kalenjin, however struck an exceptional deal with the settler farmers: provide manual labour in the farms for exchange of grazing rights. But come the mid-1940s, this arrangement was destabilized, because the settler farmers needed more land for their cash crops. Why? World War (II) had ended in 1945 and Europe had decimated most of its agricultural lands for cash crop production. In addition, the Kalenjin people were expanding in population, even as their livestock grew in numbers. They too were demanding more land to graze their animals. This naturally created further tensions.

The first thing the colonial government did in reaction to this agitation by the Kalenjin was, to contain them in squatter camps and deny them grazing land. A warrior-like people, the Kalenjin refused to be squatters in the settler farms. So, in search of pastureland, they trekked off. This migration led them to central Rift Valley, Taita-Taveta and even in as far as Tanzania.

To replace the departing Kalenjins, the colonial government brought in the Kikuyus from Central Kenya to work in the settler farms arguing that the agrarian, sedentary Kikuyus were hardworking and attuned to plant cultivation, unlike the “lazy” pastoralist Kalenjin.

By 1950s therefore, Kikuyu population in the Rift Valley had tremendously grown and this greatly upset the indigenous Kalenjin. This is around the time the Kalenjins started agitating for their land and viewing Kikuyus as strangers and intruders. Hence, the temporary halting of more “importation” of Kikuyus from Central Kenya to Rift Valley, according to colonial reports that quoted Mr P.H Brown, the Uasin Gishu District Commissioner (DC), who recommended the stop.

But, no sooner had Brown stopped further Kikuyu migration into the Rift, than his successor revoked the decree. Mr R.S Symes-Thompson pointed out that Kikuyus were central to agricultural success in the settler farms. It is an arrangement that Jomo Kenyatta inherited and perfected when he became first, the Prime Minister in 1963 and, later President in 1964.

When it became apparent that the British would have to relinquish its power in Kenya, they bought between one and three million acres of land to resettle the landless. They also put a caveat to land ownership: any Kenyan would own land anywhere in Kenya, regardless of their ancestral origins and ethnicity. Secondly, there was no free land. If anybody wanted to buy land, it would, henceforth be, on a willing-seller, willing-buyer. It is an arrangement that greatly favoured the Kikuyus and that Kenyatta took to heart and implemented it even better than the departing British. To date, these two decrees appear in the new promulgated 2010 constitution.

To this end, the British colonial government gave Kenyatta’s government 100 million sterling pounds under the Settlement Fund Trustees (SFT) to buy land for the squatters – many of who were Kikuyus. In 1969, fiery Nandi MP Jean Marie Seroney, convened a charged meeting to debate the land question in Rift Valley. The Nandi Hills Declaration was the aftermath of that meeting, which decreed all land in Nandi belonged to the local community, that would henceforth oppose any further acquisition and settlement of Kikuyus in the area.

Moi who was the Vice President and Minister for Home Affairs and was Seroney’s political nemesis, threw him into detention. The Kalenjins have always argued that even when they had money to buy their own land, the Kenyatta government opposed the move. They cite the example of the Makonge (sisal) Farm in Ziwa. The attempt to buy this land was thwarted by the state in 1976, leading to the arrest of Eldoret North MP, the controversial Chelagat Mutai. The farm, instead, was handed to a land buying company belonging to Kikuyus.

In Property and Political Order in Africa: Land Rights and the Structure of Politics, published in 2014 by Cambridge University Press, Catherine Boone, ably tackles the intricate interconnectedness of supra local politics and land ownership in the volatile Rift Valley region.

“The statist land tenure regime (LTG) established in the Rift Valley farming districts by the colonial state was perpetuated and elaborated by the Kanu government after independence,” writes Boone. She says, the government bought the land from the departing European settlers, and allocated the land through settlement schemes to smallholder farmers between 1960–1975. “The rest of the land so acquired was transferred in the form of large estates to high ranking members of the Kenyatta regime entrenching their status as an economic, as well as a political elite.”

Burnt Forest area – which become infamous in December 2007, after some Kikuyu families were trapped in a Pentecostal church and that was set on fire, burning mostly women and their children below 10 years – “become a zone of mostly Kikuyu settlement schemes and was purchased by the state in 1965.” During the highly contested presidential 2007 election, the Opposition coalition led by Raila Odinga, running on an ODM ticket cried foul and accused the Mwai Kibaki led Party of National Union (PNU) of stealing the elections, provoking ethnic cleansing in Rift Valley, especially in areas that were heavily populated by Kikuyu. Burnt Forest became one of the notorious flashpoints of that ethnic warfare.

“Many settlers on the Uasin Gishu and Trans Nzoia Districts schemes were Kikuyu who had previously been employed on European farms in these areas” points out Boone. “Under Kenyatta, the kanu government used its land powers to open the Rift to settlement by peoples and persons who were not recognized by the state as indigenous to these jurisdictions, and who did not claim ancestral or customary rights in these areas.” Boone adds, “Under colonial rule, these people were categorized into state-recognized ethnic groups (the Nandi, Kipsigis, Maasai, Tugen, Elgeyo, Samburu, Marakwet, Sabaot, Pokot Terik, Turkana and so on).”

Catherine Boone who is a professor of Government, International Development and Political Science at the London School of Economics (LSE), makes the point that even after these communities were pushed to the margins of their lands (presumably to create room for the sedentary communities such as the Kikuyu to engage in agricultural farming), the loss (of land) did not decrease, or become less onerous, overtime.

Conflicts over access to land in Kenya’s Rift Valley have marked all stages of Kenya’s national history and shaped each critical juncture, says Boone. “The colonial state expropriated much of what is now Rift Valley Province from the Maasai and other people indigenous to the Rift. The British proclaimed direct jurisdiction over what it designated as Crown Land in the Rift Valley in 1904.”

Boone argues in her book that “the farming districts of Kenya’s Rift Valley Province are some of the most productive and highly commercialized rural zones of sub-Saharan Africa. These districts – Nakuru, Trans Nzoia, Uasin Gishu and Nandi – are territories with high in-migration and high ethnic homogeneity and with settlement patterns and land allocation authored directly by the central state. It is also one of Africa’s worst conflict-ridden rural areas, with a long and bloody history of land- related struggles.”

Once Daniel arap Moi was in control of the state organs, after succeeding Mzee Jomo Kenyatta in 1978, “he used the central state’s land prerogative in Rift Valley to reward its own clients, who were encouraged by the regime to coalesce around ethnic identity, Kalenjin-ness that was centred on indigeneity (autochthony) in the Rift Valley,” notes Boone. “From 1986 on, government forestlands became caisse noire of patronage resources that were used to cement elite alliances and build political support for Moi among Kalenjin constituencies he needed as a mass power base.”

Hence, “evictions of Kenyatta-era forest squatters and the declassification of new forest land opened a land frontier that Moi used to settle thousands of Kalenjin families. Most Kikuyus were expelled from the Mau Forest in the 1980s, so that Kalenjins could move in. Many were allowed to settle south of Njoro.”

In the South Rift, largely composed of the Kipsigis, Kalenjin’s biggest dialect, a simmering anger of volcanic proportions is going on, brought about by the eviction of the Kipsigis people from the Mau Forest beginning 2018. Many were settled there, originally by President Moi in the early 1980s, soon after becoming the second president of Kenya, and for some as late as 15 years ago during the tenure of President Mwai Kibaki. The Kipsigis are now accusing the Deputy President William Ruto of ominous silence, as they are forcefully being kicked out and their property burned. Daniel Burgei told me the Kipsigis helped marshal Kalenjin vote for Jubilee Party through Ruto, “now he is mum about the evictions. This is very troubling as we watch this whole spectacle in bewilderment. The Kipsigis have been practicing shamba system in the Mau Forest, where the soils are rich, do not need fertilizer and are good for cabbage, maize potatoes and tomato production. They also have been keeping livestock; cows, donkeys, goats and sheep.” Yet, in the process, they have hived huge chunks of the forest by cutting trees, hence destroying the natural environment, all in the name of giving way to farming, said Burgei.

Ruto, like Moi in the 1970s when he was Jomo Kenyatta’s VP is accused by a section of the Kalenjin people of keeping quiet in the face of the long-standing issue of land ownership in the Rift Valley region.

It is significant to note that “the name Kalenjin came into use as a group of designation in Kenya among World War (II) servicemen and ex-servicemen and students in the elite East Africa high schools in Nairobi and Kampala in the 1940s. “This ethnic consciousness of being Kalenjin was rooted in the native-stranger distinction. In very part, it was produced by the land tenure regime. The form of ethnic consciousness and mobilization that developed in Kenya was not the consciousness of all the people.

“When (former President Daniel arap) Moi led the efforts to amalgamate the political organization of the state-recognized tribes of the western Rift Valley in early 1960, he called the umbrella group the Kalenjin Political Association (KPA).” Boone adds that when the colonial government lifted the ban on indigenous politics, Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) took over the interests of KPA.

“By the time of the February 1962 Lancaster House constitutional negotiations, “the rifts between Kanu and Kadu were…deep and deeply felt…During the talks, Moi would repeat that the people of Kalenjin were prepared to fight and die for their land.” Boone reminds us all, that “Kalenjin first appeared as an official ethnicity on the Kenyan census in 1979, Moi’s first year as a president. Moi promoted Kalenjin identity in the 1980s and 1990s as an ethnic designation to transcend the narrower, older colonial-era identities of Nandi, Kipsigis, Elgeyo, Tugen, and so on.” These ethnic consciousness of being a Kalenjin, says Boone was driven by the sensitive land politics of the Rift.

This consciousness has had the effect of creating a peculiar “tribalism,” in the Rift Valley land politics “namely that in it was almost wholly a consciousness of being, either a Kikuyu or not- Kikuyu.”

If the 1960s and 1970s were decades of consolidation of the Kenyatta regime which sidelined those claiming ancestral land rights in the Rift Valley and “inserted” African settlers into Rift Valley farming districts, the 1980s and 1990s were a reversal of these settlements. Forced to accept plural politics in 1991, by the West, his erstwhile allies in the Cold War era, Moi mobilized the Rift Valley constituencies, “along an axis of competition that pitted indigenes of the Rift Valley against settlers who had been implanted by the Kenyatta regime.”

Boone observes that the Rift Valley politicians tapped into existing land-related tensions in which the central state was directly implicated as the author and enforcer of a contested distribution of land rights. “This conflict found direct expression in electoral politics at the national level. Political rhetoric that pervaded Nandi, Nakuru, Uasin Gishu and Trans Nzoia districts dwelled on how land was lost to the Europeans was never recovered and how under Kenyatta ‘black colonialists’had been allowed to buy up land that rightfully should have belonged to indigenous communities.”

Prof Boone gives the example of Likia location, in Molo division, Nakuru District, “where most land belonged to Kikuyus in the early 1990s, local Kalenjin politicians reminded the people of the past ownership of the land and encouraged them to reclaim it.”

On January 10, 2019, a former Molo MP, Joseph Kiuna held a press conference in Likia area of Molo and reminded the Kalenjin that they had not forgotten what they had done to the Kikuyus in 2007/2008post-election violence (PEV). “All this time the Kikuyus have been pretending that they had forgotten and moved on,” said Kip. “We Kalenjin are very much aware they have not forgotten anything.” Even though thousands of Kikuyus were internally displaced – up to 600,000 people were dislocated from their homesteads in the greater Rift Valley during PEV, by the marauding Kalenjin warriors – many a Kikuyu nevertheless returned to Rift Valley. The allure of fertile soils, the armistice arrived at between Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta and a desire to go back to their lands, which they had occupied for many years, was greater than the ominous existential threat of a repeat “ethnic” attack on their farms.

And the Kikuyus have had big group farms ranging between 1000 and 3000 acres in Trans Nzoia and Uasin Gishu Counties. 35 kilometers from Kitale town are the better known Gitwamba and Munyaka Farms located at the foothills of Mt Elgon, bordering Mt Elgon Forest. Most of the Kikuyus who settled here were from Nyeri and its environs. Endowed with black alluvial soils, the farms are very fertile. Since settling there, decades ago, the Kikuyus have grown beans, cabbages, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes amongst a host of other horticultural crops. Markets days in Iten, Kitale, Matunda, Moi’s Bridge and Soy are filled with fresh produce from these farms. As fate would have it, in Trans Nzoia, it is Gitwamba – which in Kikuyu language means a flat, rich plateau with fertile soils and Munyaka which means to be lucky – that were the first flashpoints of ethnic upheavals in 1991. They have remained so to date.

The 1991 ethnic clashes were instigated, organized and executed by Moi’s Kanu regime which suddenly felt under siege from the multi-party advocates. Hoping to tap into their age-old grievances of land ownership and aware he had kept mum as land in the Rift Valley was being parceled to Kikuyus and other communities, by the Kenyatta government in the 1970s, Moi allegedly encouraged the Kalenjins to “reclaim” their land from foreigners, in exchange for their support to further cement and consolidate his grip on state power. By foreigners, he meant the Kikuyu people.

The other Kikuyu farms in TransNzoia are: Wamuini Farm A, the 1,000 agricultural land near St Joseph High School on the Kitale-Ndalu Road. Wamuini Farm B, formerly Mabonde Farm that was called mabonde – Kiswahili for denes, because of its ridges and valleys. There is also Meru Farm bought in the early 1970s. It is near Kitale showground, adjacent to the posh Milimani Estate. The other big farms owned by Kikuyus are Kiirita, Makui and Weteithie Farms. Weteithie, which in Kikuyu means self-help. All these farms were bought through land-buying companies with loans from Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC). They include Mwihoko, which means hope in Kikuyu, Ngwataniro-Mutukanio, Nakuru District Ex-Freedom Fighters Organization (NDEFFO) and Nyakinyua, which was President Kenyatta’s favourite cultural dancing troupe made up of women.

In Trans Nzoia, other Kikuyus acquired land through SFTs, formerly white farms, given ostensibly to “landless people” by Jomo Kenyatta government. In Uasin Gishu County which borders Trans Nzoia, there is a replica of Munyaka Farm, today referred to as Kimumu-Munyaka Farm, located on the Eldoret-Iten Road. The more famous Ya-Mumbi Farm is on the Eldoret-Kapsabet-Kisumu Road. Rukuini and Kondoo Farms are near Burnt Forest. Kimuri and Kiambaa Farms are not far from Eldoret town. Rukuini and Kondoo, just like Gitwamba and Munyaka in Kitale, have remained focal points of “ethnic wars” since 1991.

After the violent uproar that took place in Eldoret North following the controversial 2007 general election, many Kikuyus living in Uasin Gishu County, abandoned their farms in Turbo 30 km from Eldoret town and went to live in town, at Langas estate, the sprawling Kangemi-type ghetto located on the Eldoret-Kisumu highway, just after the Eldoret Polytechnic. Kangemi is a slum on Waiyaki Way, seven kilometres from Nairobi city centre. Stephen Kiplagat, who was born and bred in and whose family still lives in Langas told me that it is today estimated to be 85 per cent populated by Kikuyus. “My family is one of the very few Nandi families that still reside at Langas, the rest are Kikuyus.”

Five Nandi families originally owned Langas. Many of them started parcelling the land and selling it mostly to Kikuyus from the 1980s. Two factors drove this sale: the Kikuyu desire for a plot of land and the fact that they had ready cash to buy the land. With the money, the departing Kalenjin bought land in Kitale, Soy, Turbo and Ziwa so that they could engage in agricultural and livestock farming.

I went to school in Kitale in the 1980s, then it was a one-street settler town and that is where I first heard the phrase “revisiting the issue.” A prominent Kalenjin businessman, (he later become an influential politician in President Moi’s inner circle and today he is retired), said in my presence: “We’ve only leased the land to them (Kikuyus), they should be knowing that…we’ll soon revisit that issue.” When the push for multiparty elections in 1991, appeared inevitable, Moi’s monolithic Kanu one-party dictatorship relented to political pluralism, but not before igniting “ethnic” skirmishes in the Rift Valley.

Kip told me, “resources are becoming scarcer by the day in the Rift Valley region and our people would like the land issue in the Rift Valley region prioritized as a matter of national political discourse.”

The first wave of Kikuyu settlers in Trans Nzoia district first appeared as colonial civil service workers in the mid-1940s after the World War II. The next group showed up in the mid-1950s. These were Kikuyus running away from the Mau Mau insurgency and capture by the British colonial police. Many of them converted to Islam and assumed new identities. Indeed the first Kikuyus to settle in Kitale town were Hamisi Saidi and Hussein Ramadhan. They had taken up Islamic names and soon became petty traders in town.

Resources are becoming scarcer by the day in the Rift Valley region and our people would like the land issue in the Rift Valley region prioritized as a matter of national political discourse

Kigotho Njuguna, Mbugua Gachani, Danson Kangonga Mbugwa, John Muchuri, Wanguhu Githiomi (who hailed from Kijabe) and Peter Kinyanjui – one time Democratic Party of Kenya (DP) point man in Trans Nzoia) formed part of the earliest pioneers of Kikuyu settlers in Kitale. DP was an opposition party once led by Mwai Kibaki, the third President of Kenya. The others were: Lawrence Waweru, Kirima Githaiga, David Kiberu, Waigi Mwangi (originally from Ngecha in Limuru) and Apollos Mwangi. All these men are dead and many of them hailed from Nyeri district. As the theatre of the politics of succession leading to 2022, plays out in the expansive Rift Valley region, the spectre of the ever-simmering land question looms large. William Ruto, like his predecessor Moi, and not Seroney, finds himself in a dicey position of canvassing the entire Kalenjin vote, amid unsettled land ownership saga that remains an unresolved issue.

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.

A Judas Moment: Betrayal in Nyamakima

By Dauti Kahura

With a spring in his walk, an upright lanky physique, reminiscent of the world famous marathon runners from the idyllic town of Iten, in Elgeyo Marakwet County, Paul Kimaiyo Kimuge aka “Sirikwa” looks ageless, making it difficult to estimate his age. At 77-years-old, Kimuge would easily pass for a 50-something year old man: he has a medium sized body, head full of hair and a beguiling moustache that makes his smile wearily sly. “Since I stopped drinking several years ago, I’ve been on natural honey which I make at my farm,” said Kimuge. “I’m a beekeeper with lots of beehives and harvest honey and I used to make local brew from the honey.”

But, I had not travelled 340km from Nairobi to Iten, 32km east of Eldoret town, to discuss bee keeping with Kimuge, but rather his other major preoccupation, which he has done all his life: maize farming – and the politics surrounding it. “Maize farming in North Rift has been infiltrated by politics and the farmer has found himself trapped in this unfortunate conundrum,” said a calm Kimuge. “He now cannot sell his maize to the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB), because the board says its silos are full. And we don’t know from which maize farmers.”

The mzee told me he was a “small time” maize farmer. The maize from his 20 acres in Bogar, seven kilometers from Iten on the road to Kapsowar, was stuck in his barns. “I’ve just come from spraying them so that they are not attacked by stalk borers and maize weevils. I don’t know when the Board will buy my maize, if at all it will.” Kimuge said Bogar cooperative farmers had visited the Board offices in Eldoret town, but no official wanted to talk to them. “They locked themselves inside their offices and pretended to look busy.”

Maize farming in North Rift has been infiltrated by politics and the farmer has found himself trapped in this unfortunate conundrum

I asked Kimuge how is it that now there was a lot of hue and cry from North Rift maize farmers and what precisely was the mystery behind the current maize saga. “Maize has been politicised and has become a weapon to fight the Deputy President William Ruto. I refuse to believe that it is Ruto and his henchmen who are behind this maize ordeal. I’ve heard that talk of blaming Ruto and I’ve decided I’ll not be part of it. It is true we’re suffering, but we are suffering because of the government, not because of one person. Is Ruto in charge of the national maize policy? Is it Ruto who fixes the maize prices?”

Kimuge, a Keiyo, said the story about the alleged maize “importation” by some Kalenjin political elites was inconsequential. It was the work of the government to rein in on the culprits and ensure the farmer sells his maize to NCPB. “The President (Uhuru Kenyatta) recently said the Board will buy our maize at KSh2500, we are waiting to see if it will heed his orders. The truth is, even after the President commanded the Board to buy the maize from us, they are yet to do so. It looks like we are in for a long suffering.”

Kimuge’s views were sharply contradicted by another maize farmer, I spoke to in Kitale, in Trans Nzoia County who identifies as a Marakwet. The farmer, who asked me not to reveal his identity, openly stated that the maize scandal was the alleged handiwork of Ruto and his close associates. “Ruto and Kipchumba Murkomen, the Elgeyo Marakwet Senator purportedly ‘imported maize from Mexico’ but the truth of the matter is that that maize was bought from NCPB and the neighbouring Uganda,” alleged the farmer. “The maize bought from NCPB was later resold to the Board by the DP and his henchmen for a killing. That is why the Board cannot buy anymore maize, because the crux of the matter is, it has nowhere to store any extra maize, because they already have more than enough maize to handle.”

The farmer reminded me how maize used to be stolen at NCPB in the 1990s during the reign of President Moi: “Influential and powerful men linked to the president would hire trucks and drive to NCPB stores. With the collusion of the Ministry of Agriculture and NCPB bosses, they would load the maize into the awaiting trucks. The truck would drive away, only to return to sell the same maize to NCPB.”

The Kitale farmer said this is the reason why embittered farmers at the Senate ad hoc committee on Maize and Agriculture Committee held at the Uasin Gishu Hall in Eldoret town in September 2018, told senator Murkomen to his face, that he and his colleagues were behind the cartel that was bringing grief to the North Rift maize farmer. “Those making us suffer are from our own region. It is not (James) Orengo or (Moses) Wetangula making us suffer. We know them,” said some of the angry farmers, pointing a finger at Murkomen.

A Senate Ad hoc Committee on Maize and Agriculture Committee public hearing on maize issues in Eldoret, 2018. Source: Daily Nation

Jesse Mais, the former MP of Eldoret South, which was split into two constituencies –Kesses and Kapseret –, was among the farmers at the meeting. Mais, who is a large scale farmer in Mlango, next to Moi International Airport, told Murkomen that it was him and his hideous cartel that were behind the “maize heist” that was now causing untold suffering among the Kalenjin farmers.

“The politics behind the maize saga and the North Rift farmers’ grievances is now intertwined with the succession politics of 2022 and that is why, however much the farmers may feel aggrieved and, however much they may want to accuse their own leaders of being behind their suffering, they will not,” said the Kitale farmer. “The farmers know the people behind the maize cartel, it is their leaders, but ethnic politics of ‘this is our man,’ supersedes any suffering inflicted by the same leader(s).”

“Ngosamis murya kobo kot nebo,” said the farmer. It is a Kalenjin saying which the farmer translated to mean; however bad a situation is, your tribesman will always remain to be your tribesman.

The farmer shared the example of the intended fertilizer factory at Cheptiret on the Eldoret-Nairobi highway, that was supposed to be up and running, “but look it’s a shell of a building, with no fertilizer, the farmers were obviously cheated, yet Deputy William Ruto had promised it would be functional, but as you see, no Kalenjin will dare put Ruto to task over that factory.”

On January 31, 2019, Noah Wekesa the chairman of the Strategic Food Reserves (SFT) made a pronouncement in Eldoret at the NPCB offices, that the government would not subsidize fertilizer products this year, making an already bad situation worse, said the farmer. “The farmer cannot afford the fertilizer’s market price. And if the government insists on not importing the fertilizer, the farmer will be stuck and of course, this will certainly impact heavily on the local politics. The farmers are agitated that in the wake of all these happenings, William Ruto is quiet.”

Maize farming is the economic backbone of the North Rift, the bedrock of Ruto’s political fanatical support and vote rich backyard, and the base, is wallowing in angst and this suppressed anger is threatening to spillover, said the farmer. “A bag of maize is currently, at best, selling at KSh1400–1500 (forget what the President said). And this is if you get a buyer.”

The farmers’ barns themselves are packed with their own maize, because they have no one to sell to. “Eventually, the maize will rot.” He said the millers are not buying any maize from the farmers, but buying from the government, which has all the ‘imported’ maize. “Even if they were to sell their maize, they would sell it at a loss; the production cost is anything above KSh2200 per bag, whichever way for the farmer, he is screwed,” said the farmer. Maize has been politicised and has become a weapon to fight the Deputy President William Ruto. I refuse to believe that it is Ruto and his henchmen who are behind this maize ordeal.

In Ziwa, 42km north of Eldoret town and Ruto’s staunchest political stronghold, Chief Elijah Serem of Segero location told me the government had allocated only 80 bags to be sold to NCPB. “An entire location, you allocate only 80 bags? The government should reconsider this particular allocation. Segero is a location of very serious maize farmers…all their barns are full….” Apparently to deal with the maize crisis, NCPB is allocating maize quotas to locations in North Rift and has come up with a raft of conditions for the farmers to fulfill, in respect to the maize they are supposed to deliver to the Board. Besides stating that the government would not import fertilizer, Noah Wekesa also announced that the government would buy only two million bags of maize from the farmers, ostensibly because the government has enough maize for strategic reserves.

Ziwa is populated by the Nandi people. It all used to be part of the Eldoret North constituency, which was one time William Ruto’s huge constituency when he served as the MP between 1997–2007. It was split into two constituencies: Soy and Turbo. In Soy, Mzee Julius arap Nabei lamented, “we’re not happy at all…there are some people in the government who are now engaging in some political mischief…why are they emasculating Ruto’s powers now? Please let it be known we are not amused with the ongoings in Jubilee Party.” I sensed the agitation among the Nandi of Ziwa was beginning to be audible. Samus murya ku nyengung, even if the rat (in the house) is smelly it is still yours, grumbled the mzee.

In Turbo, where the bulk of the Kikuyu people in Uasin Gishu County used to live, a retired Kalenjin senior chief said, “let us not kid ourselves; the bull has been dehorned and this a very unsettling situation here. (The bull in reference to William Ruto). We were going to take some time to observe the on goings at the party, but it looks like, we the Kalenjin elders, would sooner than later ‘recall’ William Ruto to candidly tell us what exactly is going on in Nairobi.”

A recent executive order issued by the President to the Cabinet Secretaries, delegating supervision of the government’s development work to them, has been interpreted by the ordinary Kalenjin man to mean a clipping off Deputy President’s powers. The work, according to the order, is to be overseen by Fred Matiang’i the CS for Interior and Coordination of National Government.

“What the executive order has done is to galvanize the Kalenjin community into fully rallying behind Ruto,” a senior journalist from the Kalenjin community told me: “They will now not see him as the man behind their maize woes, but as a victim of state machinations. Their argument is, ‘we the Kalenjin are under (external) attack, we should close in on our ranks and face the common enemy, we can deal with our internal issues later.’”

The Kalenjin community largely farm and rear livestock. “But the main crops that we rely on, have been politicized – maize has been the most affected – but even tea might soon became a political crop,” opined the Kitale farmer. He pointed out that Kalenjin farmers from North Rift were tottering on the brink of confusion and despair. “The farmer knows the scandal has been allegedly perpetrated by Ruto and his henchmen and now he is being told that if he is tired of maize, he can opt for Avocado. It is very demeaning and hurtful. Anatwambia tupande parachichi…hiyo ndio kitu gani…hiyo ndio italisha watoto wetu? He’s telling us to grow avocados…what’s that…is that what we’ll use to raise our children?

The farmer told me North Rift farmers had huge farms, that they had been farming for eons and come to understand and anticipate the seasons, learned how to predict the rains, that are heavy and good for maize farming. “What does Ruto mean when he says we should diversify and start growing other crops like Avocado?” The Kalenjin, the farmer said, had taken this pronouncement by Ruto to mean that they should vacate maize farming so that he can be the sole importer and distributor of all the maize in the country, for as long as it was lucrative. “Ruto does not care whether our children starve to death or not, whether we educate them or not, all he is interested in is, more money and the powerful presidential seat.”

The maize scandal has become an explosive matter and that is why Ruto is quiet and cannot do anything about it, observed the farmer. “He cannot do anything about the mess because he is the one behind this humongous scandal alongside his boys.” Yet the problem of the Kalenjin farmer does not now even end with the apparent lack of a market and price distortion of their chief crop: “These Ruto henchmen also have been messing about with the flow and quality of fertilizer in the country,” alleged the farmer.

The government imports genuine fertilizer for the farmers, but Ruto and his friends allegedly have been in turn, buying these fertilizer in bulk, repackaging it by mixing it with low grade fertilizer, which they then sell to the farmers at market prices, just like the real quality fertilizer would fetch, said the farmer. “The net result of this has been farmers’ maize output has witnessed a dip, because the yield per hectare is low, because of the low grade fertilizer. The North Rift Kalenjin farmer has been suffering quietly, but bitterly, knowing very well that the pain he is undergoing, has been inflicted by his tribesman.” Ngosamis murya kobo kot nebo. North Rift is largely made of the Keiyo, Marakwet and Nandi people.

Kimuge told me it is true he is a Ruto diehard: huyo ni kijana yetu, that’s our boy. “In 2013 and 2017, we the Kalenjin elders campaigned really hard for both Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto. In 2012, when both of them were in trouble with the ICC (International Criminal Court), they came to us elders and begged for our support. Uhuru told us if he became President, he would serve for a maximum 10 years and then he would make sure Ruto serves his own 10 years. ‘Mimi mwenyewe, nitampigia Ruto debe,’ I’ll personally campaign for Ruto. The mzee remembers Uhuru telling them as much. This was a public promise made during the day. What are these stories we are now hearing about?”

The elder recalled that when Uhuru and Ruto decided to work together, the Kalenjin were relieved that the two most politically powerful antagonistic communities in Kenya had decided to bury the hatchet and co-exist peacefully. “That’s why we told our people, they must vote for the duo to secure development, peace and harmony. I’m now shocked that the Kikuyu seem to want to walk back on that promise.” They are many Kikuyus in the larger Rift Valley region engaged in varied businesses and farming, said Kimuge, “I’d really be shocked if they are now choosing death and destruction of their property over peace, security and stability.”

Kimuge said the Kalenjin elders have been watching President Uhuru and his close associates very carefully, since he shook hands with Raila Odinga. “It is true in 2007, we supported that Luo man, but he is a trouble maker and we don’t know what he is up to now. Still, President Uhuru is a puzzle to us: Even if he wants to now fight Ruto, did he have to use Raila to fix him?” The farmer said the Kalenjin elders were yet to respond to the March 2018 handshake, the May 2018 kutangatanga (roaming about) statement and, lately David Murathe’s ‘absurd’ remarks about Deputy President. “We’re bidding our time, closely observing the unfolding political happenings as we head to 2022, we’ve also not engaged our counterparts the Kikuyu elders, maybe we’ll in days to come by, but at an appropriate time, the Kalenjin elders may find it necessary to speak their mind.”

The mzee stated that if it was Raila causing havoc and friction within the Jubilee fraternity, then it is incumbent upon President Uhuru to rethink the political value of the handshake, else it may not augur well in the North Rift. “In 2007, we saw how Kikuyus lost lives and their property destroyed, especially in Uasin Gishu, we don’t want that scenario repeated, yet I’ll reiterate this: It is always important to honour a promise you’ve made with someone.”

If Kimuge, a Keiyo from Iten was implicit about his political feelings, sometimes struggling to hide them and sound unduly polite, despite being DP’s fanatical loyalist, Reuben Cheruiyot a Kipsigis from Bomet County was explicit about the current Jubilee Party turf wars being waged between President Uhuru and his Deputy’s respective camps.

Cheruiyot, is in his late 30s and has a cool mien, a suppressed easy laughter, with a knack for wisecracks and an unrepentant roving eye. He speaks with a soft voice, almost inaudible and repeats his sentences for emphasis sake. With his crimson suits worn without a tie, Cheruiyot could easily pass for the city of Nairobi’s wheeler-dealers, or tenderpreneurs, who are always on the lookout to strike deals with hungry middle cadre government bureaucrats.

Born and bred on the outskirts of Bomet town, Cheruiyot is well-heeled politically and properly ingratiated with the political networks of the Kalenjin nation. He is a member of the Kalenjin Professional Forum, Governor Joyce Laboso’s and Senator Christopher Langat’s inner networks, both of Bomet County, among his various political liaisons within the Kalenjin political elite circles and, keeps tabs with the inner sanctum of some of Ruto’s close associates.

“We’ve been keeping a close watch on President Uhuru’s actions and utterances since the maiden handshake with Raila Odinga and I can tell you he is treading on a misguided trajectory,” said Cheruiyot. In a move that took Kenyans by complete surprise, President Uhuru Kenyatta on the mid- morning of March 9, 2018, on the steps of Harambee House, shook hands with his greatest political nemesis Raila Odinga, leader of the Opposition outfit, National Super Alliance (NASA).

Deputy President William Ruto was not part of the handshake. Four months later, on July 8, 2018, in an interview at his Karen residence, with the NTV crew, he downplayed the significance of the handshake, argued that he had been fully aware of it. “In any case, the President doesn’t have to consult me in everything he does,” Ruto posited nonchalantly. But those who know Ruto says he was still rattled and startled, even as he invited NTV TV crew to his stately compound.

To state that Ruto was ambushed by the handshake is an understatement: “It could never have occurred in his wildest dreams that Uhuru Kenyatta – a man he had practically shared the presidency with, in their first term – would close ranks with his greatest political antagonist. But President Uhuru had just done that four months after he and Ruto had fought tooth and nail to stop Raila, by any means necessary, from snatching the presidential powers from them. As President Uhuru began his ‘legacy and last term’, Deputy President knew he had it all wrapped up. All that he needed to do was to lay a strategy that would ostensibly consign Raila Odinga into political oblivion. And that is what he had started working on when the handshake saga took place,” a Ruto confidante narrated.

“Uhuru and Ruto had spared no epithets and expletives, the worst kind they could ever find to label Raila. Uhuru was not bluffing when he described him as kimundu giki, (this ogre) and mundu muguruki (mad man), who needed to be stopped in his tracks by whatever schemes that could be assembled. They had sworn he would never rule the country – whether by might or right. Only now for Uhuru to turn around and become buddy buddy with kimundu giki”.

“That path Uhuru is taking is ill-informed and hurried,” said Cheruiyot, striking a pensive mood. “Before he goes off tangent, it is wise for Uhuru to pose and recall why in the first place he had teamed up with Ruto in 2012. It was because of two major things: to fend off the ICC cases and ease off the tensions in Rift Valley region. Let us be clear about one fact: it’s because of their teaming up that there is peace in Rift Valley and when I talk about peace, I mean peaceful co-existence between the Kikuyu and Kalenjin.”

Uhuru and Ruto had spared no epithets and expletives, the worst kind they could ever find to label Raila. Uhuru was not bluffing when he described him as kimundu giki, (this ogre) and mundu muguruki (mad man), who needed to be stopped in his tracks by whatever schemes that could be assembled. They had sworn he would never rule the country – whether by might or right. Only now for Uhuru to turn around and become buddy buddy with kimundu giki”.

“We’d anticipated there would be frictions within Jubilee Party in Uhuru’s second term – that is normal in coalition governments – but not of this nature,” observed Cheruiyot. “President Uhuru’s recent utterances on Ruto and his apparent dramatic change of body language have been creating palpable tension in the Rift Valley. When he refers to Ruto as this ‘young man’ and they are separated by only five years, what exactly does he mean? If the President thinks he is ostracizing Ruto, he’s grossly mistaken, he is ostracizing the Kikuyus in the Rift Valley.”

“President Uhuru is at liberty to pursue his legacy”, said Cheruiyot, “but he does not have to demean Ruto. It is a fact that Uhuru’s agenda of securing a legacy and William Ruto’s presidential pursuits of 2022 are at cross-purposes. It was bound to happen, nothing unusual about this. So, the president feels he needs to assert himself and craves his deputy’s support, but the DP is busy with 2022 and therefore, the President is jittery.” Edging closer to me, Cheruiyot whispered: “You know the President has always felt inadequate in the presence of William Ruto. He fears Ruto.”

For two people who had acted like bosom buddies in the first term, Uhuru’s recent dramatic change of behaviour is strange indeed, mused Cheruiyot. “The question we must fundamentally keep asking now is this: “Just when did President Uhuru discover corruption in his government? Are Kalenjins the only corrupt people in Jubilee? It is not a coincidence that this pending talk about lifestyle audit and demeaning of Ruto is happening at the same time. It is careless and unhelpful,” said Cheruiyot raising his voice. “It will boomerang on President Uhuru. If there is any lifestyle audit to be done in this country, it must begin with the Kenyatta family and should start in 1963. Mtego wa panya huingia waliomo na wasiokuwemo.” The literal translation of this Kiswahili idiom is: oftentimes a trap set to ensnare mice ends up trapping other (unintended) rodents. Translated figuratively, it means; you may set out to lay a trap to catch a (unsuspecting) foe, only for the trap to end up catching your (closest) friends or even ensnaring yourself. The narrative of, “if there must be any lifestyle audit to be done, it must begin with the Kenyatta family,” has spread across Kalenjin land like bush fire.

Cheruiyot told me Gideon Moi, son to Daniel arap Moi was being used by forces that want to frustrate and scuttle Ruto’s path to the presidency. “We know them: it is the deep state and Kikuyu hegemonists,” he said. Ruto learnt valuable political tricks from the grand master and ‘professor’ of Politics, but the DP’s relationship with Daniel arap Moi is bad: there’s no love lost between the two, but in May 2018, he had to go and see him, observed Cheruiyot. “They may not be friends, but Moi is our (political) father.” Cheruiyot said the May 3, 2018 visit was scurried by Gideon Moi, the Baringo Senator and last born son to the ageing Moi. “You think Ruto is foolish to just happen on (senior) Moi’s Kabarak home without prior arrangement?

“Gideon thinks he’s cunning? He’s a spoilt brat, he’ll soon know, who between him and Ruto is more cunning.” Accompanied by Charles Keter, (Cabinet Secretary for Energy) among others, Ruto landed with a Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) helicopter on the Kabarak lawns in the hope of shaking Moi’s hand. To Ruto’s fury, Moi snubbed him. In response the Rift Valley MPs allied to Ruto lashed out at Gideon, accusing him of behaving like the gatekeeper to the ex-President’s Nakuru home.

At the Kerio View Hotel in Iten and seated overlooking the breathtaking picturesque Kerio valley, Kibiwott Koross pointing yonder across the valley towards Baringo County, shared similar sentiments about Gideon: “We know which forces are cheating Gideon that he can be president of this country. He’s never going to be anything other than what he already is – a senator – which he got out of respect for senior Moi by the Baringo people. He says he still pondering whether to run in 2022 or not. Gideon is a snob and joker. Maybe one day he will vie for the presidency, but certainly not in the next general election.” Koross, a journalist, was a features writer at the Star newspaper, where I had once worked.

“Gideon was elected senator courtesy of Uhuru Kenyatta and his wife Zahra,” said another source, who is knowledgeable on the subject matter of Baringo politics, and who requested anonymity. “Uhuru came to Baringo pleaded with the people to vote for Gideon, because the people were reluctant. It had to take the intervention of the President himself – but more fundamentally, his wife.” My source alleged it was Zahra who distributed cash to women’s groups, the youth and voters around the county, canvassing for her husband. “Gideon is so mean, he only knows how to surround himself with menacing bodyguards…,” said the source. Here, he is referred to as GMO,” a pun that likened Gideon Moi to artificial (read fake) nature of GMO (genetically modified organisms) food.

“One of the great lessons that Ruto took to heart from Moi was to be generous and stay close to the people,” said Koross. “Ruto has been an excellent student of President Moi: he’s generous and social. Even though Gideon is his father’s son, he’s learned nothing – he’s a miser and anti-people.”

But a close associate of Gideon Moi told me this talk of booking an appointment by Ruto men, is all a fabrication. “Neither Ruto, nor his henchmen booked any appointment, he just arrived unannounced. You just don’t do that, yet, he knew what he was doing,” said the associate. “Ruto had a sinister agenda – he wanted to score with this trip – he knew whatever the outcome, he was going to make news and come out as the winner.” The associate said the DP in a me-too moment, decided he should also visit the Kabarak Home and not be seen to have been left behind, after Raila Odinga, had visited the former president on April 12, 2018. “He wanted to send a message to his Kalenjin base that he can also see Moi at will, and if he cannot, then, they will know who is working against their interests in capturing the presidency in 2022.” When Moi snubbed him, Ruto supporters turned the venom on the younger Moi, tongue lashed and accused him of being jealous of Ruto’s presidential ambitions.

“William Ruto has been looking for an opportunity to trip Gideon so that he can tackle him in a duel by dragging him through the mud and finishing him completely,” said Gideon’s confidante. “But Gideon has refused to swallow the bait, choosing not to engage Ruto in whatever storm he and his people create.” Even though Ruto was an “A” student of Moi’s school of politics, there are some crucial lessons he seems to have skipped, said the associate. “Moi was very patient, very obedient and totally loyal to his boss. He never did anything that would have been interpreted to mean he was undermining Kenyatta for all the time he was his Vice President. Ruto seems to want to take the battle to his boss’s corner.”

During the 2017 presidential campaigns, Ruto’s point men in the Rift Valley region would assure their supporters that the DP was as good as on the driver’s seat, “since the President himself is always busy enjoying (read drinking) himself, all the time,” a Ruto loyalist confided in me in Eldoret town. “Let us vote for Uhuru: while he will be drinking, the DP will be the one calling the shots. Look at the number of our sons and daughters in parastatal positions…sisi ndio serikali…we are the government.” Once back in Nairobi, I asked a friend of President Uhuru whether this was true – about these allegations made by the DP’s men in 2017 campaigns. “Well, as you can now see for yourself: you can enjoy yourself and be equally tough”, he said in jest.

Cheruiyot mused loudly that they (the Kalenjin) always knew the Kikuyu would betray them, “Even Ruto has always known that, so nothing new there, but this current overt machinations is something we’ll have to deal with as the situation demands and unfolds.” If President Uhuru chooses to be dishonest towards Ruto, that is really up to him, said Cheruiyot. “It just goes to strengthen the political stereotype among Kenyans, about Kikuyus not keeping their word.” It was an observation that Brenda also from Bomet reiterated: “So, the Kikuyu (leadership) has decided to betray the Kalenjin? Kikuyus have always been like that. But, that’s all well and good. But this time round, they will have to countenance with a man who is ready to take the battle to their yard. Huyu mwanaume yuko tayari kupambana nao, yeye sio kijana yao. This man (Ruto) is all too ready to face them (the Kikuyus) and therefore, he is not their boy.”

The stereotype notwithstanding, Cheruiyot mentioned to me that the first round of the Jubilee factional wars in 2018 had resulted in Ruto camp’s win: “The calling of both camps’ troops to order was a result of a temporary truce called by the leaders of the respective camps: Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto.” On June 29, 2018, President Uhuru and his deputy held a “crisis” meeting to “iron out” and “streamline” differences that had given the impression that Jubilee Party was wrought with infighting and on the verge of collapsing. After that meeting, Ruto asked his foot soldiers to observe the cessation and cease throwing brickbats towards their counterparts, the Central Kenya MPs, and instead talk about development.

“There wasn’t a cessation of anything and everybody knew it,” said Cheruiyot. “This is a protracted battle and we’re ready for it, sisi hatuogopi, we are not afraid.” He reveled in the fact that the Ruto camp’s strategy had worked: “the dragging of Uhuru’s younger brother Muhoho Kenyatta into the murky waters of the supposedly war on corruption was too much to bear on Uhuru Kenyatta’s camp and particularly, the larger Kenyatta family, which has always kept their social affairs very private and away from the prying eyes of Kenyans.”

As President Uhuru maintained that the war on graft was unrelenting and as the fight against it reached its zenith, Muhoho was fingered by Aldai constituency MP Cornelly Serem on June 26, 2018, as being one of the people who had imported contraband sugar, through his company Protech Investment. It forced the President to state publicly that if his brother was guilty of any corruption offences, he should not be spared and should equally face the law. It was a strained statement made in the heat of the battle for supremacy between Uhuru’s faction and his deputy’s.

“The David Murathe’s 2019 new year anti-Ruto utterances were not wholly unexpected,” said Koross. What shocked the Kalenjin people was his brazen and naked attacks on Ruto. Makibarjin tarit kwangoi.” Translated the Kalenjin proverb means – you do not show the bird the arrow. “If a hunter identifies a bird he want to bring down, he does not directly point the arrow to the bird, because it will fly away, you must catch it by surprise.”

The Deputy President has cautioned against verbal retaliation, “Some of the Kalenjin MPs were furious with Murathe’s statement, still the DP cautioned patience: ‘we should not be confrontational,’” he said. “Ongemuite amu 2022?” Now we just shut up because of 2022?” posed the MPs.

An Eldoret businessman who described Murathe as an attack dog said the President’s silence in the face of Murathe’s attack on Ruto was ominous, “but we can live with that, still, he should have cautioned and controlled the dog not to bark uncontrollably.” The businessman said, “the Kalenjin are happy, the attack dog-in-chief had yelped this early and exposed his master’s scheme soon enough: we now know how to take the battle to their doorstep.”

The businessman said since the kutangatanga snide remark by the President, last year, the Kalenjin community has been keenly observing the President’s body language. “It’s from that time that we noticed his handlers started scripting statements that had a different tone from the one we were used to from Uhuru.” The businessman said the narrative of linking all state sleaze on Ruto by President Uhuru Kenyatta camp had succeeded insofar as the elites are concerned: “Wanjiku and Cherop are not bothered by this narrative, they really would care less.”He said the Kalenjin were fully aware of how President Uhuru’s camp was working overtime on crafting a narrative of that links state corruption to Ruto.

The businessman was categorical that Ruto’s campaign team does not need President Uhuru’s endorsement or support. “We can fight our own battle – leadership is earned and fought for – not handed over. Ruto is not Kalonzo (Musyoka) or (Musalia) Mudavadi who have been waiting to be endorsed by being declared ‘Tosha’, so we are not afraid of our enemies, we can take on them on any front, any day.”

Amid this apparent chest thumping by the Rift Valley elites, the ethnic Kalenjin base from which Deputy President William Ruto hopes to launch his biggest political project ever, is restless, and now, has been exposed by the emerging turbulent and choppy waters of succession politics. At the heart of this state of uneasiness, is their food economy that is facing a meltdown, hence affecting their livelihood, the ever-precarious land ownership in the Rift Valley region and a destiny beholden to the personality cult.

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.

A Judas Moment: Betrayal in Nyamakima

By Dauti Kahura I returned to Kirimukuyu village, in Tumu Tumu sub-location, which is seven kilometres from Karatina town in Mathira constituency, Nyeri County, exactly twelve months after I had first travelled there to see an old lady by the name of Felistus Waguthi.

In the twelve months that had passed, Waguthi, who will be 76 years old this year, had lost her only brother, and in the last three months, she had been marooned in her house after breaking her leg. “I tripped on a slippery slope one morning as I went to the shamba, fracturing my leg bone and twisting my ankle,” she said to me, her left leg heavily bandaged and in a cast lifted up to rest on the bed. She was also hard of hearing, but “everything else considered, I have been okay, you’ve found me alive.”

When I met Waguthi in January 2018, President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, political rivals in the controversial 2017 general elections, had not “greeted” each other. The “handshake” between them that took place on 9 March, 2018, gave birth to the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), which is supposed to unite the country and ease political tensions.

Waguthi is not so convinced that BBI will work. “The fate of the country as currently constituted does not augur well for the future,” surmised the old lady, pointing out that the only thing the “greeting” had succeeded in doing was to forestall the mounting tension that cast a cloud of political uncertainty soon after the controversial 8 August presidential elections of and the repeat elections on 26 October.

“The political trajectory the country is taking is perilous and doubly uncertain because not only have things gone from bad to worse economically, but politically, the country’s leadership is groping around as President Uhuru and his cohorts seem clueless and rudderless as they steer the ship in the yet unsettled stormy waters, apparently from day to day.”

I had gone back to see Waguthi to help me reflect on the leadership of the Jubilee Party, a leadership that after retaking presidential powers in 2017 had left its base – the Kikuyu voter – seemingly confused and discombobulated. At 76 and having lived in a rural area for the better part of her adult life, Waguthi’s contemporary political analysis and sensibilities were sophisticated and on point.

“Uhuru has mortgaged the country to the Chinese…the debt now is in trillions, isn’t it?” mused the old lady, waving her fingers at me. “How much money is that? Those are mindboggling figures, yet all that money has been stolen by his friends and relatives. His government has been the most corrupt to date since I came of age and got to know what politics was all about. It is riddled with thieves and robbers and all he does is curse, threaten and talk big. I’ve never seen a president with no backbone like Uhuru. The current Kenyan leadership is in a crisis and this greeting between Uhuru and Raila, whose agenda is neither known nor understood by Kenyans, is just a gimmick to confuse the people even further,” analysed the old lady. “This is Uhuru’s last term, it is incumbent he vacates power and lets the constitution guide the next elections. Any attempt to tamper with the constitution so that he and Raila can create new centres of powers can only plunge this country into turmoil,” said Waguthi.

Waguthi told me that Uthamaki – the notion that only Kikuyus are entitled to political leadership in the country – had become a mirage, a dream deferred, a paradise lost that had left a bitter taste in the mouths of the Kikuyu people. “President Uhuru seems still hell bent in his political schemes to misuse the Kikuyus in abusing state power…That’s why there is this talk of changing the constitution…this will be disastrous, and if this is a harbinger of things to come, woe unto Kenyans. Don’t these African leaders ever learn?” Africa, she said, had been plagued with bad leadership, with leaders never wanting to leave office, which had led to many deaths and wanton destruction. Kenya, she added, was on its way to joining the league of failed state nations.

The old lady said that the move to change the 2010 constitution so that President Uhuru and Raila can presumably upstage Deputy President William Ruto in his bid to succeed Uhuru was devious and would jeopardise the security of Kikuyus in the greater Rift Valley diaspora and elsewhere in Kenya. “There has never been a time when the security of the Kikuyu people in the country has been as precarious and threatened as now…there is seemingly a truce in the country today, no doubt, brought about by the ten-month-old greeting, but one stupid move by the Uhuru leadership could see the Kikuyu peoples’ lives wrought in mortal danger.

“If it were not for the young Kalenjin man [Ruto], Uhuru would not be president, and our people would probably not live comfortably in the Rift Valley. That is a disturbing fact and, however much a section of the Kikuyu people and their political leaders will now pretend that this is not so, they owe it to Ruto,” said Waguthi matter-of-factly. “Many Kikuyus are now remembering to say many things about Ruto…that’s very interesting and those things could as well be true…but be knowing this, if you choose to welcome an ogre into your house, don’t complain afterwards that it is overfeeding and has taken over the whole house.”

“Uhuru was never a man worth being a president,” observed Waguthi. “The presidency was forced on him and six years later, he has made a total mess of it. He has never been in control, much less concerned with the destiny and plight of the people. Now that he has realised that he will be leaving the powerful position, fear and despondency have gripped his presidency – he’s been creating commotions and distractions to appear like he’s on top of things.”

Dusk was setting in and the lady who had been taking care of her was on her way back from Tumu Tumu trading centre where she had gone to recharge Waguthi’s mobile phone. Waguthi summed up her prognosis: “The president led a life of privilege. He has never done anything for himself. He is laid back. Everything has always been done for him, and even in politics that has been the case. That’s how a prince behaves…it isn’t his fault, because that’s how he was socialised. The fault has been the people who entrusted their political fortunes to a man, not because he was fit for the job, but because he came from a big political family, and therefore presumed that political power was his right.” The old lady said Uhuru pales in comparison to Ruto, who is tough, hardworking and does not come off as having been pampered in his early life.

Waguthi had given me some political food for thought, surprising and unpalatable as it may have been, coming especially from an old lady. But her analysis had been echoed by a much- travelled man, who was as educated and professional as they come. Three weeks before going to meet Waguthi, I had spent some time with a former World Bank financial consultant in Ngegu on the outskirts of Kiambu town in Kiambu County.

A teetotaler and staunch Protestant Christian, the soft-spoken 68-year-old Gikandi strikes you as a man of really few words – until he is provoked to give his prevailing political views. “The handshake had calmed down the palpable tension that had been building up in the country soon after the two elections…the county is much less tense now, but that was not a license for Uhuru and Raila to introduce a hideous agenda through the formation of the Building the Bridges Initiative,” posited Gikandi. “Let us be clear about one thing: were it not for William Ruto, Uhuru would not be president of Kenya. Have you forgotten how the two campaigned together in folded white shirts? We’ll not be drawn into distractions. The prevailing talk about political debts or the lack thereof, state corruption, revived past sins are all unhelpful and unnecessary.”

“I have lived long enough to know who has been stealing money from state coffers,” said Gikandi. “Kikuyus have stolen more money from successive governments than anybody cares to know or investigate. That I can tell you for a fact: Money was stolen in Kenyatta (I), during Daniel arap Moi’s tenure, during Mwai Kibaki’s rule and now, more than ever before, in Kenyatta (II).”

Jomo Kenyatta, father to Uhuru, was the founding president who ruled as an imperial president for 15 years, from 1963 to 1978. His Vice President, Moi, took over from 1978 till 2003, when his second term ended and his “project” Uhuru Kenyatta, the Kanu flagbearer who he had primed and propped up to take over from him, was defeated by Kibaki on a National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) party ticket.

“What we want post-2022 is security and stability for all,” said the former World Bank auditor. “President Uhuru must be very careful how he fashions his politics now as we head to 2022. It would be extremely devious of him to not think of the security of our people in the Rift Valley. I do not want to belabour that fact, but you and I know that a political misstep or mishap could easily trigger mayhem in that part of the country. We do not want a repeat of 2008. Some Kikuyus are now remembering Ruto’s past sins. They should have remembered them in 2012, not now.”

“I believe Ruto will get things done,” said Gikandi, “because he is focused, hardworking and he is always on top of things. All the President’s men, past and present, have stolen. I am not persuaded that it is the DP and his men that have allegedly siphoned all the money from the state. We cannot have double standards if we want to curb corruption and, by the way, why has President Uhuru chosen to ‘fight’ corruption now?”

The financial risk management consultant, who is also a revered church elder of a big Anglican church in Mt Kenya South diocese, said that if BBI lives up to its demand of holding a referendum so that the constitution is changed, he will robustly oppose it. “Uhuru should just honour the constitution and peacefully leave office. More importantly, he should honour the promise to his deputy. We can still remember it very well, made in the lead-up to 2013 general election.”

While in Nyeri County, I also spoke to millennials. Their political views were equally surprising. I met Mureithi from Skuta, a trading town six kilometres from Nyeri town. Mureithi, who is in his mid-30s, runs an electronics shop at Thunguma centre, which is separated from Skuta by two kilometres.

“We do not want to hear anything about President Uhuru,” said an embittered Mureithi. “He has wasted us, he fought so hard to reclaim the presidency only to plunge us further into deep poverty and political uncertainty. I am struggling to stay afloat. In the past one year, Uthamaki rulership has turned into ultimatums and angry outbursts from the president when confronted with issues of Central Kenya development issues. We, the young people of Nyeri County, have made up our minds. We have nothing to do with Uhuru, his projects, or his political schemes.”

In retrospect, Mureithi told me, President Uhuru’s six years at the helm was for self-aggrandisement and enriching his friends and relatives. “Tell me what one thing the Kikuyu youth anywhere can be proud of after his unswerving support for Uthamaki? Nothing. Instead, we have been served with disappointment, disillusionment and dispossession. And these 3Ds have given way to a great sense of betrayal. I made a mistake in voting for him twice last year. I will never do that mistake again,” said Mureithi.

Nigute. This Kikuyu word has in the last year become the political catchword for the disaffected Kikuyus whose views of Uthamaki presidential rule in the run-up to the first presidential elections was clouded by a vista of imagined economic Shangri-La and paradise revisited. Literally, the word means to throw away. Figuratively, it means to be wasted, to be misused, to be of no value after use, to be dumped.

“I threw my vote away,” said Mureithi, “So is the feeling of many Kikuyus. They are stuck in a rut, angry, bamboozled and embittered. They were deceived…the truth is, they have always been cheated, but this particular deceit could not have come at a worse time: Uhuru’s government has plundered the economy and destroyed Kikuyu businesses. The people have no money and they have no one and nowhere to turn to.”

Mureithi told me that BBI will come a cropper, spearheaded as it is by political dynastic powers that believe it is they who must always rule Kenya and nobody else. “It is headed for defeat because we shall fight it. We know what they are up to. Here in Nyeri, the youth have decreed that they will not support the referendum that is being pushed by Building the Bridges Initiative. We shall vigorously oppose it. We are tired of Uthamaki and its appendages.”

“There are some Central Kenya leaders who have been moving around the region telling us it is Ruto who is the source of all corruption and theft in government and that corruption must be fought by all means,” said Mureithi. “Those leaders include our own MP here for Nyeri town constituency, Ngunjiri Wambugu. We’ve already warned Ngunjiri that, like Uhuru, it was a mistake to have voted for him. We should not have abandoned Esther Murugi, [the former MP].” Ngunjiri is looking at his only one term in parliament, Mureithi promised me.

“The greatest theft in government has been orchestrated by President Uhuru’s close friends, who have stashed away billions of shillings,” observed Mureithi. “How is it that now it is Ruto who has stolen all the money and that it is he who is the source of all our economic and political problems? By allegedly trying to antagonise the deputy president, President Uhuru and BBI are stoking future political violence and insecurity for Kikuyus resident outside Central Kenya. I have relatives in Rift Valley. I know how nervous the Kikuyus of that region are with all this careless talk about rethinking Ruto’s Kikuyu support in 2022.”

“Corrupt or not corrupt, I will be supporting William Ruto,” said Mureithi. “What has our own Uhuru done for us? Born in riches, Uhuru has been overindulged throughout his life. That’s why he couldn’t care less whether the Kikuyus eat grass or sleep hungry, as long as he can get them to die for his dangerous political ventures. President Uhuru has been saying this is his legacy term for Kenya. We know what that means: ‘This is my legacy for the Kenyatta Family, not Kenya, the country.’”

I wound up my Nyeri County visit by engaging Lilian Wambui from Gikondi village in Mukurwe-ini. Barely a year ago, Wambui would have killed for President Uhuru Kenyatta. “I was so indoctrinated by the Uthamaki logic and the person of Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta that I’d brazenly taunt my Luo friends to go fishing in Lake Victoria and catch thamaki (fish) because we the Kikuyus had Uthamaki.”

Wambui is a businesswoman: she once rented a quarry in Njiru that borders Mwiki to the north and Ruai to the southeast in Nairobi County, where her employees were all Luo men who broke and carved stones that would be picked in truckloads at the site. Wambui has also engaged in the mitumba business, where she specialised in camera (as-good-as-new) children’s designer clothes. Lately, she has been dealing in wholesale fruits and vegetables. In three and half years, all the three businesses have collapsed. In December last year, she escaped to her rural home to run away from the hustle and bustle of Nairobi and to rethink her future.

“Corrupt or not corrupt, I will be supporting William Ruto,” said Mureithi. “What has our own Uhuru done for us? Born in riches, Uhuru has been overindulged throughout his life. That’s why he couldn’t care less whether the Kikuyus eat grass or sleep hungry, as long as he can get them to die for his dangerous political ventures. President Uhuru has been saying this is his legacy term for Kenya. We know what he means: ‘This is my legacy for the Kenyatta Family, not Kenya, the country.’”

“President Uhuru is a total failure: all the money from the government has been stolen while he stood by and watched. Now he is fighting Ruto, pretending to combat corruption. He should give us a break. I never believed he would waste us [Kikuyus] after all the support we lent him. I think we Kikuyus have been bewitched. It is not possible for one family to bestrode an entire community so easily and take advantage of their political foolishness for so long,” she commented.

Wambui told me that she vividly remembers President Uhuru specifically campaigning among the Kikuyus in downtown Nairobi in 2017. “On 9 February, 2017, taking time off from his State House duties, the president joined the Jubilee Party’s Nairobi governorship aspirants to galvanise the people into registering as voters. The then contestants were Peter Kenneth and the ‘Gang of Four’ – Mike Sonko, Denis Waweru, Margaret Wanjiru and Johnstone Sakaja.” The businesswoman recalled that everyone, including the president, congregated at Wakulima Market on Haile Selassie Avenue, famously known as Marigiti. “It is not for want of a better place to mobilise the Nairobi voter that the Jubilee Party cabal chose the marketplace. Because when the president spoke, it become rather obvious why Marigiti was a good starting point. “Wooooi andu aitu muiga nyinuke….wooooi mutikandekererie…..mutikareke nyinuke,” (Oh my people, are you sending me home….please don’t abandon me…don’t let me go home) urged the President.

“Two months earlier, campaigning in Ruaka and its environs which are in his home county Kiambu, President Uhuru at one stop addressed the people thus: ‘I have information that some people are saying they will not vote on the 8th of August. I appeal to you, particularly the youth, not to let me down. I know what we are defending. What did President Kenyatta mean by I know what we are defending?’” posed Wambui. “The Kenyatta Family legacy. Period. President Uhuru has let down every Kikuyu voter, other than his tenderpreneur friends and relatives, who came out to vote for him. And the Kikuyu youth, abused during the campaigns and ignored after power had been recaptured, have received the short end of the stick. They are now called thieves. Nigute.”

I spent half of 2017 and the better part of 2018 talking and oftentimes animatedly holding court with Uthamaki ardent followers who, just before the August 8 general elections, had immersed themselves in Uthamaki’s noxious rhetoric of political perpetuity. All of them – from market women to matatu drivers, conductors, freelance touts, hawkers, street vendors, street prowlers, petty traders, seasoned businessmen and women, college students, university dons, professionals and state bureaucrats – were seemingly hypnotised by the Uthamaki political conquest: “Seek ye first the political kingdom and all the rest shall be added unto you,” one born-again lawyer had reminded me, “but we are still humble about it.” (It was Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of independent Ghana, who famously coined the maxim, which would soon become a clarion call for many an African country seeking political independence in the 1960s.)

Yet, nothing has captured for me the hypnotic, trance-like behaviour of an Uthamaki fundamentalist who revels in sporadic moments of lunacy than the story as told to me by my friend Baba Otis.

On 1 June, 2018, Madaraka Day, Baba Otis was drying obamboo (dissected tilapia fish that is smoked and oftentimes dried for storage and which is eaten over a long period). Known by its variant name, obambla, its tasty soup is very delicious and nutritious, especially for children. In the evening, On that day, Baba Otis heard a knock on his door in the estate plot where he lives with other tenants in Nairobi. It was Mama Shiru. “Sasa Baba Otis, aki watoto wangu hawajakula siku tatu, nisaidia tu na piece moja ya samaki niwatengenezee.” (Hi Otis’s father, I swear my children have not eaten for three days. Please just give me one piece of the smoked fish. I will prepare it for my children.)

The evening visit by Mama Shiru was interesting, given that on 29 October, 2017, a Sunday and three days after the repeat presidential elections in which the Jubilee Party largely competed against itself, Mama Shiru, a mother of two, had broken into a frenzied dance of jubilation and had yelled for all to hear: “Uthamaki ni witu….thamaki ni ciao….mekuigwa uguo”. (The rulership is ours (Kikuyus)….fish is theirs (Luos)…they can go hang.) Baba Otis was there to witness the hippy dance of a woman who, for all intents and purposes, behaved as if she had been possessed by Lucifer himself. She was sporting a wristband and bandana fashioned along the colours of the Kenyan flag that have come to be associated with chauvinistic Kikuyu men and women. That night, Mama Shiru must have slept like a king in the knowledge that her tribesman had once again settled in the hallowed sanctuary of the mighty State House. Uthamaki ni witu…thamaki ni ciao.

Barely seven months later, when Mama Shiru stood outside Baba Otis’s door, she had discarded her wristband and tossed away her bandanna. The uthamaki ni witu, thamaki ni ciao alliterative singsong had long been expunged from her now pursed lips. The bravado that had accompanied the wearing of the Jubilee Party paraphernalia and totems had gone. Crude reality had by then sunk in…perhaps…perhaps not.

One fact was clear though from Mama Shiru’s predicament – you cannot feed your children on a tribal ideology, much less if your tribesman is the country’s president. “But Kikuyus can also be impervious and shameless,” commented Baba Otis.

In moments when an ethnic community finds itself in a crisis, its spontaneous response is to blame everyone but itself: introspection becomes anathema – it searches for scapegoats and scarecrows to explain away its internal contradictions and confusion. “It is the handshake.” “This problem we are in now is one for all of us.” “It is William Ruto who is engaged in all these state thefts”. “Ni mang’auro marea marigiciiria munene.” (It is the scoundrels that encircle (our) leader.) “Muthamaki ndakararagio na ti wa garari,” (The tribal chieftain should not be criticized or contradicted.)

John Njoroge Michuki is on record after Narc came to power in 2003 for proclaiming that Kenyans (read: Kikuyus) had been agitating for constitutional reforms to remove Daniel T. arap Moi: Moi was the problem – not the almighty powerful presidency that the 1960, 1962 and 1963 Lancaster House constitution conferences had bestowed on Kenyans. But hey, as long as that individual was a Kikuyu, it was business as usual. Many Kikuyus conflate Kikuyu nationalism with Kenyan statehood. And they care less for this contradiction.

The grandstanding of kumira kumira (a clarion call that means to get out in large numbers), thuraku (safari ants) and all that toxic talk about Uthamaki and “ni ithui twathanaga guku,” (it is we (Kikuyus) who call the political shots) has melted away barely a year into the Jubilee Party’s second term.

After my interviews and interactions with Uthamaki believers, I could not help but ponder over what could be a priority in their minds as they struggle to contextualise their economic hardships and situate their political path come 2022.

Post-2022, the Kikuyus are thinking very hard about their security and survival in ways that they have never thought before. The presidency has become a burden to them: Like a millstone around their necks, it is weighing them down. But they made their bed and must lie on it. In a real sense, the president has stopped being a factor in their yet undecided political trajectory.

For the very first time, Kikuyus do not have a bankable political leader. Ten months into BBI, not all Kikuyus are persuaded that it augurs well for their political insurance. So far, they do not know what to make of it. Suspicion abounds.

Painfully, the Kikuyus are learning to internalise their political suffering, trapped as they are like a caged bird, its only freedom being to pitter-patter around the cage. Hence, their desire to extricate themselves from the clutches of political serfdom, and hopefully, from the pain of the (late) realisation that they have been duped and dumped.

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.

A Judas Moment: Betrayal in Nyamakima

By Dauti Kahura

Set on a 20-acre piece of land in the Athi plains, the Mavuno “Hill City” Church (a Kiswahili word meaning harvest) looks like anything but a church: its mega dome tent resembles one huge dance hall – complete with discotheque-type revolving multi-layered and multi-coloured strobe lights that flash on and off, and a soundtrack system that would rival sound system proprietor DS Njoroge’s, 10,000-watts sound system equipment. Kendrick Lamar, the American hip-hop mega star rapper would have no problem holding a concert here. As a visiting Anglican Church cleric commented: “There’s nothing to suggest this is a holy sanctuary: a rap reggae artist could as well find his footing here. The tent could also be used to hold a conference for businessmen or entrepreneurs discussing multi-billion-shilling investments.”

Hill City, which can hold up to 4,000 worshippers, is one of the symbols of the growing influence of America’s evangelical religious culture of giant churches, whose preaching is beamed in real time on billboard-sized LED smart screens. The church precincts are no longer referred to as a compound, but a campus.

It is the kind of church where testimonies warm and cheer up the worshippers. Testimonies of success abound. “Since coming to this church, I cannot keep up with the growth of my company…my products are moving faster than I can replenish them.” Or “After I started attending this church, my prayers were answered – I got a job, which flushed the anxiety from my heart. The job gave me a relaxing feeling, the kind of feeling you have when you know you’ve a big bank account somewhere.”

Surrounded by Chinese-themed mega estates, Hill City is 35km from Nairobi city centre. Located off the Nairobi-Mombasa highway, it is a 3.5km walk from Stage 39, the nearest bus stop for worshippers intending to trek to the church. It would really take an inspired Christian to attend this church – the scorching sun and choking dust is not made for trekking. In short, it is not your typical walk-in-walk-out church. Its parking bay can easily hold 500 vehicles.

“Mavuno Church’s relocation of its headquarters to a location just beyond the city limits in 2014 resulted in a number of members moving to other churches, as well as to other Mavuno campuses closer to their areas of residence,” said Pastor Linda Ochola-Adolwa, who oversees Mavuno Crossroads Church, which meets in the Lavington suburbs.

Mavuno Crossroads was started in June 2016. Its worshippers are the remnants of the original Mavuno Church that used to meet at Bellevue in South C. Reluctant to move to “Hill City”, they finally found a suitable location where they could pray and worship: at the Lavington Primary School. They refurbished seven classrooms and gave a face-lift to the primary school. Today, the congregation is made up of nearly 400 worshippers.

“The people who formed Crossroads were the well-heeled Christians who had been supporting the Mavuno Bellevue Church with their big tithes,” said a Mavuno church-goer. “The Crossroads Church worshippers are all professionals and affluent and they meet in a rich suburb, away from the prying eyes of the less privileged Christians.” It was just a matter of time before Mavuno Crossroads’ leadership and the headquarters at “Hill City” were at crossroads over the issue of control of money allocation and tithe contribution, whispered a Crossroads Mavuno worshipper.

“Pastor Muriithi Wanjau [founder of Mavuno] is upset about the fact that Crossroads, which is a much smaller congregation, has a lot bigger slice of money than the huge congregation at Hill City,” said a Mavuno Church Athi River worshipper. “He has always wanted control of the Crossroads money, but he seems to be encountering headwinds. It is a public secret that Pastor Muriithi has shown displeasure with Mavuno Crossroads Church’s leadership over his inability to oversee its finances.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth”, retorted Pastor Muriithi. “In fact Hill City, with its big contribution of tithe is able to fund other churches that are not as endowed as Mavuno Athi River. Every church (independently) controls its finances and its choice of projects, even as they contribute their share to the central operations of the Mavuno Church,” posited the pastor. The biggest operation of the church is planting Mavuno churches where there are none. “Hill City contributes 42 per cent of its finances to the centre, Crossroads about 15 per cent, the same as Downtown, but generally churches give between 5 and 20 percent of the finances to Mavuno Church, of course, depending on their financial capabilities.” There has been a lot of rumours and misinformation out there about Hill City and me, said Pastor Muriithi.

“It is true, there was a disagreement between Pastor Linda and I”, the soft-spoken Pastor Muriithi told me, “but let me not disclose what the disagreement was about.” Pastor Muriithi said he and Pastor Linda agreed to engage “a trusted resource person,” in the person of Oscar Mureu, who is considered to be the titular bishop of Mavuno/Chapel group of churches. “We sat down with Oscar and he agreed to arbitrate our pressing issues and, we all agreed to leave the matter with him, so it’s an ongoing matter because he is currently looking into it.”

There are seven Mavuno churches in Kenya, “but because of planting churches along the logic of colonial lines within the city, the outcomes of this has been a subtle segregation within the Mavuno congregations,” said a Downtown Mavuno church-goer. Downtown Mavuno meets at Ufungamano building near the University of Nairobi. “Crossroads is the best example of a group of people for whom class and space are more important than just being called Christians.”

Mavuno Church encourages the starting of satellite churches based on specific area’ needs to cater for specific Christians, said the worshipper. In Eastlands, for instance, there is Mavuno Mashariki (Kiswahili for east). For long Mashariki used to meet in Donholm estate, but now meets at Naivas supermarket’s premises, where they erected a tent off Rabai Road opposite Buru Buru Phase V. “That church is for people from Eastlands…that’s just it,” said the worshipper.

There are seven Mavuno churches in Kenya and, in addition to their apparent intra- competition over which among its branches has the most money, “Mavuno is a church that practises subtle segregation,” said a Downtown Mavuno church-goer.

Mavuno Churches are led, presumably, by pastors influenced by the American televangelists from the south and mid-west who preach the message that success comes to those who pray. Forty-nine- year-old Senior Pastor Muriithi, takes no prisoners and pulls no punches in his preaching. In the month of October, he aptly called his preaching, “Wakanda Unchained – The Financial Liberation” series. “It was one of my boldest preaching,” confessed the pastor. “I will tell you something – our church looks rich…many are in debt…Christians give the illusion of success, you know, the idea is to fake it until they make it.”

In one of his Sunday sermons (which the church uploads online and which are available for all to view), Senior Pastor Muriithi rankled some of his congregants by talking about Jews and them being God-inspired money geniuses. He claimed Jews were successful because they understood the language of money and that is why they continue to attract hatred from other races as their blessings get multiplied.

“In a country riven with deep ethnic passions and where Kikuyus refer to themselves as Jews, it was deeply inconsiderate and insensitive to use the analogy of the Jews as God’s chosen people, whose success is seen as money-driven in a heterogeneous and multi-ethnic congregation,” said a Hill City worshipper to me. “Pastor Muriithi was preaching about Uthamaki theology in the guise of extolling Jews’ money virtues.”

“Let me say this, I regret the comments made afterwards by one of my congregants on my Jews’ analogy,” surmised Pastor Muriithi. “She misinterpreted my choice of Jews as people who have succeeded financially and otherwise as the biblical people of God. I could as well have used the example of the Ismailis. What I was saying is this: Jews are successful because they have stuck together, they are there for each other and, unlike some of our people who are socially and economically envious of one another, Jews help each other.” The pastor pointed out that after Jews were persecuted and suffered immensely, they learned that their success and survival lay in hanging together and not separately.

“I’m not a career pastor,” Pastor Muriithi reassured me as we concluded our somewhat difficult conversation suppressed by muttered breaths from both sides. He told me tithe- giving has been abused no doubt by many pastors, who are out to make money from their churches. “But that doesn’t invalidate the fact that Christians must not offer their tithes as commanded in the Bible. It is scriptural, it isn’t Pastor Muriithi’s command.”

‘Poverty does not glorify God”

“Africa suffers from [a] deficient money idea,” sermonised Senior Pastor Muriithi in one of his Wakanda series (the title is taken from the runaway success Black Panther movie about a mythical East African country). “Poverty does not glorify God,” boomed the pastor. Fired up like an American prototype televangelist, some of Senior Pastor Muriithi’s biblical pronouncements have been putting some of his worshippers on edge: “By God, where did he get that one from?” asked an exasperated Hill City church-goer.

“All what Pastor Muriithi seems to be preaching about is money, money and money,” said the church-goer. When does he get to preach about theological foundations?” As the presiding and founding pastor of the Hill City Church, one of the first sermons he preached at the newly inaugurated church in Athi River in 2014 was “financial plan for couples and money.”

As he preached in one of his Wakanda series, Pastor Muriithi plucked his authored pamphlet – “Financial Foundations” – and waved it to the crowd, saying it was the key to unlocking financial success. In an unflattering comment, a worshipper confided to me: “Pastor Muriithi is less concerned with spiritual matters, but with making money. How I wish he could write on the theological foundations to understanding the Synoptic Gospels,” bemoaned the worshipper.

“All what Pastor Muriithi seems to be preaching about is money, money and money,” said the church-goer. When does he get to preach about theological foundations?”

“Mavuno Church is run like a business,” said one of its pastors, who asked for anonymity for fear of antagonising his congregation and upsetting the church’s leadership. “It has a business plan model that must fit its expansion plans – in the country and elsewhere in Africa.” The church’s grand mission is to conquer and evangelise to African cities’ urban wannabes, “hence money is at the core of its expansionist manoeuvres,” said the pastor.

It is true Mavuno has an ambitious plan: “to plant culture-defining churches across the capital cities of Africa and the gateway cities of the world,” observes Pastor Linda.

Other than preaching about their favourite subject (money), “evangelical pastors have become experts in everything and anything,” said a Mavuno church-goer. “From investments and wealth creation, to sex and sexuality. From marital issues and parenting, to what type of people you should be associating with and who to invite in your house.” Senior Pastor Muriithi has been advising and discussing how to set up a business and how to avoid the pitfalls of incurring debt by not going to a bank to borrow money, said the Christian. “Is Pastor Muriithi an investments banker or an economist?” queried the churchgoer. “It’s true I teach about saving and investing,” said a confident Pastor Muriithi. “And it is my desire to teach about money, because I consider it to be part of my obligation to preach on social transformation as a way of uplifting the Mavuno Church. I am raising a church to bring change among the younger generation, the so-called millennials and Generation Z. It is important for our people to understand why poverty exists amidst us and for the blessed to use their blessing to uplift the less privileged in society.”

“It is very strange that some people would accuse me of preaching about money,” said a somewhat miffed Pastor Muriithi. “My Wakanda series came after two years of not talking about money…I think I spoke about money one other time in those two years.” The pastor reminded me that this year alone, he preached for only three months “and out of those three months, I only spoke about money for four weeks out of 52 weeks. It is not as if my preaching is all about money,” the pastor said.

In 2012, Fr Ambrose Kimutai described some of his colleagues as church ministers who put the love of money above everything, in essence, “bastardising the holy shrine of God.”

“The new churches of the evangelical type are in the business of promoting capitalism and neo- liberalism through their prosperity teachings and have nothing to do with spiritual nourishment or contemporary societal problems facing Kenyans,” said Njonjo Mue, the Oxford-educated lawyer with a theology degree from the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST), today known as African International University (AIU). “These pastors are just careerists, advancing their own causes of enriching themselves in the churches.”

“The church in Kenya is still colonial in form and structure,” said Njonjo. “After the exit of the colonial church, presumably with the colonial government, it bequeathed its reign of power to the ‘white community’ of Kenya – the Kikuyus. Is it any wonder that the former Attorney General, ‘Sir’ Charles Njonjo (no relation), in his heydays would decide, for instance, who was going to be the Anglican Archbishop in Kenya?” he posed. “The majority of Kikuyu church leaders fought former President Daniel Moi, not because he was dictatorial and oppressive, but because he was a Kalenjin,” said Njonjo, a born-again Christian.

“The new churches of the evangelical type are in the business of promoting capitalism through their prosperity teachings and have nothing to do with spiritual nourishment or contemporary societal problems facing Kenyans,” said Njonjo Mue, the Oxford-educated lawyer with a theology degree…”

The reference to picking Anglican archbishops by Charles Njonjo cuts back to the 1980 elections of the second Anglican archbishop. Archbishop Manasses Kuria, who died in 2005, was the second Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK) Archbishop after Festo Olang’ who retired in 1979. In line to succeed him was the fiery Henry Okullu, the Bishop of Maseno South. The elections became a contest between ethnicities.

In his autobiography, The Quest for Justice, Okullu wrote: “The Luhya and Kikuyu ethnic sentiments enforced by political tribalism blocked my way, such that a third person, out of the 25 electors could not be found to sign my nominations.” Okullu said that Bishop David Gitari told him, “Since Archbishop Olang’ was from Western Kenya (Olang’ was a Luhya), this time, you people from Western are to be prepared to support an Archbishop from Central Province.” Okullu shot back: “This time the election of the Archbishop must be geographically decided?”

In the ensuing cacophony – of who should succeed Olang’ – Olang’ himself asked Okullu to throw his support towards the Assistant Bishop of Mombasa, Crispus Nzano, a nondescript auxiliary bishop, but a bishop nonetheless. Okullu declined. To break the impasse, Nzano had been nominated alongside Mannases Kuria, an equally unknown bishop from Nakuru. On the eve of the election, Attorney General Njonjo telephoned Nzano and prevailed him to step down for Kuria and he obliged. James Hamilton, the then Chancellor of ACK, declared Kuria the second Anglican Archbishop of Kenya unopposed.

“The Christianity Kenya received from Western missions seemed to have emphasised personal piety at the expense of public and social implications of the Christian faith,” said Pastor Linda. She described the Mavuno congregation as largely middle class, professional, and young: “Hill City is a young congregation having started in 2005. This middle class congregation, which is multi-ethnic and sometimes multi-racial, tends to be apolitical in its approach to socio-economic and political matters.”

These types of Christians have come to view politics as anathema to their well-being: cushioned and shielded from the vicissitudes of real politik because of their privileged class backgrounds and professional lives, their economic largesse has also afforded them the luxury of ignoring the politics of the day around them. But after the post-election violence of 2008, many middle class (Mavuno) Christians woke up to the crude reality that politics was part and parcel of their lives and, even if it did not affect their lives directly, they had friends and relatives who had suffered because of politics gone awry.

Living in a ‘Christian bubble’

“Middle class Christians are aware of the corrupt political system, the socio-economic breakdown of our institutions and ethnic chauvinistic politics, but they seem to be exasperated and worn down by all these societal ills,” says Pastor Linda. “The greater temptation for this class of Christians is to live in a ‘Christian bubble’ of donating Christmas gifts to the poor and children’s homes, hence believing they have done their bit of civic and societal obligations.”

Yet, according to Pastor Linda, the church’s greater dilemma seems to lie in how it views its defined prophetic role: Does it obey the secular rules here on earth as stated in Romans 13 and just preach for peaceful co-existence as St Augustine proposed, or does it engage in the politics of the day and hope not to be muddied by it or shun politics altogether?

“Although the majority of Kenyans are Christians – more than 80 percent – they have relegated their church sanctuaries to politicians,” said a senior Anglican Church cleric. “Nowadays, it is the politicians who are crafting and dictating what messages the pastors and priests are to preach to their congregations.” The result: church leadership has become impotent and obsolete.

“After the poll violence of 2008, it became increasingly difficult for the Catholic Church to speak collectively in one voice,” said an Archdiocese of Nairobi priest. “The post-election violence had exposed the deep running ethnic fissures within the church. The Church had taken political sides, and one of its clergy members had been killed because of the ethnic mayhem and the dangerous ethnic and political emotions,” said the priest. “The Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB) meets nowadays to preach bland messages, such as the need for Kenyans to keep peace. It has ceased to have the moral compass to direct and guide the people.”

The priest told me that it was implicitly agreed among the bishops who form the episcopal conference that the church would not “impose” its collective stand on the politics of the day, or even pretend to inform it on the individual priests. “Politics became an individual priest’s responsibility – so long as he did not purport to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church of Kenya.”

“You cannot fight the government,” the priest said. “Even a powerful church like the Catholic Church is bound to be on the receiving end.” The priest confidentially told me that the government had allegedly sent a subtle message to the church’s leadership that if it pushed it too hard, it would impose taxes on its land and other properties it owns. The Catholic Church is the largest landowner in Kenya outside of the government. The cleric informed me that the government had even “threatened” to repossess some of the land it owned controversially, or land it had given the church.

The church and the state

Instead of effecting these threats, the government had done the opposite: Three weeks ago, President Uhuru Kenyatta, officiating at the funeral mass of the retired Archbishop John Njenga, asked the Principal Secretary at the Ministry of Land, Nicholas Muraguri, to return to the Catholic Church land that could have been appropriated or otherwise from the church. It is obvious that the Catholic Church leadership has been playing ball with the Jubilee Party state and hence the reward.

Although most of the Catholic Church’s land was acquired before Kenya attained its independence in 1963, “once Jomo Kenyatta became president, he gave the church a plot of land in the posh Lavington area,” said the priest. In Nairobi County, the Catholic Church’s land is concentrated in the Langata/Karen area, leading to the area being referred to as the “Little Vatican”. The other prime land is the Lavington property, where they have built posh schools, convents and even have a cemetery for their priests.

“If the state turns on the church it would be the worse for it and it will lose big time,” said the priest. “The church has never contemplated paying taxes, it would never pay taxes and therefore, it would do anything to avoid creating such a scenario.” The Catholic Church imports tonnes of drugs for its clinics and hospitals across the country, all tax-free. It is exempt from paying land rates. More than that, it has a large expatriate workforce that works in hospitals, schools and universities. “The last thing the church would want is for the government to make it difficult for the foreigners to work for the church,” pointed out the priest.

“When President Moi vacated office in 2002, and his former VP Mwai Kibaki stepped into his shoes, relations between the church and the state altered dramatically,’ wrote John Githongo in 2013. “The visceral antagonisms of the prior era melted away. A number of church leaders, including significantly, the National Council of Churches of Kenya’s (NCCK) Mutava Musyimi, were elected to Parliament. President Kibaki, not one for direct confrontation, cultivated a close relationship with the Catholic Church, whose national leadership seemed to share his conservative instincts, especially, in regard to property and acquisition.”

A senior Anglican cleric, who was a close friend of Archbishop Gitari, told me, “Once Kibaki became president, the archbishop ceased any fiery attacks against the state. He even subtly cautioned criticism of the new NARC government from fellow Anglican clerics.” It would seem the upshot of Archbishop’s Gitari’s pullback from finding fault with Kibaki’s government, unlike his constant attacks on Moi’s government, was that their man a (Kikuyu) had re-captured state power and that is all that mattered.

So was the Catholic Church – which had tested Moi’s patience by its stinging episcopal pastoral letters, which talked of social justice, political accountability and morality, among other pressing socio-economic and political issues – compromised?

Raphael Ndingi Mwana’a Nzeki, the Catholic prelate who had been at the forefront of demanding political transparency and of fighting against state corruption, which was rife in Moi’s KANU government in the 1990s, suddenly went mute, as did the church leadership, when his friend Mwai Kibaki became the president. It was not lost on Kenyans and keen observers that Kibaki shared the archbishop’s faith. Even more noticeable was the decline of the “sharp” pastoral letters that spoke truth to power.

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.

A Judas Moment: Betrayal in Nyamakima

By Dauti Kahura THE current clamour by a certain section of the political class across the board to change Kenya’s constitution is not anything new; we have been here before. Two years before the death of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, in August 1978, and after the hotly contested 1974 general election, this clamour reached its zenith, with its protagonists coming out openly to hold public barazas across the country to caution people about the danger of having one Daniel arap Moi succeeding Jomo. This group wanted the constitution changed so that a vice president could not automatically become president upon the death of the president, an amendment that would have made it impossible for Moi to succeed Jomo. Moi was a Kalenjin from Baringo and the so-called “Kiambu Mafia” despised him and could not in their wildest dreams countenance the fact that a non-Kikuyu could ascend to State House.

Nearly forty years later, in February 2018, a little-known and first time MP for Tiaty constituency in Baringo County, received wide media coverage when, out of the blue, he proposed changes to Kenya’s 2010 constitution. The 45-year-old MP, William Kamket, through his Constitution Amendment Bill 2018, advocated for the inclusion of a powerful position of prime minister and the scrapping of the position of deputy president. (The current constitution is hardly a decade old, having been promulgated on August 27, 2010.)

Less than a month later, on March 9, President Uhuru Kenyatta and his strident political nemesis, Raila Amolo Odinga, in a surprise manoevure, appeared on the steps of Harambee House – the seat of government – to declare a political détente by publicly shaking hands and smiling broadly for the cameras. Soon after, Raila, who had successfully petitioned Uhuru’s contentious presidential win on August 8, 2017 at the Supreme Court, only to stay away from the fresh presidential election on October 26, 2017, started agitating for constitutional change.

Through the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) formed immediately after the handshake, Raila has repeatedly said he is advocating for a future “all inclusive” government that will be devoid of cycles of violence that invariably manifest themselves every election year. The former prime minister, who has been tasked with spearheading BBI – a body made up of both President Uhuru and Raila’s circle of confidantes – has said that the Initiative will come up with suggestions on areas in the constitution that need to be changed. Since then, there have been additional disparate voices supporting this clamour for change, among them the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) and the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB).

Through Building the Bridges Initiative (BBI) formed immediately after the handshake, Raila has repeatedly said he is advocating for a future “all inclusive” government that will be devoid of cycles of violence that invariably manifest themselves every election year. The former prime minister, who has been tasked with spearheading BBI – a body made up of both President Uhuru and Raila’s circle of confidantes – has said that the Initiative will come up with suggestions on areas in the constitution that need to be changed.

The Kiambu Mafia

But we have been here before. Barely two years into his imperial presidency, the septuagenarian Jomo Kenyatta surrounded himself with political honchos from Kiambu, who in due course were to infamously acquire the sobriquet Kiambu Mafia. The group consisted of Jomo’s inner kitchen cabinet; among the most powerful were his brother-in-law Mbiyu Koinange, the de facto leader, his nephew Dr. Njoroge Mungai and James Gichuru, who, during Kenyatta’s detention years acted as the president of the KANU party, holding fort until 1960 when he vacated the seat for Kenyatta after the latter’s release from prison. It is this Kiambu Mafia that saw to it that political power was firmly established and consolidated among and within an emerging Kiambu cabal, so much so that the cabal boasted that “Uthamaki ndugakera Chania.” (“The political kingdom will never see the light of day beyond Chania.”) Chania is the river that flows through Thika town. It is the river that divides Kiambu County from Murang’a.

With cracks beginning to emerge between Mzee Kenyatta and his first vice president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, as early as 1965, the president and the cabal felt confident enough to take on Jaramogi and his band of supporters in the ruling party KANU. First, to show his disaffection and to dissociate from Jaramogi, Kenyatta did away with the Luo cap that Jaramogi had gifted him, which Kenyatta often proudly wore.

It was in the aftermath of this disagreement that the scheming of the Kiambu Mafia, with the full knowledge of the president, came into full view when it called for a KANU conference in Limuru town in 1966. With the sleight of hand of the cabal’s project now exposed, the mandarins, with the help of the brilliant, cosmopolitan and, urbane politician Tom Mboya (who happened to be a Luo), warily crafted the idea of eight vice presidents to tame and humiliate Jaramogi. The eight vice presidential slots were divided among the then eight provinces of the country.

The deliberate picking of Limuru town in Kiambu District as opposed to holding the meeting in Nairobi, the capital city, was very telling. Was Mzee Kenyatta and the Kiambu Mafia telling all and sundry that the country’s Uthamaki now rested in Kiambu District?

Mysterious deaths and political assassinations

However, the ideology of Uthamaki (based on the idea that only people from the Kikuyu ethnic group are entitled to run the country) only gained feverish currency among the Kikuyus after the assassination of the mercurial Minister of Economic Planning and Development, Thomas Joseph Mboya on July 5, 1969, at the tender age of 39. It was around this time that the famous 1969 oath- taking was secretly and hurriedly organised to ostensibly bind the Kikuyu community to defend its Uthamaki from andu aa ruguru (communities from Western Kenya).

“The secretive oathing of 1969 was the zenith of Uthamaki consolidation,” Nelson Mwangi Gichohi, the former all-powerful Nakuru District Commissioner, once told me. “Most of the oathing was concentrated in Gatundu division. There was also oathing in Nyandarua District, but I will be lying if I tell you I know the specific locations.” (Gichohi died at the age of 96 and was buried on October 5, 2018 at his Nyandarua farm.)

The Mafia was wary of any politician who remotely seemed like he would succeed the aging monarch Jomo Kenyatta who had suffered his first stroke in 1969.

However, the ideology of Uthamaki…only gained feverish currency among the Kikuyus after the assassination of the mercurial Minister of Economic Planning and Development, Thomas Joseph Mboya (TJ) on July 5, 1969, at the tender age of 39. It was around this time that the famous 1969 oath-taking was secretly and hurriedly organised to ostensibly bind the Kikuyu community to defend its Uthamaki from andu aa ruguru (communities from Western Kenya).

“With an aging and ailing Jomo, who was prone to stroke attacks, the Kiambu Mafia worried that his death might occur before they had dealt with all the real and imagined opposition,” a retired politician from Central Kenya, who was then a young man and who witnessed first-hand the political machinations of the dreaded and ruthless Kiambu Mafia, told me. “Their first hurdle was to clear the opposition within the mainstream KANU party, before moving in to deal with the KADU wing of the ruling party.”

KADU, which stood for Kenya African Democratic Union, had been an opposition party in the lead-up to the 1963 general elections. Its chief protagonists, among others, were Ronald Gideon Ngala and Daniel arap Moi. The party propagated a “majimbo” constitution that would be based on federalism, a system of government that was favoured by the “White Highlands” British settlers who wanted regions to have more autonomy.

On January 29, 1969, five months before Mboya was gunned down on Government Road (today Moi Avenue) at 1.00pm as he stepped out of a chemist’s shop. But five months before, [Clement Michael George] Argwings Kodhek was involved in a fatal accident at the junction of the present-day Wood Avenue and Argwings Kodhek Road. He was 46 years old when he died.

Meticulous and suave, Kodhek, a UK-educated barrister, had been Jomo’s lawyer at his trial in Kapenguria in 1952, alongside Dennis Pritt, a Queen’s Council (QC) and Achhroo Ram Kapila, among others. At the time of his death, Kodhek, whose English names’ initials were turned into a play of words by his Luo people – Chiedo Mor Gem (meaning the oil of Gem), was the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the MP for Gem.

Read also: IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID: Why the current push for a referendum is a distraction from the reforms Kenya needs

On December 12, 1972, Ronald Ngala, who had been KADU’s president and a founding member before the party was dissolved in 1964 to join KANU, was involved in a mysterious freak accident at Konza, 15km from the Machakos town junction. Thirteen days later, on Christmas Day, the former Minister of Power and Communications died at the Kenyatta National Hospital aged 49. Nobody has ever explained why Ngala, who traditionally celebrated Jamhuri (independence) Day with the president, was travelling to his coastal home on that Jamhuri day.

In March 1975, the Uthamaki “hyenas ate one of their own”, as the politician John Keen put it. The badly mutilated body of Josiah Mwangi Kariuki (popularly known as JM), the 46-year-old MP for Nyandarua North and an Assistant Minister in the Office of the President, was found in the Ngong Hills Forest. JM’s eyes had been gouged out and his lifeless body had been left in a path frequented by hyenas.

“Furious Nyeri Kikuyus immediately accused the Kiambu Mafia of killing JM,” recalled Gichohi. Although JM’s rural home was in Ol Kalou, where he had a big farm, his ancestral origins were in Nyeri. The Kikuyus from Nyeri vividly recalled what the Kiambu Mafia had said in 1966 – that Uthamaki would never transcend River Chania.

Gichohi narrated how three years before the death of Jomo, the Kiambu Mafia, suffering from “psychological insecurities generated by the founding president’s ill health”, felt sufficiently threatened by JM’s rising popularity countrywide to the extent that they decided to put a stop to his presidential ambitions. On many occasions, said the late Nakuru DC, the Mafia had warned JM to cease his political ambitions but he ignored them.

The formation of a parliamentary select committee to investigate the death of JM was aimed at assuaging the hurt nationalist feelings of a majority of Kenyans who identified with JM. It also sought to exonerate Jomo’s government from suspicions that it had ordered the killing of the populist politician. The select committee was chaired by Elijah Mwangale, the then the MP for Bungoma East. To seemingly lend credence to the committee, it included some of JM’s friends like Waruru Kanja.

The committee’s final report incriminated Mbiyu Koinange, the then Minister of State in the Office of the President and Jomo’s bosom buddy and brother-in-law. Furious that the Mwangale-led committee had dragged Mbiyu’s name in the report, Jomo is reported to have said that to have Koinange’s name in the report was like having his own name there. The president trashed the report, which also led to the sacking of cabinet ministers John Keen, Masinde Muliro and Peter Kibisu. Keen was the Assistant Minister for Agriculture and the MP for Kajiado North. Masinde was the Minister of Co-operatives and the MP for Kitale East. Kibisu was the Assistant Minister for Labour and the MP for Vihiga. They all were accused of endorsing and supporting the report.

Within just six years, the Kiambu Mafia had snuffed out the lives and political careers of two political heavy weights – Tom Mboya and JM Kariuki. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, the former vice president, was put under house arrest between 1969 and 1971. Still, the years between 1970 and 1976 were dicey times for the Kiambu Mafia. Mzee Kenyatta’s health was failing by the day, and it was just a matter of time before they woke up to the fact that he was no more.

To the extent that they did not want to be caught flat-footed, the Mafia must have realised that it was impossible to eliminate every possible threatening political force, so they cleverly came up with a political scheme: the creation of a party within a party. The creation of Gikuyu Embu Meru Association (GEMA) by the Kiambu Mafia apparently coincided with the weakening of the ruling party KANU. GEMA, which was supposed to be a welfare organisation in theory, was in fact a vehicle for the Kiambu political protagonists’ scheme to propagate Uthamaki philosophy as they sought to strangle KANU’s nationalist credentials, which were a direct threat to their devious plan.

The “Change-the-Constitution” movement

As Mzee Kenyatta’s health was deteriorating quickly, the Kiambu Mafia hatched another plan towards the end of 1976: the Change-the-Constitution mantra. With a constitution that expressly said that in the event that the president was incapacitated or suddenly died, the vice president would automatically take over the reigns of power, the Kiambu Mafia fought tooth and nail to stop Daniel arap Moi from succeeding Mzee Kenyatta.

The front man for the group was Dickson Kihika Kimani, the MP for Nakuru North and the controversial leader of the Ngwataniro Mutukanio land buying company. In September, 1976, the group, led by the political operator Kimani, held its first meeting in Nakuru to propose that the rules of succession be modified. A month later, Kihika, whose base was Nakuru but who had aligned himself with the Kiambu Mafia, repeated the assertion on October 3 in Limuru as he held a fund- raising meeting.

The activities of the Change-the-Constitution protagonists were stopped by the all-powerful Attorney General, “Sir” Charles Njonjo, who, two days later, issued a terse statement: “It is a criminal offence for any person to encompass, imagine, devise, or intend the death or deposition of the President.”

Kenyatta followed Njonjo’s statement with his own from State House: “The government reiterates its earlier statement by the Attorney General.” Thus the Uthamaki project of the GEMA/Change-the- Constitution group of 1976 had been nipped in the bud.

Before his fall from grace in 1983, Charles Njonjo, the influential and powerful Attorney General, is reputed to have boasted that were it not for him, Vice President Moi would not have ascended to the presidency. “Had I not laboured single-handedly, to ensure that the provisions of the constitution were adhered to, Moi would not have been president and there would have been chaos in the country,” Njonjo is reported to have said this to all who cared after Moi had entered State House.

When Moi became president, Kihika Kimani pledged his loyalty to him with the following statement on September 8, 1978, two weeks after Mzee’s death: “President Moi is the only natural leader Kenyans have with the necessary qualifications to lead the nation following the untimely death of President Kenyatta…It is the people, the majority of Kenyans, if not all, who are now pleading with him to become their President.”

Cynics believed that this professed loyalty was just a scheme to buy time, as many in the Kiambu Mafia believed that Moi would be a lame duck president and would not hold office for long. They were wrong: Moi consolidated his power and remained in office for 24 years. (In their book, The Kenyatta Succession, Joseph Karimi and Philip Ochieng describe the various intrigues, plots and personalities behind the Change-the-Consititution movement.)

Kenya’s political folklore has it that before his ouster from public life (through a commission of inquiry into his conduct by President Moi), Njonjo had since the early 1970s been conspiring and marking time to succeed President Jomo Kenyatta. His presumed support – apparently through proper constitutional means – for Moi and his wars with the Kiambu Mafia were a ruse in his master game plan to wrestle state power from Moi after taking credit for “planting” the former vice president in State House. His infamous remark, “Engethua ndogoria itingekinyera nyeki” (A limping leader sheep cannot lead the rest of the flock to greener pastures), suggesting that Moi was a weak president and therefore just “a passing cloud”, was used to incriminate and label him a traitor.

The return of Uthamaki

Twenty-four years after GEMA and the Change-the-Constitution adherents had failed to stop Vice President Moi from taking over from Kenyatta, who quietly died on the night of August 22, 1978, the Uthamaki project reared its head once more on the eve of the third multiparty elections in Kenya in December 2002. The scion of the Kenyatta family, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, was running for the presidency against Mwai Kibaki, a portly conservative politician from Othaya, Nyeri County, who had united with Raila Odinga to form a formidable opposition to the younger Kenyatta and Moi’s KANU party.

Kenya’s political folklore has it that before his ouster from public life…Njonjo had since the early 1970s been conspiring and marking time to succeed President Jomo Kenyatta. His presumed support – apparently through proper constitutional means – for Moi and his wars with the Kiambu Mafia were a ruse in his master game plan to wrestle state power from Moi after taking credit for “planting” the former vice president in State House.

The Kiambu mandarins of Change-the-Constitution movement of 1976 sought the help of Jaramogi, who in their first meeting in Nakuru, sent his political ally and former Kenya People’s Union (KPU) leader, Achieng Oneko, to represent him. For some time it looked like Jaramogi was ready to lend the outfit his nationalist credentials. Even though the Kiambu Mafia had orchestrated Jaramogi’s political banishment, they craved for his singular political support.

The Change-the-Constitution movement of 1976 was a scheme by a certain section of the Central Kenya carpetbaggers to stop a Rift Valley Kalenjin politician from succeeding President Jomo Kenyatta. The current push for changing the constitution has been interpreted in certain quarters of the Rift Valley region as a plot by a certain Central Kenya political cabal to stop another Rift Valley Kalenjin politician – Deputy President William Samoei Ruto – from taking over from President Uhuru Kenyatta… Then as now, a section of the ruling Jubilee Party, led by a section of the Central Kenya political class, has roped in Raila Odinga, Jaramogi’s second son, to help them push for a change in the constitution. Although, these same political players have in the recent past called Raila all manner of names, including telling him he is a “slow punctured politician” and is “too old and should retire”, they now seem to have rediscovered his political usefulness. David Murathe, President Uhuru’s lackey and chairman of the Jubilee Party, recently said that Raila should not think of retiring from politics, since he was still energetic enough and Kenya needed his style of politics.

The build-up to the Change-the-Constitution push of four decades ago was preceded by deaths, house arrests, and incarcerations. Will the current Change-the-Constitution movement also be accompanied by the death of certain politicians’ careers? Only time will tell.

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.

A Judas Moment: Betrayal in Nyamakima

By Dauti Kahura 1 October 2018 was a market Monday just like any other that has come and gone at the Githurai fruits and vegetables market, one of the busiest markets in Nairobi that is located 10 km from the central business district. Githurai Market is busy because its catchment area spreads all the way to Thika town and its environs. Although the older and more famous Wakulima Market, aka Marigiti, located in Nairobi’s CBD, could be busier, its market reach is not as widespread and does not go as deep into the hinterland as Githurai Market does. But, just like Marigiti, Githurai’s produce is transported from as far as Mbeya in southern Tanzania and Soroti in eastern Uganda.

This year has been one of the toughest years that the market women at Githurai Market have faced in recent times. Six out of every ten traders at Githurai Market are women. The market is largely run by resilient and seasoned female fruit-and-vegetable sellers, all of whom are Kikuyus and who in the true sense of the word, are entrepreneurs, whose grasp of the trade encapsulates the dictum: What they did not teach you at Harvard (or Yale) School of Business.

It was not the first time I was going to Githurai Market; this year alone, I have made enough trips there to get to grips with what makes the market tick, engaging with the women traders, sharing lots of cups of tea and chapatis, as well as listening to their stories about the funnier side of the market’s shenanigans.

All of this year, the market women have kept telling me how bad business has been. But strong- willed and tough-spirited as they are, they have held on to their undying optimism and belief that matters will eventually even out; in the long run, the economy will be fine and everything will flow smoothly. Their optimism is not pegged on any economic principle or the variables of fresh produce market dynamics, but on the presumption of a shared political-cum-tribal commonality through imagined ties with the ruling Kikuyu elite (referred to as Uthamaki). Hence, their presumed political correctness and unquestioned and unparalleled loyalty; in their minds, their Kikuyu tribe ought to serve as an economic shield, especially in tough economic times. “Uhuru ndangerika tuone uru. Kai twamucaguraga wake?” (Uhuru cannot let us suffer. That is not the reason we elected him.) The women’s unshaken faith in President Uhuru Kenyatta, in the face of very obvious economic turbulence, is truly puzzling, but also admirable.

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That the market women had great faith that the economy would improve and eventually stabilise had become a point of sore contention between them and me. I often asked them what miracle they expected President Uhuru Kenyatta to perform to wish away their economic woes. The country had mounting debts that ran into trillions of shillings, runaway theft that had crippled the state coffers in his first term and a Standard Gauge Railway project that had turned into a white elephant was gobbling Sh750 million in losses every month. Their chorus answer was always: “We should not keep saying the economy is bad. God is on our side and He will protect us.” It was a curt answer to a painful situation that threatened to fester indefinitely and which they were not prepared to talk about openly and publicly.

Sometime in July, when I told them that the government would impose Value Added Tax (VAT) on fuel come September, they outright rebuked me: “Aaah Uhuru ndangetikira.” (Nah, Uhuru will not consent to such an arrangement.) The VAT came and Kenyans immediately started experiencing the impact of the harsh tax. Matatu Saccos hiked fares overnight and kerosene prices shot up.

Meanwhile, the Githurai Market women’s optimism and faith in the person of President Uhuru was getting blurred and confusing. On this Monday, their spirits were beginning to break. It was 10.30am and the market was dull, inactive and quiet. The hustle and bustle had disappeared. The brisk business that used to be a permanent feature at the market throughout the week had whittled away. Something was just not working right, the unswerving belief in President Kenyatta’s “political abracadabra” and perpetual trust in the eternal Almighty notwithstanding.

To kill time as they waited for customers, the market women spontaneously formed a quasi-baraza and delved into the politics of the day. “Nitwarie caruruku,” said one woman, meaning “Let us brutally and honestly talk with one another other”. “Ithue nio ahari aa rua, no one riu uria turaria thina” (We are the people who do the lowest of the menial jobs, but look how now we are suffering). The Kikuyu idiom she used describes men who scrub and treat animal skins for a living. It is considered the lowliest job that any man could do.

“We supported Uhuru to the hilt but look at what he is doing to us now,” said one of the women. The trader said that President Uhuru had annoyed them so much that they did not want to have anything to do with him. It is obvious that it took a lot of courage to be publicly emotional about President Uhuru, a sacrosanct subject among Uthamaki loyalists, but the fact of the matter is that the market women are hurting financially and the prevailing political climate is anything but reassuring.

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“Ni gaitu ga gweciarira” (It is our very own son) had been the rallying call for the market women to come out in large numbers and vote for President Uhuru in the August 8 and repeat October 26 elections. In this ethnic logic, their son had let them down terribly and now they had their back against the wall: First, the VAT on fuel had increased the transport expenditure of many of the traders who bring in fresh produce from within and across the county’s boundaries by more than Sh5,000 per trip, per truck. Second, the economic hardship was slowly resuscitating the proscribed Mungiki gang.

The nefarious activities of the Mungiki was another taboo topic: in public, they defended the youth, arguing that as their sons, they offered protection to them at the market, ensuring it was not invaded by intruders. During the repeat presidential election on October 26, many of the so-called Nairobi Business Community (a pseudonym for Mungiki) ferried to the CBD were from Githurai. “If we didn’t have these youth, who would have protected the Kikuyu businesses in the city centre?” the women challenged me. But in private, the women dreaded “their sons”. The Mungiki blackmailed and extorted money from them. In the words of one market woman, “They reap where they do not sow.”

Githurai Market is completely under the control of Mungiki godfathers who live in the sprawling Githurai neighbourhoods, especially those bordering the railway. All the trucks that offload fresh produce pay protection fees to their agents. The police and the community are aware of these activities, but at Githurai Market and its environs, nobody mentions the M word; when the youth come to collect money, no banter is exchanged. The communication rules are very clearly spelt out – have the loot ready for the young man to pick up and no delays or asking unsolicited questions. “Now,” said one trader to me in low tones, “the godfathers are demanding cash from not only the trucks, but they have sent word that the traders should now start paying ‘Mungiki Tax’”. The traders know what will befall them if they refuse to pay up. “Mungiki don’t blackmail Luos, they don’t chop Luo heads, it’s our sons that they will start killing.”

Githurai Market is completely under the control of Mungiki godfathers who live in the sprawling Githurai neighbourhoods, especially those bordering the railway. All the trucks that offload fresh produce pay protection fees to their agents. The police and the community are aware of these activities, but at Githurai Market and its environs, nobody mentions the M word At the Githurai roundabout, Mungiki youth had erected a banner that read: Githurai Chapter of Nairobi Business Community supports Uhuru Kenyatta. A month ago, their vibandas (sheds) mounted on the Thika superhighway’s shoulders were demolished by a combined force of regular police, Administration Police (AP) and city askaris. “Why is Uhuru so careless and merciless?” asked a woman trader in total confusion. “Why is he demolishing businesses run by these youths? Does he know what he is doing? The trader said President Uhuru in just one swoop had unleashed Mungiki youth on them. “Turihetukagira ku riu?” (Where will we be passing now?)

The market women, in their ingenuity, had come up with a super idea: summon all these youth and give them fresh produce, mostly fruits, on credit to sell on the roadsides. Whatever they could not sell, they could return. It was a win-win solution for the youth and the women traders. Now even that idea had been undone by President Uhuru: The Mungiki youth who had been conscripted by the Jubilee Party to ostensibly “protect” Kikuyu businesses in the city centre were about to turn on their own, as they always do when faced with economic hardship.

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The women now questioned the utilitarian value of President Uhuru’s presidency to them, specifically as members of the House of Mumbi. “Uthamaki wa Uhuru ututeithetie na ke?” (How has President Uhuru’s presidency helped us?) “Tungethura kihii riua ritigethua?” (If we elect an uncircumcised man (to be the president), will the sun not set?) The reference to circumcision was directed at Raila Odinga, President Uhuru’s chief rival during the election.

Still, after releasing all their frustrations and anger against their muthamaki (king/ruler), the traders were agreed in unison that “Mwathani nii ngutukinyaniria” (The Lord will protect us). Then they broke into the chorus of a famous Kikuyu song: Onei! Ni Wendo Utarii Atia – Look! What Great Love without Measure.

Hutia ria keri Ngai wakwa Ndige kuona marundurundu Niigetha nyone wega Baba Bururi uria ndi riragitira.

Touch me twice My Lord That I stop seeing darkness So that I can see clearly my Father The promised country I desire.

That weekend, I had attended a graduation party in one of Nairobi’s leafy suburbs, and although it was an opportunity to make merry while the sun shone, the prevailing religious undertones of the gathering could not be missed: three evangelical pastors – two men and a woman – had been invited to offer up an abundance of prayers for the Bachelor of Arts graduate.

When each of the pastors stood to administer The Word, it quickly became obvious that the prayer- warriors’ messages were not exactly geared towards the celebration of a degree in a time of austerity and tough economic times; they were meant to reassure the people assembled there – all Kikuyus – that although it was clearly evident that there was an air of political confusion and economic uncertainty a year into President Uhuru Kenyatta’s second and final term, this was not a time to despair or lose hope, but rather a time to recommit and rededicate oneself to God.

“We’re going through the hardest economic times in recent times and many of the businesses are doing terribly badly, some are even collapsing,” said the first pastor who was invited to speak by the master of ceremony. “But we cannot give up because we know the good God is watching over us.” The pastor said it was at times like this that the people ought to rediscover their relationship with God.

When each of the pastors stood to administer The Word, it quickly became obvious that the prayer-warriors’ messages…were meant to reassure the people assembled there – all Kikuyus – that although it was clearly evident that there was an air of political confusion and economic uncertainty a year into President Uhuru Kenyatta’s second and final term, this was not a time to despair or lose hope, but rather a time to recommit and rededicate oneself to God.

“The Lord Almighty must have a good reason for allowing us to undergo these trials and tribulations,” reaffirmed the pastor to a crowd that looked like it was hanging to his every word. “We’re a special people, anointed by God, to be an example to other communities, of our fearfulness to Him,” said the preacher man, pausing momentarily and peering into the peoples’ eyes to let the message sink in. “We are fearfully made, unlike the gentiles, who, we know, have been always setting traps for us. But all their tricks will come to naught.”

Speaking like he was now in a holy sanctuary, the pastor promised the gathering that the blood of the lamb was with them and Jesus Christ had thrown a protection ring around them. “We know, Lord Jesus Christ, you’re going to fight our battles on our behalf, even as you shame our mortal enemies.” Reminding the crowd that it should always be aware that it is surrounded by adversaries, he proclaimed that they were a chosen people and, therefore. they had nothing to fear.

“Always take comfort that the Lord’s people have never been admired or liked. Has anybody ever liked the Jews?” wondered the pastor, his deliberate comparison of the Kikuyus to the Jews slipped in for effect. “We’re going to triumph – but it’s incumbent upon us to be steadfast, because our Lord Jesus Christ is seated at the throne. I know many are beginning to question the reason why we now seem to suffer so, but this is not the time to question the Lord.” As he went to take his seat, he asked the people to sing with him the following chorus:

Nii ni gwenda Ngai umenyage ningenaga muno niwe Tondu niujikaga wega na ukanyenda hingo ciothe Irio ciothe iria ndiaga, mai maria nyuaga Ona nguo cia kwihumba ciothe nowee uheaga Muoyo naguo niwe waheire, niwe ugiragia ngue Ungetheingia hinya waku, ndingiikara gathaa kamwe.

Lord, I want you to know that I’m much pleased by you Because you take good care of me and love me so always All the food I eat, the water that quenches my thirst Even the clothes that I wear, it is you who has always provided You gave me life and you protect me from dying If you ever removed your almighty power, I wouldn’t last even for a second.

The second pastor, unlike the first, was more circumspect. “We’ve fundamental problems in Mt Kenya region,” boomed the pastor-cum-university don. “And if we don’t solve these issues decisively and promptly, it’s not going to augur well for the community. The Kikuyu people have a problem with money: “Kwina gathina haha Central…nitukwenda twicirie uhoro wa handu hau…na ndigutenderia muno.” (We’ve have a problem here in Central [Kenya]…and it’s incumbent on us to ponder over that issue…and I will not rub it in.)

The pastor observed that the Kikuyus had abnegated everything else for money. They only think of making more and more money, said the pastor. “It’s a problem the community must come to terms with, as it also tackles the other socio-cultural norms that the community has negated. As it is, things are not good now and the businessmen seated here know what I’m talking about: the economy is going south, state theft in the government has become the order of the day and you know what, a lot of that theft has been perpetrated by our very own people.

“Today our children are graduating from universities, every year in big numbers, but we don’t have anywhere to take them. Employment opportunities are shrinking by the day and doing business in this country has become extremely difficult, much worse than it was several years ago. But we cannot give up, because we must never allow the devil to triumph. Yet, we as the Kikuyu people, should, as a matter of urgency, ponder very seriously over these legitimate and pertinent issues that are afflicting the community – now and in the years to come – which we are afraid of talking about them openly and publicly.”

As he sat down he invited the crowd to sing along with him, the hymnal lyrical chorus that to many Kikuyus comes naturally to their lips, just like the Lord’s Prayer.

Ngukinyukia oo kahora Njerekeire ya matuini Naninjui ningakinya Ngahuruke na mwathani Niwega Ngai muhonokia Nake Jesu ni mugate, Roho waku munyotokia Nii ndikahuta, kana nyote

Step by step Heaven bound I know I’ll reach To rest with my Lord Thank you God, my saviour And Lord Jesus is my bread, You holiness is a blessing I’ll never go hungry or thirsty.

“In times of socio-economic and political distress, Kikuyus rediscover their prayerfulness and religiosity to numb their political confusion and mitigate their hard economic times with endless beseeching prayers. Every igogona (socio-cultural ceremony) is an opportunity to unearth and sing select religious songs to presumably comfort them,” an Anglican Church of Kenya elder from Waithaka parish recently pointed out to me.

As the graduation bash was coming to end, a businessman who has operated in downtown Nairobi for 28 years, and who I have known for 20 of those years, pulled me aside to moan about the economic meltdown that was taking place on Gaberone Road, Kirinyaga Road, Kombo Munyiri Road, Munyu Road, Nyamakima area, Ngariama Road and River Road, the strongholds of Kikuyu business.

“Businesses are shutting down in real time as we watch. What the heck is going on? Why is Uhuru doing this to us?” This was a lamentation from an Uthamaki fundamentalist who barely a year before had dismissed my economic projections as the musings of a person who did not have a proper grasp of national politics and the economic underpinnings of a country like Kenya that was supposedly led by a businessman.

Podcast: The Ideology of Uthamaki

“For the very first time, in all my years as a businessman, I’m seeing tenants unable to pay shop rents,” he said. “Ona igitunyuo mwana, ni ikagirio mungu,” he proclaimed to me. The literal translation of this Kikuyu saying is that if you snatch a baby from an ape, the least you can do is throw a pumpkin at it to assuage its loss. Figuratively, the businessman was telling me that while they were not expecting saintly treatment from President Uhuru, the least he should have done is shielded them from the faltering economy so that their businesses would not collapse, and they would not be run out of town.

Businesses worst hit by the sudden tax collection regime are the hundreds of electronics shops at Nyamakima area south-east of River Road, said my business friend. Completely colonised by Kikuyu businessmen and women, it is famous for its trade in cereals pioneered by brazen Kikuyu women, who in a single day are known to collect hundreds of thousands of shillings. In the last twenty years or so, there has been an explosion of miniature electronics outlets lining the alleyways of Nyamakima, which have made scores of young men, especially from Murang’a County, rich.

“I know electronic shops that have been run out of town, unable to pay monthly rent and unable to import any more goods. In fact, many of my friends’ goods have been stuck at the Mombasa port because of being slapped with a sudden humungous tax,” said the businessman. “To complicate matters for the electronics businessmen, many of them have been accused of importing counterfeit goods from China. Has the government just discovered they have been importing contraband? Because of this, their goods have been impounded, and many have lost hundreds of millions of shillings.”

None of the businessmen can afford to import enough goods from China single-handedly, so they usually come together as a group and buy goods that can fill a 40-foot container. “So, it is very possible that some businessmen import substandard goods, but the government has never given them a catalogue of specifications of the types of electronics that they should bring into the country.” The businessman said four of his friends had shut their shops. “Today walk down River Road and Kirinyaga Road and Munyu Road, you will see prime business premises empty, their tenants having vacated them.”

After the nullification of the August 8, 2017 presidential election, businesspeople from downtown Nairobi came out in the open to show their undying support for Uhuru Kenyatta. They hung banners across the roads that read: Munyu Road Business Community Supports President Uhuru Kenyatta and Nyamakima Business Community Supports Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta. Others read: Ni Kumira Kumira, Wembe in ule ule.

“Just 12 months down the line, businessmen are gnashing their teeth,” said the entrepreneur. “The banners have since been pulled down and now they have printed new banners such as, Traders & Importers Association – Stop Killing Our Businesses.”

A scene in Muigai wa Njoroge’s video of his popular song, Mbari ya Kimeendero (The Oppressors’ Clan), shows some people carrying a banner reading: Matunda ya Tano Tena ni #Gutee…Stop Harassing Our Businessess (The Fruits of Five More [a rallying call for support for Uhuru Kenyatta’ second term] was a waste [of time]).” The popular singer reminds his listeners (and the President) that “the Nyamakima businessmen community celebrated your Tano Tena (five more [years]) victory by slaughtering many goats…now their goods have been razed down and declared fake…The person who bewitched us (Kikuyus) must have been paid real well,” concludes the lyricist.

As the preacher woman at the graduation ceremony concluded her prayers, she called on the people to join her in the chorus:

Thutha wa magirio ma thii enu Jesu niakajoya anyinukie Jesu wakwa hiuha mbara enu ni nene

After all the trials and tribulations of this world Jesus (Christ) will take me home My Lord Jesus, please come quickly, the battle before me is big.

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 Dauti Kahura

Three weeks ago, at the Karen bus stop opposite the Karen Police Station, there was a face-off that pitted passengers against matatu crews and their surrogates, the freelance touts that hang around such stops soliciting for passengers. The 33-seater matatus headed to Ngong town, 10km from Karen, were charging Sh80. Just a couple of weeks ago, the standard fare was Sh30. Occasionally, if the demand outstripped supply, which happens from time to time in the matatu industry, the fare would go up by Sh10. Any increase in fare exceeding Sh40 for the 10km ride, whatever the circumstance, would be considered exorbitant. The passengers won this round, but the lingering problem of arbitrary and surreptitious increases in transport fare had not been solved.

The Nairobi-Karen-Ngong route is a microcosm of the looming confrontation between passengers and matatus. And Karen town could be the flashpoint. The route is a very lucrative one, especially during peak hours. Most of the matatu passengers on this route work in the many church institutions, mega malls, restaurants, schools and universities and a big hospital that are located in Karen. Some work for the wealthy Kenyans who have homes there. There are also a lot of casual labourers working in Karen for whom every penny counts.

The tension that had been building between the passengers and the matatu crews had been palpable: “Hawa wathii siku moja watachoma hizi matatu, hii hasira yao ni mbaya sana,” (“These passengers will torch these matatus one of these days, their anger is real”) said a matatu driver. Wary of the people’s wrath, the matatu crews wait for the people to board the matatu, then ambush and cajole them with the ridiculous fare increase. But a fortnight ago, the people refused to enter the matatus, until the crew members publicly announced the fare they were charging. After a 30- minute stalemate, the matatu crew eventually lowered the fare to Sh100. “Lakini bado hawa wathii wananung’unika, sasa sijui wanataka tufanye nini.” (“Even after giving them a fairer price, the people are still grumbling, I don’t know what they expect us to do.”)

Since September 1, 2018, when the new 16 per cent VAT (value added tax) on fuel took effect, there has been a commotion in the public transport industry. The Karen-Ngong town driver who said that angry passengers may one of these days burn down matatus to protest against what they consider to be unfair matatu fares, was voicing a concern that has in the past few weeks put matatu crews on edge. “Wathii wanateta sana, wengine wanataka tu guoko na sisi…si kupoa,” said a matatu driver operating on the Nairobi-Limuru town route. (“Passengers are really complaining, some are picking fights with us…it is not a good sign.”)

The Karen-Ngong driver who was edgy about passengers’ uneasiness with the hiked fares said that he was struggling to remit the Sh8,000 his boss demands at the end of each day. “On several instances, we’ve had to forego our own pay. At Sh115 a litre, the diesel has become way too expensive. We asked the matatu owner to stabilize his profit to Sh7,000, with the hope of balancing the books, at the end of every day but it is not working. I think some people have cut their reliance on matatus. This has a direct relation with frequency of the roundtrips we make – the fewer the roundtrips, the lesser the money we make.”

The matatu cooperatives (Saccos) in Nairobi are in a quandary: they have been mulling (even before the fuel tax increase) over how to “rationalise their increasing costs of operations without being seen as gleeful and uncaring,” said a top brass at the Matatu Owners Association (MOA). “The business is really hurting, but so are our customers, yet, somebody has to carry the load and feel the pain. Unfortunately, it has always to be the consumer.”

But the Saccos have been hesitant: They are afraid of pushing too hard lest their customers rebel and spark off a wave of street demonstrations. Conversely, the industry is undergoing one of its most trying times in recent times – dwindling fortunes occasioned by a gloomy economic outlook. “How long can they hold on like this? That is the Saccos’ bosses’ question,” said the MOA official.

In a bizarre incident on September 16, a matatu stopped at Corporation stage (that is before Uthiru on the Nairobi-Nakuru highway) to pick passengers to Nairobi. Before the driver could know what was going on, a chap grabbed the matatu keys, scaled the dividing wall of the dual carriageway and ran off with keys. The people milling around the stage seemed unperturbed by the incident and the passengers inside and outside the matatu did not seem to mind the ordeal. Afterwards, when I asked one of the freelance touts why the fellow (who is very well known around the area), was risking his life snatching keys from a matatu, his answer was: “Hizi mathree zinaumiza watu sana.” (“These matatus are squeezing people financially.”) The matatus operating along long distances are not faring any better. My driver friend who operates a Nairobi-Nyahururu shuttle has been mourning since VAT on fuel was introduced. “I’m now spending Sh5,000 on fuel to and from Nyahururu, up from Sh3,200. Nyahururu is exactly 200km from Nairobi city centre. I used to charge my passengers Sh350 one way from Nairobi to Nyahururu before the fuel increase and I’d still take home between Sh3,200 and Sh3,500. It was reasonable.”

After September 1, he increased the fare to Sh400, but this has not helped. “Ndiraruta wira wa kuhura mai na ndiri.” (“I’ve resorted to pounding water in a mortar – in short, I’m doing zero work.”) Even after increasing the fare by Sh50 per person, the best he can take home at the end of the day, he told me, was Sh3,400, after deducting his expenses. As it is, his transport business was running on a Sh1,800 deficit every day – courtesy of the fuel tax. “I can’t dare push the fare more than Sh400: I know my customers, they are also suffering, we’ve to wait and hope President Uhuru will lower the prices,” said the driver nonchalantly.

The journey to Nyahururu is usually a one-way trip: A shuttle leaves Nairobi for Nyahururu in the morning at around 9.00am. The 200km trip usually takes about four hours. If the shuttle is lucky, it will make the return trip to Nairobi by between 5.00pm and 6.00pm, arriving in Nairobi at around 10.00pm. There are between 240 and 260 14-seater shuttles on the Nairobi-Nyahururu route. “If you make the round trip,” said my driver friend, “you count yourself lucky.”

His prayer about President Uhuru rescinding the implementation of VAT on the fuel sounded half- hearted and without conviction – like a person who already knows it is impossible but hopes for the unexpected to happen. “The truth of the matter,” he opined, “is that even if the fuel levy was dropped entirely, there certainly would be some relief, but life as it is, is already tough. Too much money had been stolen under President Uhuru’s watch and that is the price we’ve to pay for the profligacy.” But it has become increasingly difficult to hold a discussion on President Uhuru Kenyatta’s performance, especially with Jubilee supporters, like my driver friend. “Nitutigane na uhoro ucio.” (“Let’s just leave that topic alone.”)

President Kenyatta’s recent fulmination against matatu owners increasing fares, lest their licenses are revoked by National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) was rebutted by MOA, which argued the threat had no basis in law. “The President,” said a Jubilee Party MP, “will soon realise that nobody will be taking his threats any more seriously. He is a lame duck president who is doing his final term and holds no sway whatsoever on the politics of the future.”

The imposition of VAT on fuel has had an inflationary effect on practically every commodity that must be transported from point A to point B. In effect, this means that soon almost every household item will become more expensive.

On 20 September, the controversial Finance Bill, 2018 was passed by MPs. And without wasting any time, the President assented to the Bill the following day. The Bill’s vote in Parliament had been preceded by a little-nested game between the MPs and the President. The Parliamentarians had already threatened to shoot down Uhuru’s proposal to halve the VAT to 8 per cent, maintaining that there should be none placed on fuel and defying party chief whips.

“I’m afraid to tell you that even with that seeming reprieve, nothing much will move immediately,” said an oilman who imports oil products and runs several petrol stations in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. “These are the reasons: VAT is charged at the point of sale and is calculated as 16 per cent on all other costs of the product, over and above the other taxes and levies other than VAT. No importer will agree to sell at a loss simply because politics have been at play. So, even if the Finance Bill 2018 becomes law, with the President’s incorporation of the eight per cent VAT proposal, oil importers will not agree to lower their prices. We must first empty all the fuel bought within the time the VAT on fuel was imposed till we bring in new consignments. And this will take some time. If the people are thinking they are going to enjoy the VAT reprieve immediately, they are deluded.”

The oil tycoon told me that such a situation presents a perfect scenario for the industry to play market games. “If, for example, some oil importers, for whatever reason (most obviously, it would be for a quick super profit), choose to create an artificial oil shortage by hoarding their product, the price must necessarily shoot upwards, momentarily disrupting the official levy on fuel products.”

Apart from the matatu price jolts, the effects of the VAT on fuel has been heavily felt by the long- distance transport trucks that move all manner of goods from source to different markets. Businessmen who transport goats and sheep from Isiolo, Laisamis, Loiyangalani, Mandera, Maralal, Marsabit, Moyale, Turbi, Sololo and southern Ethiopia to Kiamaiko abattoirs in Huruma, Nairobi, told me that their fuel costs had gone by up by between Sh10,000 and Sh12,000 per trip. These animals are carried for up to 14 hours by 10-wheel Mitsubishi Fuso trucks on some of the roughest roads and in the most bandit-prone territories. “Already the wear and tear of the trucks has been staring down at us, but with this new tax on fuel, it has complicated our business,” said one of the transporters.

“The increase in the fuel costs means that they have to also pass down the burden to us butcher- men,” said Francis Kimani, a butcher, who goes to Kiamaiko every day to buy meat products, including goats’ heads, offal for making mutura (sausage-like delicacies) and hoofs for boiling soup. Until recently. Kimani was buying up to 100 goat heads every day at Kiamaiko to sell to his staunchly loyal customers at his outlet at the central bus station in Nairobi. “I arrive at Kiamaiko by 6.00am, pick my stuff and quickly head back to my base, because my customers want to find me ready by latest 11.00am.”

Kimani hires a boda-boda (motorcycle taxi) to transport his meat products in a box-like container. “I was paying the driver Sh250 per trip to the bus station, but after the VAT increase, he doubled the amount,” he said. But that is not the only burden he has to bear: already the prices of his meat products have gone up by more than 30 per cent. “I’ll confess I was doing a roaring business until this VAT thing came. My customers have dwindled, partly because I am buying less goat heads and partly because they are also feeling the pinch.” From selling 100 heads by the end of the day, Kimani is now barely selling 30. He said that if nothing improves, he will consider relocating to either Isiolo or Rumuruti in Laikipia County. The business was proving too difficult to sustain. “I was born in Rumuruti, I know there isn’t much there, but home is home.” “Nairobi tuokire gwetha ido na muturiri.” (“Nairobi’s not home, we just came here to look for money and a living.”) He said that in Isiolo he could look for work as a truck driver.

The VAT on petroleum products was first mooted in 2013, just after President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, formed the Jubilee coalition government. The VAT Act 2013, as it came to be known, was not implemented immediately; it was shelved for three years till 2016. When it came for review in September 2016, Treasury mandarins, through the drafting of the Financial Act 2016, postponed its introduction. But in March 2018, the Treasury Principal Secretary, Kamau Thugge, finally signalled the fact that beginning this September, the 16 per cent VAT on fuel would certainly be effected. This would mean that for every litre of fuel sold at a petrol station, Sh18 would be added on top of the original cost: a 14 per cent increase per litre. Thugge was candid: The government had no option but to swallow the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s bitter pill. Since 2016, the IMF has wanted the government to levy VAT on fuel as a way for it to collect extra revenue domestically. However, it is important to note that although petroleum products were previously exempt from VAT, they are still one of the most taxed commodities in Kenya.

This time last year, the Jubilee government was reeling from two shambolic elections – both conducted within two-and-half-months. The government was broke and was looking for credit facilities, so it turned to the IMF. The VAT on fuel, therefore, is part of the stringent conditions that the IMF has imposed on the Jubilee government in exchange for access to a standby credit facility – a fallback plan for Kenya’s Exchequer in case the economy finds itself in the ICU and needs quick resuscitation.

“Playing good politics,” and presumably exhibiting “poor leadership”, President Uhuru seemingly chastised MPs for initially rejecting his proposal halve the VAT on fuel to 8 per cent. The truth of the matter is that the President himself, in regard to the “problematic” taxation issues, is neither playing good politics nor exhibiting wise leadership.

This time last year, the Jubilee government was reeling from two shambolic elections – both conducted within two-and-half-months. The government was broke and was looking for credit facilities, so it turned to the IMF. The VAT on fuel, therefore, is part of the stringent conditions that the IMF has imposed on the Jubilee government in exchange for access to a standby credit facility – a fallback plan for the Kenya’s Exchequer in case the economy finds itself in the ICU and needs quick resuscitation.

“The Bill according to the Budget highlights by the Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury and Planning is intended is to raise an additional KSh27.5billion to finance 2018/19 fiscal budget year,” observes the Department Committee on Finance and National Planning: Report on the Consideration of the Finance Bill 2018. The report says, “total projected expenditure and net lending for 2018/19 estimates amounted to KSh2.533 trillion to be financed through ordinary revenue (KSh1.743 trillion) and AIA (Annual-in-Advance) (KSh179.95 billion). Expected external grants will amount to KSh47.037 billion, bringing the revenue to KSh1.970 trillion. This leaves a fiscal deficit of KSh562.748 billion to be financed through debt. The proportion of revenue estimates to GDP for 2018/19 is 19.6 percent which is equivalent to that of the 2017/18 budget.”

The Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM), one of the lobby groups that presented its resolutions to the committee, argues in the report that, “(the) local manufacturer was losing competition vs major foreign player. The local industries are manufacturing basic products with low gross margin compared to most foreign players, who can support the duty costs. Local players had to increase their prices around (five percent) and it’s the final consumer that will pay for the final bill. This, in turn, was jeopardising local employment.”

A Kenyan industrialist who had intended to contract some local companies to manufacture carton boxes for packaging consumer goods, such as milk, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), told me he took his business to Uganda after he was hit with a prohibitive tax levy. “The Kenyan companies were charging me $0.7 per carton box – that is exclusive of transport logistics and documentation charges,” said the entrepreneur. “Yet in Kampala, I was being charged $0.42 – inclusive of transport and documentation costs, what they refer to as free on board (FOB).”

On September 18, 2018, President Uhuru Kenyatta rejected the Bill passed by MPs a fortnight before, citing his reasons in a memorandum that sought to overturn some of the proposals shot down by the MPs – chief among them, the 16 per cent VAT on petroleum products and the National Housing Fund, a new tax where the government hopes to impose a tax of 1.5 per cent of income on employees and their employers, ostensibly to fund a home ownership and social housing programme. According to the memorandum, the 16 per cent VAT on fuel has been scaled down to 8 percent in order to raise Sh17.5 billion in the current financial year.

Another proposal contained in the President’s memorandum was to tax betting companies 15 per cent, down from 35 per cent as the case is now. This proposal, instead, hopes to raid the lottery winners’ cash by taxing it 20 per cent. The President is looking to raise between Sh25 and Sh30 billion accrued from the sports gaming taxes. The total computation of President Uhuru’s memorandum proposal was collecting Sh100 billion in this financial year.

Gitau Githongo, writing in the E Review, succinctly observed that “over the past five years, several tax measures have been introduced, including: 12 per cent Rental Income Tax on landlords from 2015, successive excise duty and fuel levy increases in 2015, 2016 and 2018; VAT on bottled water and juices, VAT on food served by restaurants, as well as, piped water; successive increases in excise duties on spirits, cigarettes and mobile telephony; and 50 per cent Gaming Tax on lotteries and bookmakers in 2017, among a host of others.”

Gitau’s article touched on the real reasons why President Kenyatta returned Kenya into the arms of hard-nosed IMF economists: “The parlous state of Kenya’s national accounts – most notably the KSh 5 trillion stock of public debt and ballooning budget deficit…suggests that the slew of tax measures proposed in Budget 2018 was purely about desperately seeking to finance reckless government spending and not about providing incentives for private sector economic growth.”

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