Why Black Lives Don't Matter in Kenya's Colonial

COVID-19 and the Future of Democracy in Zimbabwe

By Tamuka Charles Chirimambowa

The world has been teetering on the precipice ever since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan city in Hubei province, China. Since then, the disease has been classified as a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO), leading to countries adopting drastic measures to combat it.

In a majority of countries, state security institutions have been activated and deployed to help enforce the lockdown, and the stay-at-home and social distancing policies. Inasmuch as these strategies are practical measures to combat COVID-19, they have inadvertently created opportunities for authoritarianism. Jared Rodriguez aptly surmises the situation: “The pandemic creates extraordinary circumstances for restricting civil liberties, free speech and human rights while intensifying the possibilities of an emerging authoritarianism.”

In countries like Zimbabwe, which are rife with authoritarianism, it seems the pandemic has provided a perfect opportunity to checkmate the ever nagging opposition and civic movement. The strategies adopted so far by the government point only to one goal: achieving unimpeded imperial rule for the incumbent.

The responses of the pro-democracy movement have been largely premised on a neoliberal framework to politics and state-craft despite the existing material and social conditions pointing otherwise. The pro-democracy movement has mainly pursued constitutional reformism and electoralism in an economy that is predominantly agrarian, informal, and dominated by natural resource extraction and the service industry. This brings into question these strategies, and more importantly, the future of democratic politics in Zimbabwe.

Democracy under threat

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed democracy under one of its biggest threats. Authoritarian strategies have become the de facto norm adopted by governments. Singaporean Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, makes an important observation on the three pillars that may make any country manage to respond effectively to Covid-19: “In fact, this is an acid test for every single country’s quality of healthcare, standard of governance and social capital. If any one of the pillars in the tripod is weak, it will be exposed, and exposed quite unmercifully by this epidemic.”

It is important to note that governance is one of the key pillars for the state’s capacity to respond effectively to COVID-19; a failure within that realm may mean disaster in the end. In this case, governance speaks to how public power and policy are deployed and used within the state. This poses questions on how public officials and institutions are operating and guiding their conduct in seeking to enforce laws meant to contain and suppress the spread of the virus. There have been widespread reports of heavy-handed approaches that have seen the rise of what Jared Rodriguez calls the “…support for pedagogical apparatuses of spectacularised violence, fear mongering and state terror…”, thus “…creating fertile grounds for the cultivation and inclusion of authoritarian politics…”.

China instituted a total lockdown of the country that has been reported to have been accompanied by the erosion of people’s freedoms in the name of fighting the virus. Human Rights Watch has accused China of resorting to “automated tyranny”. Reason Foundation’s Shika Dalmia argues that beneath the veneer of China’s so-called impressive response to combat the virus, the Chinese authorities used a variety of tools to infringe on the privacy of people, including pharmacies to spy and collect data on customers, social platforms AllPay and WeChat to install tracking software on their users, and China Telecom colour-coded phones to screen people. It also paid close to 300,000 volunteers to spy on residents and report to the police, and rewarded neighbours to spy on each other. The police barged into homes to forcibly take away suspected COVID-19 patients.

These tactics mirror heavy surveillance of citizens in Nazi Germany. The reports of China building a hospital in 10 days whilst democracies such as the United States of America, United Kingdom and India dithered on responses inadvertently led to a discussion on which form of governance is better. The net effect has been lethal propaganda that created a fallacy of an efficient system, especially after reports of China building the hospital. Western media and scholars fell for this propaganda charm offensive that projected the Chinese system as efficient and superior while Western democracies were seen as slow and sloppy. For instance, Yale professor, Nicholas Christakis, ran a thread on Twitter praising China’s collectivist culture and authoritarian government as unprecedented and impressive.

Yet, the global media and leading scholars have been silent on how democracies like Taiwan, Iceland, South Korea and Germany have managed to successfully and effectively respond to combating COVID-19. In South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa undertook widespread consultations with a wide variety of key stakeholders, and cobbled a national consensus with the opposition, civil society, churches and business leaders. In addition, the country adopted an open and transparent information management system and tapped into expert scientists for advice. By the 9th 0f April, South Africa was reported to have increased its testing capacity of 5,000/day by six-fold after adding 60 more mobile testing units to the existing 7, combined with 180 testing sites and 320 testing units across the country.

Similarly, according to Don Reisinger, “Germany has had remarkably few Covid-19 deaths, which experts attribute partly to its high number of hospital beds and ICU beds”. Despite having a high numbers of people infected by the coronavirus, Germany has managed to lower its fatality rate, which in March 22 stood at 0.3 per cent. The death rate as of 29 March 2020 was much lower than that of China, Italy and many other countries around the world. Germany is stated to have “8.1 hospital beds per 1,000 people and 6.1 ICU beds per 1 000 people”, something highly remarkable in comparison to “Italy has 3.2 hospital beds per 1 000 and 2.6 ICU beds per 1 000”. It is these positive stories from democracies that have not gained prominence in comparison to the ones from the Benevolent Brutal Dragon’s propaganda.

Africa’s emerging trend of authoritarianism

Images of security forces beating and torturing civilians to enforce COVID-19 lockdowns in Africa have been dominating social media. Trevor Nnabugu of Ventures Africa, an online news site, provides a chronicle of human rights abuses in Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria. In these cases, security forces are accused of using indiscriminate and disproportionate force, including murder, rape, beatings and public humiliation, in a bid to enforce the lockdowns. The rising cases of police brutality in Africa, while not unique to the region, signify the tendency of our security apparatus to revert to the default logic of violence.

In Zambia, the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) took no time to suspend the licence of Prime TV on the 9th of April 2020 on the basis that it was unpatriotic and threatening public safety after the media outlet refused to air the government’s COVID-19 commercials for free. Before that, the government had banned its officials from conducting business with and appearing on Prime TV broadcasts. It also barred Prime TV’s journalists from attending official events. In addition, on 27th March 2020, Top Star Communication Limited Company, a partly state-owned television signal carrier, informed Prime TV that it would stop carrying its broadcast in a bid to blackout the television as punishment for its consistent criticism of the ruling party, the Patriotic Front (PF). In all these acts, the hand of the state is quite visible in attempting to close an independent media that has always been critical of government.

A leading African Women’s Rights Activist, Nancy Kachingwe, quipped on Twitter: “Dear African leaders, a pandemic isn’t a war, it’s a public health crisis made worse by your failures to build strong public health systems you’ve not been attacked, you’ve been found wanting batons & beatings solve nothing…”

The tweet surmises the logic and attitude of African leaders, where every solution is perceived as a nail and that needs a hammer.

Dr David Ndii, in an interview with The Elephant, warned us extensively:

We have to guard, organise and push back against what I see as an opportunistic clawback of civil liberties in the days of disease emergencies, as well as human rights violations. And I have already talked about default police brutality, which is already the default of many of our states with a legacy of repressive regimes. So that is something which I think particularly organised civil society has to be very vigilant because you can see some of these people cynically even using this to suspend civil liberties. They have been trying to do it, even before coronavirus. So now they have this perfect excuse to do what they want.

Nowhere does this warning ring more true than in Africa, and more specifically in Zimbabwe. The beleaguered Harare regime has wasted no time to use the opportunity availed by COVID-19 to usurp legislative authority at the expense of promoting executive authority in a patently unconstitutional manner and to decimate the opposition and civil society.

Zimbabwe, the unrepentant child

On Friday, the 27th of March 2020, President Mnangagwa announced a 21-day national lockdown to be implemented starting from midnight of 30th March 2020. This move came after some dithering by the Harare authorities, which were heavily criticised for failing to prepare for an impending medical disaster.

The announcement of the lockdown was positively received and praised across the political divide, a rare moment in Zimbabwe’s political history. However, the positive vibe and bipartisan consensus, and the possibility of an elite cohesion towards cobbling a national response, was quickly lost. The Ministry of Information Secretary, Nick Mangwana, through his TL @nickmangwana forewarned what was to come: “The total lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19 will start at midnight with the Government passionately calling on citizens to comply with the directive and instructions from security personnel deployed to enforce the law.”

Already the government was psyching itself into a combative mood. The Presidential Spokesperson, George Charamba, through his TL @jamwanda2, threatened the unleashing of the army in the low- income suburbs: “MaFACE angu ekumaGhetto, kindly note that pranks and drinking sprees in streets this evening will come to grief!!!! THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN!!!!!!! Loosely translated: My friends from the low income suburbs, kindly note that pranks and drinking in streets this evening will come to grief!!!! THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN!!!!!!!

Indeed, soldiers were deployed and immediately the cries of agony echoed all over the country, as videos of residents being either beaten or tortured by security forces started to circulate on social media.

In Karoi, Masvondo, a local resident, had to petition the court after some members of the Zimbabwe National Army allegedly barged into her homestead and assaulted everyone within her household under the guise of enforcing a lockdown. In Mutare, police burned agricultural produce headed for the markets, insisting that everyone should observe the stay-at-home instruction. Harare’s popular vegetable market, Mbare Musika had saddening stories of farmers and vegetable vendors, whose produce was getting rotten because of lack of access to the market.

The government had to recant some of its policy directives after there were huge outcries, even from its traditional support bases. The planning and implementation of the lockdown was not well thought-out, hence the disastrous results from the onset. As of 16th April, the Media Institute in Southern Africa-Zimbabwe (MISA-Zim) had recorded several cases of downstream vendors whose rights had been violated under the pretext of enforcing the lockdown.

Most journalists have been facing harassment over accreditation, despite the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) having acknowledged to have failed to approve the registration of journalists for the year 2020. Pursuant to that, the ZMC issued a communique that journalists’ 2019 accreditation had been automatically renewed and could be used for the year 2020. Despite this policy position of the authorities, the security services have been acting on the contrary and continue to harass journalists. Even the pro-government newspaper, the Herald, had to break with tradition and pen an editorial comment on the 13th of April 2020 rebuking and questioning the motives of the police. The Zimbabwean High Court also went further by barring the police’s heavy handedness.

The judiciary in Zimbabwe has also come under heavy criticism during the pandemic after issuing a judgment that has fundamentally reconfigured the opposition in Zimbabwe. Earlier on, the judiciary had issued a notice that it was suspending court processes and would only attend to urgent cases related to the implementation of lockdown measures. Bail hearings were suspended and even new cases were not going to be dealt with until after the end of the lockdown.

Interestingly, Dr. Thokozani Khupe, one of the claimants to the heir of the Movement for Democratic Change, tweeted on the 31st of March that the Supreme Court will deliver judgment on the long standing matter on the legitimate heir to the throne after the death of founding leader Morgan Tsvangirayi on the 14th of February 2018. What followed became an intriguing and choreographed series of events that cast further doubts on the independence of the judiciary.

Dr Alex Magaisa of Kent University in the United Kingdom gives a nuanced analysis of this drama in his Big Saturday Read blog. He summed it as compromised and selective. State security institutions have been heavily compromised and made partisan, and this has been very evident during their operations during COVID-19. Ever since the Supreme Court judgment, dramatic and bizarre events have followed, where the main opposition MDC Alliance has lost its elected representatives (Members of Parliament and Councillors) and party offices to a party that it contested against in the 2018 elections. A significant number of lawyers associated with the MDC Alliance have also been arrested and charged with spurious allegations. Three ladies from the youth assembly who dared to protest were abducted from police custody and sexually abused, and also later arrested for violating lockdown rules despite the government failing to come out clean on the abductors.

Blessed Mhlanga, one of Zimbabwe’s top journalists, through his TL @bbmhlanga on the 16th of April 2020, tweeted the case of Senator Tofa from the leading opposition Movement for Democratic Change Alliance who was barred by the police from donating humanitarian aid to the needy. In the same tweet, Mhlanga further claimed that the police went further to instruct millers not sell Honourable Tofa any mealie-meal. Earlier, on the 8th of April 2020, Honourable Caston Matewu of Marondera Central constituency claimed that the police in Marondera had refused his donation to fight COVID-19 on political grounds. Such stories are not surprising in Zimbabwe, where state security institutions have been compromised by the ruling party.

A close reading of these cases and many others show that the security services are using the logic of force to deal with purely civilian issues. A tweet by @matigary, a pro-government online troll, surmises the thinking in government: “SA military SANDF is kicking ass & bashing heads. I am inviting Dewa Mavhinga & his nywe nywe (talk too much) human rights crowd to test SANDF by defying the lockdown.”

This celebration of spectacularised violence within the security services’ response to public health issues, which are largely civilian, are very worrying and also indicate that Zimbabwe is still an unrepentant child, despite claims of a “New Dispensation” after the fall of Robert Mugabe.

An alert but limited pro-democracy movement

Zimbabwe has had an alert and very lively pro-democracy movement that has managed to successfully call out the government and ruling party whenever they fall out of line. This pro- democracy movement has been composed of the loose alliance of the main opposition, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and democracy and human rights advocacy NGOs.

For instance, during this COVID-19 lockdown, the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) has been at the forefront of providing legal defence to human rights defenders, journalists and ordinary citizens who found themselves at the mercy of authorities. The ZLHR has also funded public interest litigation that has also seen the High Court directing the Ministry of Health to provide professional protective equipment (PPE) to health workers and roll out testing to the public. A significant number of NGOs and business and church leaders have also come to the fore, establishing charity platforms to mobilise humanitarian aid to support the vulnerable and refurbish medical centres and equip them with the necessary resources to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.

A close reading of the responses of the pro-democracy movement in Zimbabwe clearly shows that it is very active and vibrant but always gets checkmated by its limited approach in dissecting national questions. Civil society in Zimbabwe has hardly questioned the role of the state, focusing more on legalism and litigation to discipline the errant state. This has seen the promotion of civil liberties at the expense of material and cultural rights.

It is abundantly clear that from the foregoing observations that the current architecture of the state has put into sharp relief the limitations of the neo-liberal state and markets. The question therefore, that beckons is: How do post-liberation movements deal with the question of material rights and redefine themselves? This is the elephant in the room that the pro-democracy movement in Zimbabwe has to tackle.

The responses to COVID-19 require to be put in a broader structural framework that is historical and not only driven by the moment. As Dr. Balakrishnan cautioned, “But let me tell you as a doctor, these are things you cannot just build up overnight. It takes years and years of investment in people, in systems, in capacity.”

A close examination will reveal that the countries that have managed to effectively respond to the pandemic are those with strong investments in public health. This brings us back to the question of the role of the state.

Civil society in Zimbabwe has hardly questioned the role of the state, focusing more on legalism and litigation to discipline the errant state. This has seen the promotion of civil liberties at the expense of material and cultural rights.

Zimbabwe’s economy has been largely agrarian, natural resource dependant, dominated by the service industry and characterised by high levels of informality and precarity. The labour force survey of 2014 estimated that 94.5 per cent of Zimbabweans earned their living in the informal sector. In 2017, artisanal/small-scale miners accounted for more gold output than large-scale miners. In 2012, the Environmental Management Agency of 2012 estimated their number to be around 500 000, a figure that should have grown by now.

In the 2018-2019 season, tobacco farmers recorded an all-time high yield of 258 million kilogrammes. Estimates put the number of small-scale farmers to between 80,000 and 90,000. Professor Brian Raftopoulos in his 2013 article, “Zimbabwean politics in the post 2013 election”, asserts that the country’s political economy had been reconfigured, giving rise to a new social base and thus calling for new forms of organising. This new social base is characterised by high levels of de-industrialisation and informality. The coming of the COVID-19 pandemic further problematises the role of the state and politics of public goods, especially in highly informalised economies like Zimbabwe. It’s quite clear that the issue of public goods can no longer be reduced to either the magic of the market or benevolent philanthropy and celebrity activism.

Looking ahead

It is patently clear that the COVID-19 response in Zimbabwe has seen an absent state. The state has largely relied on benevolent philanthropy and celebrity activism whilst looting the public purse. The Ministry of Health and NatPharm (the national pharmaceutical company, a public enterprise) have been embroiled in one looting scandal after another. An investigation and expose by two online websites, ZimLive and The Zimbabwe Morning Post, implicate high profile government officials and the president’s children in fleecing the treasury through overpricing of medical supplies under the guise of dealing with COVID-19-related emergencies. These corruption scandals even gained the attention of Interpol, the international police agency, after a two-week-old company got paid US$2million by the Zimbabwe government.

Meanwhile, the opposition has failed to make the government accountable as it is embroiled in internecine fights arising from the Supreme Court judgment of 31st of March 2020. At best, the main opposition has managed to issue a series of press statements without showing any clear direction on how to move forward.

Looking ahead, Zimbabwe’s pro-democracy movement may need to learn from Professor Issa Shivji’s wise words extensively quoted below:

The contemporary neo-liberal discourse has one fundamental blind spot. It treats the present as if the present has had no history. The discourse on democracy in Africa suffers from the same blindness. The struggle for democracy did not begin with the postcold war introduction of multiparty system. The independence and liberation struggles for self‐determination, beginning in the postworld war period, were eminently a struggle for democracy. Neither formal independence nor the victory of armed liberation movements marked the end of democratic struggles. They continued, albeit in different forms…the great democratic struggles of the African people expressed in their independence and national liberation movements remain incomplete. The so-called democracy constructed on ahistorical and asocial paradigms of neoliberalism are an expression of renewed imperial onslaught, which is profoundly anti‐ democratic…

This would mean a return to a political economy for the pro-democracy movement in Zimbabwe, which should begin to articulate the democratic struggle within the lived realities of the cross- border trader, the vegetable and fruit vendor, the small-scale farmer, the artisanal miner, the slum dweller in Hopley, the informal taxi operator, the menial worker and all the subalterns within Zimbabwe’s informalised economy. Doing so means bringing in class analysis and social and economic justice-based solutions to the core of public policy.

The current COVID-19-induced response of the state has shown why the pro-democracy movement should disentangle itself from the fallacious promise of neoliberal democracy and the magic of the market. Only when and until the pro-democracy movement in Zimbabwe realises that democracy needs to shift from just fighting for civil liberties to articulating how public goods and services can be rescued from the profit motive to bring about a better quality of life to humanity can it checkmate the reigning authoritarianism. This is the same way that the liberation movement was able to checkmate the Rhodesian Gulag State, despite its last leader, Ian Smith, proclaiming that “never in a thousand years”, will there ever be black rule.

Professor Shivji’s wisdom is instructive here:

The struggle for democracy is primarily a political struggle on the form of governance, thus involving the reconstitution of the state. No one claims that democracy means and aims at social emancipation. Rather it is located on the terrain of political liberalism so, at best, creating conditions for the emancipatory project. This is important to emphasize in light of the hegemony of neoliberal discourse, which tends to emasculate democracy of its social and historical dimensions and present it as an ultimate nirvana.

The question is: What would state reconstitution look like? Is it a return to socialism, the democratic developmental state or the social democratic state? The answer lies in any path that straddles through any of those types of state or their combination.

However, it is clear from the foregoing that the neoliberal state is not the solution. To respond to the rising authoritarianism, the pro-democracy movements need to return democratic politics to the core of delivering public goods and services and not servicing profits and the market. Doing so may mean designing critical intellectual projects meant to push back nationalist authoritarianism, increasing public ligation on the enforcement of the expanded bill of rights in the 2013 Constitution, building people’s movements anchored in collective action and solidarity around public goods rather than electoralism, and shying away from oligarchic tendencies.

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 Tamuka Charles Chirimambowa

I went to Kariobangi North Sewerage settlement on 4 June, exactly a month after the dawn demolitions took place, and long after the tell-tale signs of the raid had been erased. On 4 May, at the height of a dusk-to-dawn curfew across the country, 8,000 people had been evicted from this settlement. The eviction was widely condemned but the authorities seemed unmoved by the plight of the evictees.

The chaos and commotion had ebbed away and life in Korogocho slum, one of the more than 200 informal settlements in Nairobi, had resumed its rhythmic motion. It was bustling with humanity – coronavirus or no coronavirus. Few people wore face masks; many more did not even bother to social distance. The Korogocho Market, the heartbeat of Korogocho ghetto, was a beehive of activity, with buyers and sellers haggling over prices of every imaginable merchandise.

“Without Korogocho Market there is no Koch [short for Korogocho]”, said Mwaura, my 24-year-old interlocutor, a Kenyatta University Bachelor of Education student who grew up in Grogan, one of the nine villages that make up Korogocho, but who now resides at Korogocho B. “Grogan, where my parents live, is now my gichagi [my rural home],” he explained.

People like Mwaura, whose parents came to the city in a wave of rural-urban migration (pushed by the colonial forces of the tumultuous 1950s) have always remained squatters after having been uprooted from their ancestral homes.

“The market breathes life into Korogocho area. “You can practically find anything you want at the market. It attracts customers from far and wide,” said Mwaura. The market has been embedded into the Korogocho peoples’ lives: Korogocho slum was the market and the market was Korogocho. “The market defines the Korogocho people – the best and the worst of the Korogocho people are found here – the market is a melting crucible of Korogocho’s hopes and aspirations.”

On the morning of 4 May, at about 5.30 a.m., David Maina Ngugi, an early riser, was having his cup of morning tea when his mobile phone rang. It was from his friend, who told him to quickly get out of the house because the bulldozers had moved in. When he came out, after hastily waking up his wife, the rumbling excavators had started their work in their conventional style of flattening everything on site.

Accompanying the bulldozers were an assortment of armed-to-the teeth regular police, Administration Police and the General Service Unit (GSU), a paramilitary outfit infamous for its brutal incursions. “I think in total they were about 350 policemen,” said the 72-year-old Ngugi. “They’d come to ensure the four bulldozers executed their work with minimal interruption.”

The people waking up from their slumber watched the morning raid in utter disbelief. Uncharacteristically, they did not put up a fight, perhaps because they were too shocked by the surprise morning attack. Instead, they watched as their houses were being crushed to the ground. “Very few people salvaged their properties The dawn raid caught many people half-asleep and by the time they were waking up to the day’s realities, local hoodlums had also moved in to help themselves to anything that they could lay their hands on,” said Ngugi.

Mzee Ngugi, who owned four iron-sheet shacks, said he barely saved much from the rubble: “My iron sheets, steel doors and metal windows were stolen by thugs. I couldn’t restrain them; I was all alone and they were like a pack of wolves, so I just stood aside and watched.”

Accompanying the bulldozers were an assortment of armed-to-the teeth regular police, Administration Police and the General Service Unit (GSU), a paramilitary outfit infamous for its brutal incursions. “I think in total they were about 350 policemen,” said the 72- year-old Ngugi. “They’d come to ensure the four bulldozers executed their work with minimal interruption.”

Despite his age, Ngugi’s body is still strong. “I’m used to walking a lot. I’d walk from here to Allsopps,” he said. Allsopps area is at the junction between Outer Ring Road and Thika super highway. The distance between Kariobangi North and Allsopps is about seven kilometres. The latter is called Allsopps because East African Breweries Limited (EABL) used to have a plant at the corner of where these two roads meet, separate from the main beer plant in the Ruaraka area that manufactured Allsopps beer. The name stuck even after the EABL closed the plant many years ago.

“In the morning I’d do push-ups and physical fitness, but these demolitions have crushed my spirit,” said Ngugi. “At 72 years, I’ve been made to start all over again, but where do I even start from now?” The old man said he had sunk his meagre savings and pension into buying four plots in the area through the Kariobangi Sewerage Farmers Self-help Group. “I’d hoped my sunset years would be spent here because I did not have any other place I called home.”

When I met Ngugi, he had just acquired a 10 by 10 rental room in Korogocho B, next to the wall of Daniel Comboni Primary School. He told me that after the eviction, he sent his wife to a family friend’s home in Grogan village. “The demolition separated families. I’ve not seen my wife for three weeks, even though we speak on phone. I couldn’t immediately get someone who would house the two of us together.”

The self-help group

The Kariobangi Sewerage Farmers Self-Help Group was formed in the mid-1990s and given the name farmers because the first people who started frequenting the sewerage plant were women who would farm bananas, sugar cane, yams and other root tubers right next to the sewerage.

“The City Council of Nairobi, which owned the plant, allowed us women to farm on a section of the sewerage area in the evenings, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m,” said Mary Wambui Kamau. “The women were the first people to be allocated plots at the sewerage by the City Council officials who worked at the site because they had already developed a rapport with the officials.” Wambui said she first started farming in the area in 1996.

The 75-year-old lady said that to be old and poor in Nairobi was like being cursed and forgotten. A former employee of the defunct City Council of Nairobi, she had acquired two plots at the sewerage site and built her semi-permanent houses with her pension. “I bought my two plots for Sh600 each, quite an amount for people like me then, because I used to earn Sh320 per month and paid Sh90 as house rent. With her seven children (three later died) and a husband who did not have a permanent job and was landless, she believed that buying the sewerage plot was the wisest decision she had ever made.

Wambui grew up in Ndondori in what is today Nakuru County. “I was a little girl during the state of emergency period of the 1950s. [The British colonial government instituted the emergency between 1952 and1959] and my father was a squatter. Forced to flee from Ndondori, he found himself in Lari [today in Kiambu County]. In short, my father struggled throughout his life and never owned land.”

Wambui married early, at the age of 20. With her husband, she moved to Nairobi to eke out a living and start a family. “Rift Valley had been always a volatile region and so my hubby said we try our luck in the city where we didn’t always have to look behind our back.” Her husband died in 2004.

When the women corps who farmed the sewerage land grew and became big, the sewerage officials asked them to form a group, explained Wambui. This way it would be easier to engage in, mobilise for and push their agenda. To give weight to their agenda, they decided to buy plots of land within the sewerage area. They approached Adolf Muchiri, then the MP for Kasarani. Until 2012, the Kariobangi sewerage area was in Kasarani constituency; today, it is in Embakasi North, but government and social services are still run from the Kasarani DC’s offices.

“Muchiri backed our idea and we would have our meetings at the sewerage site. Later we moved those meetings elsewhere,” said Wambui. “Even as Muchiru backed our idea and said he would lend us political support, we continued to engage the sewerage officials, since, anyway, they were our gateway to owing a piece of the earth of the city council land.”

By the time the Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company (NAWASCO) came to run the sewerage site in 2004, Kariobangi Sewerage Farmers Self-help Group was already in existence and allocated land adjacent to the Kariobangi light industries.

“The self-help group already had 370 members by the time the Nairobi County provided a surveyor to demarcate the land about two years ago,” said Ngugi. The 370-member group was settled on 11 acres of the 25-acre sewerage land. Of these 370 members, “Kikuyus formed the largest chunk of the group. They possibly constituted about 70 per cent of the members, followed by Somalis, then Kambas, then a small group of Luos,” said Ngugi. The mzee said the plots were divided into 24 by 50 sizes and claimed that all this work was done by the Nairobi County government.

“When I got my two plots, I gave them to my sons,” said Wambui. In 2010, one of her sons, who worked at the nearby Kariobangi light industries, started living at the sewerage area with his family of four. Wambui then moved to Kariobangi A village, where I found her and some of her grandchildren. She told me that her son and grandchildren had moved in with her after being evicted. “Since coming here, we’ve been attacked two times by robbers who saw him bring along some of his items that he had salvaged,” she said.

Wambui claims that the self-help group had been issued with a group title by the Nairobi County and the county was even in the process of issuing individual titles. But there were some hitches: The self- help group has been in a tug of war with the Jua Kali Light Industries group over the allotment of plots at the sewerage site, a case that is in court. “It is true we’ve been having a long- running court case with the Jua Kali group,” said Wambui, “but we have the documents and they don’t have them and that is the difference.”

Wambui claims that the self-help group had been issued with a group title by the Nairobi County and the county was even in the process of issuing individual titles.

The sudden turn of events has broken her resolve to have a better life in her sunset years. “At 75, what else do I expect in life? I thought I’d live out the remaining years of my life in peace, but now I’ve been thrown into turmoil. I voted for Uhuru Kenyatta twice, in a very difficult area, where we are surrounded by hostile opposition. Yet at my age I woke up at 2 a.m. to queue for him and this is what I get in return? Is it that Uhuru is not aware of our plight, or now that we’re done with voting, he’s through with us?”

Missing papers

But 70-year-old Nyina wa John (John’s mother), a veteran of the sewerage plots’ acquisition and chairlady of the self-help group, has a slightly different story to tell. “What some of the afflicted families have narrated to you is correct. But as far as I’m concerned, the only incorrect information they did not tell you is that all that documentation and paperwork they are talking about had never been legalised. If it had, I would have been the first one to know and even be in possession of the rightful said documents of the land. As it is, I’m not aware of any [bona fide and legal] title deed issued to Kariobangi Self-Help Farmers Group. I’m aware that the group was even paying land rates to City Hall. That’s okay. You can pay rates. Paying rates doesn’t translate to owning the land.”

The chairlady’s assertions were corroborated by Daniel Kirugo. Kirugo is the senior chief of Muthua village in Uthiru location. I first met him in 2006 at the Kariobangi sewerage area. He was the second chief to have been posted to the area. “I know the history of the sewerage [land] very well. It is unfortunate what happened to the people, but the crux of the matter is, the self-help group’s papers are not legal. I’d know because I’ve kept in touch with some of the people who live there, the self-group’s wrangles with Jua Kali Light Industries group notwithstanding.”

The dispute between the Kariobangi Sewerage Farmers Self-Help and the Jua Kali Light Industries group led by Rashid Kaberere and one Kinyua introduced the dreaded Mungiki in the acquisition of the sewerage land. They both hired the young men to defend and fight off each other. For their work, the proscribed Mungiki group was rewarded with several plots at the sewerage site, which were dished out to them by both parties. “Many of these Mungiki youth later sold their plots to Somalis,” said Kirugo. “Somali buyers were also involved because they had the money to finance the case in court. Another reason why the Somalis came to own the sewerage land is because they would pay double or even thrice the going market price of the plots.” That is how Isaak Aden became the chairman of the self-help group.

Hence, the majority of the Kikuyus at the site had ceased being landlords; they became tenants. How and why? “Because they sold their pieces of land to Somalis who paid a premium [for the plots],” said mzee Ngugi. “Money is good and anybody who gives you the kind of money you’ve been wishing to have becomes first priority and that’s how Somalis came to be landlords here.”

The Somalis put up semi-permanent houses, which they rented to some of the very Kikuyus who had sold them the plots of land. “The upcoming stone houses were built by Somalis because they were the presumed landowners and because they could afford to put up better structures,” added Ngugi.

“I had three plots at the sewerage,” said a man who asked me not to reveal his identity, “and it is my considered opinion the self-help group didn’t have proper documentation. All the papers they claim to have and refer to were issued by the City Council of Nairobi pre-1998, during the reign of Zipporah Wandera, the then town clerk. The subsequent mayors were never involved in the sewerage matters. For such a matter to acquire the seal of authenticity, it should involve the top echelons of the city authorities. As it is, it seems the matter was only discussed by sewerage officials and some partisan people at the City Hall.

“Orders from above”

Whether the self-help group’s papers had been legalised or not notwithstanding, Ngugi told me the self-help group’s leadership had even engaged Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company (NAWASCO) officials. “They were mum, claiming the demolition orders came from above. Next we visited the District Officer’s office in Kasarani, where the stock-in-trade answer was the same: ‘Orders from above’”.

Pleading for strict anonymity, because he is not authorised to speak to journalists, a top NAWASCO official said that the people had to be booted out ostensibly because the government had been given a Sh3 billion grant by the World Bank to expand and refurbish the sewer and water system of Nairobi county. All the Nairobi wastage used to drain at the Kariobangi sewerage site until Ruai sewerage was built to complement the Kariobangi one. The Kariobangi sewerage has six gargantuan septic tanks, but with the growing city population occasioned by all the real estate developments that have taken place in the last 40 years, the septic tanks became overwhelmed.

I wound up my visit to Korogocho by visiting Mary Njoroge, a vendor at Korogocho Market. Her stall overlooks the eastern flank of the Kariobangi sewerage. No sooner had the dwellers been ferreted out than a stone wall was erected all around the sewerage land. On that eastern flank, the wall was as high as 12 feet, raised by the heavier nine by nine stone. “My house used to be inside the wall. It’s amazing how life can take a turn for the worse, so suddenly,” she said

Njoroge, who is in her early 50s, had lived in the sewerage area for 10 years. Her last child was born there. Taking time to talk to me, away from her customers, Njoroge said life that life was cruel and full of contradictions: “Can you believe I was one of Uhuru’s major campaigners in this area? Kariobangi sewerage was a Jubilee zone and we fought tooth and nail to protect his votes. Look now where some of us are languishing – in the cold, with zero prospects.”

Protecting Jubilee votes meant walking the length and breadth of Korogocho and exhorting all the Kikuyus to not sleep on the day of voting, first on August 8, and then on October 26, 2017. “We’d have expected that the government would defend us and not expose us to the vagaries of the weather and coronavirus.”

During the week that their structures were demolished, heavy rain pounded Nairobi County. Many former Kariobangi North Sewerage dwellers, including small children, slept out in the cold.

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.

COVID-19 and the Future of Democracy in Zimbabwe

By Tamuka Charles Chirimambowa This Tuesday the 7th of July 2020 marks the 30th anniversary of the infamous and bloody Saba Saba Day (seventh day of the seventh month) upheavals that are still etched in the memory of the many Kenyans old enough to vividly recall those heady days of the struggle for the second liberation. It was a day of infamy, as President Daniel arap Moi, now deceased, unleashed his security apparatus on hapless, innocent Kenyans, killing and maiming many of them for daring to call for a return to multipartyism.

Three days prior, on 4 July 4 1990, Kenneth Matiba and Charles Rubia, former Kanu government cabinet ministers who had fallen out with Moi (both now deceased), and Raila Odinga—who had just returned from self-exile in Oslo, Norway—had been arrested on the orders of President Moi. The 4th of July is America’s Independence Day. Kenyan political analysts have always wondered whether it was mere coincidence or a conspiracy between Moi and the American government to have the trio arrested on the very day America would be celebrating its much vaunted independence day. Did the American government have something to do with their arrests? “Why would the Americans, who were friends of the three, allow Moi to detain them on their big day”, Augustine Njeru Kathangu, one of the architects of Saba Saba, has always wondered.

The Saba Saba demonstrations heralded the beginning of week-long urban riots that came to symbolise the determination of Kenyans to maintain their demands for an increased democratic and political space that had been throttled by a dictatorial Moi and a despotic Kanu party. The mounting pressure brought to bear on Moi was such that he was forced to quickly constitute a Kanu Review Committee (referred to as the Committee), which immediately started its work on 25 July 25 1990.

The formation of the Committee by the beleaguered President was, ostensibly, to seek Kenyans’ views on the current state of the country’s politics. But the truth of the matter was that Moi was trying to buy time as he figured out how he was going to acquiesce to plural politics without losing face. Chaired by the then Vice President George Saitoti, the Committee was peppered with Kanu loyalists such as Nicholas Biwott, Peter Oloo Aringo, Shariff Nasir, Elijah Mwangale and Mwai Kibaki, among others.

The Committee visited nine towns during the month of August: Eldoret, Embu, Garissa, Nairobi, Kakamega, Kisumu, Mombasa, Nakuru and Nyeri. It visited Nairobi twice; on July 25 and on 23 and 24 August1990. Among the more bizarre recommendations that the Committee made was “that Kenya should continue in its tradition of one-party democracy. That all leaders in every sphere of life particularly religious leaders, politicians, lawyers, journalists and other professionals, should cease their confrontational stance and adopt a positive attitude towards issues in order to build a more peaceful and prosperous Kenya”.

With these sorts of recommendations, a contemptuous Moi and dyed-in-the-wool Kanu party mandarins, it was obvious that Kenyans’ agitation for a return to multiparty politics was destined to continue to be bloody and confrontational.

“Moi’s Kanu dictatorship was not ready for changes, but the people had smelt an opportunity and they were willing to push ahead with political reforms”, said Kathangu. A former army man and a devout Catholic who never misses the morning mass wherever it might find him, Kathangu had been planning for the Saba Saba day for two months together with four other people,

“We started planning for the Saba Saba from May”, recalled Kathangu. “I had an office at Musa House on the third floor, on Landhies Road, where we would meet and plan how we were to mobilise for the big day”. Kathangu’s four other compatriots were: Edward Oyugi, a former Kenyatta University don and detainee; Ngotho Kariuki, a tax consultant, university don and ex-detainee; George Anyona, the political firebrand, former MP and ex-detainee; and Kariuki Kathitu, a university don.

Of the five, Kathitu is the least known of those who were associated not only with the planning of that first Saba Saba, but also, more generally, with the second liberation of the 1990s. “Raila joined us much later. Raila is my friend, but I’ve always referred to him as a witness to the Saba Saba movement. He was much more involved with the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy movement formed in 1991, than Saba Saba, which his father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and others such as James Orengo, Martin Shikuku and Salim Bamahriz, helped form”.

“Matiba joined us later after he had read the public mood correctly, but also after falling out with Moi publicly”, said Kathangu. “Matiba had had an interesting special relationship with Moi. They had been great friends. When Matiba was the Permanent Secretary for Education, he used to coach Vice President Moi in the evenings, on the proper usage of the English language, mostly on the spoken English. So they knew each other well. Moi had been Matiba’s good student. But when Moi became the president in 1978, his man in Murang’a was Julius Kiano. Matiba’s entry into politics and his routing out of Moi’s man in Mbiri constituency was always going to create a problem between the two.”

Kathangu told me that it was Matiba who recruited Rubia. “Rubia was initially not in the movement for change, but his friend who was an area mate—they both came from the larger Murang’a—invited him along and that’s how Rubia, who had also been facing political frustrations from Moi, joined the opposition. Matiba came looking for us after he was disgraced by Moi. Matiba was a man who once he made up his mind, it was difficult to persuade him otherwise”.

Matiba’s falling out with Moi was triggered by Moi’s open rigging of the Mlolongo (queue voting) elections in 1988 in his Kiharu (former Mbiri) constituency. “Matiba’s queue was the longest for all to see, yet Moi decided it was the shortest so that he could prop up his friend Kiano who Matiba had beaten hands down. Matiba hit the roof, he had captured his entire election process on the video. It was clearly evident Moi was rigging Matiba openly. And that was the beginning of the political problems between Moi and Matiba.”

Boisterous and oftentimes overconfident, Matiba went ahead together with Rubia to declare the return of multiparty politics in Kenya without the agreement of Kathangu and his friends. “He had jumped the gun, that’s not how we had planned to do it, but hey, since Matiba had already let the cat out of the bag, we went along, we didn’t deny them, neither did we deny that that is what we all along been planning to do”, observed Kathangu. “It was one of the first of the mistakes that Matiba would make as we fought for the second liberation”.

Although taken aback by Matiba’s pronouncements, Kathangu and his friends still went ahead to mobilise for Saba Saba day. “Our intentions were to mobilise people to congregate on the sacred grounds of Kamukunji. We’d coordinated and mobilised people from different parts of the country to travel to Kamukunji. People were to come from Githurai, Limuru, Kisumu, Mombasa, Murang’a, Nakuru and the other major towns in the country.”

To start off the day, and as a curtain raiser, the organisers planned football matches at the Kamukunji Grounds in the morning. “The matches were to be supervised by Kathitu and they were to help attract and assemble people at the grounds. At around 1p.m. Anyona and I drove into the grounds to see for ourselves what was going on. When the people saw us—they had been waiting on the wings around Gikomba Market, in Majengo and Shauri Moyo estates—they started moving into the grounds.” The organisers had hired buses to ferry people from upcountry and those buses had arrived in the morning.

“A police officer who later I came to learn was called Cheruiyot—I can’t remember his first name—and who had also camped at Kamukunji Grounds, apparently spotted us entering the ground”, reminisced Kathangu. “Once he saw us and once the people saw us enter the grounds and followed us, Cheruiyot called for extra support and soon combat police came. They beat people mercilessly with their batons and killed many youths with their live bullets”. As the police beat people in Kamukunji Grounds, word got around in parts of the country that mayhem had broken out in Nairobi and consequently, there were riots in Githurai, Limuru, Kisumu and Mombasa”. Kathangu observed that Moi ordered the arrest of more than 3,000 youths for the simple reason that they had supported the political changes being called for by opposition leaders.

Senior Counsel Paul Muite recalls the events of the day vividly: “My friend, the American ambassador to Malawi George Trail, had come to see me in my office at Electricity House in the city centre. He was from the US on his way to Malawi. Trail had been the No. 2 at the US embassy in Nairobi and we had become friends. Mohamed Ibrahim, a lawyer and today a judge of the High Court of Kenya had also passed by to see me on a legal matter. I’d planned after finishing with the two, I head to Karen Country Club to play golf. So I asked them we leave early to beat the lunch hour traffic jam”. He was going play golf with F.T. Nyamu, a Nyeri tycoon who later became the MP for Tetu constituency.

“It is at the club that my wife called me to tell me Matiba and Rubia had been carted away by the police”, said Muite. “In those days if police took you away, you knew you were headed for detention. After I parted with Ibrahim, the police, who had seen me leave my office with him [Moi had always stationed police to watch Muite’s sixth-floor office at the lifts area and on the ground floor], followed him and asked him to tell them where I had gone. Ibrahim didn’t know I’d gone to play golf. When Ibrahim told them he didn’t know my whereabouts, they didn’t believe him”. The police had detention orders with them and as they were talking to Ibrahim, they placed the detention order book on the table and he saw that the first detention sheet was signed and had Paul Muite’s name. The other order was not signed and didn’t have any name. “What the police did was fill the order with Ibrahim’s name and that’s how Ibrahim was detained on the spot by the police”.

Moi also ordered the arrest of Gitobu Imanyara and John Khaminwa, who together with Ibrahim became the most prominent lawyers to be detained Moi during the crackdown on the Saba Saba movement. Gibson Kamau Kuria, who had been detained in 1986, went to hide at the American embassy which then was under Smith Hempstone’s watch. Muite, who had all along ben staying at his house in Karen, escaped the crackdown, all because the police didn’t think he was “hiding” in his own house. “Hempstone piled pressure on Moi to release the lawyers, Imanyara, Khaminwa and Ibrahim and Muite, but Moi was in a dilemma, his government didn’t know where Muite was, so how was he going to also release him?”, said Muite.

It is then that Moi pleaded with Muite to come out of hiding and meet him at State House with an apology for inciting the Saba Saba day riots. “Moi blamed me for the riots and had asked me to write him an apology letter. I didn’t but I still went to meet him”.

The Saba Saba movement gave momentum to the first multiparty political rally held at the hallowed Kamukunji Grounds on 16 November 1991by the opposition leaders of the fledgling and nascent Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD), So determined were FORD leaders that they told Moi they were going to hold the meeting “with or without a licence”. Aware of the mounting pressure, internally and externally, Moi grudgingly allowed the meeting to go ahead.

Kenyans were itching for a second liberation, to free themselves from the political stranglehold that had culminated in the sham 1988 mlolongo elections. Buoyed by the winds of change sweeping through eastern Europe—the advent of glasnost (openness and transparency) and perestroika (restructuring), the disintegration of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989—Kenyans seized the moment to challenge Moi and his brutal Kanu party, the supposedly baba na mama (father and mother) of all Kenyans as Kanu party stalwarts liked to put it

On the third anniversary of Saba Saba in July 1993, pro-democracy and reformist clergyman Timothy Njoya observed at the All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi that, “If we can have Moi Day as a national day to thank Moi for the contributions he made to himself, we can also have Saba Saba declared a national day to mark the contribution the martyrs of multiparty movement made to the Kenyan civilisation”. Twenty-seven years after Njoya made that remark, is it time to again reconsider his proposition?

How has Kenya faired 30 years after Moi sent the paramilitary General Service Unit (GSU) to brutally quell a people’s desire to congregate at the Kamukunji Grounds in the sprawling Eastlands area, home to the Fanonian wretched of the earth?

Going down memory lane to recapture those heady days, I spoke to Gacheke Gachihi, a founder- member of Bunge la Mwananchi (the people’s parliament), founder of the Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC) and above all, a long-time member of that urban underclass of Huruma which bore the brunt of state brutality. Gacheke is a child of the Saba Saba protests and the reformist political forces that came to define the upheavals of that time. Originally from Molo, he came to the city as a child and was swept up in the political agitation that was taking place in the urban slums.

“Although I was only 12, I was very much aware of what was happening politically”, said Gacheke. “I knew there was something wrong with the country’s politics, because I’d just come from an area that had suffered political violence and was palpable with political fears, tensions and great suspicions”. Now 42, Gacheke observes that his home area of Molo was a theatre of ethnic violence from where many people were internally displaced. “There was a lot of genocidal talk then”.

I asked Gacheke, whether the country had learned anything from the Saba Saba day and what those like him—activists who were initiated into politics by the tumultuous 1990s and the runs-ins with the state’s organs of violence—thought of the anniversary. “The anniversary comes at a time when the country is polarised by the politics of succession of 2022. If Saba Saba was agitating for increased political space in 1990, in 2020 Saba Saba should be reminding us Kenyans of the necessity to vigilantly protect the freedoms that have been gained over the years, fought through blood and great sacrifice”.

Gacheke said that in the 1990s, the youths fought hard to be heard, to exist and to hopefully break the barriers of ethnic consciousness and balkanisation. Now it looks like we’re slipping back into those bad, black days of Moi and Moism. “The youth of this country has never been able to act together, to forge a united front and capture political power and help change the trajectory of politics”. The youth caught in the vicious web of disillusionment and dispossession, nevertheless continue to be easy prey for politicians whose only agenda is to perpetuate their hold on power. It is a paradox of politics that today’s champions of political agitation were yesterday’s champions of political of status quo.

Independent researcher and political analyst Jeremiah Owiti was a political science University of Nairobi (UoN) student in 1990. “Politics then were hot and exciting. Kenyans looked forward to political changes that would meaningfully impact their lives. The people were hopeful and optimistic. Not anymore.”, said Owiti. The two biggest political protagonists today—President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta and William Ruto who now threaten to tear the country apart—were apolitical when the first Saba Saba protests took place. Uhuru was barely 30 and Ruto barely 24 years old.

Owiti said Uhuru’s friends cut across the ethnic divide, he is a nominal catholic, while Ruto is a fervent revivalist born-again evangelical Christian. “Today, Uhuru, surrounded by Kikuyu sub- nationalists, has become a master [at] evoking tribal emotions and openly calling the Kikuyus to first mobilise on ethnic bases. Similarly, Ruto has become a master of rhetoric and subterfuge, rallying the Kalenjin people to see themselves first as Kalenjin and secondly as Kenyans”.

The behaviour of the two, who were never part of the political reform movement, completely negates the cardinal lessons of Saba Saba, said the analyst. “The very essence of the Saba Saba movement was to fight for political pluralism, not political sub-nationalism as now being espoused by Uhuru and his political-friend-now-turned-nemesis. Their retrogressive brand of politics—whichever way you look at it—is a tragic throw-back to the days of Moi-ism and Kanu-ism. The crux of the matter is that both were tutored by Moi and therefore, they do not know what it is to be a political reformer and what apolitical reforms are all about”.

The analyst said Ruto deems himself a latter-day reformer, anchoring and extolling his reform credentials on the doing, rather than on the talking: “I am a reformer because I act, I don’t talk”, Ruto likes to remind anybody who cares to listen.

Owiti said Saba Saba epitomises the struggle by Kenyans to free themselves from the shackles of the politics of balkanisation, ethnic sub-nationalism and the monolithic politics of us vs them. “Unfortunately even with the promulgation of the new constitution, which was supposed to usher in a new political dispensation, the politics that is being played by both Uhuru and Ruto, champions of ethnic jingoism, does not augur well for the epochal succession politics of 2022”.

The researcher said that, by seeking to congregate at the historical Kamukunji Grounds in 1990, the Kenyan people were saying that the constitution was the supreme law of the land and if it did not allow them to assemble, it needed to be overhauled.

The 30th Saba Saba anniversary comes at a time of great political apprehension, with the country in the throes of an economic meltdown and in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic, and the elections that will determine who will be the country’s next president just two years away. The succession politics have already split the ruling Jubilee party into two diametrically opposed camps and made President Uhuru Kenyatta one of the most unpopular presidents Kenya has ever had.

“All the changes we fought for have been reversed”, observed Kathangu. “We’d hoped for an empowered society—economically, politically and socially. We’d also hoped to have a sustainable education system that did not constantly change after every five years. We too had hoped that the land question would be fundamentally addressed. Land is still a big problem in this country and unless and until we solve it, Kenyans will not rest easy”.

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.

COVID-19 and the Future of Democracy in Zimbabwe

By Tamuka Charles Chirimambowa Hands stretch out into the air, flashing the two-finger V-salute as the Toyota pick-up truck, with loudspeakers mounted on its roof, careens over the kerb and back onto the rutted road.

That iconic image of Martin Shikuku, James Orengo, Philip Gachoka and Rumba Kinuthia is etched in the minds of some 20 million Kenyans who were alive on the fateful day that marked the struggle for political pluralism in the country. The November 16, 1991 picture is a re-enactment of what should have happened on July 7, 1990 – the day known by its Kiswahili translation, Saba Saba, in reference to the seventh day of the seventh month.

The men perched atop the car had just changed vehicles after police shot at their truck’s tyre in an attempt to stop them from entering the barricaded Kamukunji grounds on the rim of Nairobi River, which was darkened by sewage and grease, and whose smells fused with clouds of tear gas in the air. It had been 16 months since the first attempt to hold a rally at Kamukunji failed.

On the gray cold morning of Saturday, July 7, 1990, reaching Kamukunji had acquired an urgency symbolising a break in the dam of political repression.

An attempted coup d’état by junior air force officers eight years earlier had floundered and given Daniel arap Moi, only four years into his presidency, the excuse to turn the screws on all opposition.

Dissent had been brewing in Kenya since Moi began consolidating political power by changing the constitution to ban multiparty politics and detaining critics (some of whom fled into exile. But the failed putsch emboldened Moi to take away judges’ security of tenure, and to blatantly rig the 1988 elections, which filled Parliament with his lackeys.

The lone government-owned radio and television service ruled the airwaves, alongside “free” newspapers that would not go to press until State House supplied its front-page photograph of Moi, and whose editors regularly fielded calls from the president. In those days, Kenyans relied on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)’s Kiswahili Service to learn what was going on in their own country.

Five months prior to the planned Saba Saba meeting, Moi’s foreign minister, Robert Ouko, had been brutally killed. Ouko’s dismembered body was dumped on a hill in his rural constituency. It was widely believed that his murder had been planned by people close to Moi.

Kenya was suffocating under the armpits of Moi’s single-party regime. He held the bureaucracy and the security apparatus in a firm grip; Parliament sang his song; and the judiciary was cowed into sniveling subservience. He had declared debate on multiparty politics stirred by clerics closed even before it began.

Open defiance seemed like the only channel for starting a national conversation.

As its opening gambit, the Moi government declared the Kamukunji meeting illegal, and arrested Kenneth Matiba, Charles Rubia and Raila Odinga, three of the senior politicians who were organising it, before subsequently detaining them without trial.

Other countries confronted with dictatorship in Africa had often gone the way of the muzzle with military coups d’etat; Kenyans put themselves on the line at the risk of permanently separating body from soul. The men on the pick-up truck were the second-tier leaders, and there was another tier below them, and yet another across the length and breadth of the country.

A movement – dubbed “The Second Liberation” – began to form in spite of restrictive laws on assembly and association, grouping people together in organising cells.

Saba Saba had been prefaced by the mysterious appearance of leaflets secretly printed and dropped around the country, inviting people to the meeting. Relying on a network of football clubs and private sector transport workers (matatu touts) travelling across the nation, people were put on buses to Nairobi for the day of confrontation. It put a match to the tinder that had piled across the country and exploded into four days of confrontations between the police and the public. The wall of fear had cracked.

When national newspapers and the international media chalked up the tally, there were 39 dead, 69 injured, and over 5,000 arrested – with over 1,000 charged with looting and rioting.

Saba Saba was the first serious organised challenge to repression through defiance. It was meant to be the first of eight public rallies – one in each province – to rally the public for plural politics and open government. Frantic attempts would subsequently be made to negotiate down demands for freedom by offering internal reforms in the ruling political party monopoly, KANU, but they were insufficient to stem the tide of change.

When national newspapers and the international media chalked up the tally, there were 39 dead, 69 injured, and over 5,000 arrested – with over 1,000 charged with looting and rioting.

Sixteen months after Saba Saba, Moi grudgingly capitulated and agreed to term limits and to repealing constitutional bans on multiparty political organising, only to use this as an instrument for fanning ethnic animosity. Within months of the return of political pluralism, some 19 new political parties had been registered by dint of the efforts of state operatives, who also engineered a split inside the opposition Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD) party.

A miscarriage of democracy

Moi retained power for two terms despite securing only a minority of the votes in the 1992 and 1997 elections. The spirit of Saba Saba revisited the country in a series of protests on July 7; then August 8; September 9 and October 10, 1997 in attempts to demand free and fair elections.

Moi split the movement by offering compromises to share slots in the electoral management agency with the opposition and repeal laws constraining public assembly. Once again, it seemed that the Saba Saba campaigners had only achieved a Pyrrhic victory.

The euphoric victory of the joint opposition candidate, Mwai Kibaki, in the 2002 election when Moi was retiring imbued the nation with a new sense of optimism and the possibility of citizens reclaiming their power. But this optimism was quickly dashed by regression to some of the old wily ways, including mega corruption scandals.

It took the violent and bloody protests in the aftermath of the 2007 election – a citizens’ revolt against loss of confidence in the judiciary and the electoral body – to produce a new constitution in 2010. The post-2007 election violence recorded over 1,300 deaths, over 5,000 injuries and rapes, as well as massive displacement – which invited the attention of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The digitised movement

Many of the people who were at the forefront of the Saba Saba protests have died or have been accommodated in the rapacious state. As the state grows more dangerous in deploying deadly force in a throwback to the dictatorship of yore, the public appears friendless and with few defenders.

Still, the spirit of citizen power that fuelled Saba Saba still roams the land like a vagabond. The pain, angst and trauma of decades of protest have blunted the desire for public-spirited action, only interrupted intermittently by fresh outrages.

The Kenyan state remains colonial in its true nature, ceding nothing even when it offers backhanded half measures to stall demands for citizen power. Cycles of reform have delivered piecemeal change in slow, grudging steps that are often also characterised by blowback. Changes to the executive to share its power with county governments continue to be undermined; Parliament appears to have lost power and public trust; and the judiciary is fighting daily for its independence.

Plural politics and expanded public voice have not resolved many of the problems that make life in Kenya a seesaw between hope and despair. Police routinely break up peaceful assemblies and turn them into riots, complete with clouds of tear gas, truncheons raining down on bodies and bullets cutting through crowds.

Yet, some things have changed. Citizens may still not control the organs of the state –and there is great frustration with the government from which they are alienated – but they continue to claim their power through an intersection of greater awareness, increased voice and technology.

The Kenyan state remains colonial in its true nature, ceding nothing even when it offers backhanded half measures to stall demands for citizen power. Cycles of reform have delivered piecemeal change in slow, grudging steps that are often also characterised by blowback. Sometimes, these strides can appear insufficient, but citizens have overcome their fear of dictatorship, and continue to evolve new tactics to make their voices heard even in the potentially repressive context.

Between that seismic Saba Saba event and the passage of a new constitution in August 2010, some 17.1 million Kenyan children were born and continue to walk the earth. The children of Saba Saba, progenies of the legacy of struggle, have come of age but they have not always been shielded from the scars of the history that birthed their freedom. They are better educated, more expressive and greatly aided by technology, but they continue to wallow in want, are beset by unemployment and are confronted daily by police brutality.

With 45 million Internet subscriptions, Kenyans are the continent’s second largest social media users, after South Africa. Young Kenyans are most active on WhatsApp and Facebook, but it is the fabled Kenyans on Twitter (#KOT) who routinely take down the country’s critics and wage war on perceived moral or ethical wrongs within and across borders.

In April 2020, Deputy President William Ruto blocked US-based Kenyan law scholar Makau Mutua on Twitter over the latter’s criticism of him. Last year, President Uhuru Kenyatta suspended his social media accounts – only a year after deactivating multiple accounts when he came up for air from a deluge of criticism that threatened to engulf him online.

Freedom is never given; it is won. The lesson of Saba Saba needs to be preserved through the generations because it reproduces the courage of the independence struggle in which ordinary people stand up to those who bully them.

It remains to be seen whether mobile phones and computer keyboards will be sufficient to hold the dam.

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.

COVID-19 and the Future of Democracy in Zimbabwe

By Tamuka Charles Chirimambowa

Chaos has never stopped Kenyans from building the country they want, and if there was ever a moment that summarised this spirit, it is Saba Saba – the date of a meeting that never took place.

It has been 30 years since opposition leaders Kenneth Matiba and Charles Rubia announced that they would lead a public rally to press for the return of multiparty democracy. Whatever their political motives, Matiba and Rubia triggered a tsunami and unleashed the thunderbolt that is the Kenyan spirit.

President Daniel arap Moi went to extremes to kill the idea, using every possible public institution to try and disrupt and scuttle the meeting. He ordered the detention of key supporters of the movement on 6 July1990, banned gatherings and issued myriad warnings through the police, his cabinet, the media and every state organ. On July 7th, 1990, the date of the meeting, roads were blocked and baton-wielding police stood as a visible threat all over the city of Nairobi and towns across the country. Blows rained down on people heading out of the slums. Hospitals and clinics scrambled to tend to those injured. There were tear gas-burned eyes and lungs across the city, but especially near the Kamukunji venue that had been ringed by police.

The meeting never happened but the day-long run-ins with power demonstrated what had been born – and has never died.

The political chaos of that moment only emphasises the spirit of Saba Saba – the spirit of Kenyans’ determination to have the country they want. A year later, political pluralism was a reality, and with it began the expansion of the democratic space. Almost immediately afterwards, the push shifted to reforms with multiple milestones.

Twenty years later, in 2010, a new constitution was in place, and with it the promise of a different country. True reformists vs. impostors

When fully implemented, the 2010 Constitution will permanently disrupt the way Kenya has been governed, and will guarantee a basic quality of life and dignity for every Kenyan. But a lot has to happen before then.

If the spirit of Saba Saba launched the vision of the 2010 Constitution, devolution of power, as directed by the Constitution, provided the tools. And more chaos.

The shift saw one-time supporters of the oppressive KANU regime take to wearing the proverbial sheepskin, learn the language of reform and insert themselves back into the machinery of government, thus interfering with the design like badly written computer code. Behind the scenes, the abuse of state instruments, primitive accumulation of capital and rabid theft of public resources took up again as it had since independence, thereby slowing down progress.

But while impostors are clogging the pipes of government delivery, an army of Kenyans across the country, including a growing number within the political leadership, are keeping the spirit of Saba Saba alive, and are now quietly working to unblock the system and put things where they should be.

If the spirit of Saba Saba launched the vision of the 2010 Constitution, devolution of power, as directed by the Constitution, provided the tools. And more chaos.

Devolved governance through the 47 countries is bringing government closer to the people. For some counties, such as Mandera, devolution has brought basic services and infrastructure, such as tarmacked roads, for the first time. Despite a lack of equipment, doctors performed the first ever Caesarean section at Modogashe Sub-county Hospital in Garissa County in 2016, safely delivering a baby boy and saving the life of his 18-year-old mother who had been in labour for two days. That was just days after doctors at Balambala, another ward level hospital in Garissa, conducted a similar procedure.

These stories of first time medical operations in what were once abandoned rural areas have become almost ordinary as counties take control of health services by upgrading and building facilities, recruiting staff, and ensuring that equipment and medicines are available.

The ongoing construction of the 750-bed Kakamega County Teaching and Referral Hospital will change the face of healthcare beyond the county and tick many boxes for health sector needs in the region. This health facility will be the third biggest referral hospital in the country in terms of bed capacity. The first phase of this Sh6 billion investment is scheduled to open later this year.

It is not as straightforward as it seems. Despite health services having been devolved, the central government has not relinquished control of the structures that should support counties. The Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) and the Ministry of Health currently run like a monopoly medical store that the counties are forced to buy from. Governors have tried to negotiate with the central government to have KEMSA restructured and give them a bigger say in management and control so they can plan collectively for the whole county and leverage economies of scale to get the best price and quality for drugs and equipment. To no avail.

In mid-2015, and after much protestation, governors from all 47 counties caved in to pressure and signed onto a Sh38 billion medical equipment leasing deal, despite the concerns they had, including the lack of specialists to operate and maintain the equipment and the fact that no one had assessed local priorities for health in the different counties. Around 100 hospitals were arbitrarily designated to receive a package that included dialysis machines, ultrasound machines, theatre equipment, intensive care unit (ICU) equipment, incinerators, sterilising units and an assortment of cancer treatment machines. The bill for all this was sent to county governments.

It is not as straightforward as it seems. Despite health services having been devolved, the central government has not relinquished control of the structures that should support counties.

With that controversial move still unresolved, mid-2018 saw the central government telling counties they must now pay double for the leased equipment – a collective bill of Sh9 billion each year, according to Isiolo Governor, Dr Mohammed Kuti, who heads the Council of Governors Health Committee. Enquiries were casually brushed off by the Principal Secretary for Health, Peter Tum, who told the media that the central government needs to buy more equipment due to a rise in demand. Meanwhile, a report released this year by the Institute of Economic Affairs entitled “The Leasing of Medical Equipment Project in Kenya: Value for Money Assessment” found that some of the equipment lying in county stores was gathering dust while other equipment is yet to be supplied.

The case of Nairobi: A return to dictatorship?

The chaos – authoritarian style – serves as a constant backdrop to the progress and fits the tradition in which Saba Saba came into being.

It is a style that was very much in evidence early this year when the central government moved in to take over the running of Nairobi City County. The usual political shenanigans on display, Nairobians watched in bewilderment as Governor Mike Mbuvi Sonko found himself at State House at the televised signing of a document that gave away the keys to Nairobi City County coffers. A new Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) was hurriedly imposed on the county in February without consulting the electorate that put Sonko in the seat of governor. Treasury quickly allocated and disbursed Sh26.4 billion to NMS.

Nairobi has been through some crazy times, with the governor at odds with almost all the executives he himself appointed. Sonko’s governance style included quarrels with the elected members of the county assembly (MCAs), dismissals of staff and allegations of corruption made against Sonko and by Sonko against other county officials.

Despite the political noise, Nairobi city has for the first time in a decade gone through a rainy season without loss of life or property to flooding. Like it or not, credit goes to the Sonko-led clean-up that saw months of drain-clearing last year. Street lights are working, potholes have been filled, fire stations and county clinics have received facelifts. Working with the Kenya Urban Roads Authority, Nairobi City County gave the road network in Eastlands an unprecedented makeover, with the repair of 38 roads totalling almost 80 kilometres.

Accolades aside, Sonko should never have been the Governor of Nairobi, not least because of a criminal past that he himself admits to. But as the political chaos goes in Kenya, behind-the-scenes machinations gave Sonko a clean pass to the position; he was even awarded the national honour of the Elder of the Burning Spear.

Early efforts to impeach and remove him from office on grounds of abuse of office, corruption and violation of the Constitution would have been the right way to go but stalled when MCAs withdrew their motion. However, the forceful takeover staged by the central government is difficult to understand, and predictably, a court declared the takeover illegal in June this year. Annual audits of county government’s financial accounts by the Auditor General have found many gaps and reports of corruption and abuse of office are common. No sitting official has yet been removed but several impeachment motions are flying in.

Devolution is oiling local economies

Sonko’s counterpart from Kirinyaga County, Ann Waiguru survived an impeachment hearing in June that spoke to concerns about the state of health service delivery in her county, among other issues. What was most interesting in the testimony given against her during hearings before the Senate was the emerging fact that residents now travel to the neighbouring counties of Embu and Meru where specific health services apparently work better.

This is the oil of devolution. Devolution is working and people now have more choice as to where they get their services. Beyond impeachment, the competition between counties will eventually underscore the effectiveness of leadership – and that is pushing governors and county leaders to work harder and faster than ever.

Power has reached Ijara in Garissa where the residents had never needed electric bulbs, water pumps or fridges. When power was first switched on last year, and residents were able to buy milk from a store fridge for the first time, small businesses immediately began to think bigger, eyeing the massive food demands of towns in the vicinity, like Garissa, Malindi and Mombasa.

A 10-kilometre tarmac road changed the face of Maralal and the activities conducted there when it was launched in 2016 along with almost 35 kilometres of street lights in the town centre. Wajir County also got its first tarmac road, properly finished with drainage, foot paths and street lights, in 2018. The 25-kilometre stretch built at a cost of Sh1.2 billion is a local tourism attraction in the county.

Rural roads into the interior of every county are multiplying although not as fast as some would like.

Once more, counties hit the political wall when the chairperson of the Council of Governors, Wycliffe Oparanya approached central government to request the transfer of authority and money for feeder roads directly to counties. Currently, funding goes to the Kenya Urban Roads Authority and Kenya National Highways Authority who are quick to act on big highways but move slowly on roads that affect the lives of millions of rural people. Again, the counties’ request was denied.

Power has reached Ijara in Garissa where the residents had never needed electric bulbs, water pumps or fridges.

Such strictures have caused counties to try a different approach. It started with a few counties in the Lake Victoria region coming together to discuss shared problems and a growing realisation that working together on common interests had considerable advantages. For example, the issue of malaria as a health concern is a greater issue for Lake Basin counties than it is in non-Lake areas and the opportunity to tackle it together made sense.

The Lake Region Economic Bloc was born and is now a formally registered institution created by 14 counties and headed by a Council with the secretariat located in Kisumu. This allows it to leverage economies of scale in contracts and encourages inter-county trade as a collective. It has so far raised has Sh1.3 billion for its proposed banking initiative from contributions by counties. Other initiatives proposed include a ring road around Lake Victoria to encourage trade. It is a model that has sparked much excitement and six economic blocs now exist. Last year, the six economic blocs met in Kirinyaga to learn from each other where it emerged that one of the blocs, the Frontier Counties Development Council, has already benefited from a Sh120 billion World Bank grant for projects. Compared to the 2020/2021 county share of national revenue of Sh369 billion to be shared between 47 counties, the potential of these blocs to move resources for development is clear.

The Frontier Counties Development Council comprises 11 counties. Jumuiya ya Kaunti za Pwani brings together the six coastal counties. North Rift Economic Bloc has eight county members while Mount Kenya and Aberdares Economic Bloc consists of 10 counties. The newest is the South Eastern Kenya Economic Bloc that comprises Makueni, Machakos and Kitui counties. Nairobi, Narok and Kajiado counties are not members of any bloc.

While this bigger devolution picture is emerging, it can never displace the foundations being shaped on the the ground. The development strides in Makueni County have inspired many news headlines. But more than the bold economic investments, the expansion of healthcare and social safety nets, Makueni represents a refreshing take on what leadership can be.

Sitting at an official public meeting in the capital Wote often feels more like a social gathering as Governor Kivutha Kibwana ends meetings by reciting the poetry he writes in Kikamba or by provoking shrieks of raucous laughter from the audience. The sense of community is reinforced when the Senator for Makueni and other local leaders regularly chip in. (Kibwana’s latest poem is about COVID-19.) In 2018, Makueni hosted governors from the other 46 counties for a benchmarking conference on the county’s successful public participation approach.

But more than the bold economic investments, the expansion of healthcare and social safety nets, Makueni represents a refreshing take on what leadership can be.

As he approaches the end of his second term as governor, Kibwana is gunning for the presidency. Other governors expressing the same interest are Wycliffe Oparanya of Kakamega, Hassan Joho of Mombasa, Amason Kingi of Kilifi and Alfred Mutua of Machakos. That field is likely to expand, and for the first time since independence, Kenyans will be offered a field of candidates with a track record they can measure.

A different presidency will emerge if a former governor takes the helm in this changed environment where new rules are establishing, new players are emerging and citizens are the indisputable referees.

Until that time, like the athletes who have brought this country such fame and honour, Kenyans continue to press forward undaunted by the distance that remains, taking in the political hurdles and chaos as they come and always intent on the goal.

Embodied in the celebration and remembrance of Saba Saba is this spirit of Kenya – patient, determined, resilient and unfazed by chaos.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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COVID-19 and the Future of Democracy in Zimbabwe

By Tamuka Charles Chirimambowa

The union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar – the contentious two-tier government system that Tanzania adopted – has been riddled with a number of complaints (commonly referred to in Kiswahili as kero za muungano or grievances of the union) right from its formation on April 22, 1964. None of these complaints, however, have been nearly as controversial as Zanzibar’s de facto inability to enter into international agreements. (Zanzibar’s failed attempt in late 1992, for instance, to unilaterally join the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) almost broke the union.) However, the desire among Zanzibaris to have this arrangement overturned across the political spectrum has never wavered and nothing could have demonstrated the arrangement’s detriments to Zanzibar’s development as much as the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is no shortage of literature on the history of the union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar, especially on its motivations. Various people, including journalists, historians, and social scientists, have tried to document the historical development regarded by some as one of the most enduring legacies of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the co-founding father of the modern Tanzanian state.

I’m too young to claim any expertise on the subject of the union (which, really, is older than my father), but as I write this I can vividly picture my high school history teacher, a blackboard behind his back, haranguing the class on how the union was conceived for the Zanzibaris’ own benefit, mainly security, and especially in preventing the return of the “Arab Sultanate” that had been overthrown in 1964. Only later would I come to learn other motivations behind the union: first, an attempt by Mwalimu to realise the Pan-Africanist dream, and second, a deliberate effort by the world’s only superpower, the United States, in the midst of Cold War politics, to prevent the emergence of “another Cuba” in the region.

How the union came about

People who are not familiar with Tanzania’s political system should understand that Tanzania’s union is a two-tier government system where there’s the semi-autonomous government of Zanzibar, known as the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar, currently under President Ali Mohamed Shein, which handles all non-union matters, and the union government, known as the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania, currently under President John Magufuli, which, contentiously, handles both union and non-union matters.

The uniting of two distinctly divergent people, both culturally (predominantly Muslim Zanzibar versus largely Christian Tanganyika) and ideologically (progressive Zanzibar versus conservative Tanganyika) took place at breakneck speed, hardly three months after the controversial Zanzibar Revolution of January 12, 1964. This denied the people from both sides of the union any chance to express their views on the decisions made by their leaders, leaving some sceptical observers doubtful of the union’s true intentions and thus laying a fertile ground for the disagreements that were to follow.

In the rush to realise the union, the Articles of the Union – the treaty that effected the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar – ended up being ratified only by Tanganyika’s Parliament on April 26, 1964, contrary to the initial agreement that the union also had to be ratified by the Zanzibar Revolutionary Council that was formed immediately after the revolution and which functioned both as a legislative and executive arm of the state.

What’s worse, nobody has ever seen the original copy of the Articles of the Union that carries the signatures of the founding fathers Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and Sheikh Abeid Aman Karume, the first president of Zanzibar. This is one of the thorniest issues in the whole discourse on the union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar.

But that’s not the only thorny issue; the other is the arbitrary increase in the number of issues handled by the union, something that makes Zanzibar progressively less autonomous while increasing the powers of its partner, Tanganyika (which, to the Zanzibaris’ chagrin, now functions as Tanzania). This enables the government to meddle in Zanzibar’s local affairs, the most notorious form of meddling being deciding which political party will lead in the isles. This complicates the archipelago’s efforts in defining its developmental path as well as dealing with issues of immense significance to its people, as the COVID-19 experience has demonstrated. While Zanzibar is expected to handle the health of its people on its own, in the process of doing so it cannot ask for regional or international support. This is because, according to the Constitution, health is a non-union matter but regional and international cooperation is a union one. This unfortunate arrangement has naturally meant that were Zanzibar in need of any support from, say, the World Health Organization (WHO), or from any other potential donor in its efforts to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, or to carry out any development initiative, it has to request it through the union government, which reserves the sole right to decide whether the request can go forward. Nothing makes Zanzibaris as disillusioned about the union as this arrangement does, and it is against this background that several demands for the restructuring of the union have been made.

Two very different approaches

Regarding COVID-19, right from the beginning, Zanzibar, a country of about 1.3 million people, and characterised by a strong communal spirit, took what seemed to be a completely different approach from that of the government of John Magufuli in its efforts to deal with the pandemic. It first reported cases on the isles on March 19, a time when the union government was still trying to figure out how to confront the public about the deadly virus, choosing instead to deny the people important information. As soon as it started to confirm its first coronavirus case, Zanzibar issued an update to its citizens and the world in general on the status of the pandemic there, earning it some admiration from some of Tanzania’s health experts.

On March 21, the Zanzibar government suspended all international flights entering the isles, a decision followed almost three weeks later, on April 13, by its union counterpart. Zanzibar even went one step further in an attempt to contain the spread of the pandemic by shutting down all 478 tourist hotels on the isles. This significantly affected its tourism sector, the lifeblood of the archipelago’s economy, which accounts for almost 80 per cent of its annual foreign income.

Almost a week after the union government announced, on April 28, that only 16 people had died of COVID-19, Zanzibar released an update showing that 32 people had died of the disease, something that made critics question the union government’s figures.

The difference in the approaches to dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic has more to do with the attitude of their respective leaders. While President Shein appreciated the magnitude of the pandemic right from the beginning, and thus took strong measures to contain it, his union counterpart, President Magufuli, on the other hand, did not view the pandemic as a threat. He even advised Tanzanians to go on with their business. While Shein’s government was postponing a major religious event to contain the spread of the fatal virus, the union government organised one. While Shein used every opportunity to urge people to protect themselves against COVID-19 by regularly washing their hands, using sanitisers and wearing masks (even making the latter directive mandatory, with he himself wearing it to set an example to his people), his union counterpart never wore one and was busy advising people to use steam inhalation therapy, saying it cures the disease in spite of health experts advising otherwise. In other words, while Zanzibar’s approach to COVID-19 was informed by the archipelago’s authorities’ willingness to trust science, Magufuli’s approach was informed by something quite the opposite: superstition and quackery.

These steps notwithstanding, there are limits to Zanzibar’s efforts to dealing with the priorities of its people, as highlighted above, thanks to both the current structure of the union as well as clientelism that characterises Zanzibar’s ruling elites, which tend to see their union counterparts (who happen to belong in the same party, the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi [CCM]) as their patrons and thus are only free to pursue a particular path only to the extent that their patrons on the mainland can allow them. For example, Zanzibar stopped issuing updates on the COVID-19 trend shortly after the union government did so in the wake of the temporal closure of the national laboratory where COVID-19 tests used to be conducted to pave way for an investigation following allegations, among many others, that the lab’s technicians were conspiring with “imperialists” to portray Tanzania negatively by releasing more positive COVID-19 cases.

In other words, while Zanzibar’s approach to COVID-19 was informed by the archipelago’s authorities’ willingness to trust science, Magufuli’s approach was informed by something quite the opposite: superstition and quackery.

To understand this complexity, one must understand how political leadership has always been obtained in Zanzibar, or, to put it differently, how CCM has always ended “winning” elections in the archipelago: it’s through a sponsorship from the union government and its security apparatus. Following pressure from the union government, for example, Zanzibar’s electoral body was forced to annul the 2015 election results for the president of Zanzibar and members of the House of Representatives, the archipelago’s legislative body, after initial results had shown that CCM, which has ruled both Zanzibar and the mainland since independence, had lost to the isles’ main opposition party, the Civic United Front (CUF). This has forced the Zanzibar government, which the opposition in Tanzania deems to be “illegitimate”, to feel like it has a debt to pay to the union government. (Jecha Salim Jecha, the then chair of the Zanzibar electoral body who was responsible for the 2015 annulment of the isles’ election, surprised many in Tanzania and beyond when he became one of more than a dozen CCM members who have declared their intention to run for the isles’ presidency on the party’s ticket.)

Zanzibar’s relatively better performance in fighting COVID-19 earned it some praise in the court of public opinion, with some even organising online fundraising to support the country in its war against the deadly virus. The seriousness shown by Zanzibar’s political leadership during the pandemic also made the archipelago a potential beneficiary of a number of international rescue aid packages available for needy countries, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s COVID-19 Emergency Financial Assistance. But that never happened, thanks to the current structure of the union. Apparently, the union government applied for the IMF’s rescue package but it was denied on several grounds, including the government’s decision to give inaccurate statistics on the budget it claimed to have spent in dealing with the COVID-19. The IMF’s Tanzania representative, Jens Reinke, told African Business that “the government doesn’t see the crisis as that big an issue” (Tanzania was ultimately able to secure about $14.3 million debt relief from the IMF’s Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust to cover the country’s debt service from June 10 to October 13.)

The Black Lives Matter movement might have popularised the phrase “I can’t breathe”, but it did not coin it. Neither did George Floyd, the unarmed black man who said these words when his neck was under the knee of a white police officer. Zanzibaris used the phrase long before it became a global rallying cry for racial justice. The only difference is that they have been using it in the plural form, “We can’t breathe”, or “Hatupumui” in Kiswahili.

Zanzibaris have for years been demanding for the restructuring of the union. They want a three-tier government system (that is, the government of Zanzibar, of Tanganyika and that of the United Republic) so that they can have more room than they have now to decide their own affairs and direct their own development path. The union government has deployed every available weapon in its arsenal to quash these demands, even arresting the movement’s leaders, and detaining them over trumped-up terrorism charges. Tanzania’s resolve to not let Zanzibaris “breathe” has turned it into a de facto occupying force in the archipelago that imposes its will on the people of Zanzibar and interferes in every aspect of the people’s lives. As shown above, it even decides which political party can govern the isles. The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us numerous unforgettable lessons. However, the most important of these lessons for Zanzibaris is that they can be better off without the union as it is currently constituted. It is not an overstatement, therefore, to conclude that the disease has strengthened their resolve to achieve the right to self-determination.

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.

COVID-19 and the Future of Democracy in Zimbabwe

By Tamuka Charles Chirimambowa

Amos Waweru is your typical consultant: he always carries his laptop and speaks the language of consultancy – strategic objectives, writing proposals, project management, conducting feasibility studies, etc. An enterprise development consultant for the last 15 years, Waweru’s consultancy portfolio includes consulting for international NGOs, both in Kenya and abroad “but that is when the going was good”. Now, thanks to COVID-19, things are different. “It is really tough now and I have had to make adjustments,” said the consultant.

With three teenage children, all in high school, dwindling consultancy work in the last two years, and now the lockdown, which has halted his work to a near standstill for the last three months, Waweru had to make some tough decisions. One of them was converting his Japanese-made vehicle into a car boot sales market. “I stayed at home for one full month the whole of April, without work, with a lot of time on my hands, and simply immobile – three things that I was not used to having in plenty”.

Waweru, a resident of Ruiru, conducted preliminary research among the women who sell vegetables at Ruiru’s open-air market. “Where do they get their vegetables, what types of vegetables do people prefer, how are they priced, so that with this information, I could work out the logistics of starting my own little vegetable market from the boot of my car,” said the consultant. The coronavirus has taken everyone by surprise and upturned many people’s sources of income, throwing people completely off-balance, observed Waweru.

Waweru had cultivated the high-flier image of a successful consultant who occasionally travels abroad. So he was initially bothered by what his peers would think of him selling vegetables from his car off a busy thoroughfare. “I’m very well-known in my church community and in my residential area of Membley, to be truthful, I was a tad worried of my image and whether it wasn’t going to suffer. I was afraid my esteem among my community would diminish”, said the consultant.

When deciding which types of vegetables he should be selling, Waweru found that leafy green vegetables were most in demand. So the next thing he did was to look for a strategic location to park his vehicle and start his business. “I did a little feasibility study around my location and found a bustling stage where the Eastern bypass and Kamiti Road intersect. Already, there were other people selling foodstuff off their vehicles and I decided to join them.” (This intersection is popularly known as the “OJ Connection” – people drop off as others board boda bodas or matatus to their various destinations.)

The leafy vegetables Waweru started with included indigenous vegetables like kahurura, kunde, managu, terere, thoroko and osuga. “The market women told me they buy the vegetables from some Ruiru farmers who farm along the Ruiru River. I didn’t know there’s a lot of vegetable farming specialising in indigenous vegetables going on around Ruiru town.” After his interest in vegetable farming was aroused, Waweru also discovered that on the fringes of Tatu City, the mega real estate project coming up on the outskirts of Ruiru town, “there are huge farms where some people have been growing tomatoes on a large scale”.

Waweru set up camp at OJ Connection, but not for long. “I was always looking for better strategic selling areas, because, somehow, I wasn’t persuaded OJ was the best location for me.” He found one at Kimbo, next to the General Service Unit (GSU) Recce Squad command post, on Kiganjo Road, off the Thika superhighway. (The Recce squad is a paramilitary force that is specially trained in dealing with terrorism and other security-related emergencies.) The consultant’s gut feelings on change of location paid off: “I’d been doing brisk business at OJ, but I began doing even brisker business at Kimbo.” Waweru’s image worries have dissipated; he is making some money “to basically pay my bills and fuel the car”.

The car boot sales allowed Waweru to deal with two things: “earn some little money, to be honest it’s really nothing – it is from car boot to mouth”, and even more critical, deal with the problem of staying idle at home. “It was driving me crazy and I found myself picking quarrels with everyone. I cannot remember the last time I was marooned in the house for this long. I needed to get out, meet my friends, have a drink and just be out there.” As he was accustomed to, he carries his laptop with him and keeps himself busy, working on business proposals to potential clients as he waits for his customers.

The Kimbo-Recce Squad junction has become a beehive of activity: We counted more than 20 car boot sales vehicles. “A new vehicle has been pitching camp every week since I came here,” explained Waweru. “Somehow, it has become a magnet for people with cars to experiment with selling a variety of foodstuff from the boots of their cars.” The consultant said that at first the paramilitary personnel were apprehensive about people bringing their cars so close to their camp, but they became more relaxed about it, but warned the car boot sellers not to encroach too near the camp’s gate.

“This coronavirus pandemic has driven people to try out different and several possibilities of finding coping mechanisms of staying economically afloat as they strive to deal with the bad times”, said Waweru. “Yet the crux of the matter is that the coronavirus has just been the catalyst: the economic downturn began with President Uhuru’s second term. I’ll be open with you – President Uhuru’s years have been the worst for my consultancy. I’ve suffered greatly because I cannot even begin to compare his tenure with President Kibaki’s. During Kibaki’s time, I made good money and built myself.”

Some of the additional 20 or so cars that have since followed Waweru to Kimbo belong to teachers, a travel consultant and two matatu owners. At Kimbo they have created a car boot sales mini-market, selling everything from arrowroots, cabbages, eggs, onions, rice (of the pishori type) and tomatoes.

High school teacher Njenga teaches at a school in Kalimoni. After staying at home for a month and after realising there might be no prospect of returning to school sooner, he started thinking of what to do with the extra time that had been created for him. “We are still getting our pay, so compared to other professionals who may have lost their jobs or face a pay cut, we teachers have so far been spared both,” commented the teacher.

“But not used to being idle and immobile, the coronavirus lockdown was driving me nuts – I’ve never stayed at home from morning till evening, day-in day-out, weeks on end. I felt I was beginning to lose my marbles and I needed to be active and breathe out.” As a day school teacher, he and his wife, who is also is a secondary school teacher, had started a side hustle (a popular Kenyan cliché to mean an income-generating project for extra cash). They had invested in a 1000-chicken hatchery. “Instead of waiting for customers to come and collect their eggs at home, we used our car to market the eggs and even attract new customers,” explained the couple.

For some people, the coronavirus pandemic could as well be a blessing in disguise. “From our car boot sale at Kimbo, we’ve been doing good business. In a just a short time, we’ve been pushing between 10 to 20 trays of eggs in a day,” said the teachers. “I mean, before coronavirus, we only depended on our traditional customary clients. Now we’ve created a new market and hope to expand it. A tray of eggs consists of 30 eggs, so, even on a bad day, the Njengas can sell upwards of 300 eggs from their vehicle. At between Sh280 and Sh300 per tray, the teachers can make up to between Sh2,800 and Sh3,000 a day. “If you remove our expenses, we can’t complain too much.”

The other teacher, a lady who also teaches in a high school, has also been selling eggs. “There are enough customers to share, so it’s not a problem that I and my fellow teachers are selling the same thing in the same place. It’s a market of varieties. Let the customers have their say”. She also keeps a poultry farm where she rears chickens for eggs. The pandemic, opined the teacher, had opened her eyes to pursuing an infinite possibility: of selling her eggs from her car. “Even after the crisis is over, I’ll not stop my car boot sale. I’ve already seen the future and I like what I’ve seen: the car boot sale is a niche I had not contemplated. I’m not letting it go”.

Two things have worked in favour of the teachers: The fact that they teach in day schools, which means they don’t have to stay in school all day, and they have not been paying cess to Kiambu County Government. Depending on the nature of business and what you are selling, the county government levies between Sh25 and Sh100 per trader per day.

A county official told me that for now, during the pandemic, they had decided not to charge the car boot sales traders. “We’ve understood the prevailing extraordinary situation to mean that the people are trying make ends meet.”

Just further afield, from where Waweru’s car was, Ben Kungu’s Toyota Hiace, complete with the tracking aerial aloft, was full of fruits and vegetables. Kungu had plucked off the seats of the vehicle to free space for his new venture. A travel and tours consultant, Kungu was hit hard. “Everything ground to a halt and I couldn’t get jobs for my ‘Shark’ [what the Toyota Hiace is popularly called].” His van then was essentially grounded and Kungu was out of a job. What to do in the prevailing circumstances? He decided to go to Ruiru’s open-air market, buy foodstuffs in bulk and in wholesale for resale. “It was both to make some money to fuel the vehicle and for my sanity. I felt like I was going crazy staying at home all day with nothing to do.”

Next to Kungu’s “Shark” were two other vans: the long-distance matatu shuttles known as “Box” because of their shape. When President Uhuru pronounced the cessation of movement in April, many long-distance shuttles that travelled outside of Nairobi County found themselves locked out of work. The owners of these two shuttles said that instead of parking them, like some of their compatriots had done, they decided to convert them into car boot sales markets and sell mostly cabbages from south Kinangop. “Once the cessation ceases, we shall resume our shuttle travel work. For now, let us make use of the vehicles in the most practical way we know how.”

“It was both to make some money to fuel the vehicle and for my sanity. I felt like I was going crazy staying at home all day with nothing to do.”

In Uthiru, an old trading centre off Nairobi-Nakuru highway, I met John Ndung’u. Ndung’u was donning a blue coat, and dusting off sweet potatoes that were spread in the boot of his car. “These sweet potatoes are the best in the market because they are from Kisii – sweet potatoes from this region are good because they remain dry and tough and are not watery,” said the former taxi driver. “They are fresher because I catch them from my supplier before he deposits the load at Marigiti Market in the city centre.” Trucks full of farm suppliers from north and central Rift Valley and western region pass outside Uthiru.

People nowadays prefer sweet potatoes to bread in the morning, said Ndung’u. “Bread has become expensive, but more fundamentally, the sweet potato is nutritious, very fulfilling and is good for school-going children. And there are more than one ways of preparing the sweet potato: you can roast it, you can boil it, you can even fry it, more like potato chips, all to create different tastes of this tasty African tuber crop.”

Ndung’u is the chairman of the Muthiga taxi drivers association. Muthiga, which is seven kilometres from Uthiru, is a popular meat-eating and beer-drinking joint. It has become so popular that it is referred to as Nairobi’s Kikopey. Kikopey is the famous mouth-watering, meat-eating stop on the same highway, but 120km away in Gilgil, Nakuru County. Ndung’u told me the coronavirus crisis had caught his members completely off-guard. Patronised by the moneyed wannabe who live around Muthiga and the adjoining areas of Kinoo, Kikuyu, Magina, Muthure, Sigona and Uthiru, Muthiga is busiest in the evenings and at night, making taxi-driving a profitable venture.

With the president’s announcement of the quasi-lockdown and curfew, taxi drivers in Muthiga became redundant. They had to quickly think of what to do next, what with families to cater for. “We decided, for those who were interested, to temporarily convert our cabs into car boot markets, as we study the effects of this coronavirus and what those effects portended for our business in the coming days,” explained Ndung’u.

If you take a quick tour of the highway from Uthiru, all the way to Regen and Rungiri, you will see saloon vehicles parked besides the highway, with open boots selling all manner of foodstuffs. “Beginning from Corporation, 87, Kinoo, Muthiga, Regen, Rungiri, all the way to Kikuyu town, most of the vehicles you will see are taxi drivers of our association,” said Ndung’u. The cab driver said if the lockdown and the curfew are lifted tomorrow, he would immediately go back to what he knows best: taxi driving.

But Monica Wangari – who I found selling bananas, avocadoes, pineapples and pumpkins in Thindigwa, a splashy middle-class residential area off the busy Kiambu Road – was not sure whether she would go back to her old job. “I was an insurance agent, working for one of the biggest insurance companies in Nairobi. Then coronavirus happened. Heads of department were asked by the MD to select which people should be laid off. I happened to be one of the people who were picked,” said Wangari.

Her family type car is a Vox Noah. Now, she wakes up in the morning, goes to Marigiti Market in downtown Nairobi, buys her foodstuff and parks her Noah on the dusty road that cuts across Thindigwa. “I couldn’t stay in the house. I tried in the first few weeks. I thought I was going to run mad.” At first, she had sought to sell off her wares on the Eastern bypass on the way to Windsor Hotel, “but I found there were too many vehicles and the competition was very stiff, so I opted to park in my hood,” said Wangari.

If you take a quick tour of the highway from Uthiru, all the way to Regen and Rungiri, you will see saloon vehicles parked besides the highway, with open boots selling all manner of foodstuffs.

Not far from where Wangari was parked, I met Catherine Nyawira. A professional cateress, her outside catering business was doing fine until coronavirus come knocking. “My vehicle was for delivering supplies. Little did I know I would convert it to car boot market.” Like Wangari, she opted to sell fruits, but with a bias towards pumpkins. “My pumpkins are from Meru, they are best: they are sweet and dry. Good for mothers weaning their babies off breast milk and for babies generally.” The coronavirus had hit her business hard, said Nyawira. “This is the new reality and it’s survival of the fittest.”

For Kennedy Kiarie from Kiambu town, this new reality is very real. He had been working in the hospitality industry as a sales and marketing executive for a leading hotel in Nairobi. Then coronavirus came. Hotels and restaurants were forced to close down. It was only a matter of time before the workers were asked to go home. He was one of the many employees who was asked to leace. His teacher wife’s salary couldn’t take care of the family and so he decided to convert their family car into a car boot sale market. Unlike Wangari, he does not fear the competition on the Eastern bypass: he has been selling fruits and vegetables just after the roundabout on the road heading to Windsor Hotel since April.

As a full-time Uber cab driver, Kimondo had to contend with the ever-increasing competition from traditional taxi cabs as well from other taxi apps. Yet he was not prepared for coronavirus. When it landed in Kenya, it hit him real hard. He found that he could not cope anymore: his clients had dwindled to zero. “With people not travelling, many cab drivers were rendered jobless, I being one of them,” said Kimondo. Kimondo is now growing vegetables like sukuma wiki and spinach in his small plot in the Mushrooms area, just behind Thindigwa. “I didn’t need to think twice. Once my cab business tumbled, I turned to my car and went off to sell my wares on the Eastern bypass on your way to Windsor Hotel”.

In these times of coronavirus, car boot sales have become an adaptation mechanism: they give people an opportunity to earn some hard cash and maintain their sanity. One could also surmise that the car boot market has in the short-term become an integral part of the food distribution network, ensuring that people living under COVID-19 and curfew still get their food supplies.

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.

COVID-19 and the Future of Democracy in Zimbabwe

By Tamuka Charles Chirimambowa

A cousin of President Uhuru Kenyatta has quietly accumulated a financial stake in SportPesa’s controversial gambling empire, Finance Uncovered can reveal.

The finding — discovered in details buried in corporate filings in Kenya, the UK and the Isle of Man — came as the president signed a law to axe a 20% excise duty on bets staked, a levy that contributed to SportPesa’s withdrawal from its lucrative Kenyan market last year.

The proposal to drop the duty was included as an amendment to the Finance Bill, which had been passed by the National Assembly last week. The final hurdle to it becoming law was the president’s assent on Tuesday night.

A cousin of President Uhuru Kenyatta has quietly accumulated a financial stake in SportPesa’s controversial gambling empire, Finance Uncovered can reveal.

SportPesa is the shirt sponsor of English Premier League side, Everton FC. After the government introduced taxes on bets placed by punters, and aggressively pursued gambling firms for its payment, it prompted a number of leading gambling firms to close their businesses in Kenya.

The president’s crucial decision is being analysed closely now it has been established that Peter Kihanya Muiruri, his second cousin, has over the past 14 months acquired stakes in three companies which are part of SportPesa’s international gambling empire. The taxes were brought in to both stem rampant gambling addiction in Kenya and also raise revenue from what has rapidly become a highly lucrative business.

Now it has been axed, it could see SportPesa, whose biggest shareholder and founder is Bulgarian national Guerassim Nikolov, re-enter the Kenya sport betting market and revive the wider gambling industry.

A SportPesa revival in Kenya would also benefit a member of Kenyatta’s own family.

A presidential spokesperson did not return calls or respond to a detailed text message asking whether Kenyatta knew about his cousin’s shareholding before he signed the bill into law.

A SportPesa revival in Kenya would also benefit a member of Kenyatta’s own family

The Kenyatta family business, managed by one the president’s brothers, has sprawling interests across the Kenyan economy, and individual family members also invest widely.

Shareholdings

Finance Uncovered, working with the Daily Nation in Kenya, accessed documents filed by SportPesa companies in Kenya, the UK and the Isle of Man.

The documents show Peter Kihanya Muiruri is a shareholder in three companies linked to SportPesa:

The first is a 1% stake in Pevans East Africa, the company which owns SportPesa in Kenya. Muiruri appeared on the shareholder register for the first time in May 2019, shortly before a government clampdown on the betting industry began. Muiruri is now also a director of Pevans. Pevans has previously disclosed that it amassed Sh20 billion in revenues and generated gross profits of Sh9 billion (£70m) in Kenya in 2018. The second stake is a 0.5% shareholding in SportPesa Global Holdings Limited (UK) – a company that owns SportPesa’s non-Kenyan betting companies in Tanzania, South Africa, Italy and Russia. It also owns a highly profitable UK business SPS Sportsoft Ltd, which provides IT services to SportPesa sister companies, including Pevans in Kenya. Muiruri acquired the stake last November. SportPesa Global Holdings made a profit after tax of almost £12m in 2018, according to its financial statements. The third is a 3% stake in SportPesa Holdings Limited (Isle of Man). This is an offshore company which receives SportPesa’s revenues from bets staked in the UK. Companies based in the Isle of Man, a small British Crown dependency and tax haven in the Irish Sea, do not have to publicly disclose their accounts so no financial information is available. Muiruri acquired the stake last December.

The value of Muiruri’s shares in the three companies is unclear, because up-to-date financial information for these companies is not available. It is also unknown at this stage how much, if anything, Muiruri paid for the shares.

SportPesa did not respond to the Daily Nation’s emailed questions.

The company was asked whether it had lobbied the President either directly or indirectly for the reinstatement of its betting licence or any tax reductions.

The firm was also asked to disclose how much the president’s cousin paid for his shares in each of the three companies, and when he became a director in Pevans.

There is no suggestion of wrongdoing either by Muiruri or SportPesa.

Family connection

Muiruri himself is a low-key businessman. Little is publicly known about him. Muiruri’s mother is Uhuru Kenyatta’s first cousin, while his grandfather was the younger half brother of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president.

In November 2016, President Kenyatta attended the funeral service of Muiruri’s father, the late Mzee Josphat Muiruri Kihanya, at the Holy Family Basilica in Nairobi and gave a short address. The presidency also issued a formal press statement paying tribute to the former civil servant, although it made no mention of the family connection.

SportPesa lost its betting license last July. The company announced it was withdrawing from Kenya last September in response to what it called “the hostile taxation and operating environment in the country”. Their withdrawal led to 400 job losses and the sudden cancellation of its local sports sponsorships.

In February this year SportPesa also withdrew from its international sponsorship commitments, including a reported £9.6 million a year shirt sponsorship with Everton.

The 20% duty was only introduced last November, according to the Kenya Revenue Authority.

Tax about-turn

Reversing any betting tax was not on the cards two months ago, when the Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning chaired by Joseph Limo published the Finance Bill for public comment on 8 May. At that stage, the bill contained no plans to tinker with any betting taxes.

Committee meeting minutes show that an obscure stakeholder group — identified only by a non- existent URL as shade.co.ke — wrote to the committee on 15 May proposing the scrapping of the 20% excise duty on bets placed. “It has made many betting firms cash strapped hence cutting down on their sponsorships to local sports clubs,” they said.

The committee agreed, noting that “the high level of taxation had led to punters placing bets on foreign platforms that are not subject to tax and thereby denying the Government revenue”.

In its justification for approving the amendment, the committee explained to the National Assembly that it would “reverse the negative effects of this tax on the industry which has led to closure of betting companies in Kenya, yet international players continue to operate”.

The committee turned down other proposals by the unidentified stakeholder group to amend other tax laws affecting betting, which included a reduction in withholding tax on players’ winnings from 20% to 10% and exempting the betting industry from digital services tax.

A gambling nation

As the committee was still considering the excise tax proposals in May, Finance Uncovered working with the Daily Nation published leaked betting revenue declaration figures from the industry for May 2019. The data showed that punters had wagered more than Shs30bn (£234m) in just one month. SportPesa alone accounted for two-thirds of these betting revenues, according to the data which all betting firms submitted to the Betting Control and Licencing Board (BCLB).

Such huge revenues for a single month showed what is at stake for the gambling companies in Kenya.

The controversial 20% excise duty would have been levied directly on these revenues, and could — on the basis of the leaked revenue data — have been worth up to Shs72bn (£562m) in annual taxes for the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA).

SportPesa alone accounted for two-thirds of these betting revenues, according to the data which all betting firms submitted to the Betting Control and Licencing Board

However, this was when the industry was at its peak, and before the government began its tax and regulatory clampdown last July, including suspending the betting licences of gambling firms including SportPesa and its next biggest rival Betin.

Two other associates of the president already hold a significant chunk of equity in SportPesa both locally and internationally.

They are Paul Wanderi Ndung’u, a key fundraiser for Kenyatta’s Jubilee political party during the 2017 election (17%); and Asenath Wachera Maina (21%), whose late husband Dick Wathika is a former Nairobi mayor whom Kenyatta has described as a long-time friend.

In addition to these links, SportPesa’s Nairobi headquarters share the same office complex that also houses the Kenyatta family-owned investment holding company.

This article was first published by Finance uncovered. An investigative journalism training and reporting project.

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 Tamuka Charles Chirimambowa

“Lord, protect me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies.”

The above quote by Voltaire is one that Deputy President William Ruto could well be spending lots of time brooding over, especially in these times of coronavirus. Since official recognition of the pandemic’s arrival in Kenya over just three months ago, Ruto’s political battles – not with his enemies, but with people he had counted as friends – have intensified. The battles that are being fought in the Jubilee Party, the party of President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, are internal and among erstwhile friends.

Coming barely 30 months after the forceful UhuRuto duo won a controversial fresh presidential election on October 26, 2017, the two political brothers looked set to finish their second term the way they started the first: as a formidable team of like-minded captains, with the lead captain passing the baton to his comrade once his term expires. But that today is a dream: the waters have been poisoned and the former buddies are no longer swimming in the same direction, leave alone swimming in the same waters. The breakdown of the alliance has all the hallmarks of betrayal, brinkmanship, deception, fraud and subterfuge.

Jubilee Party mandarins did not see the break-up coming; if they did, they all pretended they were not aware of the imploding scenario. The ruling party is now a house of two diametrically opposed camps led by their respective protagonists: President Uhuru Kenyatta, who coalesces around the Kieleweke (it shall soon be evident) camp and William Ruto, who is spearheading the Tanga Tanga (roaming) team.

“We can no longer pretend that the current war being waged against William Ruto is not from within and therefore not from friends, or people he had presumed were his political friends,” said a Ruto confidante I spoke to. “To think otherwise now would, like the proverbial ostrich, be burying our heads in the sand. It is better to be fought by your enemies, who you have fought several times before and therefore you already know to deal with them, rather than be fought by friends, who have turned the tables against you, all the while posing as your compatriots.”

“Uhuru is employing political terrorism against his number two and to be honest, it is something we had not anticipated,” said Ruto’s friend of many years. “Yes, it has taken us by surprise, the intensity and all, but we must stay and fight back, even as we devise a strategy to stem the political bloodbath. It is all about the politics of succession in 2022 and there is no hiding the fact that Ruto obviously wants the seat. If you have been a deputy president for seven years, what else would you want as a politician in that position? It is also true that once Uhuru and Ruto were sworn in for the second and final term, we started popularising our candidate immediately – it was the natural thing to do – hitting the ground running. This was misconstrued to be a campaign, but even if it were, we weren’t doing anything outside of the constitution.”

Ruto’s loyal friend said that the popularisation strategy had a context: “Prior to the presidential election in December 2002, we all were in Kanu – Uhuru, Ruto and me. We would go to [President] Moi and tell him, ‘Mzee tell us who will be our candidate so that we can start preparing the grounds early.’ And he countered by saying: ‘Nyinyi vijana wacheni mbio, siku ikifika nitawambia. Mimi nimekuwa kwa siasa miaka mingi…nataka mwendelee kuwa wafuasi kamili wa Kanu.’ (You young men, why are you in a hurry? When the day comes, I’ll let you know. I’ve been in politics for many years, I know what I’m doing. For now I want you to be steadfast in your support for Kanu.) By the time he was proposing Uhuru as the party’s candidate, it was already too late and there wasn’t enough time to campaign for our candidate.”

The Ruto ally, who also counts President Uhuru as a first-name-basis friend, believes Uhuru lost the election in 2002 to Mwai Kibaki and the opposition, because Moi took too long to name the party’s flagbearer. “We could have won that election but for Moi’s delaying tactics, which backfired and we lived to regret that bad decision. Eighteen years later, with lessons learned, we’re not about to repeat the same mistake. You cannot win a presidential election if you start campaigning six months to the election date. That is what Uhuru is doing with our candidate and in Jubilee, and we won’t let him do that.”

The coronavirus appeared just in time to help President Uhuru fight his political battles, reasoned the DP’s bosom buddy. “He is now using the pandemic to wage war against his deputy. The semi- lockdown and the curfew are strictly not about COVID-19, but about clamping down on Ruto’s forces in the party and in government.” The pandemic, he observed, has acted like godsend: It has given Uhuru space to mount a sustained onslaught on Ruto, but it has also helped the DP to ward off (at least for the time being), the “nobody-can-stop-the-reggae” force, which was also threatening to overwhelm him.

“Uhuru is maximising on the COVID-19 pandemic as much as possible because he knows his antagonist, the DP, cannot organise and mobilise for his counter-attack, which he is good at. The people have been locked down, they are restricted, they cannot move, they are scared and are caught up with survival. President Uhuru can therefore wreak havoc in Ruto’s camp with as little distraction as possible,” he added.

The coronavirus appeared just in time to help President Uhuru fight his political battles, reasoned the DP’s bosom buddy. “He is now using the pandemic to wage war against his deputy. The semi-lockdown and the curfew are strictly not about COVID-19, but about clamping down on Ruto’s forces in the party and in government.” Uhuru is not alone; since the onset of COVID-19, some world leaders have been using the pandemic as an excuse to amass more presidential powers, extend their presidential terms indefinitely, resort to dictatorial tendencies, and quash opponents.

But unlike the last election, the president does not have the unflinching support of his own people. “Uhuru’s biggest problem is that the Kikuyus have turned their back on him,” said a friend of Uhuru who also counts Ruto as his friend. “He thought he owned them and he could do whatever he wanted with them. He also thought they would always go back to him and do his bidding. Now, they seem dead set in ignoring him completely and the fact of the matter is, as a political leader, you can do little if you cannot galvanise the support of your people. You cannot claim legitimacy, you can only impose yourself on them and that is always counter-productive.”

Because of this, said the Jubilee Party mandarin, President Uhuru’s current headache is how to de- Rutoise central Kenya and the larger Mt Kenya region. “He’s been trying to tell the Kikuyus that Ruto has been disloyal to him, that he wants to grab their power, that he’s not fit to ascend to the presidential seat because he’s corrupt and power hungry. But they have refused to listen to him. With each passing day, he’s getting furious with the Kikuyus’ recalcitrant stand against him. Now, he has turned to appointing Kikuyus in prominent positions, including the recent reshuffles in Parliament to appease his Kikuyu base.”

The duo’s friend told me that President Uhuru’s allegations about his deputy’s insubordination was a red herring. “What disloyalty is Uhuru is talking about? When he was busy drinking, we held fort by taking care of government business, even as we covered his social vices. Now he has the temerity to talk about disloyalty. We’re not afraid of him. The Jubilee Party/Kanu coalition agreement is illegal as per our Jubilee Party constitution and it was cobbled up to stop Ruto from vying for the presidency”.

All the president’s men

To fight Ruto, President Uhuru Kenyatta formed an advisory team that meets at State House. Part of the team comprises David Murathe, Kinuthia Mbugua, Mutahi Ngunyi and Nancy Gitau.

Murathe has for the longest time been President Uhuru’s sidekick. His father, William Gatuhi Murathe, was one of the wealthiest Kikuyus, courtesy of Uhuru’s father and the country’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, During Jomo’s time, the senior Murathe was the sole distributor of wines and spirits countrywide.

When David Murathe was routed out as the MP for Gatanga constituency by Peter Kenneth in 2002, his fortunes dwindled and he was even declared bankrupt at one stage. From that time, he has not left Uhuru’s side. The Tanga Tanga team describes Murathe as “Uhuru’s attack dog”. They believe that when Uhuru wants to communicate an important message, he uses Murathe. And they’ve learned to decipher his messages. Murathe is the man who has been put in charge of the advisory team’s budget.

On 6 January 2019, Murathe suddenly resigned from his post as the Jubilee Party’s vice chairman, citing conflict of interest. He said he wanted to fight Ruto and stop him from being the Jubilee Party’s sole candidate for the 2022 presidential election. On 2 March 2020, Murathe recollected his thoughts on his supposed resignation and claimed he had not really resigned because his resignation had not been accepted by President Uhuru Kenyatta, who is the chairman of the party.

Kinuthia Mbugua is the State House Comptroller; he keeps President Uhuru’s diary. He served as Nakuru County governor for one term. Eagerly looking to serve for a second term, he nonetheless lost the Jubilee Party nomination to Lee Kinyanjui. He was furious, and even looked to run as an independent, but was persuaded by Uhuru to join the presidential campaign team, with a promise of a bountiful reward once the campaign was over.

The Tanga Tanga team describes Murathe as “Uhuru’s attack dog”. They believe that when Uhuru wants to communicate an important message, he uses Murathe. And they’ve learned to decipher his messages.

Mbugua, a career civil servant, hails from Nyandarua. When he was the commandant of the Administration Police (AP), he employed many youth from Nyandarua and the adjoining areas. He equipped the force with personnel and machinery and soon there were murmurs from the regular police service, which felt that the AP was being favoured and was becoming extra powerful. After the 2007/2008 post-election violence, President Mwai Kibaki and his cohorts did not trust the regular police. Mbugua’s not-so-loudly spoken brief was to reorganise a force that had always played second fiddle to the boys in blue.

Mbugua to date believes William Ruto rigged him out of a nomination when he was left to man the Jubilee Party headquarters at Pangani during the chaotic and hectic nominations. He carries the grudge like an ace up his sleeve.

Mutahi Ngunyi is a private citizen who has immersed himself in state (house) politics and has distinguished himself as a maverick, a person who can swing like a pendulum and still remain standing, without falling. In the lead-up to the 2017 election, he made Raila Odinga, the opposition coalition leader of the National Super Alliance (NASA), his punching bag, terming him a “punctured politician”, an epithet that his detractors used to describe Raila’s father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga in the 1970s.

After Uhuru and Ruto romped back to State House, Mutahi quickly (perhaps too quickly) identified with Ruto’s camp and decreed that Ruto will be the next president come 2022. A crafty mythmaker, he even came up with the Hustler vs Dynasty narrative to define the rivalry between Ruto and the sons of prominent Kenyan leaders, including Uhuru Kenyatta, Raila Odinga and Gideon Moi. He wildly claimed in a May 2019 tweet that the only person who could liberate Kikuyus was Ruto. (Mutahi has since deleted all his tweets that were singing Ruto’s praises.) Then, beginning this year, Mutahi flipped, disavowed his hustler narrative and claimed that Uhuru Kenyatta was ordained to rule Kenya.

“Mutahi Ngunyi is a gun for hire,” said a Ruto aide. “For nearly two years he worked for us. He’s a mercenary, he’s a fugitive of justice.” When I contacted Mutahi and asked him if what was being said about him was true, he responded: “Tell them it is true, whatever that means. Tell them they can also hire me!”

The aide claimed that Mutahi was presented with the National Youth Service (NYS) file by the National Intelligence Service and was asked to cooperate…or else.

The NYS file he was referring to contains details of a huge scam that was perpetrated between 2014 and 2016 when Anne Waiguru Kamotho, the current governor of Kirinyaga County, was the powerful Devolution and Planning Cabinet Secretary. Mutahi was one of her advisers on the youth programme that was being implemented by NYS. The scam involved the misappropriation of billions of shillings of taxpayers’ money in which Mutahi was heavily implicated. At one time, he even purported to clear his name by claiming to have returned Sh12 million to the government coffers. Appearing before the Parliamentary Accounts Committee on September 20, 2016, Mutahi said he had rewired the money back to the Central Bank of Kenya. He said that the money had been “wrongly” credited to his company, The Consulting House. He further stated that he believed the money had come from an organisation that he had consulted for, not the Devolution Ministry.

Mutahi is now operating from State House and The Chancery building on Valley Road in Nairobi. The Chancery is owned by the Kenyatta family. Part of his brief is to spin favourable Kieleweke group narratives while conjuring up propaganda and disinformation on his former employer, William Ruto.

Nancy Gitau has been the resident State House adviser from the time of Mwai Kibaki. Before becoming a state aficionado, she worked for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). While at USAID in the 1990s, she was involved in the democracy and governance sector, which was being heavily funded by the United States and other donors. The last big project that she oversaw was a partnership between Kenya’s Parliament and the State University of New York (SUNY, Albany)’s Centre for International Development (CID), which Sam Mwale and Fred Matiangí managed. Both Mwale and Matiangí would later become civil servant bureaucrats, serving as Permanent Secretary and Cabinet Secretary, respectively.

Mutahi is now operating from State House and The Chancery building on Valley Road. The Chancery is owned by the Kenyatta family. Part of his brief is to spin favourable Kieleweke group narratives while conjuring up propaganda and disinformation on his former employer, William Ruto.

Gitau was very well-known within the civil society and the NGO sector and interacted with many of them. “Gitau was one of the architects of a report implicating Ruto in the post-election violence and so there is no love lost between her and Ruto,” said Ruto’s aide. The deputy president is still upset about Gitau singling him out. During the days when Ruto and Uhuru were facing charges related to the post-election violence of 2007/2008 at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, one of Ruto’s team members said to me: “Ruto never forgives and never forgets a wrong done to him.”

Expunging Ruto’s men

The Gitau-led advisory team ostensibly meets every Sunday morning at State House and during weekdays at La Mada Hotel located in the New Muthaiga residential area in Nairobi. La Mada is the hotel that Ruto claimed in 2019 where a plot to assassinate him was being hatched by people known to President Uhuru.

One of the team’s main jobs is the expunging of Ruto’s men in the Senate, with Kithure Kindiki, the Senator of Tharaka Nithi County, being the latest casualty. Until 22 May 2020, Kindiki was the Senate’s Deputy Speaker. The first two casualties were Kipchumba Murkomen and Susan Kihika, the former Majority Leader and Chief Whip, respectively. Murkomen’s job was given to Samuel Poghisio, a politician from West Pokot, while Kihika’s went to Irungu Kangáta, the Senator of Murangá County.

“The two were removed because the president and his men didn’t have the majority in the Jubilee Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC),” said a “renegade” senator, who accused President Uhuru of “using strong-arm tactics to coerce senators to vote according to his whims”.

During the days when Ruto and Uhuru were facing charges related to the post-election violence of 2007/2008 at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, one of Ruto’s team members said to me: “Ruto never forgives and never forgets a wrong done to him.”

The senator said that the Speaker of the Senate, Ken Lusaka, was allegedly approached and reminded of the “small matter” of the wheelbarrows when he was the Governor of Bungoma County.

When Lusaka was the governor of Bungoma County between 2013 and 2017, the county bought 10 wheelbarrows worth Sh1.09 million (approximately $10,000 or $1,000 per wheelbarrow) – the most expensive wheelbarrows ever sold in Kenya, where an ordinary wheelbarrow goes for around Sh5,000 ($50). When he was asked by the Parliamentary Accounts Committee what was so special about the wheelbarrows, he claimed that they were made from “stainless, non-carcinogenic material”. Some of the county officials were jailed for the scam.

Everybody knows it was illegal for the speaker to acquiesce to President Uhuru’s demand that the Senate Parliament Group meet at State House, said the senator. “The reason why nominated senators are being intimidated and threatened is simply because Uhuru doesn’t have enough senators on his side to fight his deputy.”

Senators were allegedly paid Sh2 million to vote to remove Murkomen and Kihika. “On the day the senators were summoned to State House, President Uhuru didn’t have enough senators to push his motion,” said the senator. “The Jubilee Party had only 11 senators, Kanu, three and one independently-elected senator, Charles Kibiru. If you count Raphael Tuju and President Uhuru they made 17 votes. Tuju is the secretary general of Jubilee Party. So, they were way short of the required majority of 20 votes.” The senator claimed that the president had to send helicopters to pick senators from their far-flung regions.

“Uhuru can send choppers to senators who are supposed to be in lockdown and in quarantine, but he will not send planes to rescue and send food to flood victims. That’s how much he cares for the unity of this nation,” complained the senator.

It is just a matter of time before these elite squabbles are replicated on the ground. On 20 May 2020, two charged groups in Kikuyu town faced each other: one group supported President Uhuru Kenyatta and the other supported Deputy President Ruto along with the area MP Kimani Ichung’wa. So far Kimani has been an unswerving supporter of Ruto. They yelled and shouted at each other and exchanged invectives. It was a prelude to Ruto’s visit to the constituency on that day.

It is hard to tell whether the two groups had been paid by their masters to grandstand. But that is neither here nor there. The Jubilee Party honchos have indicated that Ruto’s presence in the Mt Kenya region cannot just be wished away – hence the Kieleweke group’s project to defang Ruto.

I asked a Ruto confidante why his boss had gone quiet. Was the heat becoming unbearable? “This is not the time to speak. We actually advised him not to open his mouth. There’s a time that he will speak, but not now.”

The confidante also reminded me of another saying: The man who speaks little makes mistakes, but what about the man who talks a lot? He makes big mistakes. 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.

COVID-19 and the Future of Democracy in Zimbabwe

By Tamuka Charles Chirimambowa

Britain is in a froth, and sharply divided, over the desecration or removal of statues of historical figures linked to slavery and empire.

What began as Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, following the appalling murder of George Floyd by a white policeman in Minneapolis, swiftly morphed into attacks on statues and monuments in London, Bristol, Edinburgh and other towns and cities in the UK that implicitly venerate slavers and imperialists. Some were removed from their plinths, one was thrown into a river, others were vandalised, and a Union Jack flag on the Cenotaph, the national war memorial in central London, was set on fire. In Oxford, where there have long been calls to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes from the wall of a college, the student-led Rhodes Must Fall movement (which originated in South Africa) was given new impetus, and large street protests were held. Some statues have been removed by local authorities “for their own protection”, such as that of eighteenth century slave-owner Robert Milligan, which stood in London’s Docklands.

Images of these events blazed across the media day after day have both incensed and delighted in equal measure. The British public learned more about its dark past in 48 hours (and rising) than in decades of being taught empire-light history in school classrooms. I was one of them. All we learned of empire was the victors’ story, and Britain’s “proud” role in the abolitionist movement. No wonder all this statue-smashing has come as a shock to the system – in every sense of the word. (Similar outrage over monuments linked to racial oppression and slavery has swept the US and other nations in the wake of BLM, but it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the wider phenomenon.)

The right-wing media, the Tory government and other far-right commentators have predictably dubbed the attackers “mobs”, “thugs” and “vandals”, with Home Secretary Priti Patel (the daughter of Ugandan-Asian immigrants to Britain who could well have been denied entry under her hard-line regime) vowing to find and swiftly punish those responsible. (That may prove tricky since many were wearing protective masks against COVID-19.) In Tory hands, playing to the Brexit gallery, it fast became a “law and order” story. The courts were granted powers to fast-track prosecutions of demonstrators within 24 hours of an incident, “amid mounting concerns that Britain is facing a summer of disorder” (The Times, 12 June).

We are good at summers of disorder. Every dull English summer seems to require a new moral panic. In the middle of COVID lockdown, this uproar has almost come as light relief, not least to the mainstream print media, which is struggling to survive. The right-wing tabloid Daily Mail devoted its front-page lead and 7 inside pages to the story on 10 June, and the issue was still taking up the entire two-page spread of readers’ letters two days later (including an edited letter from me, calling in part for changes to the school history curriculum). At a time of COVID crisis, this was extraordinary. Every national newspaper has covered it too, with the downmarket Daily Star poking fun by giving away cut-out paper “statues” of famous people for readers to shout at if they so wished. (It’s a “free” country.)

The broadcast media has also covered the story extensively. A question about statues and apologies for imperial wrongdoing was the first to be asked on the BBC’s weekly televised Question Time on 11 June. Booker Prize-winning novelist Bernadine Evaristo, a woman of colour, gave a robust argument for the defence, calling in part for dark history to be recontextualised, challenged and interrogated. “I absolutely relished the toppling of the [Colston] statue in Bristol. He was a really toxic symbol,” she said. (More on Colston below.)

For the prosecution, we have Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit campaign, leading the charge. “Where are the police?” cried this arch Brexiter on Twitter. “Where are you Boris? Do we have a leader?” And, next to a photograph of a graffiti-daubed statue of war-time premier Winston Churchill: “Boris Johnson is supposed to be a Churchill fan, but he says and does nothing. He is not half the man.”

A question about statues and apologies for imperial wrongdoing was the first to be asked on the BBC’s weekly televised Question Time on 11 June. Booker Prize-winning novelist Bernadine Evaristo, a woman of colour, gave a robust argument for the defence, calling in part for dark history to be recontextualised, challenged and interrogated.

In the Telegraph (9 June), Farage accused “our craven leaders” of “failing to stand up to a Marxist mob which wants to tear down our history”. Prime Minister Boris Johnson responded a few days later, fuming that his hero had been dubbed a “racist”. (Boris wrote a much-derided 2014 biography of Winston Churchill, on whom he clearly models himself.) This was pretty rich coming from a man who, in his former career as a journalist, described Africans as “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”, compared niqab-wearing Muslim women to “letterboxes”, and said of colonialism in Africa: “The problem is not that we were in charge, but that we’re not in charge any more.”

I will say more about far-right white youth rage in a moment, but it takes its cue from Boris, Fa- RAGE (as I prefer to call him), and links to Brexit-related frustrations. Brexit is meant to have happened on 31 January this year, but curiously, those who voted for it seem angrier than ever.

How it all began: Slaver Edward Colston

When BLM demonstrators tore the bronze statue of the seventeenth century slave ship owner Edward Colston from its plinth in Bristol on 7 June, dragged it to the harbour and threw it in, police wisely decided not to intervene. This, and police refusal to intervene in similar incidents elsewhere, is what Farage (plus fellow Brexiters and Tories) are so incensed about.

Colston, a rich merchant and MP, was venerated as a benefactor and philanthropist, with schools, a concert hall and streets named after him. (Some have been renamed.) Bristol residents had been calling for the statue’s removal for years, and had presented an 11,000-signature petition to the council. But nothing had come of asking nicely, hence some decided it was high time to sling Colston’s hook themselves. His reburial in a watery “grave” was itself laden with symbolism, since it was from this harbour that Colston’s slave ships sailed. They carried more than 100,000 West Africans to the New World between 1672 and 1689. More than 20,000 slaves died en route and were thrown overboard – something the slavers welcomed because they could claim insurance.

The Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset police, Andy Bennett, defended his force’s actions that day, telling the BBC he understood that Colston was “a historical figure that’s caused the black community quite a lot of angst over the last couple of years”. He said he understood their anger, and the symbolism of the statue. He went on: “You might wonder why we didn’t intervene and why we just allowed people to put it in the docks – we made a very tactical decision, to stop people from doing the act may have caused further disorder and we decided the safest thing to do, in terms of our policing tactics, was to allow it to take place.” (A furious Priti Patel reportedly gave him a dressing-down.)

Marvin Rees, Bristol’s Labour mayor and the first directly-elected black mayor in Europe, was widely praised (and condemned by the usual suspects) for his considered comments in the media. He termed the toppling of the statue “a piece of historical poetry”, and has called for a “city-wide conversation” on the future of the statue (which has now been hauled out of the harbour). It may be placed in a museum, along with demonstrators’ placards taken from the scene of the “crime”. He added: “I’d like to make sure that conversation is informed by good history.” Hence he is putting together a team, including local historians, to make a study of statues, memorials, street names and the like, so that future decisions are based on “good history, good understanding”.

Other targeted statues of imperial, fascist or slaver figures are listed on a new website called Topple the Racists (www.toppletheracists.org). They include Lord Nelson (as in Nelson’s Column, Trafalgar Square), Robert Clive (of British India infamy), Scotland’s Robert Dundas (son of a man who deliberately delayed the abolition of slavery), Jan Smuts, the architect of apartheid, and Lord Baden- Powell, the founder of the scouts movement. The latter also has links to Kenya: he is buried in a Nyeri churchyard, near a cottage in the grounds of the Outspan Hotel where he spent his final years. Baden-Powell is accused of atrocities against Zulus during his military career in South Africa, and for his flirtation with fascism. In his 1939 diary, he wrote: “Lay up all day. Read Mein Kampf. A wonderful book.” Former scouts travelled to Poole in Dorset to protect a statue of their idol, which has been placed under 24-hour protection. They cut ridiculous figures: middle-aged men in shorts, brown shirts and woggles (a device used to fasten scouts’ neckerchiefs), vowing to follow the scouting motto: “Be prepared!” Kenyan scouts have also pledged allegiance to their founder.

Far-right youth

Those ripping statues from their plinths, or “vandalising” them if removal is physically impossible, are white, black, and all shades in-between. But the racism in critics’ hysterical responses is palpable. Far-right white supremacist youths have waded in, joined by older beer-bellied men, with supporters of Tommy Robinson (a notorious far-right Islamophobic activist) and groups like Britain First vowing to “defend” and “protect” monuments from “commies” and the “unwashed”. Self-styled “Tommy Teams” rushed to scrub the graffiti off monuments, including Churchill and the Cenotaph, and stayed to “protect” them since the police were not doing so at that stage.

In some provincial towns, they also collaborated with angry older men, many with military backgrounds, to “protect” monuments, including war memorials. Posting videos of their exploits on Twitter, they spoke of protecting British heritage, and defending historical icons. Bragging of their manhood, they asked (as Farage had done) where the “real men” were.

As I write this, far-right groups from across the country had travelled to London to “protect” the monuments from BLM, which had planned more demonstrations in the city. Police boarded up major monuments to keep both BLM protesters and their opponents away; these included statues of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. Boris Johnson called the boarding up of Churchill “absurd” and “stupid”, conveniently forgetting that he had done the same with certain monuments when he was mayor of London.

Priti Patel publicly denounced the current London mayor, Labour’s Sadiq Khan (a hate figure to far- right Islamophobes, Tories and Brexiters), who had ordered the protective measures. The government also hates the fact that Khan has set up a commission to review all monuments in the capital, while more than a hundred Labour councils across England have pledged to review monuments on public land. In a bizarre twist, the far-right protestors gave Heil Hitler salutes before Churchill, a man revered for fighting fascism. Having denounced supposed BLM violence, it was they who ended up getting drunk and fighting the police. The word “Eng-er-land” (their chant) is trending now. Angerland?

Why has this issue fired up far-right, mainly white, youth groups? Rootlessness, a lack of identity, unemployment or low-paid insecure work, lack of educational attainment, poor prospects, the crisis in masculinity and other factors combine to create youth disaffection not unlike that which produced the Mods and Rockers, two rival youth groups that rioted in seaside towns in southern England in 1964, though in some ways, today’s youth alienation is worse. (One could write a whole thesis on this alone, and no doubt scholars already are.)

Throw into the mix the economic crisis which will hit the poorest, including Brexit-voting, communities, hardest. The UK is said to be heading for its worst economic depression in 300 years following COVID, and is likely to fall off a cliff once Brexit is fully implemented. The anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-“woke” rhetoric of right-wing politicians and media commentators who call on “true patriots” to show their allegiance to Britain and British “values”, the failure of Brexit to deliver yet (if indeed it ever does), and the frustration of weeks of COVID lockdown: all this and more stokes the anger of particular groups. In their insecurity, Tommy’s boys – and some girls – have long clung to perceived icons of national identity. (Their Twitter profiles feature images of Churchill in particular, bulldogs and St George flags, though in fact St George wasn’t English and never set foot here).

But let’s not get too carried away with the perceived threat to society, which is how the Tories want to frame all this. Sociologist Stanley Cohen, in his classic 1972 book Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers, identified how certain figures, groups or events periodically spark moral outrage, and are scapegoated as “evil” threats to civilised society. Cohen noted the Mods’ and Rockers’ overwhelming sense of boredom. Street clashes or the prospect of them were as thrilling then as they are now – “just simply being present in a crowd was an event…” Having studied white street gangs in the 1970s, I know that putting the boot in (and crime in general) is very exciting when you are working class, young and bored. If you can film the bovver on your phone as it happens, take selfies and tweet to the world, that’s all the more satisfying.

Turning briefly to Kenya

The imprint of empire’s boot is still visible on the monument landscape of Kenya, though there have been some notable changes down the years. The Nairobi city centre statue of Lord Delamere was removed at independence to the Delameres’ Soysambu estate, but the Vasco da Gama pillar is still a major tourist attraction at Malindi. Street names have changed: for example, Victoria Street became Tom Mboya Street. Many South Asian street names have been Africanised.

The statue of Queen Victoria that previously stood in Jeevanjee Gardens, a public park Nairobi, was beheaded by unknown vandals in 2015. I am told by A.M. Jeevanjee’s great-granddaughter, the historian, activist and writer Zarina Patel, that the county government later removed the rest of the monument, which now lies in a storeroom. “Who did it, and why remains a mystery,” she says. “Was it politically motivated? That would be understandable because Queen Victoria represented an unjust colonial power.”

However, she has concerns that one of the conditions her forefather made when handing over the gardens to the then colonial government was that the statue should never be moved. In so doing, he hoped to protect the gardens from future land grabs. In 1991, Zarina campaigned successfully against an attempted grab of the park by “the highest powers-that-be in the land”, adding, “of course they have never been identified”.

Zarina Patel welcomes the arrival of statues commemorating Dedan Kimathi and Tom Mboya, and the Mau Mau Memorial in Uhuru Park, which she hopes will set a trend. She also believes that the Nyayo monuments in Uhuru Gardens, erected by former president Daniel arap Moi, will be moved at some point.

What is her take on colonial-era monuments, and those glorifying post-independence leaders? “The statues celebrating colonists and dictators are part of Kenyan history – rather than destroying them I think they should be kept in some suburban parks or museums with explanatory texts to give them proper historical context; so that our future generations can be reminded of the battles we have fought for freedom, justice and democracy.”

A review is surely long overdue of place-names with colonial connections. Lake Victoria is the obvious one. Smaller fry include Uplands and Thomson’s Falls, though Scottish geologist/explorer Joseph Thomson did not (as far as I know) enslave anyone. Lugard’s Falls in Tsavo West is more clear-cut, since Lord Lugard was a colonial administrator.

And what do we do about tourism centred on colonial nostalgia, starting with Karen Blixen? Why is Karen the suburb still on the map of Nairobi? Why is the Norfolk Hotel (among others) still proudly branding itself as a white settler hang-out, and every safari lodge and camp in the Mara selling a Blixenesque sundowner fantasy? This type of tourism generates huge sums, but at what cost? It reinforces the notion that Kenya is one big Happy Valley playground, a safari-suited hyper-real theme park (see Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation) where racy white mischief can still be had, at a price. I’ve even seen Japanese tourists in pith helmets at Elsamere, Lake Naivasha, who had no idea how uncool they looked. If I find all this embarrassing, how do Kenyans feel?

Maybe it’s time for a national conversation – led by citizens, not government – on what Kenyans would like to see changed or removed. If the conversation is anything like the one convulsing Britain right now, be prepared for a huge row. A very healthy one.

I concur with those who see this as an unmissable opportunity to re-educate global citizens about the past. The destruction or removal of monuments from sight is not the answer; they should be moved to a dedicated museum, with educational materials (textual and audio-visual) providing deeper context. Use them for debate, alongside alternative narratives. Fill the monument landscape (if you must) with new figures who more accurately reflect your diverse societies and the best of your ideals. Then bin the current school history curriculum, and replace it with something fit for purpose in the post-post-colonial twenty-first century.

Postscript

Latest news from Bristol: a statue of the Jamaican poet, playwright and actor, Alfred Fagon, was doused with a “bleach-like substance” on the night of 12 June. It was erected in 1987, in the largely black and mixed-race area of St Pauls, on the first anniversary of his death. Fagon was the first black person to have had a statue erected in his honour in the city. One of his first plays, No Soldiers in St Pauls, explored the social tensions between the police and the black community in 1970s Bristol.

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.

COVID-19 and the Future of Democracy in Zimbabwe

By Tamuka Charles Chirimambowa

Across East Africa there is pattern of disparity in the implementation of COVID-19 control measures. While there is no single template for the implementation of the respective containment measures, Uganda and Rwanda have taken proactive actions ranging from lockdown to swift public health measures that are showing early signs of bearing positive fruit in the form of minimal community transmission.

Kenya, on the other hand, despite having employed partial and targeted measures, such as swift contact tracing exercises and cessation of movement coupled with a dusk-to-dawn curfew that initially slowed down the spread of virus, has hit a snag. There are emerging signs of setbacks and weaknesses due to increased community transmission that have been attributed to the disjointed and unrealistic nature of Kenya’s COVID-19 control measures.

Comparatively, Burundi and Tanzania opted for an open COVID-19 control strategy alongside questioning or downplaying the World Health Organization (WHO)’s COVID-19 guidelines. The “genie is still in the bottle” as to whether Burundi and Tanzania are on the right or wrong path because the available data and statistics are at best still very sketchy. Their only comparison for now could be Sweden and Brazil who have also opted to follow a more open strategy unlike other European and Latin American states, respectively.

Sweden went for jugular by placing emphasis on personal responsibility, which Kenyan government officials tried to sell with noticeable setbacks. In their open COVID-19 strategy, only basic WHO COVID-19 health guidelines were enforced but the lockdown did not affect businesses, which remained open.

The approaches of Burundi and Tanzania can be classified as COVID-19 denialist or comparable to the poetic phrase “dancing with death”. WHO and critics of these two countries argue that the path taken by Burundi and Tanzania puts their citizens’ and their neighbours’ lives at an alarming risk. In their desired strategy, Burundi has ended up prioritising a tense general election and Tanzania has prioritised the economy amid a global pandemic.

Initial reports reveal that states like Rwanda and Uganda that implemented nationwide lockdowns are now reaping decreasing rates of new infections “significantly from 67% rise in the first week after the lockdown to a 27% rise in the second week”. In countries that employed “partial and targeted lockdown along with effective public health measurers”, initial reports indicate that they have been “more effective at slowing down the virus”.

Across East Africa, based on available COVID-19 data, Uganda too is categorised in the second option with credit going to her near-perfect public health measurers. If the ability to slow down the rate of communal infection within a country is a measure of success in slowing down the spread of coronavirus, then Uganda and Rwanda are worthy of reaping the benefits of lockdown measures. Although it’s early to argue confidently, but going by data available after two to three months of seeking to contain COVID-19, they have within that time recorded limited cases of communal infection.

A study in the US (yet to be peer reviewed) seeking to understand how delayed enforcement of COVID-19 measures might have been a factor in the surge and spike in the cases discloses “changes of disease transmission rates in US counties from March 15 to May 3, 2020”, It shows “a significant reduction of the basic reproductive numbers in major metropolitan areas in association with social distancing and other control measures”. Further, counterfactual simulations indicate that had the required COVID-19 measures been “implemented just 1-2 weeks earlier, a substantial number of cases and deaths could have been averted”. The study underscores the “importance of early intervention and aggressive response in controlling” the coronavirus pandemic. The study indicates that Uganda and Rwanda’s early and swift intervention resulted in a desirable curve compared to the rest of the region.

In the case of Kenya, there was a delay in enforcing enhanced COVID-19 measures (some of which were disjointed), which resulted in a non-flattening curve due to a surge in cases. The difference between Uganda and Rwanda on one side, and Kenya on the other, is the onset of communal transmission that Kenya is now struggling to contain with minimal success.

In the case of Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, many argue that their limited foreign interactions or exposure, unlike Tanzania and Kenya, does explain at some level their slow rate of communal infections. Others point to the aspect that lockdown measures did enable Rwanda and Uganda to curtail the infection beyond certain localities where COVID-19 was first reported.

Science-based strategy

Uganda has adopted a science-based containment strategy driven by past experience of battling other pandemics. In reality, Uganda has been in disease outbreak mode since 2018, and according to WHO, with success stories in tackling Ebola, yellow fever, measles and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.

In short, Uganda didn’t wait for the first confirmed case to spring into action; the country drew on past experiences in battling previous outbreaks like Ebola and yellow fever. When the first case was confirmed, WHO credits Uganda for moving first with “placing a lot of emphasis on risk communication and community engagement to promote good health practices among members of the public”. Uganda knew well that without public understanding and ownership of the process, setback and reversals would keep mounting.

In the case of Kenya, there was a delay in enforcing enhanced COVID-19 measures (some of which were disjointed), which resulted in a non-flattening curve due to a surge in cases.

In contrast, Tanzania has within the same time criminalised COVID-19 discussion across media platforms, especially on social media. In Kenya’s case, the norm has been to lecture and dictate to the public about the dangers of the pandemic.

Before lifting the lockdown measures, Uganda, like Rwanda, opted for the science-driven route of informing the masses of the planned next phase. The government engaged 200 survey teams to conduct a rapid assessment exercise to establish the prevalence of COVID-19 among communities – a move based on derived data that sought to know it if it was right to relax some of the measures.

The Rwandan Health Ministry opted to “trust the process”. Rwanda’s decision to partially lift the lockdown was reached after a countrywide health survey across 30 per cent of health facilities in the country. Among the survey samples were 4,500 employees who had continued to work during the lockdown and others who had over time shown COVID-19-like symptoms. The survey, according to Rwanda’s Minister of Health, revealed either minimal or zero communal transmission. Therefore, it seemed wise to partially lift the lockdown.

In Kenya, the disjointed COVID-19 control measures have not been informed by any publicly known survey or large-scale mass testing. In sharp contrast, Rwanda directed hospitality businesses to keep contact details of all their customers should there be a need to trace them in case of any COVID-19 infection or exposure. Rwanda has a comprehensive COVID-19 approach that shows that political will does count when it comes to enforcing measures.

Uganda and Rwanda’s swift action in containing the spread of coronavirus has drawn attention to the remarkable gains registered by authoritarian and autocratic regimes. Some argue that the citizens of Rwanda and Uganda have little or no room to defy government-enforced directives as the price of defiance is substantially high.

In contrast, Kenya’s evolution of COVID-19 control measures into the province of “law and order” rather than public health resulted in public apathy, and in some instances, open defiance. Police brutality against civilians during the curfew hours (which has resulted in the death of at least 15 people) further broke the trust between the people and the government.

Kenya’s COVID-19 strategy, which has borrowed heavily from “partial and targeted” lockdown strategies, hasn’t shown the desired success. A plausible explanation could be the disjointed nature of public health measures despite successful contact tracing. The reversals emerging in Kenya also have more to do with the pushback from the population that has felt belittled or somehow lectured upon to adhere to the measures.

Kenya’s inexperience in handling pandemics points to the challenges of its political leadership and its failure to prioritise the well-being of citizens. While the Kenyan public has been castigated for its “lack of discipline”, the shaky roll-out of health measures puts into doubt the commitment of the leadership to contain the crisis.

Tanzania and Burundi have followed the “open strategy” similar to that of Sweden and Brazil. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Tanzanian President John Magufuli has cut a resolute posture of a COVID-19 denialist. Tanzania has placed a ban on reporting on or updating COVID-19 cases in Tanzania; the last COVID-19 update was on April 29 and by then fatalities stood at 21 people.

In comparison, Sweden, which has employed “open strategy” or “softer lockdown” of keeping schools, restaurant and business open, has produced one of the “world’s highest death rates, relative to population.” However, the Swedish government has declined to change strategy. COVID-19 fatalities stood at “6.25% per million inhabitants per day in a rolling seven-day average between May 12 and May 19” and slightly below global COVID-19 fatalities that stood at 6.6%. Sweden emerges as the “highest in Europe and just above the United Kingdom which had 5.57% death per million” (Reuters, 19 May 2020).

In contrast, Kenya’s evolution of COVID-19 control measures into the province of “law and order” rather than public health resulted in public apathy, and in some instances, open defiance. Police brutality against civilians during the curfew hours further broke the trust between the people and the government.

According to Kenya’s Health Minister, Mutahi Kagwe, Kenya’s fatality rate by mid-May stood at 5.6%, just below global fatality rate of 6.6% by a single percentage point, but still the highest in East Africa. (Health Ministry Press Briefing, 20 May 2020)

Despite Sweden’s open strategy, “only 7.3% of people in Stockholm had developed the antibodies needed to fight the disease by late April”, which is below the “70-80% needed to create ‘herd immunity’ in a population”, implying that Sweden, Tanzania, Brazil and Burundi’s open strategy will continue to hurt for some time.

A question that can’t be answered for now is if the open strategy will hurt more or less when compared with other nations that opted for lockdowns or targeted measures. By the end of May, Brazil, which had also opted for a sort of open strategy, “became the second country with highest COVID-19 infections behind USA”. The perils of high-handed leadership

While there are a couple of factors fueling the surge and spike in COVID-19, one unmistakable commonality among the countries with the highest infections is that their “high-handed leaders have downplayed the severity of the crisis and embraced outlandish conspiracy theories, ensuring that outbreak is worse than it should have been”. In some countries, it is also difficult to get access to accurate and reliable data, so it is hard to ascertain if cases are rising or not. Therefore, in countries like Tanzania and Burundi, it has become difficult to assess whether fatality and infection rates are above or below the global average.

Shockingly, President Magufuli, a former chemistry and mathematics teacher, has emerged as an outright advocate for alternative approaches to the pandemic. He has told all and sundry that Tanzania will not be “ruled” by COVID-19 global politics and that the economy is “more important than the threat posed by coronavirus” (The Guardian, 19 May 2020). And he has thus resisted shutting down the economy and has gone ahead with permitting the tourism industry and schools to reopen with minimal COVID-19 prevention measures. WHO and critics of President Magufuli have suggested that his perceived COVID-19 denialism or delayed response might have exacerbated the spread of the coronavirus in Tanzania.

Burundi faces uncertain times ahead. It still remains in the COVID-19 denialist club. The leadership has disregarded any UN agency’s or foreign institution’s COVID-19 concerns. Since the confirmation of COVID-19 cases in the country, the Burundian government advised the population to observe strict hygiene procedures. Yet throughout the campaigning period, none of these directives were adhered to, with even Burundi’s key government leaders calling on the masses during the election campaign not to fear COVID-19.

The late President Pierre Nkurunziza bragged that Burundi was the only country where public and religious gatherings were still happening and that God would protect Burundians. In reality, Burundi has one of the worst political climates in Africa, and within this context, the population faces serious repercussions if they publicly acknowledge suspected COVID-19 infections or deaths.

Amid COVID-19 concerns, Burundi went ahead with general electoral process including campaigning with minimal observance of social distancing, notwithstanding the risk of te spread of coronavirus. In essence, reminiscent of previous elections in Burundi, the months leading up to the vote were marked by violence among political groups competing for power.

It was during the tense general election that a WHO representative and three WHO experts coordinating COVID-19 responses were expelled from the country (Al Jazeera, 14 May 2020). And they were only a few among a long list of expelled experts that included representatives of the UN Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

While Tanzania has given priority to economic concerns over COVID-19 threats, Burundi has sacrificed COVID-19 threats at the altar of a tense political transition. Although Pierre Nkurunziza officially died of “cardiac arrest”, there are those who suspect his death to be due to COVID-19. The coronavirus pandemic arrived in Burundi to find the leadership in government and the participating opposition completely entrenched in survival mode and showing little regard for the welfare of the majority of Burundians. Prior to the 2015 coup attempt, Burundi had a vibrant civil society that had mobilised some of the most vocal mass pro-democracy protests in May 2015. All these civil society organisations and the independent media have since been scuttled and most of their professionals have gone into exile.

Therefore, to expect the COVID-19 pandemic to scare or move the will of Burundi’s leadership is to expect too much. This leadership has midwifed the final phase of a five-year violent political transition that has counted at least 1,700 among the dead and another 400,000 as refugees (Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 24 September, 2019). All that many can hope for is that by the time the election campaigns were kicking off, communal transmission had not set in. Any communal transmission that might have happened then might have been accelerated by the campaigning and voting process that observed no social distancing.

At the moment, Burundi’s transitional and subsequent new government priority will be to settle in after a tense and unpredictable political transition that was preceded by five years of the politics of violence and intimidation.

With the COVID-19 pandemic not showing any signs of relenting anytime soon, pressure is mounting from populations on the governments of East Africa to ease or revise COVID-19 measures. In reality, all the East African states face socio-economic challenges that make efficient containment of their populations difficult to enforce (International Center for Not-For Profit Law, 21 May 2020).

The need for political survival is driving some East African leaders to act with precision, while others exhibit a hands-off approach that points to a contemptuous attitude towards their populations. Some believe that downplaying the COVID-19 threat will vindicate them. In Uganda and Rwanda, the fear of an authoritarian state is driving compliance, while in Kenya and Tanzania, the broken social contract between the people and their government is undermining the process.

In essence, the litmus test brought by COVID-19 is how far the respective East African leaders will go to protect their people. The genie is still in the bottle.

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 Tamuka Charles Chirimambowa

On the night of April 9, 1906, a small congregation led by William J. Seymour, a black preacher, was meeting at a home on Bonnie Brae Street in Los Angeles, California. The group was three days into a ten-day fast, praying and waiting on God. Suddenly, “as though hit by a bolt of lightning, they were knocked from their chairs to the floor” and they began to speak in tongues and shout out loud praising God.

In the next few days, news of the event spread throughout the neighbourhood, and Seymour began to look for an alternative venue to accommodate his growing congregation. At one point, the front porch of the house collapsed under the weight of the swelling crowd. They found a place at 312 Azusa Street, a ramshackle building that had most recently served as a stable for horses with rooms upstairs for rent.

It was in this building on Azusa Street that the modern Pentecostal movement can trace its origins. People from all over the United States and beyond came to experience the “outpouring of the Holy Spirit”, and from the outset the Azusa Street movement was remarkable for attracting a diverse group of followers – black, white, Asian, people of all ages, income and class backgrounds.

Consider that this was happening in 1906 in “Jim Crow” America, just a decade after the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision that entrenched racial segregation as law in the US. The racial intermingling was a scandal, to some extent even more than the “Weird Babel of Tongues”, as a front-page headline from the Los Angeles Times described it. The paper continued: “Colored people and a sprinkling of whites compose the congregation, and night is made hideous in the neighborhood by the howlings of the worshippers, who spend hours swaying forth and back in a nerve racking (sic) attitude of prayer and supplication.”

Seymour’s mentor, Charles Parham (who was white), broke with his erstwhile disciple and was sharp in his criticism: “Men and women, white and black, knelt together or fell across one another; a white woman, perhaps of wealth and culture, could be seen thrown back in the arms of a big ‘buck n-gger,’ and held tightly thus as she shivered and shook in freak imitation of Pentecost. Horrible, awful shame!”

A few years earlier, Seymour had attended Parham’s bible school, which at the time violated Texas Jim Crow laws – Seymour had to take a seat just outside the classroom door. Later Parham and Seymour preached on street corners together, but Parham only allowed Seymour to preach to black people.

Seymour himself endorsed speaking in tongues as a sign of the Holy Spirit, but with time came to believe that although tongues-speech was the initial evidence, it was not the absolute evidence. He saw that some white people could speak in tongues and continue to treat people of colour as inferior to them. For Seymour, Holy Spirit tongues-speech had to be accompanied with a breaking down of racial barriers and a reordering of society – it had to be, as Ashon Crawley writes, a posture of protest: “It would have to be a practice that is not merely a style, but also a political practice.”

This stance was not unique to Seymour. Contrary to what today’s Pentecostalism may suggest, early Pentecostals – especially those who stayed close to Seymour’s position – rejected war, militarism, patriotic indoctrination, wage slavery and racism, believing that the love of Jesus had to supersede the love for nation-state, money, social class and yes, whiteness. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 (which came just eight years after the revival on Azusa Street) would put their convictions to the test. They opposed the war and refused to be drafted into the US military, arguing against it as conscientious objectors.

They were vilified for this, and called “traitors, slackers, cranks and weak-minded people for extending Jesus’ love beyond racial, ethnic and national boundaries”, as the seminal work, Early Pentecostals on Nonviolence and Social Justice, an edited collection of writings by those early leaders including Seymour himself, outlines.

Pentecostalism is mainstream now, so if you are thinking of a group that is radically committed to social justice and the breaking down of racial hierarchies and capitalistic exploitation, Pentecostals wouldn’t be the first folks who come to mind. But that obscuring of Pentecostalism’s early, radical history has made us all the poorer for it, and has resulted in reaching for prayer, speaking in tongues and public piety as the default, go-to reaction in the face of crisis. To be sure, early Pentecostals did pray, shout, jump, speak in unknown tongues and get slain in the Spirit. But they did more – their Spirit baptism had real-world, political consequences.

Seymour’s breaking ranks with his mentor Parham in some contexts is attributed to a difference in doctrine – Parham believed that tongues were real, translatable human languages, whose purpose was to empower missionaries to travel around the world converting non-believers to Christianity. Seymour believed that this could be the purpose of tongues, but that tongues could also be a “divine language”, perhaps the language of angels that could not be understood by human ears.

Is it any wonder then that as a white man Parham’s understanding of tongues was embedded in a missionary-driven, evangelistic and imperial project, but Seymour – who as a black man could not even sit inside the very Bible school classroom teaching the concept of tongues – was convinced that the Holy Spirit had to bring a broader, more elevated freedom-speech that had the power to tear down the immediate racial restrictions in his own life?

In our context here in Africa, spirit-empowered movements were not necessarily a direct outgrowth of the Azusa Street revival. Some were, such as the Assemblies of God, Apostolic Church and Church of God in Christ, established by American Pentecostal denominations. But others either arose independently, and became known as African-initiated/ independent churches, or emerged out of Western mission churches as a revivalist streak within mainline denominations – Anglican, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Mennonite and so on. In later years another category emerged, that is the neo-Pentecostals, which became most associated with Pentecostalism as most of us know it today – the urban-centred, upbeat prosperity gospel churches.

“Good people” in positions of power

My own experience with Pentecostal and evangelical churches while growing up in middle-class Nairobi was one of not necessarily avoiding direct engagement with the political, but instead implicitly ascribing one of two theories of political change, if not both simultaneously.

The first theory assumed that concerns regarding social justice would resolve themselves spontaneously if the general population received the redemptive message of Christ and became Born-Again and Spirit-filled. It was a matter of simple arithmetic – individual salvation would eventually translate into societal transformation, one soul at a time.

This strategy may appear, at first glance, to be disengagement with the public sphere and with politics. However, as Damaris Parsitau’s research has demonstrated, African Pentecostals do not regard prayer, fasting and evangelism to be apolitical. Not at all. In fact, they are intensely political, a strategy that spiritually “takes the nation for Christ” through crusades, tent revivals, healing and deliverance services, conferences and symposia, fellowships, ladies’ meetings, men’s meetings, prayer fellowships and night vigils, and expects that this will eventually have real-world, political consequences.

The second theory of change is more targeted, and in some ways, more elitist. It is the idea that Christians can “infiltrate” and influence structures of power for good. In practice this means working to ascend to positions of influence in order to harness that power towards a “godly” agenda. This second strategy has become more refined in the neoliberal era, one that is ostensibly meritocratic, a “marketplace of ideas” where the best ideas and the most qualified people would rise to the top.

The mission was to ensure that these people, apart from being technically qualified for the job, would also be Born-Again, Bible-knowing, Spirit-filled and so “ambassadors” for Christ. It would also mean pastors and other religious leaders ascending to unofficial but incredibly influential positions as advisors to presidents and politicians, for example through organising “National Prayer Breakfasts” in Africa and elsewhere, which are usually attended top government officials.

Ebenezer Obadare’s Pentecostal Republic outlines how this latter strategy has played out to great effect in Nigeria since the country’s return to civilian rule in 1999. Obadare’s book makes a categorical assertion – that the Nigerian democratic process over the past two decades is ultimately inexplicable without the emergent power of Pentecostalism, “whether as manifested in the rising political influence of Pentecostal pastors, or in a commensurate popular tendency to view socio- political problems in spiritual terms”.

The problem with both of these political strategies, when we really think about it, is that both work with the general assumption that the fundamental political structures of society are either inconsequential to public welfare, or if they are, they are in the main, sound and just. They assume that all we need to fix racism, capitalistic exploitation, social decay, violence and neo-colonialism is first, a change of heart, and second, “good people” ascending to positions of power and influence. The system is mostly sound, the idea goes – all that is needed to fix it is “leadership”. However, these notions do nothing to radically challenge the status quo; rather they reify and stabilise it.

Slave patrols and modern-day policing

However, in the past few weeks, especially in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in the US, we have seen the limits of those arguments. Take the problem of police violence, for example. It is not a result of “a few bad apples”. Abuse, harassment, misconduct and brutality are not rare or aberrations; they are structural and part of everyday policing.

Policing in the African colony was always and inherently designed to protect the property of the elite – at first, European property and people, and later, the property of their African comprador successors. The African poor were viewed as a problem to be contained. The enforcement of minor offences designed to restrict African movement and corral them into working for European farms and industries took up most of the colony police’s time and resources. Even to this day, the first question that a Kenyan police officer is likely to ask you upon contact is for your ID card – a hangover from colonial vagrancy laws that still exist, which render the African as an “illegal” presence in the colony unless the African’s existence is justified – that is, if his/her labour benefits the colonial state.

In the US, policing in the South started as slave patrols, first to capture runaway slaves and return them to their masters, and second to provide a form of organised terror that would deter enslaved people from revolting. Later, the police’s major job was to enforce the black codes of the Jim Crow South to control the lives and movements of black people. In the early 20th century in cities in the North, municipal police were primarily involved in suppressing and breaking up the labour strikes of the day.

In such a context, where impunity, classism and racism is the structure, the scaffolding and the raison d’être of the police force, how can one honestly say that you can “influence” it for good? Even the Jesus in the gospels did not move to Rome to “influence” Caesar; his life and ministry were instead in Judea, among peasants and fishermen.

Furthermore, oppressive regimes are sustained not by brute force alone, but also by a coterie of enablers who mistakenly believe that they can “change the system from the inside” but really only end up legitimising the regime. Using the context of Zimbabwe and the ruling party Zanu-PF, Alex T. Magaisa, in this article, expertly peels the layers off this fantasy that is frequently held sincerely by well-meaning and competent people, but which only ends up normalising the abnormal, and so becomes invaluable in giving a sheen of legitimacy to a thoroughly oppressive regime.

Magaisa’s searing analysis can apply to any illegitimate or repressive system in any country. “They may start from the periphery wearing the label of ‘technocrats’ but soon enough, they will find themselves deep in the cesspool, wearing scarfs and chanting ridiculous slogans…,” he writes. Cocktail parties and prayer breakfast meetings are not just about hobnobbing with the high and mighty; they also give the impression that everything is normal, which is something oppressive regimes desperately need. But as we say on social media, it always ends in premium tears.

In Obadare’s analysis, although Pentecostalism has indeed influenced the struggle for state power in Nigeria, it has had little effect on the state itself, “whether in terms of its governing philosophy or animating spirit”. In fact, Pentecostalism in Nigeria is a force focused on appropriating state power, and even demobilising civil society. Parsitau echoes this view. Her research highlights that in the Kenyan context, Pentecostal and Charismatic theology abstracts social evil into spiritual terms – attributing problems such as inequality, poverty and crime as the work of the devil, demons and other malevolent spiritual agents.

New sight, new tongues and a new wind

In my view, using simplified language like this is not necessarily a bad thing. Structural evil is sometimes so insidious and its effects so thorough that if you don’t have access to terms like “neoliberalism”, “the prison-industrial complex” or “exploitative capitalism”, the only way you can sincerely describe the devastation around you is to ascribe it to the devil.

It is actually demonic that the world’s richest 1 per cent have more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people, or that the 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa. How else can you describe our violent world where anti-blackness is global, where black lives are disposable, where women’s lives are the most precarious? How can you reckon with a planet that seems to be hurtling towards self-destruction? How can one exist in a world like that and remain sane?

Facing the truth – that fellow humans are, in fact, responsible for this state of affairs – is sometimes too much to contemplate. It would drive one to commit retributive mass murder, or resort to suicide. James Baldwin puts it thus: “To be a Negro in this country [the USA] and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” (We could say the same about being black anywhere in the world.)

Escapist though it may be, attributing such evil to the devil is, in some ways, a way of preserving one’s sense of humanity. Since I am human, surely those who commit such evil must be animated by a malevolent force, otherwise, how could we both be human?

But because Pentecost Sunday was recently held on 31 May, I want to argue, like Rev William J. Barber does, for a new Pentecost – and for revisiting the passions of early Pentecostal leaders and examine Pentecostalism in fresh ways. The account of the day of Pentecost in the New Testament, Acts 2, outlines a dramatic moment when Jesus’s followers spoke in new and unknown tongues, and were given new sight and power as a wind shook the building they were in. My dear friend Curtis Reed once told me that many Christians are exhausted by trying to identify and resist domination and intimidation because it is frequently housed in Christian language (like Deputy President William Ruto saying he’s “investing in heaven” when dishing out large sums of money to churches).

If we are to find that again in this moment, we need new sight (to clearly see the structures of domination) new tongues (language to describe what we are seeing) and a new wind (if whiteness is invisible and powerful like air, then Pentecost in 2020 would mean new energy and drive to confront these entrenched systems, just as we’ve seen a wind of consciousness drive a whole generation to the streets in Minneapolis, Atlanta, New York, London, and further still).

The first thing the believers did after receiving the Spirit at the end of Acts 2 was to sell their possessions and share according to each one’s need, going against the logic and normative framework of Empire. (Empire is about extraction, accumulation, excess and wastage, as the early Jesus followers must have experienced intimately as oppressed subjects of the Roman Empire.)

We must remember that the modern Pentecostal movement was led by a black preacher who saw that any claim of Holy Spirit baptism must have anti-racist and anti-imperialist real-world political consequences. This must lead us to move against patriotic indoctrination, militarism, and capitalistic excess. The love of Jesus and the power of the Spirit cannot be an abstraction, and cannot be limited to individual rehabilitation, but must extend into a practice of justice and equity for all people. It must be, as Seymour discovered, a posture of protest.

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.