The Sinicization of Christianity: How China Is Responding to Religious Threats

By Dauti Kahura

It is around 4.00 pm on an easy, quiet Sunday. At the Kingdom Hall in the upscale suburb of Kilimani, off Elgeyo Marakwet Road, a church service begins with a song. Kingdom Hall is where the Christian denomination of the Jehovah Witness (JW) meets to praise and worship God. In fact, unlike many other Christian denominations, they call their church service a Christian meeting.

After the song, the congregants will pray and then follow the prayer with a 30-minute Bible lecture. The lecture could be on any of the ethical and moral scriptural teachings, as captured in one of the more famous JW’s teaching tracts, Watch Tower. The other is Awake magazine. While, Watch Tower deals with biblical teaching, Awake tends to concentrate on contemporary issues. These two pocket- size, simple and well-written, and available in many of the world’s languages, including African languages, have been the selling point of JW’s proselytising mission wherever they are stationed.

The Bible lecture is followed by a one-hour discussion on the selected theme of the late afternoon. The discursive session closes with a song and then a prayer, just like it had begun. Unlike many of JW’s meeting across the country, this is a special meeting: the Bible, the prayers, songs, the Awake and Watch Tower tracts are all in Mandarin. And that’s because the worshippers are Chinese expatriates and migrants living in Nairobi. “The Jehovah Witness believe in spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to all people, in their languages and without discrimination,” says one of the Chinese converts, who didn’t want to be named. Even though they are thousands of kilometres away from mainland China, the Chinese, wherever they are, are wary of the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s surveillance on Chinese citizens abroad. “Especially when they are engaging in activities considered anathema to CPC’s national interests – like participating in religious activities.”

This particular meeting comprises Chinese entrepreneurs and high society Chinese men and women living in Nairobi. The congregation number between 50 and 60 worshippers. They are joined by a smattering of Kenyan JWs who speak and understand Mandarin. “In its mission to spread its creed to all the peoples of this world, Jehovah Witness in Kenya grabbed the chance to evangelise to the discerning Chinese foreigners in the country,” said a Kenyan JW adherent, who speaks fluent Mandarin and attends the church meeting.

The Kenyan, who also sought anonymity, told me that the Jehovah Witness has one of the most robust websites of any religious organisations in the world. “We have Bible teachings, general information, messages and notices, practically in all the major languages of the world.”

The Jehovah Witness is a good place to commune and worship because it offers a convivial experience of oneness, there’s spirit of brotherhood and there isn’t any racial discrimination,” said one of the Chinese Jehovah Witness.

Ge Yuchen, in his article, “Chinese Migrants in Kenya: Why Do They Seek Religion?” quotes a Chinese dentist who says, “Jehovah Witness is not only a church that forsakes all kinds of racial prejudices, but also an ideal place for interacting with the local people. It is an excellent place for social communication.”

Yet,it has not always been easy for the Jehovah Witness to reach out to some of these Chinese expatriates. “The Chinese living in Kenya are segmented: there are those that come through government agencies such as the China Global Television Network (CGTN), a public broadcasting station that used to be China Central Television (CCTV), Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, road construction workers, and those who migrant on their own in search of freedom (subjective as it may sound) and business opportunities,” said the Kenyan JW, who speaks Mandarin and lived in China in the early years of this century.

He said he learned this when visiting a Chinese friend who works for a huge construction firm and who he got interested in an Awake magazine. “We Jehovah Witnesses are called to spread the ‘good news’ to all the people, wherever we meet them, more so, to people who may have not heard about Jesus Christ. That’s why we carry these tracts wherever we go.” But as soon as he was done seeing his friend, the supervisor approached and told him never to discuss religious matters with any of the Chinese workers.

“Chinese working for the government cannot be seen in or go anywhere near a church sanctuary or a religious gathering – Big Brother CPC is ever alert to Chinese flouting its rules and the punishment can be dire once you’re recalled or when back for home holidays” The Chinese migrants in Kenya not only attend the JW meetings, they also attend other churches, mostly evangelical/Pentecostal churches, while a few are to be found in the mainstream churches such as the Catholic and Protestant churches. However, no Chinese person living in Kenya wants to discuss his or her religious beliefs, especially to a non-Chinese stranger. So, although Wang Wei (not his real name) has lived in Kenya since the turn of the century, and converted to Catholicism, and is today a parish member of a well-known Catholic parish, he pleaded that I should not expose him.

“For some of the tens of thousands of Chinese businessmen and entrepreneurs who are working in Kenya, following religious creeds helps to establish good codes of conduct in their business operations. Those who convert to Christianity are often able to receive positive recognition from the public. The way that they look at their situation and surroundings is also often altered for the better.

“By deliberately guiding us the exploration of life pursuit, the Bible is just like a beacon which gives us light and illuminates the dark roads forward,’ said Mr. F, a middle-aged merchant who trades in shoes in coastal Mombasa,” writes Yuchen. He continues:

“Perhaps most significantly, believing in a religion seems to allow foreign residents in Kenya to integrate into the local community more easily. In particular, believing in Christianity helps Chinese residents understand the local culture and lifestyle. In contrast, according to Mr. D., as a result of a reluctance of learning and understanding the local people’s lifestyles, many Chinese residents have failed to assimilate into the local social environment of Kenya. When I spoke with a few Chinese employees at a company on Nairobi’s Mombasa Road, they described how they seldom have any opportunities to interact with locals.”

Conversion as a means of assimilation

In his article “How Africa is Converting China”, Christopher Rhodes, a Boston University don who has been studying Chinese migrants in Eastern Africa and their affinity to Christianity, observes, “Many Chinese who have gone abroad, especially Africa, have met alien cultures and traditions – leaving them feeling alone and foreign.”

For many of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese who live and work in Africa, life is often not easy. Low pay, long hours and extended assignments in unfamiliar cultures often lead to feelings of isolation and disillusionment, says journalist Eric Olander. “Connections with friends and family back home, largely using WeChat, are often difficult to maintain over extended periods of time, which prompts some to look for comfort closer to home. And in places like East Africa, some of these disaffected workers are finding their way into the evangelical Christian community that is so pervasive in that part of the continent. Seeing the opportunity to grow their parishes, church leaders are readily embracing this new population with services in Mandarin and other Chinese dialects.”

But after they return to China, notes Olander, they become a potential problem for the Chinese Communist Party, which imposes strict regulations on religion and bans any unapproved religious activity.

Therefore, in an interesting twist of fate, these Chinese have found religious solace in the evangelical Christianity of the Pentecostal persuasion that has been spreading so fast in sub-Saharan Africa, like the devastating bush fires wreaking havoc in New South Wales, Australia. Spurred on by an expansionist ambition and appetite to attract new converts to swell their numbers, these churches have stumbled upon a ready fishing ground of a people in search of fellowship and meaning.

For these churches, winning the souls of the Chinese is a big project, especially seen in the wider context of the fact that many of the evangelical churches in Kenya and Africa are proxies of mother churches in the US. Hence, bankrolled by those organisations to carry their global agenda, part of which is to spread the American version of Christianity through evangelical Christianity. Similarly, for the migrant Chinese, attending a church service freely and openly, unhinged and uninhibited, is a liberating experience of religious expression and belief in a supra-natural deity other than the CPC. In mainland China, this is practically impossible.

Christianity in China

“Religious freedom in China has really reached to the worst level that has not been seen since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution by Chairman Mao (Zedong) in the 1960s,” writes Samuel Smith, a journalist with the Christian Post. He points out that the Chinese government is supervising a five- year plan to make Christianity more compatible with socialism. There will be a “rewrite” of the Bible. According to a prominent religious freedom activist, the Rev. Bob Fu, the revision of religious regulations will actively guide religion to “adapt to socialist society.”

Religious control in China today is even more severe than it was even just a few years ago, observes Rhodes. “The CPC has always been anti-religion, but after (Premier) Xi Jinping assumed Party control in 2012, China enacted a level of religious persecution not seen since Mao attempted to eliminate religion and other sources of dissent during the bloody Cultural Revolution.”

The plan proposes “cultivating and implementing the socialist core values.” One way in which they plan to “Sinicize” Christianity, Fu is quoted saying, is by “re-translating” the Old Testament and providing new commentary to the New Testament to make socialist ideals and Chinese culture seem more divine. Fu said that in order to comply with the new religious regulations, the Three Self- Patriotic Movement and the Chinese Christian Council (China’s state-sanctioned Protestant bodies), have developed a five-year plan on “promoting the Sinicization of Christianity.”

Thence, posits Rhodes, Catholics in mainland China can legally practise their faith only through the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, a government body that regulates them into a tightly managed and Communist-friendly version of Catholicism. “Under President Xi, Chinese officials have literally exploded churches, arrested entire Christian congregations, forcibly removed images of the Dalai Lama from Tibetan Buddhists’ homes, and detained up to one million Muslims from the minority Uighur ethnic group in ‘re-education’ camps.”

This notwithstanding, it has not stopped Msgr Agostino Cui Taim 69, the “controversial” Catholic bishop of Xuanhua, of being seen as a threat and treated as a rebel by CPC. Sanctioned by the Vatican, he is derided by CPC and viewed as an enemy of the state. Since 2007, he has been constantly harassed and placed under surveillance by the CPC. He was recently released temporarily to spend some time with his ageing sister on the eve of China’s Lunar New Year celebrations, which began on January 24. The celebrations were supposed to end on January 30, but they have been extended for another three days because of the sudden explosion of the coronavirus disease, which has hit the populous Wuhan province.

“In a more disturbing move, last year, the Vatican and the CCP concluded years of negotiations with a deal to merge the government-controlled Catholic organization and the underground Catholic Church in China, while allowing Beijing to maintain a substantial role in approving the appointment of new bishops. Many have viewed this deal as a win for the Chinese government, extending its oversight over all Catholics in the country,” wrote Rhodes.

He adds: “From the days of Confucius until now, Chinese governments have been consistently focused on social order, and the Chinese Communist Party is downright obsessed with maintaining stability. Between a quarter and half of the Chinese population now believes in one religious tradition or another, and the CPC fears any large group of organized and ideologically motivated citizens could challenge the Party.”

“Religion is seen as a weakening influence and an existential threat to the very existence of a new emerging Chinese order that is bent on ruling the world in the coming years,” said a Chinese national living Kenya. “China is in constant fight and struggle with the West, which it believes wants to undermine its stranglehold on world power through the influence of Christianity. On this one, China cannot and will not relent.”

He alluded to the six-month Hong Kong city demonstrations by the unrelenting Hong Kongians and the CPC’s backlash. CPC views these demonstrations, not as a demand for more democratic freedom and space, but as one of the West’s strategies of sneaking in religion into Chinese culture, hence weakening its power. Because of the Hong Kong riots, CPC has tightened its already strict controls for Chinese Christians going to Hong Kong for retreats and seminars.

Although it clear the churches are not in control and are not the originators of the unending strikes, CPC believes the churches have surreptitiously been lending support to the strikers. “From criticizing the Chinese Communist Party and supporting underground churches both before and after the handover, to calling upon the population to defy repressive Chinese-proposed laws in the early years of the ‘one country, two systems’ era, the churches of Hong Kong have actively mobilised opposition to Beijing and created an atmosphere of defiance against the CPC,” said Rhodes. “And so, the current round of protests in Hong Kong reflect the larger ongoing battle between the CPC and the church. So far, the protesters have stuck to singing the eponymous chorus of ‘Sing Hallelujah to the Lord.’”

Currently celebrating their Lunar New Year, whose celebrations commenced last weekend (many of the road construction workers in Kenya are back in China for the fete), CPC is also luxuriating in the fact that it is living in the “New Era”, an epoch of the emergence of Chinese global power. In this New Era, China is definitely reclaiming its past glory and influence from centuries of exploitation and humiliation from the West and is viewing religious infiltration as a real threat. The one area CPC will not compromise on is religion. From 1839 to 1949, China faced a “century of humiliation,” an epoch that China does not like remembering and has vowed is a thing of the past, never to recur again.

The world’s new superpower

Before Lee Kuna Yew, the indomitable Singaporean Prime Minister, died in 2015, he noted that “China under Xi Jinping is driven by an indomitable determination to reclaim past glory. The size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It’s not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.”

Today CPC believes that America is no longer a power to be frightened of; it may have a slight edge in military might for now, but CPC forecasts that by 2049, it will bridge the gap and then accelerate with speed to further widen that gap. It is also aware that it has to deal with the “little problem” of 300 million Chinese people living in poverty. Once it has sorted out those two issues, China will be ready to conquer the world. From then on, China will take its place of pride in global power play by cementing its overall dominance – economically and politically.

This year, China is supposed to achieve an urbanisation level of 60 per cent, and to become an Internet power and a moderately well-off-society. This means that its per capita income will have doubled from the 2010 figures. It also hopes it will have established its global image and refashioned its soft power. Next year, China also hopes to showcase its accomplishments at the 100th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the CPC. CPC views these goals as the “Chinese Dream” or the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.

Before Lee Kuna Yew, the indomitable Singaporean Prime Minister, died in 2015, he noted that “China under Xi Jinping is driven by an indomitable determination to reclaim past glory…It’s not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.”

Two important milestone years – 2021 and 2049 – mark China’s hegemonic project. 2021 marks the first of China’s “two centenary goals” that are pegged to the 100th anniversaries of CPC and the People’s Republic of China. At the centre of these patriotic goals is a civilizational creed that sees China as the centre of the universe. In the Chinese language, the word for China, zhong guo, means “middle kingdom.” In the lead-up to the centennial celebrations of 2049, CPC has the ambition of galvanising the great China as one unstoppable hegemonic behemoth, devoid of any external influences (read the West) and especially religion. CPC sees religion as a Trojan horse that can never be let into the kingdom.

According to Xinhua, China’s major news agency, by 2049, the centenary year of the People’s Republic of China, the ultimate goal is to build a modern democratic, socialist country that is prosperous, strong, culturally advanced and harmonious. The Chinese powers that be are nostalgic about a world where China was the dominant power and where other states looked upon it in supplication as a superior power. These states came to Beijing as vassals bearing tribute, said Lee Kuan Yew.

As CPC fends off the powerful influence of religion, particularly Christianity from the West, Xi Jinping has promised to make China great again. How? By returning China to the predominance it once enjoyed in Asia before the West interfered, and commanding the respect of other great powers in the council of the world.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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

By Dauti Kahura

The two-week break in the month of December afforded me some time to travel around the Kikuyu populated peri-urban areas bordering Nairobi in Central Kenya (also known as Uthamakistan in today’s political parlance) and in the greater Rift Valley – a segment of Kenyan society that has strong views on the succession politics of 2022.

For the very first time, the ethnic community’s elites who have dictated the pace and rhythm of the country’s politics since 1963 are at a crossroads: they do not have a horse to back. Conditioned and socialised to believe they cannot back someone outside their ethnic cocoon, they are at a loss, mainly because President Uhuru Kenyatta is serving his last term and has not pointed to anybody who could possibly succeed him. In a country where presidential campaigns begin two years before the actual election date, the uncertainty that President Uhuru has created among the Kikuyu rank and file is palpable.

This uncertainty has been exacerbated by the fact that Uhuru is viewed as the most underperforming president since independence; he is now loathed and lampooned in equal measure by his core constituency – the Kikuyu underclass and pretenders to the middle class. Why? “Because after voting for him three times – in 2013 and twice in 2017 – it is very painful to see that we the Kikuyus suffer unmitigated economic disaster, courtesy of his gross incompetence and cluelessness,” said Peterson Gakuo from Ihwagi location, Mathira constituency, Nyeri County.

“We have now come to the realization that the man was all form and no substance. We thrust the presidency onto him because he was supposedly one of us. I can tell you there was no other criterion…we were told he is our leader by the late John Njoroge Michuki. If anybody wanted to negotiate with the Kikuyu vote, he had to talk to Uhuru. And so we were stuck with a man whose only claim to any ‘political fame’ is that he has pedigree. It is the greatest mistake the Kikuyus have ever made.”

The Kikuyu rank and file, suffering from the vicissitudes of President Uhuru’s intemperate economic policies and callousness, have in recent years been showing him the middle finger. They are revolting. Like they say where I come from, “vitu kwa ground ni different.” Things on the ground are different. In Kikuyuland, the name Uhuru is slowly becoming anathema. “Please, please ndukagwetere ritwa riu haha, ndugathokie ngoro, ndakare.” Kindly avoid mentioning that name [Uhuru] here, I don’t want my mood spoilt.

The second reason why this uncertainty is driving the Kikuyus crazy and is taking on a dangerous trajectory is that “Uhuru is carelessly endangering the lives of the Kikuyus of the greater Rift Valley,” said Beth Wairimu from Zambezi trading centre along the Nairobi-Nakuru highway in Kikuyu, Kiambu County, which is some 20 kilometres from Nairobi.

“In 2013, we Kikuyus voted for both Uhuru and William Ruto as a team. There was an understanding that after Uhuru’s 10-year two terms, he would support Ruto. This is publicly acknowledged within the community. This meant the Kikuyu people would equally throw their lot behind Ruto in order to ensure the security of the Kikuyus in the Rift Valley diaspora and to honour his part of the bargain. Now to turn around and betray him is really jeopardising the safety of our people in the Rift. We owe him [Ruto] our trust.”

I shall return to this theme of betrayal, and security, survival and trust issues of a politically-jaded community later. But first, let me begin my story with a meeting that took place exactly two years ago.

Politics of betrayal

In December 2017, just about a month after Uhuru was sworn in after the controversial repeat presidential election of October 26, I sat with two Uthamaki fundamentalists, one a Nairobi city Jubilee Party politician and the other a nouveau riche city of Nairobi real estate businessman. We were at the Sagret Hotel in the Milimani area, a popular nyama choma joint. Although patronised mainly by Kikuyu old money for many years, it has in recent years been attracting a coterie of new money, mostly made in the Mwai Kibaki era between 2003 and 2013. The businessman I was meeting was one of the fellows who made his millions during that time.

The middle-aged businessman, after soaking in thufu wa thenge (he-goat’s soup), mutura (traditionally-made sausages) and ndudero (stuffed intestines), turned to me and said straight to my face: “Ni ithue twathanaga guku…Kahura ni waigwa? Uthie ukandeke uguo niguo ndaiga nii ndurika ya wa Susana.” It is we [presuming himself to be part of the Uthamaki cabal] who rule this country. Kahura have you heard? You can write that’s what I’ve said, me, a braggart and son of Susan. “Nitwarekania na Ruto…Ruto no riu? Ndagecirie tutioe uria ekire…MoU ya Raila twameikirie kioro, ona ya Ruto noguo tukumeka.” We are finished with Ruto…who is Ruto by the way? He shouldn’t for a moment think we’ve forgotten what he did [referring to the 2007/2008 post-election violence in the Rift Valley region]…we threw Raila’s MoU into the toilet…that’s what we are going to do with Ruto’s.

In December 2002, the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc), fronted by Mwai Kibaki, defeated Kanu, whose flag bearer was the neophyte Uhuru Kenyatta. Narc comprised Kibaki’s Democratic Party (DP), Charity Ngilu (today the governor of Kitui County)’s Social Democratic Party (SDP), Michael Kijana Wamalwa’s Ford Kenya and the breakaway Kanu group that was led by Raila Odinga and consisted of, among others, George Saitoti, Joseph Kamotho and William Ntimama. This Raila group morphed into the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). (Saitoti, Ntimama, Kamotho and Wamalwa are no longer with us; they all died under different circumstances and are therefore not part of any current coalition.)

In an MoU that is presumed to have been agreed upon by Raila and his LDP group and Kibaki and his DP brigade, in the event that they took power, each group would equitably share cabinet positions. More significantly, there was an understanding that once Kibaki took on the presidency, he would appoint Raila as the prime minister. The long and short of that MoU is that it was never honoured. Five years later, in 2007 (an election year), Raila cobbled up another political party, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), that took on Kibaki’s Party of National Unity (PNU), which had also ditched Narc.

Ruto: The key to peace in the Rift Valley?

The disputed presidential vote count in December 2007 led to the massacre of more than 1,000 people, and the displacement of more than 500,000 others, the majority of whom were Kikuyus from the Rift Valley. To cut a long story short, the businessman told me: “Twamurutire nyama ee kanua…eke uria ekaga aria samaki na atofoke rui, kai Ruto ariwe wena ny…e cigana?” We snatched the victory from the lion’s mouth, (basically to mean), we grabbed back power from Raila, who had won it and we told him to go jump into Lake Victoria and do his worst…we were ready to deal with him. So this Ruto, how many b….s does he have?

The duo boasted that if Ruto lives up to January 2020 to be in government or indeed even anywhere, “niukumenya ndiaruire rui Ruaka.” You’ll know I wasn’t circumcised by the Ruaka River, said the braggadocio. “We tamed this Raila man who has given us enough headaches, put him in his place…save for Ruto who entered politics just the other day. I say yet again, we govern this country, we decide among ourselves who will rule the country. The other communities must wait for us to dish out positions to them, and they must be satisfied with what we give them. It is not for nothing that our political and business elites are the most powerful in the country.”

Fast forward to January 2020 and it is the Kikuyu electorate that finds itself torn between the devil and the deep blue sea: it must choose what should “devour” it. Whatever option it takes, it will not be an easy choice because Ruto has presented the Kikuyus with the greatest dilemma. If they do not support Ruto, is there a risk that the violence of 2007/8 will be repeated? As a food seller from Banana in Kiambu County told me, “It is true, the memories of 2007 are vivid, yet were it not for Ruto, Uhuru would not be president and our people in the Rift would not be living in peace and harmony.”

I met the feisty food seller who runs a kibanda (foodshed) 150 metres from the gates of the United Nations complex and US Embassy in Gigiri in December 2019. Serving me chapati and coco beans, she confessed that it had been a most difficult year. “People don’t have as much money in their pockets as they used to do, but God is great, we are alive.” I asked her why the Kikuyus, who had willingly chosen President Uhuru, were now complaining. She said, “We don’t want to hear that name – he has really annoyed us, it is unbelievable what he has done to us and now to make it worse, he wants to impose Raila on us.”

The lady, who looked to be in her mid-40s, told me she would be voting for Ruto come 2022. “At least the man is firm, focused and resolute.” The food peddler said that deep in their hearts, Kikuyus know they owe Ruto a political debt: “We entered into a pact with the Kalenjin people, that they would help our son capture power and protect our people in the Rift. In return, we would lend our support also to their son after Uhuru’s terms ended. It would now be disingenuous for the Kikuyu people to renege on that promise…it actually would be dangerous. I have relatives in the Rift and I can tell you, they are not sitting pretty.”

“So you are alive to the post-election violence of 2007?” I asked her.

“Oh very much so.”

“How then do you explain the violent backlash from the same people you claim to have been protecting your relatives?”

“We forgave Ruto,” the lady said to me. “As Christians, we are called to forgive our transgressors…but we’ll never forget, no, we cannot forget. It was very painful. But remember also, Ruto was working under the command of Raila. He takes the bigger blame. Raila is very wicked, absolutely wicked – he will never be king in this country. Look now at what he has done after realising he cannot win through the front door. He has gone ahead to confuse Uhuru so that he can capture power through the back door.”

The woman claimed that Uhuru is a victim of Raila’s charms, machinations and political whims. I asked her what she meant. “Can’t you see how he crafted the handshake – Raila is the architect of the handshake and BBI and Uhuru fell for the ploy. “Uhuru ni kirimu gitu.” Uhuru is our stupid son. President Uhuru has thoroughly let down the community…“No ona kuri uguo, mwana muciare ndateagwo.” You do not throw away a baby you have given birth to. Even though President Uhuru has wasted the aspirations of the Kikuyu people, he still remains painfully one of our own.

Raila: The central hate figure

I learnt that the Kikuyu people were back to stereotyping Raila, and by extension, the Luo community: the insults and innuendoes have been revived. “We will never let the country be ruled by an uncircumcised man. Let me ask you, why is Raila so eager to rule Kenya? The day the Luos take power in this country we’re finished, so that will never happen. That’s why we’ll reject anything to do with Raila and Uhuru together…so take it from me, we’ll shoot down that BBI of theirs.”

Once again, Raila is the central hate figure of the Kikuyu people. “It is this handshake that worsened our economic plight,” said a straight-faced Peter Macharia, a businessman who runs a tours and travel company. “Raila should have stayed in the opposition because he is best at checking the government, but not as a president, because anyway, he’ll never be.” According to Macharia, Raila was born to dabble in opposition politics and not the politics of leading the country as its head of state.

“Uhuru, during the presidential campaigns, reminded us – for the umpteenth time – that Raila was uncircumcised, and was therefore a boy and that national leadership was not for boys. Now we see them holding hands. Did Uhuru circumcise Raila?” asked a woman from Kagio Market, in Kirinyaga County. “Uhuru should stop joking with us; if he has circumcised him, he should come back here and tell us so.”

A lady pastor who runs an evangelical church in Githurai, Nairobi County, said that she would vote for Ruto. “There’s a way he connects with the people of God. The good Lord could be using him to pass a special message to us Kikuyus. I don’t trust Raila – why does he exhibit an unbridled thirst for power? I’ve always doubted whether he’s Godly.

“Have you ever heard of the dog whistle theory?” asked a mzee from Kiambu. The Kikuyu people had been conditioned to be wary of Raila’s movements, utterances and whatever else he did, the old man said. “When Raila opens his mouth to speak, they automatically interpret their own things, totally different from what other communities have heard him say. Lazima tupambane na hii ufisadi vilivyo. (We must slay the dragon of corruption relentlessly.) The Kikuyu interpret the statement to mean: We must deal with these Kikuyus firmly wherever they are.” The mzee said right now to sell Raila and anything associated with him in central Kenya is like pounding water in a mortar with a pestle.

“Kikuyus are waiting for Uhuru to tell them this is the direction we the Kikuyu community will be taking,” said the old man. “If he says we’re going west, they will take the opposite direction. That’s what they plan to do because they want to teach him a lesson by acting contrary to his wishes.”

Anger begets anger. “Kikuyus plan to vote for Ruto to punish Uhuru. Absurd as it may sound, Kikuyus have resolved to give President Uhuru the contempt card because he has already shown he doesn’t want Ruto to succeed him. After re-electing him for a difficult second time, the Kikuyus are bitter with President Uhuru for exposing them by not grooming a fellow Kikuyu to succeed him. Instead he looks like he’s rooting for Raila.” In the logic of the Kikuyu people, said the mzee, it is akin to a man who, hoping to evade stepping onto urine, jumps straight into faeces.

The Kikuyu people’s political wisdom can be puzzling, said mzee Kimiti from Gikambura in Kikuyu constituency, Kiambu County. “I describe them as oogi aa jata aria matoi kendu, the wise men who know nothing.”

“In 2002,” recalled Kimiti, “the Kiambu people went against the grain and voted for Uhuru Kenyatta to a man when practically every other Kikuyu was rooting for Mwai Kibaki. In their strange logic, Kibaki wasn’t one of their own – even though he spoke the Gikuyu language, hailed from central Kenya and had served in prominent positions, including as an influential finance minister and vice president. These were not enough to qualify him to be called a son of the soil.”

But in 2007, the people of Kiambu turned around and voted for Kibaki. “Do you know why?” posed the mzee. “Because Uhuru had joined Kibaki’s PNU bandwagon. Had he not, they would have followed him to wherever he would have taken them, abstained, or thrown their votes to the dogs. Now they are rallying against President Uhuru but still waiting for him to show them a sign. Brainwashed into believing that voting for Raila as president would be the beginning of their end, they are currently confused with the newly found bromance between their son and Raila. [Kiambu] Kikuyus can kill you with their wisdom: their very own Uhuru is finishing them from within, yet they firmly believe that Raila, who has never done any harm to them, will actually finish them.”

Gakuo said the only option Kikuyus currently have is to hedge their bets on Ruto. “President Uhuru has been waging war on Ruto… for what? When we voted for them for the first time in 2013, we knew both were running away from the ICC [International Court of Justice]. Uhuru therefore knew Ruto’s character. Why is he now turning around, telling us Ruto is the most corrupt state officer in his government? Uhuru arenda gutukuwa urimu niki? Why is Uhuru taking us for fools? That narrative of Ruto being the greatest thief is neither here nor there and in any case it’s already late in the day. Muceera na mukundu akundukaga taguo. He who is in the company of a thief is also a thief. They [the Kenyattas] have stolen from their very own Kikuyu people. What have they done for the people?”

Collective guilt

Amid the confusion and paradoxes reigning in Uthamakistan, an urgent need for the Kikuyu people to assuage their collective guilt is also quietly at play. Businessman Ndiritu Kanyoni told me that Kikuyus want to vote for Ruto because it would ostensibly “right” the “wrong” of being the only community that doesn’t vote for those who are not from their own ethnic group. “They want, for the first time, to prove to the other ethnic communities that they indeed can vote for a non-Kikuyu,” said Kanyoni. “The guilt of being seen as the most tribalistic people when it comes to voting for the president has been gnawing at them. Voting for Ruto will, in their view, assuage that guilt.”

The businessman said in 2003 the Kikuyu political elite shafted Raila (read Luos) and the result was the post-election violence of 2007/2008. In 2013, the same elite shafted Musalia Mudavadi (read Luhyas) when Uhuru Kenyatta claimed demons had visited him and caused him to change, a presumed pact between him and the son of Moses Substone Mudavadi. The result, pointed out the businessman, was creating an unnecessary mistrust among a community that today the Kikuyu people would be counting as its political ally. After 2017, the elite has unashamedly shafted the Kalenjin by labelling Ruto as the most corrupt man in this part of the world and therefore unfit to be president. “We cannot be the tribe that shafts every other ethnic community.”

Musalia was “a safe pair of hands,” opined Kanyoni: “innocuous, malleable, stands for nothing…the Kikuyu political elite would have easily controlled him…But the elite is know-it-all, tactless and full of hubris.”

The “other” Kikuyus

Wairimu from Zambezi reminded me this was not the time to “annoy” Ruto by reneging on a deal that every Kikuyu knows about. “For the sake of the Kikuyus living in the North and South Rift – Ainabkoi, Burnt Forest, Eldoret, Endebess, Kericho, Kitale, Londiani, Moi’s Bridge, Matunda, Molo, Mt Elgon, Njoro, Soy, Timboroa, Turbo and others places – we Kikuyus will vote for Ruto. Call it political insurance, safety and security and survival for our people.”

“The only person who can ensure the protection of Kikuyus in the Rift is William Ruto – not Uhuru Kenyatta, not Raila Odinga,” said Wainaina, one of the wealthier Kikuyu businessmen in Eldoret town. Wainaina said that the notion that the state can protect Kikuyus who live away from the motherland was false and misleading: “Mwai Kibaki was the president when violence was visited upon the Kikuyus in the Rift Valley. Why didn’t he protect us? Since then, we’ve been sitting ducks and we’re on our own and we know it. If violence were to erupt in the Rift Valley, it’s us Kikuyus who’d suffer the brunt and Uhuru would be nowhere – he’s been unable to protect our businesses, what about our lives? We’re not gambling. Ruto ndio kusema hapa Rift Valley,” Ruto’s the final word in the Rift Valley…that’s it.”

After the post-election violence, the Kikuyus from the Rift Valley region came to the conclusion that their aspirations and those of the Kikuyus from the motherland were incongruent: “They consider us collateral damage, a political expediency to be toyed around with. They don’t care if we’re killed in huge numbers,” said Wainaina. “When some of our people retraced our ancestry back in central Kenya, they were not welcome. They told us to go back to where we belonged, that there was no space for us…that we’d left many years ago. It was as shocking as it was painful.”

In his machismo style, the businessman at Sagret Hotel said: “It’s we, the Kikuyus from central Kenya, who tell the Kikuyus in the Rift what to do politically and they follow. What have been their options? If some of them are caught in the political melee, well, it’s because we’ll not cede ultimate power just because some of them will be slaughtered.”

“Hustler” and “dynasty” are two narratives that have entered into the Kenyan political lexicon. It appears that the hustler narrative has been accepted by the Kikuyus’ wretched of the earth. It implies “emancipation from the predatory Kenyatta family”, said a politician from central Kenya.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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

By Dauti Kahura

On November 27, 2019, the day the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) document was being publicly launched at the Bomas of Kenya off Langata Road in Nairobi, I hopped into an Ongata Rongai-bound matatu from the Railway Station in central Nairobi. The talk of the town on that day was the much- hyped BBI report, so I knew the chatter in the matatu would be about the BBI.

When I told the tout that I was dropping off at the Galleria Mall because I was headed to Bomas, he said, “What a waste of public funds…what a useless report.” By his looks and demeanour, I could tell he was in his mid-20s, well-socialised, if not well-educated. “I’ve read parts of the report and to me that document is just about one thing: It is a ploy by Uhuru Kenyatta to self-preserve himself, as he also preserves his Kenyatta family dynasty. Everything else in that document is a fair game.”

“How will introducing new seats in the executive, solve our economic problems? Will the introduction of the position of Prime Minister solve the problem of electoral theft? Because that has been the problem since 2007. Let’s not beat about the bush: Three times the presidential elections have been stolen and three times, the defeated have overturned the victor’s win to rule Kenya by force of law and ethnic superiority. President Uhuru Kenyatta is looking for a back door to re-enter the executive so that he can continue protecting his family’s immense wealth.”

The conductor told me of how the report talked of uplifting the youth so that they can be self- sufficient and get gainful employment…“this is B…S… and a very tired cliché. The youth have become every politician’s moral guilt-trip: ‘We need to find our youth jobs or else we shall not have peace.’ So to have peace in the country, you create the position of the PM and his deputies and office of the Leader of Opposition.” In just about one and half years, said the tout, the BBI team had splashed the equivalent of Sh11billion to produce an uninspiring, not well-written small document that says nothing about everything that has not been said before. “If the government was interested in improving the lives of the miserable youth, it would have disbursed that kind of money to the youths themselves. But this government cares so much about the youth, it spent all that money to write about how, if the youth are not catered for, Kenya will not have peace. They can do whatever it is they want to do with the report, I’m least interested in its shenanigans.” I did not ask the tout his name, but I had no doubt he knew his politics well.

The conductor reminded me of my friend Allan Mbuthia, a graduating agricultural economics student at the University of Nairobi (UoN). Mbuthia will be graduating this month with an upper second Bachelor’s degree. During most part of his student life, he worked on and off as a conductor on route 105 that plies the Kikuyu town route. The work has enabled him to pay his university fees. Brilliant and charming, I asked him whether he had read the BBI report. “Which report,” he retorted in his characteristic witticism. “I will be graduating in a few and I still got arrears I need to clear, I ain’t got time to waste on a useless report. Uhuru Kenyatta has no intentions of going anywhere…that’s what that report is about.”

The Bomas jamboree

At Bomas, the crowd inside the conference hall was controlled and carefully picked by the BBI mandarins to shore up support and shout down anybody whose views were contrary to the BBI cabal’s wishes. The crowd outside was not so orderly, so I opted to spend most of my time outside, where the erected white mega dome tents held close to 3,000 people.

Inside the hall, there was a carnival mood around the “BBI team”. The terrace corner was occupied by the “Embrace Team” – the “women’s league” of the BBI. Formed just after the BBI was constituted, it consists of female Jubilee Party politicians – current and former MPs and senators. It is ostensibly led by Ann Mumbi Waiguru, the governor of Kirinyaga County, and some of its leading lights include the Nairobi County speaker, the troubled Beatrice Elachi, who returned to her office two months ago after being impeached last September by a coterie of hostile MCAs.

“If the government was interested in improving the lives of the miserable youth, it would have disbursed that kind of money to the youths themselves. But this government cares so much about the youth, it spent all that money to write about how, if the youth are not catered for, Kenya will not have peace…”

The event’s master of ceremony was Junet Mohammed, the Suna East MP and Raila Odinga’s political son. The crescendo of his emceeing reached its zenith when, just before he invited Onesmus Kipchuma Murkomen to the stage, he took a jibe at the Jubilee Party’s internal squabbles, which I paraphrase: “Today’s a national event and therefore Jubilee Party members should put aside their differences and talk about what’s in front of us. They can resume their quarrels afterwards when we are done.”

The 42-year-old Suna East MP is a confidante of Raila: When Raila went to shake the hand of President Uhuru Kenyatta on March 9, 2018, he took Junet with him. “Raila trusts Junet like his son,” opined another equally trusted aide to Raila. “If Raila wants to send a special message to Uhuru, he gets hold of Junet. Likewise, if Uhuru wants to reach Raila confidentially and fast he looks for Junet.”

Junet’s jibe upset the Tanga Tanga wing of the Jubilee Party that was also inside the hall. So much so that when Murkomen stood to speak, he could hardly contain himself: he was boiling with rage and it had to take the intervention of Senator Yusuf Haji, the chairman of BBI, to calm him down and to ask the crowd to stop heckling him. When he spoke, he was shaking with anger, Murkomen said that it was unfortunate that the event had been turned into a partisan occasion. “We cannot have a master of ceremony who is biased and does not respect our party leaders,” he said.

Murkomen was probably upset because his boss William Ruto, the Deputy President, was being embarrassed and humiliated by none other than President Uhuru, who would laugh uproariously every time a snide remark was made about the Deputy President and/or his Tanga Tanga brigade. As Murkomen spewed his diatribe, Rachel Wambui Shebesh, the former Nairobi County Jubilee Party Women Rep, who was seated among the Embrace Team, stood to boo the senator. Acting as heckler- in-chief, Shebesh invited other members of the team and their sympathisers to jeer Murkomen. But as he was being booed inside the hall, Murkomen was being applauded outside by scores of wananchi sitting in the shade.

Junet’s closeness to Raila is such that he has the luxury of reading “The Enigma’s” mind: “In our culture [referring to Luo not Somali culture], if a mzee tells you he’ll get back to you on an issue, you surely know, as day follows night, that he will. So you don’t rush him – you wait patiently. I’ve looked at Baba and I can tell he has yet to immerse himself with the document. I’ll give two weeks, after which he’ll relay to us his followers his findings. And his findings will be our findings too.”

Seated in the BBI corner was the freedom fighter and nationalist. the nonagenarian Gitu wa Kahengeri. He sat next to Esther Passaris, the Nairobi County Women’s Rep. My friend John Maina, who is a confidante of Raila, had driven Gitu to Bomas. When he went to look for him for the ride back home, he found him gone: “I asked him to leave early to avoid the melee and push and shove of the people,” explained the Nairobi Women’s Rep.

“We’re not boarding”

Most of the people milling outside, I gathered, were Raila Odinga’s most loyal followers. As Raila himself quipped, “If Kibra is the bedroom…Langata, where Bomas is located, is the sitting room.” Many of his followers had walked to Bomas. Those that did not find a place to sit milled around and formed disparate discussion groups that dissected the BBI document.

Edging closer to one of these groups, I listened as they tore the document into pieces. “This document is meant to manage our angry stance – what new thing does it propose? They are once again baiting the youth with this talk of bettering their lives – that is utter nonsense. We’re not boarding that ship. The chief problem of this country is vote stealing. We popularly elect our leader, but they always steal our votes…how, you tell me…will the position of a prime minister stop this wanton theft?”

It was obvious the group was unimpressed by the report: “There is a certain clique of people in this country that have decreed that no matter what, they will not let any other person rule the country. Now they have roped in Baba to help them retain that power…sometimes, it is very difficult to understand Raila.”

Their animated discussion was interrupted by the appearance of Deputy President William Ruto, on the giant plasma TV screens that were placed in strategic corners. They wanted to hear what he had to say and when he said it, they all applauded. The gist of the DP’s speech was that the document was not bad but that it should not be about creating [executive] positions for certain individuals.

I called one of the group’s discussants aside, a lady from Kibra called Nyasembo, and asked her to break down for me Baba’s most loyal lieutenants’ true feelings. “Some are confused and tired…but really more fatigued than confused. Many are just indifferent. They know BBI is just a circus, a merry-go-round meant to create a happy feeling and calm down Baba’s angry supporters. Yet, the crux of the matters is we cannot continue this way for long…Baba’s presence still towers over us. It is very difficult to disengage just like that from him. To be honest, with the release of the report, we sincerely don’t know his game plan. We’ll have to wait for him to make his move.”

Still, she was of the view that the Luo community generally supported the BBI. “It is not difficult to see why,” mused the talkative lady. “The killing of Luo youth by the state’s instruments of violence has stopped. They are now not being profiled or targeted – whether here in Nairobi or back at home in Kisumu. The police and the paramilitary had express permission to mow down any Luo youth in the ghettoes of Kibra, Kondele, Manyatta, Nyalenda, Nyamasaria, and Obunga.”

Kondele, Manyatta, Nyalenda, Nyamasaria, and Obunga are slums in Kisumu where some of the fiercest battles between the state security apparatus and recalcitrant youth took place after the nullification of the August 8, 2017 presidential elections by the Supreme Court of Kenya. One time the battle-hardened Kondele youth engaged the paramilitary General Service Unit (GSU) for 14 hours, driving out the combined force of the regular police and GSU out of town…but not without live bullets being used on them.

Early this year, down in Kondele, some youth had told me that driving out the humiliated GSU from the newly built thoroughfare that passes through the settlement had turned them into marked men. Kondele, they said, is the nerve centre that organises counter-attacks against the state security forces. “We only need to send word that our formation is ready and the rest follow suit. The first to respond is Manyatta, because it borders us, then Obunga, Nyalenda and Nyamasaria, which border each other.”

“The killing of Luo youth by the state’s instruments of violence has stopped. They are now not being profiled or targeted – whether here in Nairobi or back at home in Kisumu…”

According to Nyasembo, in Kibra, Raila’s political turf in Nairobi, police were expressly ordered to shoot to kill. “Some of our youth fell from the police’s bullets. But you know our youth, they don’t fear the police, so anytime they would be spotted in Kibra, the youth would interpret they are looking for a fight…To date, there are areas in Kibra the police cannot venture into. They very much know what would be awaiting them.”

A temporary truce

BBI has apparently come with some goodies. “They have just finished the road from Kisumu to Kakamega. The road from Kisumu to Isebania – on the border of Kenya and Tanzania – is also being worked on, although we hear the contractor could have left the site,” said Nyasembo. “Kisumu city centre beautification is ongoing…although it preceded the handshake and is a project of the Kenya Urban Project and World Bank. There has also been some hubbub activities at the port – Wagni beach was cleared without resistance to give Baba’s port project a chance.”

The lack of hostility among the Luo community towards BBI is a relief, said my friend John Okoth from Kisumu: “There is a feeling the handshake took off the heavy burden of political fights – of the Luos always being pitted against the state.” He said the community no longer felt the urge to be the “vanguard of Kenya’s political reform struggle”.

Okoth was dismissive of those who question Raila’s motives. “Raila did his part. He didn’t make it because they stole his votes. We understand. Now let those who may feel aggrieved carry on with the struggle. If he has joined the other side so what…let him be.”

He said there was a lot of cynicism about the BBI politics. “The feeling is whatever Baba does is okay. If he gets something out of it cool, if he doesn’t…it’s still cool. There are no grand expectations. It is that feeling more than material rewards that drives the indifference to BBI.”

A political party leader who hails from Kisumu County said to me that the BBI’s true purpose was to form a pact between the Kikuyu and Luo elites – a détente that was supposed to stop the massacre of Luo youth by a state perceived to be controlled by the Kikuyu. “And that has largely been achieved. But beyond the declaration that ‘Luo Lives Matter’, BBI was supposed to have come up with Big Bold Ideas – BBI – that charted a way forward on the future of Kenyan politics: a clean break from the politics of vote stealing, because that has been at the core of the Luo community’s profiling and the unleashing of violence against its people.”

Instead, said the party leader, “what came out of the BBI report was many underwhelming and irrelevant stories that have nothing to do with a reorganisation of electoral justice, but everything to do with the re-establishment of the current political order.”

The party leader claimed that the BBI report was not the original document envisaged by the team. “This report is a variant of many reports that were trashed to accommodate William Ruto and the Punguza Mzigo [lighten the load} initiative.” According to the party leader, all that the BBI has done is to create more confusion and to a temporary truce. “The Kisumu youth are not amused – yet they have nowhere to go – maybe for now. I foresee political turbulence in the coming days.”

One of the biggest reasons why the Luo community is in support of BBI is the unspoken yet widespread feeling among its people that the Kikuyu are in a bind and are facing an economic meltdown. And so because they created this mess, they must be allowed to “finish the journey”. As Uhuru’s supporters say, “I’m completing the journey with Uhuru Kenyatta – what about you?”

Nyasembo said Kikuyus mocked the Luo during the repeat election in 2017. They said that they would elect Uhuru for a second time even without Luos’ support – which they did on October 26.

A more fundamental reason, closer to home, why the Luos are supporting the BBI is William Ruto. “Ruto’s rabid hatred of Baba, his incessant insults and innuendoes towards Raila have driven many of Raila’s supporters to rally behind him,” said Nyasembo. “Ruto, in his differences with Baba, had become personal, too personal. Even Raila’s lukewarm supporters cannot stomach this. Differ with Baba, for all we his supporters care, but don’t demean him on a public rostrum.” Because of the DP’s unceasing jibes against Raila, his support base has decided they must stand behind him. “We can discuss the merits and demerits of Baba’s supporting BBI in-house.”

Raila’s bedrock support is largely intact, Nyasembo pointed out to me: “He confused us with the handshake move…Some of us became very angry and hugely disappointed, but he is still the enigma…If tomorrow he tells us that he will be having a public rally at Uhuru Park in the morning, trust me, we will all would troop there by 6 a.m. What am I saying? Baba’s followers will go wherever he is… he is now with BBI, that’s where we shall be…until further notice.”

As Raila’s foot soldiers and loyal supporters seek to situate BBI within the body politic of the Luo community, even as they keenly watch Baba’s body language for any signals, the Kikuyus – whose muthamaki has been praising the handshake and supporting the BBI – have been rejecting the document.

Recently, in a series of tweets, former Mukurwe-ini MP Kabando wa Kabando, a former diehard supporter of President Uhuru, acknowledged that Kikuyus were very angry with muthamaki [Uhuru]. He said if the president does not move quickly to assuage their anger, BBI will be in trouble among the Mt Kenya people. The truth of the matter is that Kikuyus in general view the BBI as a short cut that will impose Raila Odinga (the community’s political nemesis) on them.

Mad man versus saviour

Already facing economic hard times, Kikuyus have turned their anger on President Uhuru and his lacklustre performance. And unless things change now and before 2022, they have vowed to teach him a lesson by rejecting any of his political advances towards them. His six years of underperformance has made it apparent that he has no clear successor. This, coupled with post-2022 uncertainties, have made Kikuyus seriously contemplate embracing William Ruto as their saviour. Ruto, realising the dilemma in which the Kikuyus are, has been sending all the right signals to them as he plots to lock them on his side for the 2022 showdown.

The truth of the matter is that Kikuyus in general view the BBI as a short cut that will impose Raila Odinga (the community’s political nemesis) on them.

Two separate incidents captured in central Kenya serve as a prescient warning to President Uhuru. The first one is a video clip shot in Kiharu constituency of Murang’a County showing some constituents expressing their huge disaffection with President Uhuru to their self-effacing MP Ndindi Nyoro. “Uhuru came here and told us Raila is a mad man,” says an agitated woman. “We now hear he has been trolling around with the mad man. When did he befriend him?” Pointing to a specific place, the woman remembers President Uhuru’s very own words: “Woooi please don’t let me be devoured by this ogre [Raila].”

“They will bring this BBI to us, tell us it’s good, but afterwards, if we are not careful, it’ll be a burden to us,” says the woman. “We must have a baraza over this document to learn more about it – if there isn’t anything beneficial for us, we’ll defeat it.”

A second video clip shows a Mukurino mzee, Michael Ndungú, speaking to a journalist in Nyeri County. This is what he says: “Our leader is Ruto – whatever he says is what we’ll follow – he’s the one leading us in Mt Kenya: Nyeri, Murang’a and Kiambu.”

It seems BBI has become the albatross that the people have to carry around their necks even as they contemplate how best to cross the bridge without being washed away.

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.

The Sinicization of Christianity: How China Is Responding to Religious Threats

By Dauti Kahura

Early this month, the burial of the mother of a businessman who operates in the famous Nyamakima area in downtown Nairobi took place in south Kinangop. Businessmen who have a strong association with and loyalty to each other turned out in large numbers to financially and morally support their colleague. Many of the traders present – mostly millennials – deal in electronic and hardware goods. For many of them, travelling to Guangzhou in China to haul back 40-foot containers full of varied consignments to Kenya has become second nature.

After the burial, the businessmen drove in their four-wheel Prados and double-cabin pick-up Toyotas to Naivasha town to “shake down the dust” and have “one for the road to clear their eyesight” for the 100-kilometre journey back to Nairobi. Settling down to juicy and sizzling nyama choma (roasted goat meat), a favourite delicacy among many Kikuyu middle class men, the traders could not wait to bitterly excoriate and fume against President Uhuru Kenyatta’s presidency and his second-term politics, and to process and reevaluate their collective Uthamaki (the notion that the Kikuyu are and should remain the ruling class) position as they contemplated the future of the Kikuyu nation.

Washing down the goats’ ribs with beer, brandy and whiskies, the traders said that if they could get hold of President Uhuru, they would give him a thorough whipping until they drew blood. “He has not only collapsed our businesses, they are now being taken over by the Chinese,” said a visibly angry trader. “Including the cereals and grains businesses, traditionally done by our mothers (the term mother here being used loosely), are gradually being taken over.”

During President Mwai Kibaki’s reign (2002–2012), when many of the traders expanded and grew their businesses, their trade enjoyed a great boom and flourished immensely. They made loads of money, built stone houses in their ancestral homes, bought tracts of land, invested in real estate, rode fancy and powerful SUVs, and generally lived large. Many of them could even afford the upkeep of a concubine.

What hurt most, said the mourners, was that they had staked their lot with Uhuru’s re-election, and had collected funds for his campaign, especially in 2017, in the hope of continuing to reap big time, just like they had done in Kibaki’s time. Between 2013 and 2017, they noticed that their lucrative businesses had slackened somewhat. But they rationalsed this by saying it was President Uhuru’s first time as president and it had taken longer than necessary for him to settle down.

“Business was still thriving,” said Jason Mwangi, an importer of hardware tools, electronics equipment and strobe lights, “but mega corruption was beginning to get out of control and was affecting our trading.” As it was Uhuru’s second and last term – also viewed as his legacy term – the trader told me, the businessmen had hoped that the president would rein in runaway graft, institute measures to curb it and even order the arrest of the said looters.

“He had nothing to lose, he could afford to be firm and brook no nonsense,” reasoned the traders. So, in 2017, they had sealed the entire Nyamakima area to dance and dine and wine and revel in his victory. And now this…barely two years into his legacy term, the traders were gritting their teeth, their businesses were collapsing faster than they had taken the time to build them.

Peter Macharia, who deals in solar lights and panels and energy-saving light bulbs, told me that for the last couple of months he has just been paying his rent for his premises without any discernible income in hand. “Business is so bad. I’m just hanging in there…I don’t know what to do, we have really been screwed…Since President Uhuru’s re-election, he has been spinning the tale that it’s [William] Ruto to blame for all the corruption, hence the wobbly economy. Did we elect Uhuru as president or we elected Ruto?”

“If indeed all the theft in government has been perpetrated by Ruto, what has the president done about it?” said a visibly agitated trader. “Gutiri muici na mucuthereria.” There is no difference between a thief and his onlooker. “In fact, the onlooker in this case is even worse than the thief because he knowingly abetted the theft. Just when did President Uhuru realise that his deputy was apparently pilfering the state coffers?” the traders argued, “Because of President Uhuru’s gross incompetence and wanton carelessness, it was just a matter of time before they were exposed.”

“If you are a farmer who keeps animals and you employ a shepherd to care for the animals, but instead of doing that, he slaughters your very animals from time to time, would you continue keeping him, would you continue trusting him with your flock?” asked one trader. “For Ruto to presumably engage in all that state theft, the president must also have been part of it. How else do you explain the fact that you’re the president but you don’t know what’s happening in your backyard? And when you finally wake up from your slumber, you demolish people’s property in the guise of fighting corruption.”

The traders were thoroughly peeved about the president’s directive late last year to destroy certain properties to prove to Kenyans that he was indeed fighting state corruption. “Who was he fooling? That was an unnecessary distraction because as he was destroying the properties, he was clamping down on our consignment.

My goods were confiscated for six months,” said Macharia. “At the Embakasi government go-downs and by the time the president was pretending to come to our rescue, I’d given up on the goods – I couldn’t afford to pay the charges. I lost a lot of money.”

The traders noted that for the longest time the Kikuyu electorate had excused President Uhuru’s drinking habits. “We said it didn’t matter…what mattered was his performance and the fact that he was one of us. We were dead wrong.” they said. “Ruto is focused and steady because he is always sober,” observed the traders. “He also has his faults but because he is a teetotaller he is disciplined, hardworking and organised. This talk that it’s Ruto who had depleted the state’s cash is hogwash…Let Uhuru fight Ruto if he must, but let him not tell us the economy has tanked because Ruto collapsed it.”

Giving up on “The Family”

Among the Kikuyu, the Kenyatta family has always remained a taboo subject: the family is treated like royalty, immune from criticism. Not anymore. The traders said many Kikuyus are waking up to the realisation that the Kenyatta family was only interested in advancing the larger family’s interests and expanding its business empire. “The family has been using the Kikuyu people as a stepping stone to enrich itself to the detriment of the community. It doesn’t care whether our children are starving or not, whether they go to school or not, whether they have jobs or not…all they’re interested in is ensuring this plantation serves their purpose.”

Yet, “the plantation” is now showing signs of dying: the Kikuyu electorate is dazed, disillusioned, and restless. “We’ll never vote again” has become an increasingly repeated mantra among the electorate. Or “We are going to vote for Ruto because he is available and generous.”

The “Kikuyu plantation” is also withering because its people – especially the young – are planning to run away from the country to far-off lands to escape the crippling economic conditions.

Dennis Kimani, aka Denno, a Bachelor of Commerce graduate from the University of Nairobi, has thrown in the towel as far as job hunting is concerned. Even though he is from a fairly stable middle class family, his family connections have refused to come through. “I’ve given up,” said Denno when we recently met. “I cannot take it anymore.”

He has been looking to migrate to Qatar in the hope of getting a job – any job “because at 28, the clock is ticking away…na riua ritietagirira muthamaki.” The sun does not wait even for a king. “I am not growing younger.”

Among the Kikuyu, the Kenyatta family has always remained a taboo subject: the family is treated like royalty, immune from criticism. Not anymore.

Denno told me an unfortunate story: “When I was in primary school, my closest friend was Clifford Omondi. We lived in the same estate, went to the same school and shared many things. We were happy. One night my father came home late at night. We were all asleep but he woke us [children] up to eat the nyama choma he had brought. But he hadn’t woken us to eat the meat – he had woken us to tell me about my friend Omondi. ‘Listen my son, I want you to cease your friendship with that boy…those people are not good, they are not cultured, they have odious beliefs, they like destroying people’s property so they have no respect for anything. If by chance they were left to lead this country, they would run our country down completely…Have you heard what I’ve told you?’”

Denno never spoke to his friend again, but what his father told him many years back haunts him to date. He wonders why since President Uhuru’s presidency in 2013 the country has been gripped by massive state corruption, and by 2018, after two controversial presidential elections, things have apparently spiraled out of control. Even his more reticent father on matters politics is looking troubled. “What I have been itching to ask my father is why the country’s economy is in shambles and yet we have a Kikuyu for president.”

After coming back from United Arab Emirates (UAE), where she had lived for 10 years, Florence Wambui came back home to Nairobi for good to start a business that she had always dreamed of starting: running a shoe company. In Dubai, she had worked for five years as a manager in a big shoe boutique. “I had the know-how, the experience and some money I’d saved to start the business. But the Kenya I’d left behind in July 2008 wasn’t the Kenya I returned to in January 2018 just after President Uhuru had been sworn-in for his second term,” said a less than inspired Wambui.

In just less than a year, she was already thinking of relocating to Canada. “I could not see my future here…everything seemed to be in a tumble down.”

But as luck would have it, people like Dennis began approaching her for advice on the procedures for migrating to the Middle East, a region she had come know very well after a 10-year stint there. “I halted my own migration to Canada to run a bureau for Middle East-bound Kenyans, many of them Kikuyus, who seem to be literally escaping from their country.”

Steve Karanja, 27, an IT technician, is in the same predicament as Denno. Unable to find a steady job, he has reconciled with the fact that the only way for him to find work is if he leaves this country. With a contact in the United Kingdom, Steve has been working to save some cash for the expensive visa processing as he also thinks of how to beef up his meagre bank accounts. “Brexit Britain is better than a troubled country called Kenya,” Steve said to me. “Anytime.”

Lost children of Mau Mau

But nothing prepared for me the impending Uthamaki meltdown like a video clip that was sent to me several weeks ago. It is of a Kikuyu millennial man who claims to have a messianic message for a tribe that apparently has lost its way. It is a cry of anguish, and of introspection. The message is a call to the tribe’s long gone forefathers to come to its rescue and intercede on behalf of a community captured by the capriciousness of fate, and by a single powerful family that has enslaved the community for the last half a century.

“Let’s come and reason together people of my tribe,” reads the young man from a long well-crafted missive read from a mobile phone. It is an impassioned plea:

Nyumba, ndirari gathafari ndiratumetwo ni mwene nyaga na arajeria kundu kuria mwitaga ukirini, ndiracemania na ngomi, maithe maitu, ngomi citu acio makomire tene na ruo runene na ti akenu…eeeh ti akenu. Kiria maruagera ni munaga gikihuthirwo uru ni aria matekeruire. Kuma riria Kenya yagiire wiyathi, gutire mu Mau Mau uri wagunika, bururi uyu, kana ciana ciao igeteithekera kuo. Athini aria athini bio bururi uyu ni Mau Mau na ciana ciao. Aria matari migunda ni Mau Mau na ciana ciao, aria mururaga umuthenya magicaria wira ni ciana cia Mau Mau. Aria maturaga magicaria title deed cia tubloti twao ni Mau Mau na ciana ciao. Aria maturaga manegenaga ni kahuwa na macani na iria no Mau Mau na ciana ciao. Aria maturaga mururaga na maratathi magicaria wira bururi-ini uyu, no ciana cia Mau Mau. Airetu aria makomagwo nao ni itonga nigetha mandikwo wira ni ciana cia Mau Mau…Ni nyumba imwe tu ya twenjeiri irima riri eria yehokirwo ni maithe maitu, igicoka ikimagaruruka na riu no indu nyumba iyo iracokaniriria, nigetha iture ya thaga ciana cia Mau Mau na ciana cia cio…icio kimi… Andu aitu hingokai maitho…kirumi kia Mau Mau una riu ki mwoyo…kirumi kia Mau Mau una riu ki mwoyo…

My people, I was away at a little safari that I’d been sent to by our God (of the mountains), and he took me to a place you call ukirini where I met our ancestors, our forefathers that that are long dead, who died with a lot of pain, and they are not happy…yes, they not happy. They are unsettled because what they fought for is being misused by those who did not fight for it. Since Kenya attained independence, no Mau Mau has ever benefitted in this country, not even their children. The poorest of the poorest in this country are the Mau Mau and their children. Those who do not have land, those who loiter every day looking for job opportunities, are the children of Mau Mau. Those that have been chasing title deeds for their little plot of lands, are Mau Mau and their children. The people who have perpetually complained of their coffee, tea and milk productions are Mau Mau and their children. Those people who have been moving from one corner in this country to another with testimonials, in search of work, are the children of Mau Mau. Those innocent lasses who are prostituted by the rich [Kikuyu men] for job favours are the daughters of Mau Mau…It is just one family that has dug this abyss for us, a family that had been trusted by our forefathers, but which turned against them. Since then, that family has just been accumulating abundant riches, all in the name of continuing to enslave and oppress the descendants of the descendants of Mau Mau…You all know the family I am talking about…(The narrator does not mention the name of the said family, but leaves his listeners with absolutely no doubt which family he is referring to: the Kenyatta family).

The narrator closes his call to action to the Kikuyu people by imploring: “Our people, open your eyes to [the true realities of your lives]…the curse of the Mau Mau is still alive…the curse of the Mau Mau still lives.”

This is an excerpt of a much longer soliloquy in which the narrator reminds the Kikuyu people: “Gikuyu kiugaga thire utarihwo no worogi…haria bururi weigereire na kirumi…Kenya yagurirwo na thakame ni maithe maitu magekua meendeire ni getha matucariria wiyathi…wiyathi uyu weteaga na ngati…” The Kikuyu people say the only debt one cannot pay is that of witchcraft…this country has set itself on a cursed path…Kenya was liberated by our forefathers who willingly died so that we, their descendants, could enjoy the freedom that they so gallantly fought for…freedom which the home guards and collaborators seized, and which they continue to mock us with. A couple of weeks ago, I was taking a reality check in the central business district (some Nairobians now call it the central bad district) and by pure coincidence I walked next to the statue of the freedom fighter Dedan Kimathi situated on the junction of Kimathi Street and Mama Ngina Street. This was before the National Museum of Kenya (NMK) ring-fenced the statue’s area for renovations.

It was late in the evening and dusk was setting in. As I approached the statue, I could hear the noises of a man grovelling in acute pain. On closer look, I saw a young man, possibly no more than 30 years old, cuddled in a foetal position besides the statue, beseeching Dedan Kimathi, son of Wachiuri, to intercede on behalf of the crying Kikuyu people and liberate them from the yoke of modern day slavery and oppression.

The Kikuyu people say the only debt one cannot pay is that of witchcraft…this country has set itself on a cursed path…

“Why are we suffering so and yet you fought very bravely against the white man so we could have jobs and enjoy life,” pleaded the man. Shaking like a mulberry tree in dry winter, the man wailed about how nobody cares about the downtrodden sons of the peasant and poor Kikuyu families. “For how long will the children of the house of Mumbi continue to suffer so,” implored the man. “Tell us.”

The man then engaged Kimathi. “When will we ever be liberated from the shackles of poverty and enjoy the fruits of the promised land which you and our forefathers promised us?”

As I stood there watching the man writhe in pure pain and pleasure – the pleasure of communing with his ancestors – I realised that the Uthamaki Kingdom was staring at a meltdown: The people are crying, the people are confused, the people are cornered, yet their Muthamaki seems unbothered.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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

By Dauti Kahura

Something startled where I thought I was safest. – Walt Whitman

My Dungeons Shook – The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

On Saturday 9, 2019, two days after the hotly contested Kibra by-election had taken place and the dust had settled, Raila Odinga, aka Baba, was in an ecstatic mood: he gathered around some of his closest associates that had helped him campaign to retain the Kibra seat by hook or crook for a toast-up at his Karen home.

The ODM party candidate had triumphed over an onslaught that had threatened to torpedo Raila’s iron-grip stranglehold over a constituency that had, over time, become synonymous with his name and political career. But it was a victory that been won with “blood”: Bernard Otieno Okoth, aka Imran, took 24,636 votes while his closest nemesis, McDonald Mariga Wanyama, an international footballer-turned-betting-billboard-face, had carted away 11,230 votes. Although there were no casualties, voters had been roughed up and beaten.

As one of ODM’s foot soldiers from Ololo (Kaloleni estate, off Jogoo Road in Makadara constituency) later confided in me, “There was no way those rural folks (referring to William Ruto’s gang of MPs, mainly from western Kenya, and their supporters) were going to storm our grounds. Hii tao ni yetu, tumekuwa na mzae tangu 90s, na tumepingana vita nyingi sana…hao watu walikuwa wanacheza na nare.” This is our turf and we’ve been with Raila ever since the 90s, and we’ve fought many bloody wars, those people were stoking a war and playing with fire.

As a diehard supporter of Raila Odinga, the stocky foot soldier, now in his late 30s (he is a former bantamweight boxer)m said he had not slept for three consecutive days: “Kibra ni bedroom ya mbuyu na wewe unaleta mbulu pale…utatembea buda.” Kibra is the old man’s bedroom and you want to desecrate it…you’ll pay for it.

He said in those three days, all the foot soldiers’ work was to screen all “foreigners” entering Kibra. This was evident to me because I had also been forewarned by my minders that I should now be extremely careful when going to Kibra for my journalistic work.

And that is all that mattered. The rest of other 22 contestants were neither here nor there, including ANC’s Eliud Owalo, a one-time Raila’s confidante who collected 5,275 votes.

According to IEBC (Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission)’s 2017 figures, Kibra has 118,658 registered voters and 24 polling stations. In the just-concluded by-election, a paltry 41,984 people voted, constituting 35 per cent of the electorate. In the 2017 presidential election, 18,000 people voted for Uhuru Kenyatta, the Jubilee Party’s presidential candidate. The Jubilee Party candidate Doreen Wasike got 12,000 votes. The 6,000 extra votes that increased Uhuru’s number to 18,000 came from the Nubian community resident in Kibra.

As Raila and his friends were sipping champagne on a sunny Saturday afternoon, Ruto was gnashing his teeth, furious to the point where he refused to meet with the buddies he had campaigned with, according to media reports. However, his chief noisemaker, the rabblerouser Dennis Itumbi, denied that his boss was in a foul mood after the by-election.

Kibra constituency, formerly part of Langata constituency, has been a hotbed of political contests ever since Raila opted to stand in the constituency in 1992, the year the country returned to multiparty politics. Two years before that, in 1990, Raila, who had been exiled in Norway, had come back to Kenya to be part of the “Young Turks” who agitated and pushed for political reforms. He had stood in what was then known as Kibera constituency in the first multiparty general election and from then on Kibera became his enclave. That is why, in the run-up to the by-election, Raila “privatised” the constituency and called it his bedroom, in a (desperate) effort to rally around his troops to vote for Imran and to affirm to his current biggest political rival, William S Ruto, that Kibra was impenetrable to the latter’s political whims.

That is why the Kibra by-election was not so much about the 24 contestants that took part in the race, but was more of a competition between the two biggest political parties, the ruling party Jubilee and ODM, and between Raila Odinga and William Ruto. Imran and Mariga were just pawns in a much bigger and wider plot linked to the 2022 presidential succession political chess game in which the two have staked their ambitions and claim.

Three weeks to the by-election, I met with one of Ruto’s bosom buddies who was coordinating the campaign behind the scenes. “If we wrestle the Kibra seat from the kitendawili (riddles) man, we’ll have completely changed the political map of not only Nairobi County, but of the country,” he had said to me. “We will configure national politics and consign Raila to a corner. And then relish to face him in 2022.”

The Ruto man told me that in the lead-up to 2022, their chief tactic is to draw Raila into a two-horse race, in which case, “I can assure you, we’ll pulverise the enigma [one of the monikers used to describe Raila] once and for all”. It understandable, hence, for Ruto to have taken the defeat personally and Raila to have gloated – but for how long?

In many ways, the by-election was a curtain raiser, a preamble and a showdown of what to expect in 2022, the year Kenyans once again go to the polls to elect a new president. The violence witnessed in Kibra will be multiplied at the national level. The money that was thrown at the electorate in little Kibra will seem like cash for an afternoon picnic as the chief contestants in 2022 open their war chests to woo an even hungrier electorate, ready to settle scores and be manipulated. The shadow line-ups that we saw falling respectively behind the protagonists will be reshaped many times over before 2022.

The by-election was also about the “big boys” (Raila and Ruto) settling scores and about cementing the burial rites of the already dead NASA (National Super Alliance), the fledgling and motley coalition that brought together Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka, Moses Wetangula, and Musalia Mudavadi. In addition, it was about the extension of the supremacy battles being fought between the Jubilee Party wing of President Uhuru Kenyatta and its rival that is being led by his deputy – in essence, the trooping of colours between #Kieleweke group and the #Tanga Tanga brigade.

Could this by-election also have signalled the death knell of the Jubilee Party as currently constituted?

The Ken Okoth factor

The by-election was a function of several variables, including what can be referred to as the Ken Okoth factor. Okoth, who died from colon cancer at the age of 41, was the Kibra MP when he succumbed to the killer disease on July 26, 2019.

Okoth was elected in 2013 in the newly created Kibra constituency, which was hived off from the larger Langata constituency to Raila’s chagrin. (This is a public secret.) Even though Okoth was elected on an ODM ticket, he was not Raila’s first choice. Okoth was an independent-minded politician and a popular and well-liked local boy. Home-grown and well-educated, he understood the problems of the infamous Kibera slum like the back of his hand. He was suave, well-spoken and a terribly likeable man.

When he became the MP, he charted an even more independent path: he decided he was not going to be anybody’s protégé. So he cultivated his political friendships across party divisions. As a man who understood the power of education (he was the recipient of a sound education from Starehe Boys’ Centre, where he was educated on a full bursary), he invested heavily in education in Kibra. A good secondary education, like he used to say, had saved him from the clutches of poverty.

Okoth built eight secondary schools in Kibra and expanded many of the primary schools to have a secondary school wing. He rightly argued that since many Kibra parents could not afford to take their children to boarding schools, he would lighten their burden by constructing local secondary schools. He also gave out lots of bursaries to parents who struggled with fees. Any pupil who got 350 points or more in his or her KCPE (Kenya Certificate of Primary Education) exam got full bursary to transition to high school.

Even though Okoth was elected on an ODM ticket, he was not Raila’s first choice. Okoth was an independent-minded politician and a popular and well-liked local boy. Home- grown and well-educated, he understood the problems of the infamous Kibera slum like the back of his hand. Juliet Atellah, a Kibra resident from Gatwekera village in Sarang’ombe and a double maths and statistics major from the University of Nairobi can attest to this. “When Okoth become MP, he told us education was the key to success. He implored us to work hard in school as he also worked hard to ensure Kibra youth interested in education benefitted from a bursary.” It is something that Okoth continually preached till his death.

Okoth, also, through his Jubilee Party networks, tapped into the National Youth Service (NYS) resources to create some employment opportunities for the youth of Kibra. This cross-cutting political parties’ engagement would land him into trouble with ODM mandarins who accused and suspected him of cavorting with the enemy. “By opting to work with Jubilee Party functionaries, Okoth looked at the bigger picture: what mattered most, according to him, was how best to improve the quality of lives of Kibrans. If the help would come from his presumed ‘political antagonists’ so be it,” said a friend of the late MP.

He relegated the work of managing the bursaries through the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) to his brother Imran. Little wonder then that his brother clinched the ODM ticket, but not without loud grievances. According to my sources within the ODM party, Peter Orero (popularly known as mwalimu), the Principal of Dagoretti High School, and also the former principal of Upper Hill High School, had won the ticket, but to stem the fallout that was going to befall the party as it faced its greatest onslaught from Ruto, a man who was staking his all to capture the seat, Raila opted to hand the ticket to the former CDF manager.

Disgruntled followers

Kibra constituency residents are some of the most politically “woke” electorate that this country has ever produced. Their political consciousness is high and battle-hardened from their brutal fights with the Kanu regime in the 1990s. The people of Kibra know their politics well. This is courtesy of Raila Odinga, who for a long time championed the political struggle for equity and social justice in the country. As their MP, Raila encouraged Kibra voters to fight for their rights and to demand no less than his rightful representation.

But the burden of the “handshake” between Raila and Uhuru Kenyatta had reared its ugly head and it was evident that Raila struggled when campaigning in his former constituency. “With the handshake, Raila commercialised the struggle,” said a politician who has known him since the multiparty struggles of the 90s. “The handshake had confused his base, angering many and disillusioning a great deal of people who had stood with him all the way. Until, the death of Okoth, Raila had not stepped in Kibra to explain the handshake. Instead, when he shook Uhuru’s hand, he headed to Kondele in Kisumu to appease his other equally fanatical base, 300 kilometres away.”

The politician said that Kibra people have yet to enjoy the handshake’s dividends. “Many of the youths who were shot at by police when defending Raila were from Kibra, yet the handshake projects have all been taken to Kisumu. Although the Kibra electorate is still fanatically loyal to Raila, they were also passing a subtle message to him – it about time you re-evaluated your politics with us.”

Hence, it was not lost to keen observers that for the first time since Raila began campaigning in Kibra in 1992, he had been forced to solicit for votes beyond Kamukunji in Sarang’ombe ward. “For the first time,” said a resident of Sarang’ombe, “Raila had been forced to campaign in Bukhungu in Makina, Laini Saba, and Joseph Kange’the in Woodley.” As the area MP, Raila would campaign only in Kamukunji grounds and with that he would seal his victory and close that chapter. The rest of the voters would fall in place.

Sarang’ombe ward has the largest number of voters, largely comprising Luos and Luhyas. The Luos are concentrated in Kisumu Ndogo village, while the Luhyas are to be found in Soweto and Bombolulu villages. There are about 6,000 registered Luhya voters in both the villages, while there could be about 20,000 Luos in Kisumu Ndogo. The other large concentrations of Luhyas are located in Lindi and Makina. Hence the reason why Raila went to campaign in Makina. He also campaigned in Woodley on Joseph Kange’the Road, because it has a large population of Kikuyu voters.

New alliances and 2022 politics

If campaigning on “virgin” territory was not too much of a stretch, Raila had to enlist the support of seven governors: Alfred Mutua of Machakos, Ann Mumbi Kamotho (previously known as Ann Waiguru) of Kirinyaga, Charity Ngilu of Kitui, Kivutha Kibwana of Makueni, James Ongwae of Kisii, John Nyagarama of Nyamira and Wycliffe Oparanya of Kakamega. “Ruto with his loads of money was piling pressure on Raila and he wasn’t going to take any chances,” explained one of Raila’s associates.

So, on October 30, 2019, nominated MP Maina Kamanda, Kigumo MP, Ruth Mwaniki and David Murathe (President Uhuru Kenyatta’s hatchet man) met with Raila to ostensibly pledge the Kikuyu electorate’s and President Uhuru’s support for the ODM candidate Bernard Otieno Okoth aka Imran. At the meeting, Mwaniki hinted that McDonald Mariga Wanyama, the Jubilee Party candidate, had been forced on the party leadership and President Uhuru: “I don’t know why some leaders [referring to Deputy President William Ruto] in Jubilee dragged Mariga into the race.”

In the spirit of the handshake, Kamanda said he would rally the Kikuyu voter to throw his lot with Imran: “When you see me here, know that President Uhuru Kenyatta is here.”

On the previous day, the former Starehe MP had told the Kikuyus in Kibra, “On November 7, please come out in large numbers to vote for Imran. Imran’s victory will be a big win for the unity of this country.” He was referring to the now mercurial political handshake that President Uhuru and Raila cemented on March 9, 2018. The handshake between the two bitterest rivals gave birth to the Building the Bridges Initiative (BBI). The acronym has been baptised many things, the latest one being Beba Baba Ikulu. Take Raila to State House.

On that same day (October 30), Raila had separately met with Kikuyu and Kisii opinion shapers from Kibra at his office in Upper Hill, before descending to Kibra again in the evening, three days after he had held a rally there on October 27, a Sunday. This same day, as Raila met with the respective community leaders, he confided in a mutual friend who he had lunch with at Nairobi Club that Ruto was breathing down his neck, and giving him a run for his money in his erstwhile constituency that he had represented for a quarter of a century.

During the time that Raila stood in Kibra, the Luhya community had also stood with him. They voted for him to the last man, “but when Okoth died, the Luhya nationalists in Kibra and elsewhere thought ‘it was their time to eat’”, a Luhya politician who stood as a senator in western Kenya said. “The Luhya felt the time was ripe to get paid for standing with Raila all these years since 1992.” The politician reminded me that even when Michael Wamalwa died in August, 2004, the Luhyas remained strong supporters of Raila. Feeding on this Luhya nationalism, Ruto and his band of Luhya MPs from western Kenya landed in Kibra, and hoped to hype this reigning scepticism to maximum effect. So when Bernard Shinali, the MP for Ikolomani, was caught by the hawk-eyed ODM foot soldiers dishing out money to potential voters in Kisumu Ndogo three days before voting day, he, like the former Kakamega Senator, Bonny Khalwale, wanted to prove to their boss Ruto that they were ready to deliver the Kibra Luhya vote to him. The other Luhya MP from western who would be deployed to Kibra was Benjamin Washiali of Mumias and Didmus Barasa MP of Kimilili.

In all probability the Kibra by-election offered Kenyans a trailer of how the 2022 presidential elections will be and how they will will be fought. Will that election be a contest between Raila and Ruto? If the parading of the troops from both sides is anything to go by, the sneak preview of the troops’ formation promises many shifting alliances.

Wavinya Ndeti, the former MP for Kathiani and a governor candidate for Machakos County in 2017 on a Wiper Democratic Movement (WPM) ticket – but nonetheless aligned to Raila – allegedly moaned loudly, after seeing Mutua in Kibra. Had Raila dumped her by inviting the Machakos governor into his “bedroom?” Kalonzo Musyoka, one of the four NASA co-principals is mum, but when he said he would be supporting the Ford Kenya candidate Ramadhan Butichi, he invited opprobrium from ODM mandarins. My friends in ODM hinted to me that Kivutha is the man to checkmate Kalonzo. What about Musalia Mudavadi, the other NASA co-principal principal? Is Oparanya being propped up to replace him?

The fact that President Uhuru Kenyatta has not made any comment on the by-election, and has not appeared anywhere near Kibra to campaign for the Jubilee Party candidate speaks volumes about whether indeed Mariga was a Jubilee Party candidate, I told a close associate of the deputy president that Ruto and Mariga had camped at State House for two days to get the president’s audience. It was only on the second day that Ruto showcased Mariga to the president, who fitted Mariga’s football head with a Jubilee cap. “That is all true,” agreed the associate, “but the president is a grown up, how do you force anything onto a grown up?”

What is clear, however, is that as 2022 fast approaches, the Kibra by-election of November 7 marked the unofficial commencement of the 2022 campaign season in Kenya with Ruto’s aggressive raid into Odinga’s “political bedroom”. Now, as pundits, political analysts, and the media try to explain what this political drama will mean for the future of Kenya’s politics, the central question that Kenyans need to ask is what role they will play in shaping a prosperous future.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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

By Dauti Kahura

On October 14, 2019, President John Pombe Magufuli officially moved his presidential operations to Dodoma, the capital city in the central region of Tanzania.

Was the move to Dodoma, which is 420 kilometres from Dar es Salaam, on the weekend preceding the 14th of October, a coincidence or a well-calibrated move? October 14th is the day that Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, the first president of the Republic of Tanzania, died. In the wider scheme of things, it could as well have been both: President Magufuli, looking to be re-elected in a year’s time, may have made a deft tactical manoeuvre to signal his re-election bid in earnest.

Forty-six years ago, in 1973, Mwalimu Nyerere had picked Dodoma as the future capital city of the republic, citing its centrality and its ample, expansive and flat land as fit credentials for the new capital. Although, Mwalimu did not live to see the transfer of the capital, President Magufuli understands the import of fast-tracking the transfer of the presidential operations to Dodoma: Mwalimu would approve of it and the electorate would interpret the move as being in tandem with Mwalimu’s popular wish in a country currently in the grip of Mwalimu nostalgia. President Magufuli is probably riding on these feelings.

Keen Magufuli watchers have averred that he would very much like to be viewed as a Nyerereist, a man exemplifying the very (socialist) ideals of the post-colonial and independent Tanzania’s founding father. It has not been lost to observers that like Mwalimu, Magufuli considers and carries himself as a teacher: he was a chemistry tutor long before venturing into elective politics. In effect, Magufuli sees himself as the modern Tanzanian Mwalimu, the latter-day Nyerere, who would very much want to be loved in the same vein as Mwalimu. But this article is not about President Magufuli – it is about Mwalimu Nyerere – who 20 years ago this month, exited the scene and the curtains fell on the 20th century’s arguably Africa’s greatest political leader. October commemorates Nyerere, particularly in Tanzania, and generally in the rest of the African continent. In recent times, there has been a debate in Tanzania, led by the likes of Pius Msekwa, the former Speaker of the National Assembly (1994–2005), whether to commemorate October 14, the day Nyerere died or April 13, 1922, his date of birth. Msekwa posits that April 13 should be made a holiday in Tanzania.

The spirit that calls rain

Mwalimu Julius Kambarage (the spirit that calls rain) Nyerere was born 97 years ago to his father Nyerere Burito (1860-1942) and his beloved mother Mugaya, who was the 18th wife of Burito, the paramount chief of the tiny Zanaki tribe. He was named after a rain spirit – Kambarage – because he was born during a storm. And the name Nyerere commemorated a plague of armyworms that struck the time of his father’s birth in 1862. Largely brought up by his mother, Nyerere converted to Catholicism at the age of 21and for the rest of his life, he would lead a Catholic life in deeds and words.

For a man whose relatives routinely lived past 90 years, Mwalimu “died young” in 1999 at the age of 77. Indeed, according to Nyerere himself, he was “a child” in the eyes of his chiefly clan: “In my clan, when your parents are still alive, you’re a child,” Nyerere remarked when he took a corpus of media personalities to the bedroom of his mother in Butiama, who had lived past 100 years. Nyerere came from a clan with the “gene of longevity”. His brother Wanzagi lived up to 86 years, his maternal uncle died as the age of 96, and his father’s brother (in African lingua, his elder father), died at the age of 95.

Once, while campaigning for Benjamin William Mkapa, the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) candidate in the first multiparty elections in 1995, Nyerere had boasted that he would still be around in 2005 – in time for the third multiparty elections. But four years later, he was diagnosed with leukaemia at St Thomas Hospital in London, where he remarked to his close family members who had kept vigil at his bed, “I know I won’t live for long because I’m suffering from a terminal disease. I know Tanzanians are going to miss me, I’ll miss them too and I’ll pray for them once I depart for the hereafter world.”

Disillusionment with the party he founded

A founding member of CCM in 1977, a party he chaired till September 1991, Nyerere would later become so disillusioned with CCM apparatchiks that in early 1995, in a fit of anger, he proclaimed: “CCM is not my mother, I can leave it.” Whether the reference to his mother was coincidental or intentional is probably neither here nor there, but by the time he was uttering this statement, his mother was still alive and was exerting a strong influence on her former president son’s life.

Then to show his great disenchantment, he openly rebuked the party leaders, including President Ali Hassan Mwinyi, who he termed as a “weak person who is easily swayed”. In the last booklet that Nyerere penned – Uongozi Wetu Na Hatima ya Tanzania (Our Leadership and the Fate of Tanzania), he referred to Mwinyi as a “weakling”.

Really miffed by the happenings at CCM, Tanzanians saw a side of Nyerere that they had not witnessed. When Augustine Lyatonga Mrema, the then flamboyant Minister of Home Affairs, Labour and Youth Development, quit CCM in a huff to join the nascent opposition, Nyerere publicly defended him and reproached the CCM.

A month before the first multiparty elections in November, 1995, Nyerere proclaimed: “I cannot let the country go to the dogs.” Even when he was no longer at the epicentre of power, he ensured that the pendulum of power swung according to his wishes.

In 1995, the year of the first multiparty elections in Tanzania, Nyerere was applauded for the first time since retiring as president in 1984 for castigating a government that he believed had taken to alienating itself from the people. He launched his onslaught on CCM leaders’ misdemeanours, which he said were contrary to the party’s policies. Nyerere was so popular that had he wanted to have a go at the presidency, again, he would have rode home on a triumphant note.

In that year, Nyerere single-handedly picked his political protégé Benjamin Mkapa, the then Minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology, and campaigned for him across the country as the CCM’s flag bearer. With Nyerere’s backing, Mkapa, who once edited the government-owned newspaper the Daily News and its sister paper Sunday News, overcame the opposition to win the presidency. Nyerere, aware of the infighting within CCM, had deftly picked Mkapa, an intellectual who then had an unblemished record in the civil service and parliament, to assuage the feelings of his contemporaries in the party.

Who were some of his contemporaries? Edward Mrisho Lowassa, the then Minister of Lands and Urban Development and Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, a former army officer and who would become the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Finance.

Lowassa in 1995 was 43 years old and rich. At the CCM national committee meeting in Dodoma, Nyerere asked a few unsavoury questions concerning Lowassa’s wealth. That sealed his fate. As for Kikwete, then 45, his religious affiliations must have worked against him in 1995. He is Muslim. Opposition to Mwinyi, a Muslim, had grown and Tanzanians in 1995 were reluctant to be led by another Muslim.

Nyerere had read the mood of the Tanzanians well: in selecting Mkapa as a compromise candidate in a field of 16 CCM party presidential candidates, he had appeased the party loyalists (wakereketwa), who had been disenchanted that Lowassa had not been picked by the party. More importantly, Nyerere not only picked a Christian, but a Catholic. Still, supporters of Tanzania’s multiparty system will always remember Nyerere as the man who paved the way for pluralistic politics in the country.

Once described by Prof Ali Mazrui, as a “heroic failure”, Nyerere remained the embodiment of Tanzanian politics, looming large over Tanzanians like a colossus. (Nyerere once praised Mazrui as a famous public intellectual and interlocutor. When they met, he is reported to have said, “Nasikia sifa tu” [I can only luxuriate in your fame].)

The theme of “heroism” in Nyerere’s life would recur later in life when the Tanzanian Catholic clergy would seek to venerate him for his “saintly” deeds.

Nyerere was famous by all means, famous in the style of Socrates’ words: Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds. A philosopher-king, Nyerere went further to perfect Socrates’ epigram – fame is the perfume of heroic deeds and spectacular failures. Nyerere failed spectacularly in some of his political experiments.

The Arusha Declaration and its aftermath

In October 1995, one month before the general elections, I met Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu, the Zanzibari Marxist intellectual and former Minister of Economy of Tanzania, at the Gandhi Hall in Mwanza, the lakeshore town on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Tanzania. “Anybody who wants to understand Nyerere must begin first by demystifying him,” said Babu in his introductory remarks.

For the 23 years that he was in power, said Babu, Nyerere shaped and reshaped the destiny of a nation with the single-mindedness of a chief, convinced that Tanzania’s fate lay in “African Socialism” – a concoction of scientific socialism and African communalism. So, in February 1967, Nyerere came up with a blueprint that Babu believed Nyerere wrote himself: Azimio la Arusha (The Arusha Declaration). And for the next two decades, the document’s philosophy formed the basis of Ujamaa (loosely translated as brotherhood). This led to the formation of rural collectives (Ujamaa villages) for agricultural production and the nationalisation of industries. The philosophy underplayed ethnicity and focused on unity. However, this radical experiment turned out to be a monumental failure. Till today, there is a section of Tanzanians who are rankled by those heady days of the disastrous Ujamaa policy.

In August 1984, Nyerere, who in his spare time had translated two of Shakespeare’s plays – Julius Caesar and Merchant of Venice – into Kiswahili, coined a new Kiswahili word: kungátuka, meaning to retire. And with that he left the Msasani State House that faced the Indian Ocean in Dar es Salaam.

Once referred to as a cunning fox by Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese supreme leader, Nyerere later shifted positions on kungátuka and said: “Sikungátuka…nimefanya kutoa guu.” I didn’t retire…I just relocated my foot.

I met Nyerere twice: once in a political meeting in Mwanza where, as master and servant politician, he was doing what he knew best: dazzling the crowd and mesmerising them with his magic wand. The second time was in a gathering of a graduating class, where again the philosopher-king was at ease, bantering away with the graduates and their professors alike. On both occasions, I got the impression that Nyerere was ever the king-maker, the philosopher-king, whose words everybody hung onto.

Feted at home and abroad, Nyerere had the simplicity of the underclass and the power and gait of aristocracy. He exuded exceptional political morality and was celebrated in the West by the liberal left. He became the darling of left-leaning governments in Europe, such as Sweden, which poured donor aid into the country and held Nyerere up as an example of good African leadership. Mwalimu stood like a beacon of rationality, sobriety and princely leadership. In essence, Mwalimu was an institution unto himself. Sometimes referred to as the “peasant-president”, Nyerere had the privileges of a royal prince who found himself among real peasants who could only marvel at his power and grandeur.

As part of the crop of post-colonial African leaders who emerged in the 1950s, Nyerere carried with him huge dreams – oftentimes huger dreams than he could find time to interpret in his lifetime. Sometimes in the process of interpreting those dreams, he got carried away and possessed by them and anybody who did not dream along, or proffered a different interpretation, found himself at a crossroads and at odds with the mighty Mwalimu.

For instance, when cabinet minister Oscar Kambona disagreed with some of the tenets of the Arusha Declaration, he found himself in exile. Babu, after being released from detention by Mwalimu, opted to live in exile as well, in the “cold climes of London”, as he used to refer to the harsh British climate. Even the Sykes brothers, who had been influential in founding the TANU party (which later morphed into CCM), and who had funded it and had even inviting Nyerere to join it in the mid-1950s, opted to stay put and gradually melt into political oblivion.

At a time when the institution of the presidency was synonymous with an individual and state-led development, we must give it to Nyerere for stepping aside (for whatever reason) and allowing his protégé to take over.

The Catholic president

Seven years after his death, the Tanzania Episcopal Conference (TEC), through the cooperation of the Musoma Diocese, opened a cause for Nyerere’s beatification with the approval of the Vatican. The Catholic leadership of Tanzania throughout Nyerere’s reign loved him: the Catholic church was the only institution whose properties were not nationalised with the advent of the Arusha Declaration. The church continued to run its hospitals and schools, and to own its huge tracts of land without the state intervention.

After TEC’s proposition, an Italian, Silvia Cinzia Turrin, wrote an essay on Nyerere: Nyerere, il maestro. Vita e utopie di un padre del lÁfrica, Cristiano e socialista (Nyerere, the teacher. Life and utopia of an African priest, a Christian and socialist.)

The Catholic church in Tanzania, with the tacit approval of the Maryknoll Fathers, and the American missionary group that first went to Tanzania as White Fathers at the beginning of the 20th century, and who ran Musoma diocese, spoke of Nyerere’s heroism within the Catholic church. They argued that Nyerere was fit for canonisation because of his saintly deeds. While Prof Mazrui saw Nyerere as a heroic failure, the Catholic church in Tanzania saw Nyerere as the exemplification of an ideal Catholic.

In the Catholic church, canonisation or sainthood is the church’s official recognition that the person so declared has performed heroic deeds (on earth) and is without doubt with God in heaven. Pastorally, it has an even greater significance; it means that the church has put forward the life of the person in question as an example for all Catholic faithfuls to follow during their pilgrimage towards the final vision of God at death – the beatification. Nyerere’s beatification is currently one of the 44 pending cases from the African continent.

Nyerere’s success as a president who ably balanced his religious creed and political beliefs has been celebrated all over the world. He is seen as a leader who astutely preached religious co-existence, harmony and tolerance. Many may be taken aback and may not remember that the Republic of Tanzania, alongside the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar, in a manner of speaking, is largely a “Muslim” country, even though Catholicism is the biggest Christian denomination.

Was Nyerere, therefore, the Catholic president of a Muslim country? For all the years that Nyerere was the president of Tanzania, he never preached Catholicism to Tanzanians, even though he led a very devout Catholic life both privately and publicly.

Nyerere is normally compared to another African “Catholic president” who reigned largely in a Muslim country – Senegal. Leopold Sedar Senghor, the African-French gentleman, practised his Catholicism in a country whose more than 80 per cent population obey Allah, but never, at any time, did the Senegalese feel that their president was biased towards Catholicism.

One year after Nyerere’s death, I posed the question: Between Nelson Mandela, the Black Pimpernel and Mwalimu Nyerere, who was the fairest? Then, as now, I believe Madiba might as well arguably turn out to be Africa’s best leader-president of all time. So, while Nyerere will forever remain great (partly because of making great mistakes), Mandela will forever be remembered for spending a third of his life in South African prisons and surviving to assume the presidency of a Rainbow Nation.

***

In November 2000, I was in Dar es Salaam to cover the second multiparty elections. It was the first election that was being held in the absence of the towering Mwalimu. The violence that was meted on the opposition party, the Civic United Front (CUF), CCM’s bitterest rival, was unprecedented. My Tanzanian colleagues and friends would later reminisce that had Nyerere been alive, little of that violence would have been witnessed.

Since Mwalimu’s death, Africa especially, has remained lonely without his presence. It is probable that the continent may not have another Nyerere for a long time. Yet it is now, in this momentous time in the world’s history, that Africa needs a Nyerere.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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

By Dauti Kahura

The fracas that took place in Gitui Catholic Church in Murang’a County on September 8, 2019, is a harbinger of the political battles that are going to be fought in Central Kenya and the larger Mt Kenya region by the fractious Jubilee Party antagonists.

“The battle for the soul of the Kikuyu vote is on and what we witnessed in Murang’a was a proxy war being waged by two factional camps, split by succession politics that are intent on capturing the Kikuyu vote ahead of the 2022 general elections,” said a Central Kenya politician who requested for anonymity.

The camps are led by President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy William Samoei Ruto. Fronted by their respective protégés, the factions are known by their signature monikers – Kieleweke (it shall [soon] be evident) and Tanga Tanga (the roving group). Although President Uhuru has not come out openly to associate with the @Kieleweke group, which is being fronted by one Ngunjiri Wambugu, the flip-flopping Nyeri Town MP, his deputy, no doubt, has made it known that he is the de facto Tanga Tanga leader, a label he proudly carries.

The church lent itself as a perfect scene on a Sunday afternoon for the antagonists to outdo each other as they sought to prove to their respective masters that were ready and willing to wage a proxy battle on their behalf. As it will soon be evident, Murang’a County, sandwiched between Kiambu and Nyeri counties, is the very ground where the battle for the much-coveted Kikuyu electorate will be viciously fought.

If the Kieleweke group has smelt dissent and infiltration of enemies in what they consider to be their unrivalled turf, the Tanga Tanga group, in its roving mission, has stumbled upon a restless electorate, anxious and willing to be wooed by a ready suitor. The electorate has sniffed a one-time opportunity to prove (to its sister counties) that it too can also ascend to the highest echelons of political power and it should not be taken for granted.

The Kieleweke group, this time led by nominated MP Maina Kamanda – a man who now carries the label KYM (kanda ya moko, Kikuyu for a hatchet man) – “sneaked” into Kiharu constituency, an unacceptable political tourism into another MP’s territory without his prior notice. As Uhuru’s man on the ground, he had carried Sh1 million to be donated to the church on behalf of the president. Getting whiff of Kamanda’s meandering into his constituency, Ndindi Nyoro, the greenhorn Kiharu MP, who today is described as the “Murkomen” of Central Kenya, burst into the church to let Kamanda know that he was the sheriff in town and that others could not appear in his turf without his prior knowledge and permission.

“The ensuing kerfuffle between Nyoro and the elderly Kamanda inside the church was, as unfortunate, the proxy battles being fought elsewhere in the country by the Jubilee factional wings,” said a Mt Kenya politician who has known Kamanda for well over three decades. “We were with Kamanda in the opposition politics in the 1990s and one time I and another Central Kenya MP went to bail him out in Embu town after former President Daniel arap Moi ordered that he be locked in a police cell for his utterances.”

The politician told me he has been calling Kamanda’s mobile phone number to no avail. “He has refused to pick my call…just as well…because I wanted to tell him that the September 8 ugly scene was beneath him. As a senior politician, he should have known better than to engage in such like shenanigans.”

But the Mt Kenya politician reserved the harshest barbs for both the Catholic Church’s leadership and the parish priest, Fr John Kibuuru. “That priest is a vagabond. For him to have allowed the politicians to desecrate the offertory was a cardinal sin to, especially us Catholics. The offertory is where we go to offer our supplications, it is a sacrosanct place – how dare he let vagabonds like him defile the holy sanctuary?”

The politician, a staunch Catholic known for his morning mass and an unfailing Sunday service attendance wherever he is, reminded me: “I have never conducted my politics inside the precincts of the church for all the 30-something years I have been in politics. The Church can bare me out…you can bare me out. If and when I want to meet the electorate, who form part of the congregation, I ask it we meet outside the church, after the priest is done with the mass. I’ve always respected the sanctity of the church.”

It was useless for Bishop John (Maria) Wainaina, of Murang’a diocese who also oversees the Kirinyaga diocese to issue a belated decree the day after, ordering politicians to keep off the church’s sanctum, said the politician. “The pulpit should not, at all times, be a place for politicians to address the electorate – the politicians have their forums to do that – and the church’s rostrum is not one of them.” The politician accused Fr Kibuuru of being partisan on the current succession politics and for letting himself be dined and wined by politicians.

“For my church, I’m sorry to say it has lost its direction: the clergy is no longer the light of the laity. For that ugly scene to have taken place in a Catholic church shows you just how lowly the Catholic church leadership in Kenya has sunk. Priests nowadays do what they feel like doing. The bishops cannot reign in on the priests because they themselves are no better.”

He added that the Catholic Church has been infiltrated by ethnic baronial politics, which has chosen to serve the interests of political power brokers. The politician said the church in general, in Kenya has ceded ground to the politician because of greed for money and power.

Gitui Catholic Church is on your way to Kangema and some of the congregants told me that Kamanda’s coming to Kiharu without notifying Nyoro was disrespectful and uncalled for. “Kamanda should know we have an MP whom we elected ourselves, he shouldn’t stomp here like it’s his area, Nyoro is young, but he is ours.” The Kiharu residents let it be known to me that “after all, Kamanda is not from here, he is from Nyandarua, if he wants to be elected, there is Nyandarua for him if Nairobi has become too hot for him to handle.”

The 36-year-old excitable Ndindi Nyoro has been riding on the crest of a popular wave since that hullabaloo with Kamanda. His electorate right now think of him as a local hero for standing up to Kamanda and for expressing his political stand – which at the moment gels with the electorate: dissatisfaction with President Uhuru’s disastrous politics.

Ndindi’s Kiambugi Mixed Secondary schoolmates remember him as a feisty young man who dreamt of one day being an important (wealthy) man. A relative of Ngenye Kariuki, Ngenye refers to Nyoro as his grandson. He campaigned for Ngenye in 1997 when he run for the same Kiharu seat, as a student. “He was very active, organising for Ngenye’s supporters to be ferried in trucks to his rallies and exclusive meetings,” said one of his schoolmates. Ngenye won the seat on a Safina ticket and Ndindi four years later transitioned to Kenyatta University. Kiambugi Mixed Secondary School later on was transformed into a boys’ only high school.

Between 2013 and 2017, Ndindi Nyoro, served as the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) manager for Kiharu under Irungu Kangata. When Kangata decided to go for the senator seat, there was understandably a mutual agreement between them that Nyoro should “take over” from Kangata. Today, Nyoro has publicly identified his politics with those of Deputy President William Ruto, claiming that he is the best suited to “take over” from President Uhuru who is serving his last second term. His Kiharu constituents seem to largely agree with him…for now.

The Matiba factor

Kiharu constituency is famous for being at one time represented by the irrepressible Kenneth Stanley Njindo Matiba, the rambunctious politician who was detained by President Moi in 1990 and never recovered from his stroke till his death in April 2018. Matiba still evokes nostalgic emotions from Murang’a residents, who still view him as the president they never had. It is a “grudge” they carry against their cousins from both Kiambu and Nyeri counties, albeit surreptitiously.

The general election of November, 1979 called by a new President Moi, who had taken over from Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, who had died on August 22, 1978, saw an energetic, bold and young Matiba enter the race for Kiharu, then known as Mbiri, armed to the teeth with the latest statistical data on the constituency. Fresh from being the managing director of East African Breweries Limited (EABL), Matiba waged a political battle pitted against the “mighty” Gikonyo Kiano, which Kiano, until his death in April 2003, was never to recover from.

In an era when statistics as an effective campaign tool was unheard off, Matiba came to Mbiri with data that laid bare the geographical, socio-political and economic facts of the constituency: gender composition, household incomes, number of graduates, population density, the area’s topography, voting patterns, I mean…name it. With these facts, Matiba, with military precision, combed the length and breadth of Mbiri, and floored Gikonyo, the first post-independence Minister of Trade and Commerce, in a battle royal that is the stuff of political legends.

When the son of Njindo entered the presidential race in 1992, it was not the same Matiba who, more than a decade before, had entered constituency elective politics as a corporatist, dare-devil, intelligent and sharp man. Although the presidential race was won by the incumbent Moi, Murang’a people to date believe that Matiba won that election, in which he ran alongside Ford Kenya’s Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and the Democratic Party’s Mwai Kibaki.

However, it was Kibaki’s entering the presidential race in 1992 that still rankles the Murang’a folks: Had he not run, the Kikuyu vote would not have been split and, therefore, Matiba would easily have romped home, many of them believe. It is something they will not say loudly, but it is still a chip on their shoulder after all these years.

“The people of Murang’a County break no bones when they insist they have supported both Kiambu and Nyeri people to ascend to the presidency. But those same people have yet to reciprocate the gesture,” said a former Nairobi city councillor from Dagoretti. “This feeling of ‘abandonment and betrayal’ by their cousins, was aggravated in 2017, when the Murang’a moguls ceded control of Nairobi to a ‘lay about and nonentity’ through Uhuru’s carelessness and cowardly politics.”

The former councillor, who keeps tabs with the Rwathia Group, the influential and richest group of Kikuyu men who since independence have controlled the business and politics of Nairobi city, said the moguls seethe with anger against President Uhuru for the loss of the Nairobi County governor’s seat to Mike Mbuvi Sonko in 2017. “That is all we had asked from Uhuru, to allow us to have Nairobi, but even that he could not deliver,” confided the moguls to my councillor friend.

“The Murang’a people have smelt an opportunity and they are ready to seize it,” said the former councillor. “Uhuru is not going to be a factor insofar as 2022 succession politics are concerned: no Kikuyu voter, much less the political elite, is going to listen to him – he has done his call of duty and as it is, they are not amused with his performance,” the former councillor said.

The Raila factor

The anger against President Uhuru among the Kikuyu electorate makes Ruto seem like the only viable alternative. “It is going to take a near miracle for President Uhuru to persuade the Kikuyus to listen to him. The Kikuyu rebellion against the Kenyatta Family this time is real.”

The Kikuyus are plotting to vote for William Ruto as a protest vote and teach President Uhuru a lesson, said one of the richest magnates in Murang’a. “Raila will never rule this country. If Uhuru thinks we will be swayed by his belated shaking of hands with that ‘mad man’, he has another thing coming. Uhuru has overseen the systematic destruction of the Kikuyu economy – he was supposed to protect it, instead, what has he done? He has presided over its deliberate collapse. Is that not why he is sending Kamanda to us? Because he cannot dare venture into Central Kenya or anywhere near Mt Kenya region?”

The Murangá magnate said, “The Kikuyu people will frustrate Raila’s presidential efforts until he grows so old that he will not have the stamina to run. We are waiting for that Uhuru to come and tell us about the handshake. We will tell him our minds.” If by supporting Ruto, the Murangá people can attempt a stab at the presidency so be it, said the tycoon. He said that President Uhuru spent half of his presidential campaigns demonising Raila, so much so that, to now point the Kikuyu people to his direction is to really mock them. “Has Uhuru come back to the Kikuyu people to undo the damage?” he asked.

The many forays by Deputy President Ruto’s team into the heartland of the Kikuyu domain is because he has established that the people are divided and are not speaking in one voice, said a one- time senior civil servant from the Mt Kenya region. “He knows the President’s core constituency is bitter with him and because he [Uhuru] is unsure of their retribution against him, he has dilly-dallied going home. So the DP has taken advantage of this lacuna to make inroads into the region and is consistently preaching a message that entrenches their hatred for Raila Odinga.”

A poll survey conducted recently by a professional research group showed that if presidential elections were to be held today, William Ruto would win by 45 per cent countrywide, and in the Mt Kenya region, he would garner a very strong support. The poll’s sample size, significantly larger than the usual 3000 people, was picked across the 47 counties. The somewhat surprising poll results dissuaded the firm from publishing its findings and making them public. Ruto is considered an incumbent, and therefore a frontrunner, and the only person who has explicitly said he would be gunning for the presidency come 2022. His is not only a brand name, but he has name recognition across the country.

To tame the deputy’s presidential ambitions and to curtail his perceived inroads into Central Kenya and the larger Mt Kenya region, his political nemeses in the Jubilee Party have been making his interlocutors lives’ in the region, difficult.

“The hauling of the Kiambu governor to court and making him spend some days in police cells over corruption charges is part of the handshake’s efforts to throttle the DP’s penetration of the area,” said the former senior civil servant. “When he was thrown into custody at the Industrial Police Station cells, Ferdinand Waititu (Kiambu Governor) was visited at night by a Jubilee Party mandarin allied to President Uhuru’s wing who mocked him by telling him ‘to now call the DP’ to bail him out.” The mandarin allegedly warned Waititu that he was going to pay for his cavorting with the Deputy President.

Governor Waititu apparently is not the first Central Kenya politician to be “punished” by the “handshake team” for not toeing the line: “The first to be tamed was the deleterious Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria, who immediately after the swearing-in of President Uhuru Kenyatta for his second term in November 2017, was seen as Ruto’s point man in Central Kenya. He was slapped with an unpaid tax accumulated over the years that effectively cooled his heels,” said the former senior civil servant.

Yet, according to the senior civil servant, it was Governor Ann Mumbi Waiganjo, formerly known as Ann Waiguru, who had to be quickly nipped in the bud because she was thought to be running ahead of herself. Immediately after being confirmed as the Governor of Kirinyaga, after a protracted court battle filed by her opponent, former Gichugu MP and 2013 presidential contender, Martha Wangari Karua, it is alleged that Governor Ann Mumbi Waiganjo went around telling and whispering to anybody who cared to listen that she was primed to be Deputy President William Ruto’s running mate come 2022.

“The Kirinyaga governor was therefore seen as a possible and viable teammate of Ruto in his search for a deputy from the all-important Mt Kenya region,” said the former civil servant. “To stop forthwith that talk that apparently was interpreted as rallying the larger Mt Kenya region in the direction of the Deputy President’s team 2022, the governor was aptly reminded of the National Youth Service (NYS) mega scandal that took place in 2016 when Ann Waiguru was the Cabinet Secretary for Devolution.”

The sudden change of tune by the Kirinyaga governor is not out of step, said my source: “That today she is singing the ‘handshake tune’ is not as a result of a Damascus moment, the realisation that after all, it isn’t a good idea to be a deputy president of Kenya. It is the flexing of power of the opposing sides within the Jubilee Party at play.”

Since her change of tune regarding local and national politics, the governor has had to face the wrath of some of her constituents: Last month, when she went to open a market in Kagumo town, she was jeered by a mob that she claimed was paid to do so. Paid to do so, because it told her off over her support of “the handshake” and the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI).

Kagumo town in Kirinyaga Central constituency is the hotbed of Kirinyaga County politics. And this is not the first time the governor was being chased away from Kagumo: When she was campaigning for the governor’s seat, she was also one time ferreted out of the town. It took the intervention of Purity Wangui Ngirici, then campaigning for the Women Representative seat, to help her navigate around Kirinyaga County.

“It is Ngirici who held Ann’s hand in a manner of speaking and showed her the ropes in Kirinyaga,” said one of Karua’s chief campaigners. “Waiguru didn’t know the nooks and crannies of the county – it was Ngirici who showed her around. Remember Ngirici was always a William Ruto person: the helicopter she was campaigning in – which was emblazoned with her name Wangui – was lent to her by Ruto.” Purity Wangui Ngirici hails from one of the two most powerful families in Mwea: Mbari ya Douglas, (the clan of Douglas) and Mbari ya Mkombozi (the clan of the saviour). She is married to Ngirici, who is the son of the late spy master James Kanyotu.

Ngirici, who is in her late 40s, is the Women’s Rep, but by and large she controls the politics of Kirinyaga: three-quarters of all the elected MCAs owe allegiance to her. To checkmate her, the governor equally nominated her loyalist MCAs to counterbalance Ngirici’s force. Ngirici has trashed the handshake and has been telling the Kirinyaga electorate that the BBI’s motive is to unload Raila onto them by creating additional executive positions.

In Ngirici, Ruto has a powerful ally in the county. It is, therefore, not improbable to imagine where Ngirici’s politics are headed: in 2022 Ann Mumbi Waiganjo will have a worthy opponent for the governor’s seat. And if all factors remain the same, it is also not too difficult to imagine whose drumbeats she will be beating: William Ruto’s.

On the peripheries of Mt Kenya region, other Ruto allies include the Kikuyu MP Kimani Ichungwá, Kandara MP Alice Wahome, Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro and Bahati MP Kimani Ngunjiri. “These are relatively young MPs (of course apart from Kimani) in age and politics. They are pragmatic enough to know where their political bread is buttered; not with Uhuru, but with Ruto…so it’s nothing personal,” said a Jubilee Party politician from Mt Kenya.

In an area where 70 per cent of the incumbent MPs are thrown out every five years, these MPs are closely reading the signs on the wall – and the signs on the wall currently in the Mt Kenya region are that William Ruto is the man to beat.

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.

The Sinicization of Christianity: How China Is Responding to Religious Threats

By Dauti Kahura On August 2, 2019, the Kenyan government finally put the troubled Kenya Planters Coffee Union (KPCU) under administration. Peter Munya, Cabinet Secretary for Trade and Industrialization said the government had liquated the union because of gross mismanagement.

KPCU, the oldest farmers’ union in the country, and the biggest employer in the agricultural sector in the 1980s, has undergone many trials and tribulations.

“The union [in the 1980s] was so cash-rich that some influential Kanu party mandarins would make it borrow money from ‘good’ banks, which was actually a scheme to launder and siphon money from the union,” said a top-level KPCU insider, who spoke to me strictly in confidence, because he is not authorized to speak on KPCU matters to a journalist, and also because discussing KPCU is a dangerous subject matter, of life and death. “Some of these men would deliver 10 bags of coffee and claim they had delivered 1000 bags, getting paid for one hundred times what they had actually brought in,” said the insider.

Then, as now, there was no robust system of records at KPCU; many of the transactions were not recorded and therefore, it has always been difficult to prove anything, he said. KPCU was a monopoly because all coffee had to be milled by the union, before the liberalization in 1994. “KPCU was not only the only miller, it was the only seller of coffee,” said the insider.

One of the biggest problems that later came to haunt KPCU for the longest time is that it also operated like a bank for coffee farmers. It would lend the farmers money to buy land, for example, to expand their coffee acreage. “Many of the farmers who borrowed money from KPCU were not your ordinary small-scale farmer, but the big-time plantation farmer. With the new regulation in 2001, officially allowing for independent millers, majority of these KPCU loan defaulters refused to pay back the money they had borrowed from the union… they just took their coffee to independent millers from then on,” said the KPCU source.

And that is partly how KPCU found itself in trouble: the people who borrowed money then from KPCU remain some of the wealthiest and most influential men in the country to date.

“The list of KPCU creditors is the who’s who – some in politics, some in the civil service and others in the private businesses. The ones in private business have powerful connections to those in the politics and public service. They are untouchable,”saidthe insider.“To date, KPCU is probably owed KSh4 billion by the big-time coffee farmers who have bluntly refused to pay the loans they took from it.”

At its peak, KPCU sold 120,000 bags of coffee. That was in the 1980s. “Today, it barely sells 30,000 bags, most of it smuggled from Uganda,” said my source. “Made up of 16 board members, only two have post-secondary education, the rest are semi-illiterate and they are in their 70s. The board is a proxy of a powerfulcartel that still runs KPCU like a fiefdom. With a workforce of about 40 employees, the board is right now kicking out anyone who is not related to its members, now that the union has been taken over by the government. At KPCU, the name of the game is blood loyalty. Period.”

In January, 2018, the former Cabinet Secretary for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Willy Bett, asked the Auditor General to do a forensic audit at the KPCU. “The Auditor General Edward Ouko and his team spent six months at the union and found out that the government owed KPCU about KSh270 million – this is the loan that could be ascertained. If you calculate the base interest rate of about 7–8 percent compounded over a period of 20 years, KPCU would be in a position to comfortably repay its debts and revive its operations,” observed the source. The KPCU insider said there was another KSh200 million that the government allegedly owed the union, “but the money cannot be ascertained because records could not be found.”

The saga and the multifaceted problems bedeviling the coffee farmer in Kenya is a sad story, which can make one break down with emotion over their tribulations.

Tounderstand the woes of the Kenyan small coffee grower,I took a trip to Irembu Farmers Co- operative Society Ltd in Murang’a County, 70km north-east of the capital city Nairobi. Located eight kilometres off Maragua town, the coffee factory yard looked desolate and forlorn. There was a deathly air to it. There was zero activity. The existing infrastructure had been let to rust and rot.

A once thriving factory that in its heyday turned over 60,000kilograms of coffee in one day, and upward of 1.2 million kilograms a year, Irembu Farmers Co-operative Farmers Society is a microcosm of the sorry state that is Kenyan small-scale coffee growers find themselves in today.

The saga and the multifaceted problems bedeviling the coffee farmer in Kenya is a sad story, which can make one break down with emotion over their tribulations.

I was met by the society’s secretary-cum-manager, Salome Wanjiru, a middle-aged woman in her late 40s, who has worked in the coffee industry for more than two decades. “Irembu used to serve 700 members during the halcyon years,” said a nostalgic Salome. “The factory was so busy, it was not unusual for farmers to trans-night at the factory waiting for their turn to hand in their coffee berries.”

That now was in the past. The coffee racks that were used by the factory workers to dry the coffee berries had fallen apart, the wooden stumps half-eaten by termites. The grinding machine is derelict, the manager could not recall the last time it had crushed coffee berries.

“The coffee woes begun in the late 1980s with the onset of the liberalization,” said Salome. “When the free-market policies set in proper in the 1990s, the small-scale coffee grower found it really hard to contend with the new arrangement: of independent millers and freestyle marketing, in which he ceded control of his produce.” The liberalization was as a result of the introduction of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), brought about by the Bretton Woods institutions: the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“During KPCU days, the small-scale coffee grower enjoyed subsidies from the government”, said Salome. “The government in conjunction with the Co-operative Bank – known countrywide as the ‘farmers bank’ would supplement the coffee farmer with farm inputs such as fertilizer and loan advances.” Today there are about 20 independent millers, and hearing Salome speak, it seemed to me the farmers’ woes have multiplied twenty-fold.

“I was educated with the coffee money,” Salome ventured to tell me. “All that my father needed to do is walk into a Co-op bank branch in Murang’a and show the manager his coffee factory delivery number, and he would be loaned money for school fees.” Her story – the story of how she was educated with coffee money is a narrative replicated many times in the lives of many Kenyans from Central Kenya – some of them now influential people in the civil service and politics.

But with liberalization, the emergence of independent millers and coffee brokers put an end to all that. Salome did not mince her words: the government of the day has neglected the small-scale coffee grower. I asked her why. “The small-scale coffee grower has continued to languish in mounting debt and searing poverty, all the while the government looking askance, leaving the farmer mercilessly at the hands of insidious brokers and ruthless millers.”

The coffee racks that were used by the factory workers to dry the coffee berries had fallen apart, the wooden stumps half-eaten by termites. The grinding machine is derelict, the manager could not recall the last time it had crushed coffee berries.

Irembu Farmers Co-operative Society – like many of the coffee co-operative societies across the country–enjoyed its last merry days in the early years of the 1990s. “If my memory serves me right, the years between 1993–1996 were the last time the coffee farmer enjoyed the fruits of his labour,” said Salome. In those years, a kilo of coffee berries averaged KSh40. But in 1997–1998, things changed abruptly: the Irembu farmer was only advanced seven shillings. “After we took our coffee to KPCU, no money was paid for the coffee delivered. What shocked the farmer even more, is that, he was told, he owed money to the co-operative running into hundreds of millions of shillings.”

In the intervening years, the small-scale coffee grower has sunk into despair and hopelessness. Many coffee farmers are now engaged in subsistence farming. Salome showed me erstwhile coffee farms that had been turned into banana and maize farms. “Coffee is a sentimental crop, but you cannot eat sentimentality,” she said. Farmers have agonized over whether to uproot the coffee tree, many have gone on to do so, embittered by the deteriorating coffee prices and their helplessness in controlling the marketing chain.

One of the farmers that has been mulling over whether to uproot his coffee trees is Samuel Kimari. Kimari has been growing coffee on his five-acre farm in Kigumo, also in Murang’a County. He recounted how over the years, the coffee prices have plummeted to a miserly Sh30 per kilo – adjusting for inflation, this is measly. “This is notwithstanding the huge expenses of employing labourers, buying fertilizer and sowing the land,” said Kimari. “The coffee farmer, unlike his counterpart the tea grower, is at the mercy of the coffee cartels which include the collusion of millers and coffee dealers.”

Once the farmer has taken his coffee to the millers, he ceases to have control over his coffee berries, said Kimari. “You cannot even be sure whether the miller is selling your coffee or indeed what has happened to it.” It is the miller who decides how much a farmer is going to be paid for his coffee berries. “The miller collects your coffee, markets it and pegs the price on how much he is going to pay for your coffee, all rolled into one.”

Small-scale coffee farmers in Kenya are treated like slaves, Peter Mwangi Njoroge told me in Maragua town. He is small-scale coffee grower, chairman of Kenya Small-Scale Coffee Growers Association (KESCOGA), a lobby group formed 10 years ago to agitate for the voice of the small- scale coffee growers countrywide. “We read in history that slavery was ended by Abraham Lincoln in the US, but here in Kenya, the coffee farmer is still very much a slave,” lamented Njoroge. “Our leaders have been compromised by the coffee cartel, they look the other way as the coffee farmer is brow beaten by the millers who keep the farmers money.”

Njoroge’s organization, which represents some of the 700,000 small-scale coffee growers countrywide, hopes to resuscitate the small-scale grower coffee farming. Yet, in between animated conversation about the glorious days of coffee farming, skepticism will creep in and he will say something like, “if the government does not do something about the coffee industry woes that have gone on for far too long, coffee farming will soon die and there will be no coffee to drink – here and abroad.”

Njoroge reminded me that Kenya grows one of the best coffee varieties in the world, Arabica, but because production volumes are low, Kenyan Arabica is used to blend with other coffee types like Robusta grown in South America, or in neighbouring Uganda, to come up with a coffee taste that sells all over the world. “Without our coffee, the world would find little to enjoy in drinking one of the finest coffee brews,” said Njoroge.

But, be that as it may, the story of the coffee problems in Kenya is half told if you have not spoken to the club of the big boys who have been growing the crop on large scale plantations. Kiambu County, also in Central Kenya, has been the cradle of coffee growing, since the cash crop was introduced in 1893 by the Scottish missionaries.

As luck would have it, I met Josephat Njoroge and his wife, who are looking for a joint venture to turn his 220-acre coffee plantation into a real estate project. The farm is located just on the outskirts of Kiambu town. “I cannot take it anymore. I have been saddled with so much debt; the bank has been threatening me with auctioning my land if I do not pay their money,” Njoroge told me in the middle of phone calls with potential partners for the JV.

At $990 billion traded in coffee every year, “coffee is the second highest quoted commodity in the world’s stock exchange after oil, but look at the coffee farmers in Kenya. They live like paupers,” said a disenchanted Njoroge. The global coffee enterprise is an upward of $100million (Sh1 trillion dollars), but hardly a fifth of this money reaches the farmer.

The election of Mwai Kibaki in 2002 brought hopes that the coffee sector would be reformed, seeing that Kibaki was from a coffee-growing area and so he must have understood how the coffee farmer was struggling and had been impoverished by the coffee cartels. To his credit, Kibaki reactivated the Stabilisation of Export Earnings – Stabex – a fund provided for by EU-ACP that channelled money through Co-operative Bank, money that was meant to be advanced to farmers, with as low an interest as five percent per year.

“I cannot take it anymore. I have been saddled with so much debt; the bank has been threatening me with auctioning my land if I do not pay their money”

“Yet no sooner had Co-op bank advanced us the Stabex money, than the bank said the money had dried up,” said an agitated Njoroge, who told me the bank now started asking the farmers to pay a 12% rate. “But that was not even the killer. The bank ordered the interest rate to be paid in dollars,” explained Njoroge. “That is when I knew my time was up with coffee growing business.” The bank is now asking the government for an extra Sh1.5 billion, said Njoroge.

Njoroge was unequivocally blunt: “In Kiambu coffee growing will be a thing of the past – make no mistake about it. Look around at the biggest coffee farms in Kiambu – nearly all of them have turned their back on coffee.”

A cursory glance at the plantations confirms Njoroge’s assertions. Socfinaf– one of the largest coffee estates – had converted part of their sprawling Tatu estate into a golf course; a full 600 acres of it. Seven hundred and seventy four acres of the Migaa coffee estate is now scheduled for a gated community housing project next to Ruiru town. Cianda coffee estate, which belonged to the late Kiambu veteran politician Njenga Karume, uprooted the coffee and planted tea instead – all of the 1,000 acres.

Talking of selling, it is allegedly believed Kiamara estate, which is also on the outskirts of Kiambu town–1,000 acres and that belongs to James Karugu, a former Attorney General– has been sold. Karugu’s Kiamara estate is right next to Ibonia estate, 1,000 acres all under coffee. Ibonia is owned by “Sir” Charles Mugane Njonjo, the only coffee estate that seems to be doing well. “I really would like to know how Njonjo has been so successful in his coffee growing,” Njoroge mused loudly. “He is the only coffee farmer among the big boys who has not hinted he is about to sell his plantation.”

Even Kibubuti Farm – a whole 2,000 acres all under coffee has been reconsidering uprooting the coffee trees and converting the land into real estate. Kibubuti is owned by Mike Maina, a hotelier who runs Marble Arc Hotel in Nairobi.

Outside the cradle of the coffee belt in Kiambu, the other area that grew coffee on a large scale was in Kitale. An agricultural settler-like town, Kitale was home to 4,000 acres of land under coffee. The giant farm was called Wamuini Co-operative Society. The farm was run by farmers from Nyeri County. It was divided into Wamuini A, Wamuini B and Wamuini C, etc. But even this humongous farm could not withstand the complexities of what had become the coffee woes of Kenya. The farmers gave up on coffee and now the plantations have been turned into maize and assorted fruits farms.

Like his counterparts, from the small-scale coffee growers, Salome and his namesake Njoroge of KESCOGA, Njoroge believes the 20 millers or so are part of the cartel that have ensured the coffee farmer does not reap from his coffee farming. They are all agreed that the government must step in and reign in on the cartels, give the farmer control over his produce and stabilize the coffee prices. “Coffee is a sentimental crop, no coffee farmer is happy to see his plantation, big or small, turned into concrete jungle,” said Njoroge.

“It is a paradox that coffee farmers did well when KPCU was the only miller in the country,” Njoroge from Kiambu said sadly. It was during this time when the troubled Mbo-i-Kamiti Farm (1,500 acres), one time produced a third of all coffee grown in Kenya. “It is a record that has not been broken to date,” summed up Njoroge.

Will the mess at KPCU and in the coffee sector ever be solved, I asked my KPCU insider source. “Yes. But not by opening the Pandora’s Box. The individuals who owe KPCU money, plus those who have corrupted the industry, include some of the most powerful men in Kenyan politics today. They will fight back because they owe hundreds of millions to KPCU and have no intentions whatsoever of repaying that money. They, therefore, will do anything to stop whoever is pursuing them. Hence, opening the can of worms is an exercise in futility. “What the government should do is pay back the monies it owes to KPCU, ensure farmers are paid their rightful dues and start afresh. As for the individual defaulters – a truth and reconciliation type of commission should be constituted for the powerful men – to seek penance and be remorseful for their criminal sins.”

Written and published with the support of the Route to Food Initiative (RTFI) (www.routetofood.org). Views expressed in the article are not necessarily those of the RTFI.

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.

The Sinicization of Christianity: How China Is Responding to Religious Threats

By Dauti Kahura Victor Rago 23, is a tall lanky fellow, who every inch looks like an IT geek. He is not far from that description: he will be graduating with honours from the University of Nairobi on September 6, 2019, with a degree in industrial and analytical chemistry. His pastime is crunching numbers, and, as he told me, is looking to enter into the word of global financial trading.

But Rago has another pastime, a more lucrative one –farming. “I’ve been farming potatoes in Narok County on a one-acre plot of land,” said Rago. “I cracked the numbers and realized I could be making some tidy sum of surplus cash from the hired piece of land, after I’ve deducted all my expenses.”Rago’s rented potato plot is in Erongitok, five kilometres from Narok town.

“I rent my one-acre land at between Ksh40,000-50,000 per year. When the season is excellent, I’ll reap sack of potatoes every three months, in a good year. It’s a profitable undertaking provided you do your math well,” said the science student. “When its harvest time, I don’t have to go looking for buyers – they will come with their Mitsubishi Fuso trucks straight to the farm and collect the potatoes at the source.” That, he observed, saves him and his buyers from the crafty middlemen and potato crop brokers. “They are a necessary nuisance, but a menace, nonetheless.” This is the one time he must physically be at the farm. “Harvest time happens to be the busiest period, so you don’t want to leave all that work to your employee, or even hired hands. These people are human beings and they are prone to temptations.”

Rago told me the black alluvial soil, the flat land and the sunshine weather in Erongitok is good for potato crop cultivation. “The rains are also dependable, although they can be erratic, but just good enough to grow my potatoes.” His expenses include: hiring a farmhand, equipping him a feature phone (‘mulikamwizi’) and erecting a makeshift structure at the farm for his farmhand to live in during the season. “Labour is cheap, the farmhands are paid between KSh2000–3000, depending on the size of the land and what crop he is looking after. I pay mine KSh2000.”

Ever the ambitious university student, Rago, who has dreams of pursuing a master degree in analytical chemistry, has come to define your archetypal millennial “farmer”: adventure-seeking, entrepreneurial, a little ‘bougie’, techy-savvy, a terribly young man, who when talking about his farming, makes it sound like such a sexy undertaking. Telephone farming may not have started with the millennial, but this generation has sexed-up traditional farming as we know it. “Modern day farming is today a social enterprise engagement that is being done by (college) students and young corporate types from the confines of their lecture halls and offices,” said Rago. “The friend who introduced and interested me in this side hustle is a financial consultant with an office in Nairobi CBD, who has been farming hay and potatoes on a large scale in Erongitok.” Rago said his friend was now even thinking of diversifying his telephone farming into keeping livestock – cows, goats and sheep. “Ërongitok and Ntulele(an area just before you reach Narok town from Nairobi city), are good for livestock keeping because there’s a lot of fodder and expansive land for the animals to graze,” Rago’s said his friend.

Rago has come to define your archetypal millennial “farmer”: adventure-seeking, entrepreneurial, a little ‘bougie’, techy-savvy, a terribly young man, who, when talking about his farming, makes it sound like such a sexy undertaking.

According to Rago, his friend told him that traditional farming as practised by our parents is waning – with the advancement in technology– you need not always be physically present at the farm. “Just invest in the right technological tools and personnel and you can engage in farming activities from wherever you are.’” In the coming years, the next big money to be made in this country is in the food production, said Rago’s friend. “But in the meantime, what’s wrong in making hay while the sun shines?”

Rago told me he has never thought of himself strictly as a farmer, “I wouldn’t say farming is my passion – it is not – but as an up and coming social entrepreneur, I’m always looking for opportunities to make a fast buck: this potato farming has been affording me some extra cash, while at the same time contributing to the country’s food production. I would like to think of myself as a patriotic Kenyan who’s playing his dutiful role as a food producer.”

Unlike Rago, Susan Wanjiku 32, has a full-time job, working for a local NGO in Nairobi. Wanjiku took me to her farm in Kamulu, 25 km east of Nairobi’s CBD. From Kamulu, a fast-growing trading centre, we rode a boda boda that took us eight kilometres, deep into the farmland area, which borders Ukambani on the northern side. “I grow watermelons on my half an acre plot. As you might be aware, watermelon is a succulent fruit that does not need lots of water. So, apart from investing in irrigation drips, the black cotton soil is good because, when it rains, the soils become water- logged, hence, can retain moisture and water for as long as the dry spell persists.”

“I consider my farming as an extra-curricular activity: it pre-occupies me over the weekend and any other time when I’m not going to the office,” said Wanjiku, who considers herself a millennial in every sense of the word. “I grew up in the rural area and my parents were subsistence farmers. Today when I tell them that I’m a farmer who doesn’t need to tend to the farm personally, they really get amused.”

Wanjiku says that farming is a good income earner that supplements her wages. “These December holidays, I’ll be going to Kikambala beach, thanks to my fruit farming.”This is her fourth year growing watermelons, “and I can tell you that watermelon farmers cannot satiate the market – the fruit is one of the most popular among the fruit-thirsty Kenyans – if only I could find more land to grow them,” she mused.

Wanjiku lives in South B and she can afford to visit her farm every so often, especially on weekends and when she gets a day or two away from the office.“Mobile telephony is the greatest thing that happened in this millennium, all I need to do is pick up my phone, call my farm-worker to get updates or pass information on what I need done on the farm, without interrupting my day-to-day work.”

Wanjiku, who is employed as a personal secretary, says she has a passion for farming: “I love everything to do with the earth and what germinates from it, I love the soil, I like the fact that when I visit my farm, I wear my gumboots and wade in the muddy clay soil.” When you get it right farming is very profitable. To this end, every Saturday, she never misses her Saturday Nation newspaper pullout – Seeds of Gold – that chronicles, farming “success” stories that have been apparently glamourized and hyped modern-day agriculture; from breeding exotic goats for milk production, to urban farming done on rooftops. She reads the magazine, aptly, on her excursions to the farm every Saturday morning.

“But what really gave me the impetus to pursue my passion in farming are the seminars that I’ve been attending at the Latia Resource Centre Farm,” said Wanjiku. “The 60-acre demonstration farm in Isinya in Kajiado County, has a big lecture room, fully equipped with chairs and an erasure board and runs short courses for “urban” farmers and people who would like to invest in agri-business.”

“I love everything to do with the earth and what germinates from it, I love the soil, I like the fact that when I visit my farm, I wear my gumboots and wade in the muddy clay soil.”

The farm, which grows different types of crops, some grown organically – from carrots to cucumbers, from lemons to lettuce and from potatoes to tomatoes, has the latest demonstration farming techniques and information on technology-driven agriculture. When I visited the farm recently, the farm had just installed state-of-the-art greenhouses from The Netherlands. It was also host to some South African farmers from Orange Free State province.

For Anthony Namodi, remote farming came to him by default: “I inherited a two-acre farm from my parents, part of a larger farm that they had been farming in Nzoia scheme in Kakamega County.”The 34-year-old dairy farming consultant, based in Nakuru, said he decided to continue growing maize, which his parents had been doing for ages. “I couldn’t go wrong with maize farming because, I understood all the motions of growing the crop. I was walking a well-worn path. The one challenge that I faced though, was that I was going to be a telephone farmer, since I wasn’t available to look after the farm myself,” said Namodi.

So, using his smartphone, Namodi goes through the motions of telephone farming, by giving instructions to his workers on how he wants the farm tended every new season. “Once my supervisor alerts me on the impending rain, I begin putting together resources for tilling the land with a tractor, buying the required amount of fertilizer and the necessary amount of seed, then send the money to him. It is really telephone farming, because my supervisor must also spend considerable time on the phone, as we discuss back and forth on the farming process.”

Four years into telephone farming, Namodi points out that this type of farming has its own challenges. “Since most of the time you’re not there to oversee your own farming, a telephone farmer has always to cross his fingers and pray that his instructions are followed to the letter.” Many times, workers have a way of ignoring instructions given by the owner of the farm, observes Namodi. They presume they know better since they are ‘on the ground’ and therefore they know what ought to be done. It is always a big tussle, especially for someone like me, who is an agriculturalist, and knowledgeable in the dynamics of farming techniques.”

Frequently, many farm workers want to cut corners, says Namodi, which ends up compromising quality. “If, for example, you send them money to buy a dozen bags of fertilizer and a specific type of seed, they will shortchange you on the number of fertilizer bags –meaning they will buy less bags and compromise on the quality of the seed – by buying an inferior prototype.” The dairy farming consultant said it is always a constant struggle to ensure that his instructions are properly adhered to and the workers are not stealing from him. “I came to realize that my workers always inflate prices of farm inputs because I’m not there to ascertain those prices. Every time I have the time to be on the ground, I always negotiate better prices for my farming inputs.”

Namodi’s three biggest challenges in telephone farming are therefore: cost, uncertainty of whether his instructions have been implemented properly, and quality control. “This is not to say that I’m not eternally grateful for the invention of the smart mobile phone. My workers will always take pictures of the farm, to capture and record the progress for me on WhatsApp, as they keep me abreast of what’s happening to the farm constantly. I don’t have to be present to remit their payments or indeed any payments that maybe needed urgently.” Technology has made farming as a real-time activity, he added.

Namodi concluded his telephone farming has been a mixed bag of success: “I usually harvest 15 bags of maize per acre, for which I sell KSh2000 per bag. But I must warn profitability depends on the season – if for some reason, there wasn’t enough rain, the harvest suffers. That notwithstanding, I will tell you without a doubt, farming is the business of the future.”

Yet, telephone farming is not a preserve of the odd adventurer millennial. George Mukoya, 64, has been engaging in remote farming for 20 years, since 1999. A consultant in the energy sector, Mukoya is a farmer by choice and has been farming his six-acre farm in Ndalu scheme through the telephone for those many years. “I farm maize and beans.I’m amused by these young people who wonder how telephone farming used to take place before the advent of the mobile phone. In 1999, mobile phone was still a novelty in Kenya, a preserve of the plutocrats, I don’t remember any of my friends owning a mobile phone.”

Namodi’s three biggest challenges in telephone farming are therefore: cost, uncertainty of whether his instructions have been implemented properly, and quality control.

Mukoya said in those pre-mobile phone days, he conducted his remote farming by writing letters to his workers, sending someone to the farm and travelling by himself to supervise the farming process. “There was indeed a lot of pre-planning.” When he compares those days and now, Mukoya, who got the “farming bug” from his uncle, today truly appreciates where he has come from with his remote farming: “farming can now be done in real-time by the smartphone, it is amazing how technology can alter our livelihoods and lifestyles for the better.”

With the smartphone technology, Mukoya says he can check on the weather patterns, research on the latest types of seeds, and get real-time updates from his farm workers. The telephone farming for him has been profitable, but of course, just like any other engagement run remotely, it has had its challenges. “The biggest challenge is of course trust issues from your workers: they will cheat and steal from you, all the time.” Therefore the two times that he must ensure he is present at the farm is during the sowing and harvesting time.

For the millennial who may falsely believe that telephone farming is their “invention” because mobile telephony happened in their time, they would be shocked to learn that remote farming preceded their generation.

As far back as in the mid-1980s – when the term millennial had not even been coined – Samuel Onsango, now fully retired, was already engaging in telephone farming. Then a full-time employee of the British American Tobacco (BAT) company, the company contracted him to be running their tobacco farms in Migori and Sirare, in Migori County, then referred to as South Nyanza.

“It was my duty to organize the farmers, ensure they have been supplied with all the farm inputs that they need, prepare their farms in good time during the sowing period and most importantly, always remit their payments on time without delay. All this, I did on my own time, not on the company’s time,” said the 74-year-old Osango. “I travelled a lot then. Every other weekend, I was on the move, to check on the farmers, to ensure they were maintaining the strict quality control demanded of them by the contracting company.”

The telephone farming for him has been profitable, but of course, just like any other engagement run remotely, it has had it challenges. “The biggest challenge is of course trust issues from your workers: they will cheat and steal from you, all the time.”

This was telephone farming by any other name, said Onsango, because I ran the farms from Nairobi, which then was seen as very far away. The best means to travel then to Migoriwas by the overnight bus. Onsango said every trip he made to Migori and Sirare had to be accounted for and add value – both to him and the farmers. And as long as everybody played their roles and delivered results, everyone was happy.

The success of Onsango’s tobacco remote farming did not go unnoticed: “Word got around to East African Breweries Limited (EABL), that I was the force behind the successfully organized tobacco farms of South Nyanza,” said the retired cigarette maker. “Soon the beer company contracted me to be overseeing their barley and wheat farms of Narok. I used the same techniques I employed to handle the tobacco farmers: visit them regularly, listen to their demands, inspect the farms, deliver farm inputs on time, as I also paid them on time.

As Onsango managed BAT and EABL farms, from Nairobi, he reckoned he could also manage his own remote farming. In the late 1980s, he bought a 100-acres in Cherangani scheme in Kitale and was soon planting maize. “It was enjoyable and an adrenaline-driven activity as long as I was young and energetic,” said the mzee. “You can only do so much telephone farming. In 2000, I retired from everything.”

Written and published with the support of the Route to Food Initiative (RTFI) (www.routetofood.org). Views expressed in the article are not necessarily those of the RTFI.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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

By Dauti Kahura

In the sprawling congested tenements of Kiamaiko, just behind Jonsaga area in Huruma, Nyawira (not her real name) used to be the gossip of her flatmates for the longest time. She was married to a Chinese man who had come to the country as a road construction worker in the mid-2000.

“I used to sell edibles to the Chinese workers, who had begun constructing Thika Road and that’s how we met,” said Nyawira somewhat nostalgically, remembering those days that she daily interacted with the Chinese. “It was my first time to meet with the Chinese people – they spoke neither English nor Kiswahili and I didn’t speak their language Mandarin. But they needed to eat and I needed to sell food. It is the story of how human beings can overcome imagined obstacles in order to relate.”

By the time the Thika superhighway was nearing completion, Nyawira and her Chinese friend were an item. They had even moved together in Kiamaiko and today their 12-year-old son is a testament to that liaison.

But the romance did not last long. “A couple of years back, he told me he had to head back home for some urgent matter I have not seen him since,” explained Nyawira.

In Nyawira’s neighbourhood, there are two Chinese men who share a one-bedroomed house. “The two men are my water clients,” said Zangi, one of the water vendors that supply water in 20-litre jerricans to Kiamaiko’s residents. “These Chinese have adapted to the local situation, they are just like our people.”

At Eastlands Hotel on Ring Road Kilimani, a wholly Chinese-owned deluxe hotel for Chinese tourists who cannot afford to stay at the city’s high-end hotels, I met Wamaitha (not her real name), an ordinarily very talkative and outgoing person, but only when her Chinese husband is not around. A consummate businesswoman, she met her Chinese mate at a business convention. She is in her early 30s, and her tummy is already showing a noticeable bump – a telltale sign that soon she will be expecting a baby. “My husband is also a businessman, dealing in precious stones,” said Wamaitha, who is from Kerugoya in Kirinyaga County.

To date, the most famous of these Chinese marriages has been that of Liang Yongyu and his 29-year- old wife, Karen Ngunjiri, who married recently. It became a public matter when an unknown fellow who must have attended the wedding uploaded their exclusive marriage ceremony video (the couple says they don’t know who did it) that went viral. Ngunjiri said her wedding to a Chinese man really excited Kenyans for reasons she cannot quite fathom.

Nyawira’s and Wamaitha’s inter-racial relationship stories with the Chinese is the story of diversity of the Chinese people who come to Kenya: from the construction worker to the polished entrepreneur, the Chinese migrants in the country have been causing socio-cultural ripples with their unparalleled quick adaptability to the local environment. “In the next 50 years in Kenya, the Chinese people are going to integrate into the Kenyan society in ways that can only be unimaginable today,” said Christom Karimi, a Kenya-Chinese cultural expert, who speaks perfect Mandarin.

Inter-racial families in Kenya have never been a big deal; they are prevalent, especially among white men and indigenous Kenyan women. The white folk in Kenya has been around for long, and their liberal Western culture, English language, Christian religion and general demeanour have made it easier for Kenyan girls to easily gel with them. Not so with the Chinese, whose Oriental culture, language and even religion and their “peculiar” culinary habits have been alien to Kenyans. Chinese people eat dogs, cats and even frogs. These cuisine recipes would test the taste buds of even the strongest Kenyans, who are otherwise known to enjoy international menus.

Early this year, at Diamond estate in South B, Nairobi, a German shepherd went missing. A notice was plastered on the main gate to the estate. After a couple of days, when the garbage collectors came to pick the trash, they found the dog’s head in one of the dustbins. A security meeting was called and the people confronted one of the Chinese estate residents. He owned up to rounding up the canine and agreed to pay a fine of Sh35,000.

Usually, when a local girl gets married to a white man in Kenya, she is whisked off to a posh suburban area: these girls believe they have crossed the Rubicon; it is a mark of upward mobility and privileged social status. Not so with the inter-racial Chinese marriages between Chinese men and Kenyan women; like Nyawira, many end up living in shanty towns. Where it all began

In 2009, three Chinese companies were contracted by the Kenyan government to build the Nairobi- Thika superhighway. These companies imported Chinese migrant labour who did the actual road construction. The Chinese workers lived in makeshift tin shacks with makeshift mobile toilets in a compound that was sealed from the rest of the Kenyans. The biggest construction site was at the huge Globe Cinema roundabout, where the construction of the 50 km superhighway began. The roundabout is just 500 metres from Nairobi’s central business district (CBD).

The Chinese workers were under strict instructions from the companies’ general managers not to meander into the CBD. So the only meaningful interactions the Chinese workers had with Kenyans was during tea and lunch breaks. At tea break, they would be served African tea and mandazi (a doughnut-like delicacy). For lunch, they were served local cuisine. The food usually included, ugali, githeri, chapati and broth made of turtle beans and green grams. Many of the girls and women who sold food at the site were from Mathare Valley, a large informal settlement that borders the Thika superhighway – the language barrier notwithstanding.

Five years later, in 2012, when the $360-million road was opened by President Mwai Kibaki, the Chinese migrant labour had not only completed the road and overpass bridges, they had also invested in creating inroads and building bridges among the local female populace. Referred to as chinku – the ghetto slang name for the Chinese, the Chinese quickly learned the local lingua franca Sheng, the colloquial language spoken in shanty towns across Nairobi.

Today, the Chinese have not only married local girls and become assimilated into Kenyan life, they have also ventured into informal businesses, a preserve of Nairobi’s rank and file that lives in Eastlands, the poorer part of the city. The resilience of the Chinese came to light when they started trading at Gikomba Market, the largest second-hand clothes market in East and Central Africa. Gikomba Market, a stone’s throw away from Mathare Valley, is a bedlam of activities: you would have to be made of tough metal to conduct business there.

Not all the local women were as lucky as Nyawira and Wamaitha to be in steady relationships, Nyawira’s hubby later disappearance notwithstanding. There are many the tale of Chinese men who have sowed seeds wherever they worked and moved on, either back to China, or relocated to other working sites.

In Mathare 4B, Njeri was not as lucky: she was abandoned by her Chinese mate even after having two children with him. She was also serving food to the Chinese on Thika superhighway. Her two boys are now big – one is about 8 years old, while the other is 10.

Mathare Valley is a hellish place. Reminiscent of the favelas of Port Alegre and Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, life in the slum is short, nasty and brutish. Among the children hopping over the open flowing sewers and mounds of garbage strewn all over are Njeri’s children, who have continually drawn attention from fellow children, not so much because of their fairer skin complexion, but more fundamentally, because of the shape of their eyes.

Such mixed-race children – often referred to as “Chikuyus” – can also be seen in other parts of the country. Last month, in Gitaru, Muthure village, a married woman gave birth to a baby that created a buzz among the villagers: the baby looked Chinese. When she was asked to explain the anomaly, she owned up to having an affair with a Chinese construction worker. The Gitaru–Wangige Road is currently under construction by the Chinese. Local folklore has it that when she was asked to identify the man, even after they were paraded for identification, she could not pick him. The joke going around is that all Chinese men look alike. Such mixed-race children – often referred to as “Chikuyus” – can also be seen in other parts of the country. Last month, in Gitaru, Muthure village, a married woman gave birth to a baby that created a buzz among the villagers: the baby looked Chinese.

This is the same joke-story that Purity told me in Mwihoko, Githurai. Purity was a food seller at the Githurai roundabout during the road construction. Over time she befriended a Chinese man. When he impregnated her, he disappeared. “Ï went looking for him, among his colleagues, I couldn’t find him. That was 10 years ago, because that is how old her daughter is,” she said.

The Chinese invasion

The Chinese have not only been marrying local girls, impregnating the ones they could, and engaging in retail business, they have also, surprisingly, been attending church – mostly evangelical churches – and have even started local branches of international churches. To most Kenyans, the Chinese people are not known to worship the Christian God, much less worship God at all. This view traces its origin to the Chinese history as a majority of Kenyans understand it: that China has always been a communist country that has no place for God or religious activities.

Emboldened by the warm reception of a Christianised population, where 80 per cent of the country, nominally or otherwise, belongs to the various Christian denominations, the Chinese migrants are starting evangelical type churches even in rural Kenya. At Gambogi, a trading centre on the Kakamega-Kisumu Road, the Chinese construction workers who are building the 60km road between the two towns have colonised the Gambogi PAG (Pentecostal Assemblies of God) Church, situated just beside the road. Gambogi PAG Church, which has meetings in rented premises, has now added the name China to its church label to read China Gambogi PAG Church.

Today, there are three main Chinese churches in Nairobi, all run by pastors from abroad. The pastors, mainly from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia, are plying their trade in posh suburban areas in Nairobi. The Bread of Life Church, which is the better known of the Chinese churches, meets in a tall office block and caters mostly to employees of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), CGTN, the Chinese government broadcasting media house, and the business community.

Even though many of the migrant Chinese in Kenya are of evangelical persuasion, not all of them attend such churches. It is 4.00 pm at the Jehova Witness Kingdom Hall on Elgeyo Marakwet Road where the faithful meet every Sunday. A special service is going in Mandarin. Here, a group of Chinese Jehova Witness followers meet to fulfil their religious obligations. The meeting, incidentally, is not exclusively for the Chinese; there are Kenyans there, who by the virtue of attending these meetings, have learnt Mandarin.

The majority of these Chinese people live and operate around the radius between Ngong Road, Argwing Kodhek Road and Ring Road, Kilimani. Many of their social-economic activities are centred around this area. At the Chinese Centre on Ngong Road, for example, they can shop at their supermarkets, which cater solely to their needs. At Park 53 building on Ring Road, 90 per cent of the businesses, mostly restaurants, are owned by the Chinese. Because many of them do not speak the local lingua franca, English and Kiswahili, they tend to huddle together, hence live communally in the same area.

Amid all these Chinese activities in the country, their seemingly unchecked influx has apparently been causing disquiet among Kenyans, especially among small traders and the business community, who engage in the importation of merchandise. Kenyans tend not to be xenophobic, but the Chinese community is quietly and slowly eliciting xenophobic rhetoric among Kenyans. The majority of these Chinese people live and operate around the radius between Ngong Road, Argwing Kodhek Road and Ring Road, Kilimani…At the Chinese Centre on Ngong Road, for example, they can shop at their supermarkets, which cater solely to their needs.

Several weeks ago, the MP for Starehe constituency, Charles Njagua, stoked xenophobic fears when he accused foreigners, who obviously included the Chinese, of monopolising all the businesses that “belong” to Kenyans. In his inciteful remarks, the MP said if the government did not take any “stern measures” against the foreigners, he would lead the people in ferreting out the foreigners out of the country. The MP has since recanted his statement, arguing that he was quoted out of context. But the point had already been made.

Traders on Gaberone Lane, the 100m backstreet alleyway behind Gaberone Road in downtown Nairobi supported and loudly voiced the xenophobic rhetoric against the Chinese. It is not difficult to see why. They all deal mainly in fabric and textiles materials, all imported from China. “Since the Chinese entered into this business, our businesses have gone down, they have been doing everything to undercut us by their price differentiation” said Ken Mutahi, who has been importing fabrics from China for the last 15 years.

“The Chinese have the unparalleled advantage of buying the materials directly from the factories, in their own country, while we buy from retailers. It has become increasingly impossible to compete with them, because all they need to do is lower their prices a little bit and they will still be within their profit margin,” complained Mutahi. He said that the traders were furious with the government for allowing the Chinese to “invade” their businesses. “Which government allows foreigners to overrun businesses meant for the locals?”

At Gikomba Market, anger has been building up against the Chinese traders, who have taken the second-hand clothes business by storm. “Chinese are now some of the biggest middle men, involved in selling thousands of bales of clothes,” said Elvis Kariuki, himself a trader at the market since the early 1990s. “We have been asking ourselves what kind of work permit these Chinese are on that allows them to engage in such businesses,” said Kariuki. Seemingly better organised and with a lot more capital than the local traders, the Chinese have been buying huge stocks of second-hand clothes mainly imported from the United Kingdom and filling all the warehouses in Gikomba.

“Expatriates who come to the country should be bringing in [new] knowledge and skills that maybe scarce or non-existent – why does the government allow the Chinese to come and take our jobs?” posed Kariuki. The trader said many of the Gikomba Market traders who have never known or done any other work, other than selling second-hand clothes, are very bitter with both the government and the Chinese traders.

The Chinese have not only infiltrated the second-hand clothes market, they are also involved in importing – from their own country – merchandise that was the sole preserve of the small traders. In downtown Nairobi, Chinese traders are running shops and renting stores which they stock with stuff imported from China. These items include cheap feature mobile phone handsets, their spare parts and hi-fi equipment such as hoofers.

“Some of the Chinese traders doing business in Kenya have been contracted by local companies back at home,” said a Kenyan trader who has been in the business of importing the same stuff. “The Chinese traders then become the conduits for creating new markets for the products manufactured back in China.” The Chinese traders, on the other hand, have a different view of themselves. Some of the Chinese traders I spoke to said that they were not taking away anybody’s job or business – all they were doing was engaging in market competition. “We just happen to be aggressive and versatile,” some of one Chinese trader.

Forty-year-old Alex Cao (pronounced Chao), originally from Tianjin, came to Kenya seven years ago. He said he found his niche in real estate development. “It is never a smooth sail,” said Cao. “Dexterity is the name of the game if you have to survive the market onslaught.”

Richard Ling, 30, hails from Guangzhou and has been in Kenya for only three years. A trader, he hawks merchandise, including mobile phone gadgets, chargers, power banks, and torches, from his small rented stall at Kamukunji market building in downtown Nairobi.

Sixty-year-old Ling Fang came to Kenya 20 years ago. His wife joined him 10 year later. They found success in selling and stocking drapery and other upholstery materials, which they import in bulk from their country. From their shop on Biashara Street, they have engaged in both retail and wholesale business.

The dexterity of the Chinese in Kenya has seen them diversify in all manner of businesses. At the Eastmart supermarket on Tom Mboya Street, one of the upcoming suppliers of confectioneries is a Chinese man who makes doughnuts, shortcakes and cupcakes. “Every morning by 8.00 am, the Chinese man will deliver his goods without fail,” said the supermarket attendant who is in charge of the bread and cakes section. “His prices are between Sh10 and Sh20 cheaper and his cakes are slightly bigger, so they move faster.”

At their peak in 2015, there were about 40,000 Chinese in Kenya, but Karimi told me that over the couple of past years, the number could have gone down to between 30,000 and 35,000. According to Howard French, a journalist who has written the book, China’s Second Continent, there are upward of one million Chinese people in Africa.

“The Chinese who are always looking for favourable places to do business have recently been migrating to Ethiopia. The Ethiopian economy is growing at a steady pace, the government has reduced much of the red tape associated with starting businesses for foreigners and their tax regime is not as punishing,” Karimi said.

By 2017, China had become Kenya largest trading partner. In 2017, it built a new railway line, at the cost of $3.18 billion, the most expensive infrastructure expenditure in Kenya since independence.

Two years ago, perhaps in an effort to endear themselves to Kenyans, a Chinese philanthropic group started a feeding programme in eight informal primary schools in Mathare 4A. The biggest of these schools, Chang Rong – which translates as Mathare Light Centre – is the biggest, with 400 pupils. Collins Abongo, a teacher at the school, told me the Chinese also sponsor a football tournament among the eight schools. 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.

The Sinicization of Christianity: How China Is Responding to Religious Threats

By Dauti Kahura

As the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) comes to a close (the last town hall meeting is slated for July 28, 2019, in Nairobi County) the spotlight on the initiative has shifted to its mandate, and has been heightened up by a section of Kenyans who are already anticipating its probable outcome. This directed interest and anticipation of the process led to two widely circulated documents on social media on July 15, which the BBI team, led by its chairman, Senator Yusuf Haji, promptly denied. The documents, titled BBI Technical Team Proposals and Proposed Changes to The Constitution were declared “fake” by Senator Haji. BBI was constituted after President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, his chief political opponent, shook hands on March 9, 2018. On May 24, 2018, BBI was gazetted and soon commenced its countrywide solicitations of public opinion.

Paul Mwangi, one of the joint secretaries to BBI (the other one is Ambassador Martin Kimani), in an interview conducted by The Elephant, said that the BBI team was shocked to see the documents, purportedly authored by BBI, being posted on the Internet. “We were surprised to see these documents. Like everyone else, the team saw them for the first time on social media. It is to be expected that as we conclude our town hall county meetings, interest in BBI’s work has risen in all quarters of the Kenyan society,” said Mwangi. “BBI hopes to wrap up its county participation on or around August 9 and, therefore, any report purporting to second-guess the committee’s work that is not from the BBI’s team is to be disregarded.”

The initiative’s terms of reference were extended to October from May, 2019, after it fell behind its schedule. Once through with the Nairobi meeting, Mwangi said the team will immediately start compiling the deliberations with the help of a team of researchers, each of whom has been assigned the nine thematic areas: corruption, ethnic antagonism and competition, devolution, divisive elections, inclusivity, lack of national ethos, safety and security, shared prosperity, responsibilities and rights. “We should be done by October 24,” he said.

I asked Mwangi whether a referendum was one of the issues that the BBI deliberated upon, to which he quickly retorted, “I don’t wish to preempt anything at this time of the process. BBI will suggest solutions and it’s these solutions that will determine whether there will be a referendum or not.”

But an inside source, who cannot be named because he is officially not authorised to speak on behalf of BBI, said: “The issue of a referendum is a foregone conclusion – the question is not if, but when the referendum will be held. That is the climax of the process.”

The source said the town hall meetings have been a process of setting the ground for an eventual referendum. “We will not go to the next general election without a constitutional change, that is why the issue of a referendum has gripped the nation, and you can see that is what currently is preoccupying Kenyans.”

The source told me Ekuru Aukot’s referendum efforts are meant to be a distraction to BBI’s own referendum project: “Whoever is funding him wants to steal the thunder from BBI, dilute and make nonsense of the BBI’s forthcoming referendum.”

The people behind Aukot’s referendum hope to argue “why have another referendum and there is already one at hand that is actually addressing the fundamental issues in the constitution that are troubling Kenyans?’ observed the source. Nicknamed Punguza Mzigo (reduce the load) one of the biggest issues that the Aukot’s referendum wants to deal with is the issue of “over-representation”, hence, a need to reduce some of the political seats, such as MPs’ seats. Aukot is the party leader of The Third Way Alliance Party.

“Were Ekuru’s referendum to be held, he would only need the consent of 24 counties, as per the 2010 constitution. He would then take his finding to Parliament, which as currently constituted, is presumably controlled by Deputy President William Ruto’s supporters in the Jubilee Party,” said the source. “Although Aukot’s referendum issues sound right and would easily resonate with a majority of Kenyans, the proposed constitutional changes he is seeking are meant to blind Kenyans, that indeed he cares about their plight. Truth be said, those changes would be difficult to implement and in any case, they would not be implemented immediately.”

As a pointer to the coming BBI referendum, Senator James Orengo, Ugunja MP Opiyo Wandayi, Alego Usonga MP Samwel Atandi and Rarieda MP Otiende Amollo, faulted the Punguza Mzigo initiative and counselled the Third Way Alliance party boss to be patient and wait for BBI, which, ostensibly according to them, will deal with all the issues pertaining to Kenyans.

Said Orengo on July 21: “We are waiting for the BBI report that has all the issues of the people. The questions in Aukot’s proposal have not undergone stakeholders consultations, let’s wait for October when we will have the BBI report and thereafter a referendum that will decide on the fate of Kenyans.”

Succession politics

Since 1992, when the country returned to multiparty elections, no presidential succession has not been preceded by a constitutional change, said my source. “That is why the elephant in the living room of the BBI’s unproclaimed core mission has been the referendum. A chronological understanding of the succession politics since 1992 to date should therefore locate the real reason behind BBI’s formation, its real agenda, bearing in mind the 2022 succession political perspective and its dynamics.”

Responding to Western countries’ pressure to liberalise the monolithic Kanu party politics, President Daniel arap Moi, in December 1991, orchestrated a political process that culminated in the removal of Section 2A of the old constitution that made Kenya a de jure single party system. And although the amendment to the constitution did not immediately transform the country into a democratic polity, it allowed for the introduction of pluralistic politics. That is how FORD, before it split into two (Ford-Asili and Ford Kenya), the Democratic Party of Kenya (DP) and the Kenya Social Congress (KSC), led by firebrand politician and ex-detainee, George Anyona, came into being. So, for the first time since independence, opposition parties were allowed to participate in the December 29, 1992 general election.

Faced with another election in five years, President Moi was again confronted with demands to expand the scope of the political space, as well as to institute constitutional and legal changes. Between 1992 and 1997, there were continuous demands from the opposition and civil society organisations to effect these changes, especially to level the tilted playing field. President Moi ignored these demands until a few months before the December 29, 1997 general election. Principally, to ease off the pressure that had been building and that had threatened to forestall the elections through a boycott under the clarion call of “no reforms, no elections”, he acquiesced to some minimum reforms.

Inevitably, the question in 1997, as the country prepared for its second multiparty elections. was: Should we go to the elections with or without reforms? As the political temperatures gradually soared, it became imperative that the country needed some facilitative reforms.

The formation of the Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group (IPPG) allowed President Moi some breathing space, and afforded the opposition some minimum reforms to go to the elections with. Just a month before the election, in November, through the IPPG, a number of constitutional, legal and administrative changes were adopted. They included enlarging the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) to accommodate representatives from the opposition, repealing the Public Order Act (which President Moi used to harass and scuttle the oppositions’ rallies), and allowing the registration of new political parties. At that time, the Safina Party, led by Paul Muite, was registered and more fundamentally, the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) Act was amended to allow for more equal air time for all political parties.

Aware that the facilitative reforms had allowed President Moi to hold a largely incident-free election in which once again he trounced his opponents, civil society, led by the National Convention Executive Committee (NCEC) – which was at the forefront of demands for a new constitution, and which was opposed to piecemeal constitutional reforms – was unrelenting in its push for a new constitution. The issue of a new constitution, just like the facilitative reforms, was one that President Moi did not want to deal with and therefore kept postponing the matter.

By the late 1990s, when faced with an election that he would not participate directly in as a presidential candidate since being elected in 1978 after the death of President Jomo Kenyatta, President Moi had already started planning his exit and successor. A new constitution did not feature in his plans because his hand-picked successor, Uhuru Kenyatta, went into the elections under the old constitution, fraught as it was with risks.

To deflect the NCEC’s pressure and refusing to cave in to demands for a new constitution, President Moi suspended Parliament on October 25, 2002, and announced an election timetable, all in the name of forestalling Katiba Tuitakayo, a proposed new constitution model by NCEC. Under the old constitution, the President was bestowed with the powers to dissolve Parliament and call elections at his pleasure, and once Parliament was dissolved, a general election had to take place within 90 days.

On November 4, 1999, at a press conference, the NCEC spokesperson Prof Kivutha Kibwana pointed out that, “Kanu has demonstrated that it is unwilling and therefore incapable of ushering in constitutional and democratic change in Kenya.”

The general election was held on December 27, 2002, and President Moi’s project – the candidature of Uhuru Kenyatta running on a Kanu ticket – was defeated by Mwai Kibaki, formerly of the Democratic Party, but then running under the banner of the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc). The first thing that President Kibaki promised when he was sworn in at Uhuru Park on December 31, 2002 was a new constitution within a 100 days.

To fulfil his promise, Kibaki supported the continuation of the work of the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission (CKRC), which had been constituted in November 2000 by a legal framework for reviewing the constitution. CKRC was headed by the renowned constitutional lawyer, Prof Yash Pal Ghai. After their lengthy deliberations at the Bomas of Kenya, CKRC, came up with a new draft constitution. The draft included a raft of constitutional proposals, such as a parliamentary system of government with 14 regions, and a hybrid presidential system with more or less ceremonial powers but with co-shared executive powers between the president and a prime minister. It was an experiment that borrowed from both the British (parliamentary) and the American (presidential) systems.

“But instead of presenting the Bomas Draft to Kenyans, President Kibaki gave them a ‘skunk’ in the name of the Wako Draft,” said the source. “Amos Wako was the then Attorney General and instead of giving Kenyans the draft constitution that they had helped to come up with, he bastardised the Bomas Draft and edited the old constitution to cheat Kenyans that that was the new constitution that they had debated upon.”

This Wako Draft was the basis of the Orange vs Banana referendum in 2005. The Orange proponents opposed the draft, while the Banana supporters proposed the implementation of the draft. “The outcome of that referendum had not been difficult to predict,” said the source. “Clearly, what was being presented to Kenyans was not what they had proposed to CKRC and which had been adopted at Bomas of Kenya through the National Constitutional Conference (NCC).”

The Wako Draft was rejected by a majority of Kenyans and thereafter, President Kibaki fired all his cabinet ministers. Those who were aligned to the No (Orange) movement did not return to government. “Constitutional experts have always argued that it was at this point that President Kibaki ought to have resigned from government because the referendum had essentially passed a vote of no confidence in his government,” said the source.

The critics of the Bomas Draft, mainly technical people and some political elites, argued that the draft was a mongrel kind of constitution that failed to locate state power and therefore was not bold enough to differentiate between the president and the prime minister, who wielded real power. The critics pointed out that in a politically fragile country like Kenya, this was a risky venture.

“After the government was defeated in the referendum, electioneering went into high gear and that is when the Orange Democratic Party (ODM) was formed by Raila after he was sacked as a cabinet minister,” the source said. “The electorate was being prepped to go into the 2007 election without a new constitution and clearly this was a harbinger of things to come…the ominous signs were there…as sure as night follows day, there was going to be violence.”

After the devastating election of December 2007, after which violence indeed erupted, especially in the North Rift, the country was taken back to pre-2002 scenario: the country needed to have a new constitution if it was to hold the next general election in five years time.

In 2008, Ekuru Aukot become the chief executive officer (CEO) and secretary of the Committee of Experts (CoE) that was mandated to look afresh into the matter of processing a new constitution. Nzamba Kitonga became the CoE’s chair. The CoE members included, among others, the current Supreme Court of Kenya judge Njoki Ndungú, Otiende Amollo, currently the MP for Rarieda, Atsango Chesoni, Prof Frederick Ssempembwa, a Ugandan, Chaloka Beyani, a Zambian, and Prof Christina Murrey from South Africa.

“The CoE came up with the Draft Proposed Constitution of Kenya, which it rolled out for people’s comments and opinions just like BBI is doing, only that its methods were different,” said the source. It printed the Draft in thousands, placed it as inserts in the mainstream newspapers, uploaded it online and also printed booklets which were distributed to the populace.” After reviewing the Draft as the law required, the CoE passed the document to the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on constitutional review chaired by Abdikadir Mohamed. The PSC meeting held in Naivasha made a significant change: it removed the hybrid system and replaced it with a purely presidential system, the one that Kenya has now.

The PSC Draft is what was published by Wako – “and as the law required of him, he was not to tamper with the draft, as he had done in 2005 with the Bomas Draft. The Draft was taken to Parliament as is and it was passed as a consensus document.”

After reviewing the Draft as the law required, the CoE passed the document to the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on constitutional review chaired by Abdikadir Mohamed. The PSC meeting held in Naivasha made a significant change: it removed the hybrid system and replaced it with a purely presidential system, the one that Kenya has now.

“With the foregoing, it is obvious that Kenya must have, at the very least, constitutional changes, if it is to face the 2022 general election” said the source. “After the 2017 general election, in which for the first time in the history of legal jurisprudence, a presidential election win was revoked by the judiciary, to be followed by a fresh presidential election, the country for a while seemed to teeter on the precipice.”

“It looks like the political elite logic has always been to play the election game of holding elections every five years, while all they do is tweak the constitution to create the impression that we have dealt with real constitutional changes. All this in the name of perpetuating themselves, putting the opposition in its place and ensuring there is no tumultuous revolt,” said the source.

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.

The Sinicization of Christianity: How China Is Responding to Religious Threats

By Dauti Kahura

On Sunday June 16, 2019, President Uhuru Kenyatta woke up to a bad day. While attending a public meeting called by the Akurinu, a religious denomination, at Moi International Sports Centre in Kasarani, he let down his guard, lost his cool and went ethnic on an event beamed live on a nationwide television channel.

To be fair, this was not the first time the president was exposing his soft underbelly; he has been angry before, railing against his real and perceived enemies, swearing and threatening to deal with them at an appropriate time. But on this day, unable to contain himself, he went ballistic, switched to his vernacular Kikuyu language, shouted and presumably talked down to the people he was addressing. He was visibly piqued, a sign that the president has of late been increasingly irritable, a veritable shortcoming for a leader who holds the highest office in the land.

So what provoked this outburst? Let us briefly recap the events of the day. The Akurinu, a Kikuyu religious entity (the Akurinus are not a homogenous group) were holding their annual general conference. President Uhuru honoured their invitation and attended. In 2018, he did not attend; Deputy President William Ruto presided over the event. President Uhuru arrived before his deputy and was warmly received by the Akurinu leaders. Whatever his reason, or reasons, for arriving after the president, Ruto, when he showed up, received a warmer reception than the president.

Two things stand out. One, by arriving after the president, the deputy president had obviously stood up to Uhuru. The louder applause he got from the delegates upstaged the president’s own lukewarm reception. Two, and more fundamentally, the powerful yet subtle message from the Akurinu was that they held the deputy president in higher esteem than the president. Could this have been the trigger for President Uhuru’s fulmination in the Kikuyu language?

It is claimed that in 2018, when Deputy President William Ruto attended the Akurinu meeting, he gave them Sh10 million and a six-acre piece of land. As he is wont to do to buy loyalty and votes, he allegedly promised them more cash and more land. For the longest time, the Akurinu have been looking for suitable land to build a college to train their own clerics.

The Akurinu are a conservative, traditional Kikuyu sect whose religious faith is a fusion of Kikuyu cultural norms and Christian beliefs. They are often referred to as African Sikhs because of the white turbans they wear. The first Akurinu church was started in 1922, ostensibly after Mwene Nyaga (God) spoke to the first Mkurinu and asked him to pray for his land. The “apparition” led to the formation of a religious movement, the Akurinu Church. Since then, the Akurinu believe it is their prayers that have been holding this country together.

“Apparently, when the president failed to attend their meeting last year, his deputy seized the moment and rose up to the occasion,” said a Jubilee Party politician and former MP from Central Kenya, who did not want to be named because he is not authorised to speak on behalf of the party. “This has been the crux of the matter: the president has always seemed to take a back seat on some of the more important duties and obligations. Every time we had an audience with him, throughout his first term, we reminded him of his obligations to the nation and his Kikuyu people in particular. We told him he had a deputy who was very proactive and politically agile. He therefore needed to be on top of his game and firmly in control, but he always brushed aside our concerns…now he is reaping the fruits.”

The politician said that instead of President Uhuru scaring away the rebels in the Jubilee Party, he had emboldened them. “What was all that anger the president exhibited at Kasarani about? Who was it directed at? Why had the president used a public podium to address intra-party squabbles?” The ground had shifted, or was shifting. The president’s centre seemed not to hold right before his own eyes and the clock was ticking away, added the politician.

Thiong’o Gichuhi, a Mkurinu friend, told me that the Akurinu have not been happy with President Uhuru’s leadership. “Since 2017, the Akurinu leadership had been trying to reach President Uhuru and Mama Ngina Kenyatta to tell them that God is not happy with the Kenyatta rulership and all not well in the House of Mumbi,” said Thiongó.

“The Akurinu worship and believe in the God of the Agikuyu, even though they regard themselves as Christians,” said Thiongó. “You may not know this, all Akurinu churches are built in a way that if you are kneeling down to pray, you face Mt Kenya.”

The Akurinu have been “revolting” against President Uhuru’s rule, even though they have not been public about it, said Thiongó. “Although the Akurinu at Kasarani praised President Uhuru publicly, I can tell you they have been seething with anger for apparently assuming and neglecting their entreaties.” Was President Uhuru then, also projecting his anger at the Akurinu for “disrespecting” him, by “stomping their feet,” when the Ruto arrived, well after the president?

“All that diatribe by President Uhuru at Kasarani was directed at the Central Kenya (rebel) MPs, who have refused to kowtow to his plethora of demands, among them, to stop hanging out with the DP,” said one of the rebel MPs, who spoke in strict confidence and who sought anonymity because of fear of a backlash from Jubilee Party mandarins allied to the president. Among the MPs from Central Kenya considered to be “rebellious” include Kimani Ichungwa, the MP for Kikuyu constituency in Kiambu County, Ndindi Nyoro, the MP for Kiharu constituency in Murang’a County, and Alice Wahome, the MP for Kandara constituency, also in Murang’a County. On July 23, Ndindi Nyoro posted the following on his Facebook timeline: “In their desperate machinations to silence all perceived DP William Ruto’s supporters, they are arranging to ‘deal’ with some of us using all manner of issues. It has dawned on Uhuru that he is an outgoing president…an outgoing president has no stranglehold on MPs whose fates are clearly no longer tied to his ending presidential favours. His fury and veiled threats against Central Kenya MPs are neither here nor there…any sensible politician from Mt Kenya knows that his 2022 fortunes are not with President Uhuru, but with the next probable leader, whose chances of ascending to the presidential seat are practical and predictable.” (That probable leader to them is Deputy President Ruto, who they have openly backed.)

It is a paradox that President Uhuru now does not want Jubilee MPs from Central Kenya to associate with Deputy President Ruto, said the MP, “yet in his first term, he encouraged the opposite thing. That is the person we were asked to work with, it is the person we have worked with since 2013. We know him, we understand him, but above all, he has also worked with us. It is rather a bit late to introduce a new person to us. In any case we have not found any fault with him.”

In a surprise twist, the Central Kenya MPs in Ruto’s camp are now castigating President Uhuru’s rule and finding fault with his current political modus operandi. “I will tell you this, and this is a fact – Uhuru today would not be president were it not for Ruto – it is just as straight forward as that and it is something we want to drum into our people,” the MP said. “It is also a fact, the president, also, several times in his first term reiterated to us that he would be succeeded by Ruto once he finishes his tenure. He would not only be succeeded by Ruto, he told us, he would publicly campaign for him. If there is anything that has changed, he should explicitly communicate it to us.”

The handshake

President Uhuru, in an abrupt deft manoeuvre, made peace with his chief opponent, Raila Odinga, on March 9, 2018. Prior to the political handshake, the president had hurled tongue-biting insults at Raila during the campaign period.

“President Uhuru did not tell us about the handshake, but we took it in our stride,” said the MP. “To date, many of us do not understand that handshake, shrouded in secrecy as it is, but then, why is the president unhappy with our association with Ruto. Is the DP not a member of the Jubilee Party, unlike Raila? When did associating with a fellow party member be considered a crime and doubling in oppositional politics?”

The MP said the president did not tell the truth when he pointed out that were not for his help, some of the Central Kenya MPs would not have won their parliamentary seats. “That is not true at all: The president did not help any Central Kenya MP get to his current position – not in 2017. In 2013, it is true, any politician who wanted to win a seat in Central Kenya had to align himself with Uhuru Kenyatta. But it is a fact in 2017, some former MPs, governors and senators lost their seats because of his apparent lackadaisical attitude during the Jubilee Party nominations.”

It is now patently evident that President Uhuru’s tenure has been defined by incompetence – some structural, but many self-inflicted, observed the MP. “The self-inflicted exceed the structural difficulties. President Uhuru was negligent about his social habits. He let those habits interfere with his presidential responsibilities. He assumed a hands-off policy and became nonchalant while the deputy president has always remained politically active and pointed to his ambitions.”

No less than politicians such as Onesmus Kimani Ngunjiri and Moses Kuria have publicly pointed out President Uhuru’s shortcomings and his apparent and sudden about-turn on his deputy. In a video clip that went viral in June, 2019, Ngunjiri, the Jubilee MP for Bahati constituency in Nakuru County, rails against the president for his seemingly laissez-faire attitude towards presidential politics. “If it were not for Ruto, let me tell you before my God in heaven Uhuru would not be president today…he has no time for campaigning…Ruto is sober.”

On January 10, 2019, Ngunjiri was recorded telling the president that if he was tired of ruling, he should give way to his deputy, or call a presidential election so that the people could vote for William Ruto. He accused the president of worsening the economic wherewithal of the Kikuyu lot by his retroactive policies.

Kuria, the MP for Gatundu South, President Uhuru’s rural constituency, equally, in a video clip shot in July, 2019 states categorically that it is because of Ruto standing firmly by Uhuru’s side – both in 2013 and 2017 – that Uhuru defeated his chief enemy to become the president. Everything else, said Kuria, is a sideshow.

Hostile territory

A former MCA from Nyeri County observed that as it is right now, the president is not sure of venturing into Central Kenya. “The ground is hostile and the electorate is currently not feeling him. They feel hugely disappointed by him, mainly because of the economic downturn and the political uncertainties that go with the economic slump.”

According to the politician, the Central Kenya people feel they have not been sufficiently told what the March 2018 handshake is really all about. “I am always on the ground, and all I hear about from the people is, if the handshake is about creating extra political seats, they will not support a referendum that is being ostensibly pushed by the Building the Bridges [an initiative that came out after the rapprochement between President Uhuru and opposition leader Raila Odinga].”

The politician opined that on four occasions, the president had planned to visit Central Kenya, and all four times he has deferred the visits since being re-elected on October 26, 2017. On July 11, Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga, on Inooro Radio, said that the president had three weeks before a planned visit to his county, but postponed it at the last hour: “I want to tell the president that he is most welcome to visit my county, any time he is ready and we will heartily welcome him.”

The president has been itching to address the Kikuyu populace as he dresses down some of the Central Kenya MPs who have not been towing his political line, said a Jubilee Party politician from Kiambu County. So, the Akurinu meeting at Kasarani provided a perfect platform for President Uhuru to admonish the rebel MPs, as he sought to reassure the electorate that he still their president and has their interests at heart, from a controlled crowd and safe grounds as it were.

“With an electorate that feels thoroughly let down by his politics, and unsure of where he may be leading them, the president at Kasarani turned to the time-tested ploy of ethnicising national politics,” said the politician. “The president, by seeking to reassure his base, through speaking to them in vernacular, was implicitly reminding them to be cognizant of their (privileged) ethnicity, to dissuade them from questioning his nothing-to report-home-about performance.”

The pleasure and pain of Uthamaki

The last seven years of President Uhuru’s reign have brought both pleasure and pain to Uthamaki followers: Pleasure when they elected him in 2013 – and even in 2017 – but pain in between the two terms. In Uhuru’s second and last term, the pain in the Uthamaki kingdom has been deep and severe. Across Uthamaki land, the people have been hurting and they have come to the realisation that the politics of pleasure go side by side with pain.

If President Uhuru can cause them so much grief, they rationalise, then no politician is good – they are all bad. President Uhuru is bad because Raila is worse and Ruto has never been any good, so he is no better than either of them. But, because the deputy president has worked with President Uhuru, he can be tolerated. For the Kikuyu people, if Uhuru has failed to make a good president, no Kenyan politician can. Therefore, because all politicians are bad, let us just stick with Uhuru.

I have been repeatedly told by Kikuyus across the spectrum that they are done with voting – that voting for Uhuru in the second fresh presidential election held on October 26, 2017, was their last. Why is this so? Why did they not stop at the first presidential election that took place on August 8, 2017? It is because when they look ahead to 2022, instead of seeing light at the end of the tunnel (to use a cliché), they only see darkness. Darkness to them means they do not have a dependable and probable Kikuyu (male) politician that they can confidently bank on and vote for come 2022.

For now, they must perpetuate the political fiction that they are not looking to voting in the next general election because President Uhuru, their Muthamaki, has let them down terribly. If President Uhuru can let them down, then which president won’t let them down? In the logic of the Kikuyus, the failures of President Uhuru sum up the imagined failures of all the forthcoming presidential candidates. Hence, they will not waste their time again by waking up at 2am to line up for a non- Kikuyu.

“Just the other day in 2017, when Uhuru was campaigning, he went round Kikuyuland telling us the voters that we should not vote for Raila because he was a ‘kimundu kiu…mundu muguruki… an ogre…a mad man. Now he is full of praise of a ‘mad man’, parading him now as the best alternative for the Kikuyus. Has he stopped being an ogre, has he been cured of his madness?” asked a Central Kenya MP aligned to Ruto’s Tangatanga camp.

The politician told me that for the better part of the last 50 years, the Kikuyu political elite drummed into the Kikuyu voter to never forget that the Luo was his greatest enemy. That the Odinga family had a hideous agenda not only against the Kikuyu people, but against the country. The Luo and the Odinga family combined were a deadly threat to the existence of the Kikuyu. The cabal told the Kikuyu voter that Raila Odinga wants to be president so that he can “avenge” the mistreatment of his father Jaramogi, who was detained and harassed by Uhuru’s father Jomo Kenyatta.

“Ostensibly, that revenge the Kikuyu voter has been impressed upon is to be visited on him…it’s therefore incumbent upon him to jealously protect his survival by stopping his presidential ambitions,” said the MP from Central Kenya. “Now, in an about-turn, President Uhuru is asking Kikuyus very subtly that they cast their political net with the son of Jaramogi, Fifty years of socialising the people to view a particular family with political suspicion cannot be overturned overnight through political gamesmanship. Jomo Kenyatta’s quarrels with Jaramogi were nationalised by Jomo to draw in the entire Kikuyu community, in which, he persuaded them through secret oathing that the presidency was theirs and they should do everything in their power to protect it.”

At the height of the 2017 general elections’ heated campaigns, a diehard Uhuru supporter from Kiambu County told me unabashedly and matter of factly that Raila needed to be taken out for Muthamaki to rule effectively without hindrances. She outlined the hindrances as unnecessary oppositional politics, which always pushed back Uhuru’s efforts to develop the country.

As Kikuyus go through the politics of pain, they have been asking themselves conspiratorially and in hush-hush tones why Raila opted to shake Muthamaki’s hand, and hence joined the government. “Look now what is happening to politics and the government – it is because Raila is not in the opposition. There isn’t anyone to check the excesses of the government. They would not be as much theft as we are witnessing now because he would be calling out President Uhuru and his cohorts and shouting for all to hear about the runaway corruption.”

It is a twisted logic difficult to discern if you are not a typical Kikuyu: here are a people, schooled and socialised to embrace the politics of suffering (even with bitterness), yet to never ever think of imagining a president from outside of their ethnic circle. The logic goes something like this: If our own person can cause us all this suffering, what about a person from a different ethnic group? We will all be finished. So let’s stick with our own, who God will prevail upon to have mercy on us.

Inevitably, Raila Odinga, for all the time he has been in active and elective politics, was the political bogeyman of the Kikuyus. If Muthamaki was not performing, it was because of the oppositional noises generated by Raila and his group. When he helped form the Government of National Unity and became a non-executive Prime Minister in 2008, all the blame of President Mwai Kibaki’s failings were shifted to him. Then in March 2018, Raila recalibrated his politics and accepted to work with his political nemesis in the name of uniting a country that was on the brink of fracturing.

The logic goes something like this: If our own person can cause us all this suffering, what about a person from a different ethnic group? We will all be finished. So let’s stick with our own, who God will prevail upon to have mercy on us.

Not accustomed to political truths, Raila’s move confused the Kikuyus, who were denied a punching bag and smokescreen. They had no one who they could channel their political frustrations through and blame.

Now with the prospect of a Ruto (or Raila?) presidency in 2022, they have no one left to blame but themselves for believing the Uthamaki myth and betting on a horse that had a short shelf life, and which was not particularly interested in their plight. The chickens, it seems, are coming home to roost.

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.