2017: a Time of Small Big People,KENYA's

Kenya will never forget their heroes

By Patrick Gathara 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.

Kenya will never forget their heroes

By Patrick Gathara

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.

Kenya will never forget their heroes

By Patrick Gathara

In the sort-of beginning, there were just two hegemons. Both white, both male and both nuclear- tipped. Now everybody, it seems, can try to be the ultimate tough guy.

Though this may not be a wholly new thing in our region, there is certainly a new flavour to it. The clear trend is towards macho posturing as a form of governance performance. Nobody is old enough to retire or considered expired. The use of harsh language, backed up by extra-judicial physical methods, is both a result and proof of this claim to virility and relevance.

In our region there are no meaningful democratic – or at the very least, pro-people – political processes taking place. 2017 may be the year this paralysis peaked.

In Sudan, where a home-grown national bourgeois class seems to have been in crisis and fighting retreat mode for decades, the current president has emerged from one type of siege (the recently relaxed economic sanctions driven largely by the United States), only to remain stuck in another (the indictment at the International Criminal Court). Meanwhile, economic and military difficulties remain entrenched, in particular, the government’s ongoing war against its own citizens in the Darfur region, as well as the (to put it bluntly) ethnic cleansing in the Nuba mountains.

In our region there are no meaningful democratic – or at the very least, pro-people – political processes taking place. 2017 may be the year this paralysis peaked.

In South Sudan, fratricidal war shows no sign of abating, grimly echoing the poet Okot p’Bitek‘s berating of post-Independence African leaders:

“….while the pythons of sickness swallow the children/and the buffaloes of poverty knock the people down/and ignorance just stands there like an elephant/the war-leaders are locked in bloody feuds/eating each other’s liver…”

Kenyan politics functions in the manner of cut-throat corporate enterprise, which comes naturally to this one-time beacon of successful African capitalism. Speaking to me in private, a senior and well- informed Kenyan public servant framed the entire NASA vs. Jubilee epic wrangle as the political expression of competition between two groups of cartels for dominance in key sectors in the economy, hence its intractability. True or not, it is clear that elections cannot be reasonably organised in such a toxic environment, and yet the “traditional” alternatives” – somewhere between mass civic action and armed struggle – are not viable either.

Uganda, stuck with one president for over three decades, has finally reached that moment one experiences while watching a rickety Nigerian movie and realising that all along the director believes that all the viewers are all fools, and is probably surprised that they stayed watching for that long. And then you cannot locate the “off” button on the player.

Kenyan politics functions in the manner of cut-throat corporate enterprise, which comes naturally to this one-time beacon of successful African capitalism.

Burundi’s presidency, in seeking one massive term extension, is basically trying to become Uganda’s all at once.

In Rwanda the citizens are the culprits; they simply will not let their president step down, no matter what the obstacles, be they constitutional or electoral. Apparently, they hold him a near prisoner in State House, and he has decided it’s perhaps best not to argue with them.

The occupant of State House in the Democratic Republic of Congo has simply decided that it’s probably best not to bother with elections at all, and has carried on for a whole year beyond their supposed scheduled date. Tanzania’s electorate – or perhaps just the political intelligentsia – seems to be caught up in a bout of buyer’s remorse now that their recently-elected president has settled in. But behind the scenes, intense resource-fuelled contestations are taking place, fomenting mounting authoritarianism across the board.

A way must be found to help us understand this unfolding situation: Is this the future, or is it the past? We have to consider the possibility that we are on the threshold of a whole new political praxis.

In his Christmas address, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, criticised “tyrannical and populist” world leaders: “In 2017, we have seen around the world tyrannical leaders that enslave their peoples, populist leaders that deceive them, corrupt leaders that rob them, even simply democratic, well-intentioned leaders of many parties and countries who are normal, fallible human beings.”

In Rwanda the citizens are the culprits; they simply will not let their president step down, no matter what the obstacles, be they constitutional or electoral.

Since the demise of the Soviet/Russian side of the two-part global hegemony, there has been a slow return to naked political overreach by many potentates as they realise that there is nobody for their domestic opponent to seek support from in attempts to overthrow them. That game ended, and new language and thinking about what opposition means, and how to enforce it, has struggled to emerge. In most of countries in the East and Central African region, this gave rise to new dispensations regarding what the playing field would look like going forward. Some developments, like broader, more accommodating constitutional and electoral arrangements, or at the very least peace treaties between warring factions, were put in place. That was roughly two decades ago, we need to remind ourselves. A lot has happened since.

A way must be found to help us understand this unfolding situation: Is this the future, or is it the past?

Just under a decade ago, progressive writers living in the heart of the great big imperial machine, such as Paul Mason and Larry Elliot, finally began announcing the death of the capitalist system, confirming what radical African thinkers like Professor Dan Nabudere had been saying since its first modern crash in 1987. It took the drama of the 2008 crash, and the arrival of real “donor- conditioned” economic policies on their own shores, for Western thinkers to also recognise this. But contrary to what they believe, austerity measures are not a policy choice for the West; they are a survival strategy for the economic masters who are struggling to find a way to turn their global profit-making machine back on. This is where we come back in.

Capitalism’s zombie corpse now reverts to its original form: straightforward plunder of any natural resource that is either in the commons – like the oceans – or weakly defended by native peoples. The attendant environmental destruction is simply a side effect.

Our “leaders” have realised this, and have worked out that as long as they do not stand in the way, or better still, if they are willing to put themselves at the service of this mission, not much else will matter. Their emerging new praxis can be summed up as: seize ground, corral the resources therein, and then talk to the big US, Chinese or European Union corporations gunning for oil, coltan or fertile land, and through them, their equivalents of the Pentagon. “Ground” can mean anything from some mineral-rich real estate (not necessarily located within your own borders) to a whole state, and even to somebody else’s state that you have managed to take over.

There now always seems to be a causus belli in the eastern DRC, requiring armed neighbourly intervention. However, analysts of the region argue that these have historically been largely excuses for foreign powers to muscle in on the King Leopold-founded tradition of looting the riches there, as happened in the mid-1990s, and is happening again.

Once the Pentagon – or its equivalent among the other big powers – decides that this is a good thing, then their foreign policy will miraculously adapt to support this, or suddenly become incapable of seeing what is going on.

Democracy can now be finally safely jettisoned. Through the current stage-managed faux-democratic processes, we are transitioning away from what little we gained from the post-Cold War “good governance” aspirations towards a new and lethal state of affairs where anything goes, including the dissolution of the very state structures we live in.

Through the current stage-managed faux-democratic processes, we are transitioning away from what little we gained from the post-Cold War “good governance” aspirations towards a new and lethal state of affairs where anything goes, including the dissolution of the very state structures we live in.

This will still require skills, but of a different type: in order to be able to make themselves look big in the eyes of those over whom they seek to wield power, these “leaders” will have to hide their smallness in the eyes of those on whose behalf they wield it.

The ability to speak the language of global conflict entrepreneurs, as well as qualifications in Advanced Warlordism, will also be essential.

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 Patrick Gathara

2017 was a rough year. The two elections that held Kenyans hostage to months of campaigning and election contestations saw the business sector slow down and not much happened in other sectors as players waited for the dust to settle. As Education Cabinet Secretary Dr Fred Matiangi continued with his trademark zeal towards education, the health sectors seeming experimentations with the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) aroused suspicion and alarm in the backdrop of financial scandals at the ministry. In the world of arts and culture, discussions on financing the creative economy stimulating its economic potential have been key. What then does 2018 hold? The experts share their thoughts.

Gender – Daisy Amdany, Executive Director Community Advocacy and Awareness (CRAWN) Trust

In 2018, I see us having a bit of a struggle in legislation for the implementation of the two third rule. The president will most likely try to meet the gender principle with the cabinet because of the 2016 judgement which we followed up on requiring that any appointments post 2017 align with this. We have legal battles coming up to enable the inclusion of women but because of the economic pressure the government is facing in regards to the wage bill, I foresee a strong argument against this on the basis of costs. There is already talk of constitutional review and 2018 could end up being big on constitutional review.

Economy – Kwame Owino, Executive Director, Institute of Economic Affairs

The pace at which public sector wages are growing is something we need to keep an eye on in 2018 because it ties up with the public debt. Because public debt and wages of public office holders have to be paid first, other public services then suffer cuts. This means that there is less money for the expansion and improvement of healthcare or educational services and other development plans. KRA’s recent aggressiveness tells us that there is a stress with revenues and we will continue to see this in 2018. The Jubilee policy of tax and spend – borrowing and spending big on infrastructure – will have to come to an end because we have been borrowing more than we have been making. We’ll have a debt crisis in two years, the only question is if we want to start paying it now or wait till we are knee deep in the crisis.

Education – Dr Wandia Njoya, Lecturer, Daystar University

In 2018, I expect us to see more business wars on education. We will see more corporates sell privatized digital education and content to unsuspecting parents desperate for any solution to the education problems. We may also witness publishing wars, given that the Ministry gave a single tender for publication of textbooks. Unfortunately, the grass that will suffer is our children, and ultimately the Kenyan nation since our children are its foundation. We will probably witness more social tensions given the number of young people who have been abandoned to figure out what next after high school.

National Security – Kenneth Okech, Political Scientist

Kenya’s biggest external threat as we head into 2018 remains terror groups, especially Al Shabaab. Progress has been made in fighting it by targeting its sources of finances and leadership, but the prolonged political instability in Somalia continues to give its members safe ground to plan their activities. Food, employment levels, and economic inequalities are also critical in shaping the security of Kenya; the 40% unemployment rate could have serious implications for national security. The sense of exclusion felt in certain parts of the country following the elections, which has fuelled the calls for cessation, makes it worse.

Health Care – Dr Ouma Oluga, Secretary General, Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU)

2018 will be very busy for the health sector. There’s going to be reorganisation around three main areas – healthcare as a business, health as a devolved function, and legislation. There’s a concerted push to privatise the health sector in terms of technology, service provision, human resource and the pharmaceutical industry. At the base of it, KMPDU is campaigning against the commodification of health, it is a right, not something for the highest bidder. In the pharmaceutical industry, we will see the entry of a lot of generic drugs which while good for lowering costs, will come with the problem of increased counterfeit drugs. KMPDU is holding a conference for governors in April to look into management of healthcare in the counties. Legislation will focus on the Health Act and the NHIF Act, especially provisions on employment of health workers and streamlining the healthcare system.

Agriculture and food security – Dr Richard Munang, Africa Regional Climate Change Coordinator, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

In 2018, focus will be on leveraging the existent opportunities and threats. The agriculture sector which is central to food security, contributes over 20% of Kenya’s GDP, accounts for 75% of national employment and 40% of revenue. Food security will continue to be addressed using an integrated approach that solves inefficiencies along the agricultural value chain. In 2018 we will still see the sector working with players in energy and infrastructure development, the environment, planning and affordable financing, so as to achieve its goals.

Arts and culture –Margaretta wa Gacheru, Arts Correspondent

2018 will see a carry-over of some of the events that have been happening in December as well as the regular annual events. We’ll see the creative economy working group continue with its work in trying to raise awareness in government about the importance of culture and the economic value of culture and the arts. Film is one area taking off, and the diversification of theatre spaces may see it grow. Literature, poetry, storytelling and self-publishing are also exploding and we will observe the growth of even more reading groups.

Political Stability and national unity – Barack Muluka, Political analyst

2018 will redefine us one way or the other. We have operated under an illusion of nationhood since independence yet we have never really been a nation. The fortunes of national unity are at their nadir and this is especially so as a factor of the political activities of 2017. Going into the new year, there are only two possibilities. Either conscious effort will be made to address what ails us or we drift even further. I don’t want to imagine what this latter option will be like. The kind of restlessness and ennui we have witnessed so far tells us that it won’t be good.

International Relations – Raphael Obonyo, Africa representative to the Global Diplomatic Forum

On the global stage, Kenya ended on a rather uncertain note with the abstention on the vote on Jerusalem. The Jerusalem vote will define global foreign policy agenda in 2018, with the USA pulling funding from the UN, which will affect Kenya as well. We will see Kenya actively strengthening the East African Community (EAC) and pushing other EAC countries to open their borders. Kenya will not be very interested in playing a strong role at the continental level, and so may not take centre stage in the AU. It’s focus on infrastructure growth will see continued and closer engagement with China.

Technology and innovation – Brenda Mwirichia, CEO, Peak and Dale Solutions

Internet will become faster and cheaper. The Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (KETRACO) has installed overhead fibre and it will be interesting to see how this will be adopted in the new year. General availability of .ke top-level domain begins on January 18th, something that is a huge milestone for the country. We’ll see more businesses using e-commerce and payment integration. The mobile development space will explode with more people embracing apps in various sectors. We’ll also see more Kenyans taking up crypto currency. Challenges will mostly be in security of data.

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 Patrick Gathara

The epic legal battles which have defined Kenya’s presidential contest this year ended, not with the loud bang of the Chief Justice David Maraga’s gavel, but with a whimper and muted celebrations. In the end, it seems, even the resolute Justice David Maraga-led Supreme Court succumbed to political intimidations and Jubilee secured a hard-wrung, bloodstained but Pyrrhic victory.

But for the executioners of Kenya’s electoral coup, the legitimacy deficit occasioned by a low voter turnout, dubious legal victories and political violence, counts for little. The end justifies the means.

However, how Jubilee secured this victory -and the resistance it had engendered- provides insights into what we might expect to define political struggles in Kenya’s competitive authoritarian regime, in the coming season of street battles.

It should worry all and sundry, who care for Kenya’s liberal democratic aspirations. It is the harbinger of a political struggle characterized by civic activism and state sanctioned political violence, by the police and allied militias, as well as by resistance from the National Super Alliance/National Resistance Movement, but without any trusted arbiters of deep seated political grievances.

Jubilee secured the ultimate legal stamp of approval through a legal but morally dubious political processes, made possible by the Executive’s sleight of hand that outwitted both the Chief Justice and other litigants, buttressed by the government-instigated credible threat of apocalyptic genocidal political violence in the slums of Nairobi, and some instances of resistance by undisciplined and easily infiltrated protests by the opposition.

The destructions of nascent democratic institutions, which Jubilee’s twin tactics, legal and extra- legal, have left in their wake, may well mean that in Kenya’s struggle for change, where civic action (lawfare) led by the urban middle class competes with, and sometimes complements, street fights between the urban poor and police, the latter encounters may dominate the struggle in the coming months. A look at how these have played out points to several worrying trends. Lawfare first.

Judiciary

If the execution of the August 8 electoral coup had claimed the independent electoral commission, the police service, the police oversight authority, and Kenya’s “main-street” media, then its backlash against the Supreme Court following the September 1 setback may have claimed the nascent independence of the judiciary, its transparent methods of determining disputes, and its polite but firm approach to litigants. And more.

In a first in Kenya’s electoral history, the Cabinet Secretary in charge of security declared the day before the October 26 repeat presidential poll a public holiday. The decision rendered most courts inoperative, except the High Court and the Supreme Court, which had express permission from the Chief Justice to hear all the pending and urgent election-related cases, before them.

But something happened. First, the Supreme Court failed to muster the necessary quorum, at least five out of seven judges, to listen to a case filed by democracy activists seeking to stop the poll. Justice Maraga was hard pressed to explain the absence of some of the judges.

Despite his efforts, it is still hard to understand why only he and Justice Isaac Lenaola had reported to work on that day. The absence of the indisposed Justice Ibrahim and Philomena Mwilu, the Deputy Chief Justice, whose driver had been shot and wounded the previous day, may indeed be excused but where were Justices Njoki Ndungu, J.B. Ojwang’ and Smokin Wanjala?

Jubilee’s bloodstained victory has come at a great cost to the nascent institutions of Kenya’s democracy: judicial reforms, police reforms, and electoral reforms. It now boasts the legal imprimatur of Kenya’s apex court

Then, three judges at the Court of Appeal held a late night sitting which delivered a significant judgment, in curious circumstances and without listening to both parties to the case, which overturned an earlier ruling by the High Court that had declared the appointment of election officials unconstitutional. It was eerily reminiscent of the travesties of justice during the late- night Mwakenya trials of the 1980s.

The Court of Appeal did not have express permission from the Chief Justice to meet on this day as it was not one of the courts mentioned his October 24 memo which allowed sittings on the public holiday. But it received and determined a petition, late at night, filed by one of the litigants, while during the day, other litigants could neither find a register nor a duty judge.

What’s more, in marked departure from the Court of Appeal’s judicial tradition, this late-night Court, without listening to both parties to the case, rescinded an earlier High Court decision that ruled that the IEBC had irregularly appointed the returning officers who were to preside over the re-run. Why did the grant of ex-parte orders under such circumstance? Why did the Court of Appeal President, Justice Kihara Kariuki, empanel only this court for only one of the many litigants on this day?

Glossed over by Kenya’s ‘main-street media,’ this act and the subsequent ruling by Justices Erastus Githinji, Martha Koome and Fatuma Sichale, point to a judiciary with two centers of power- one de jure, under the authority of the Chief Justice, and another de facto one, but answerable to Justice Karikui or a power higher than the Chief Justice’s, located somewhere else.

Justice Kihara’s action bodes ill for the rule of law. Courts should be predictable and accessible to all. Late-night courts must be the anti-thesis of justice which must not only be done, but also be seen to be done, sometimes literally under the glare of television cameras, and especially when political stakes are high.

In November, the Supreme Court returned. If the six-judge bench of September 1 was firm, patient and polite, this time, they were irascible, a little impetuous and imperious. If last time the court was a lot more engaged, taking both an adversarial and inquisitorial approach to determine the first petition, this time round the court seemed detached. It took a purely adversarial approach, allowing the litigants to slug it out, more in its 2013 mode.

Unlike the confident, but split bench that delivered the historic September 1 ruling, the judges returned to work united but subdued.

This time, the Court was quorate with all but one of the seven judges present. They reported for duty without fail for seven consecutive days. But true to the black and crimson red robes and white bibs, the traditional colors of Kenya’s judiciary, they were conservative to the core.

The court seemed disinterested in several aspects of the two petitions. It threw out most of the petitioners’ prayers which suggests two possibilities: the petitions were either irredeemably defective, or that the court recoiled at the prospect of another bruising battle with the executive.

If it is the first, then there is little cause for alarm. No doubt, the Court’s full judgment, when released, will shed light on why, in their eyes, the two petitions had “no merit.”

The second possibility, however, also deserves attention. Was the court acting out of an instinct for self-preservation? Was it trying to avoid the kind of assault that the Jubilee government, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, as well as its own Justice Njoki Ndungu, had launched following the invalidation of the August election?

The judiciary had come under unrelenting assault after the September judgment. The executive had attacked the Court and its partners mostly on the strength of Justice Ndungu’s claims that the majority judges did not scrutinize the relevant electoral reforms, something supposedly corroborated by Ezra Chiloba, the IEBC’s chief executive officer. It targeted the Registrar of the Supreme Court, and the International Development Law Organization, which it accused of inappropriately influencing subversive jurisprudence, threatening the separation of powers between it and the judiciary.

In the second set of presidential petitions, the Supreme Court judges steered clear of the whole kit and caboodle of the IEBC’s paraphernalia: the servers, the Kenya Integrated Electoral Management System (KIEMS), the numerical and alphabetically designated forms: 34A, 34B, 34C, and 32C.

This was a big victory for the IEBC. The compromised electoral management body would no doubt welcome a process that neither made reference to servers and KIEMS kits, nor pressed hard to produce a voter register, without placing unreasonable financial barriers on the path of petitioners. These were black boxes of this year’s general election, keeping the all-important record of how many Kenyans voted and whom they voted for.

The path to Kenya’s Supreme Court denouement has been long and convoluted, sometimes defying easy comprehension, and has arguably left Kenya with a weaker, much less confident Judiciary.

And, in Pontius Pilate like response to the Kenyans competing cries, “Give us Uhuruto or Democracy,” they seem to have unanimously delivered all Kenyans into the hands of Uhuruto’s well- planned conservative backlash against the 2010 constitution.

They gave Jubilee government a Tano Tena, five more years, without the hearty high-fives and thunderous applause that greeted the September’s landmark decision. Rather, the good news was received with a tad luke-warm celebration within the wood-paneled courtroom, even among the battery of lawyers who had fought to hard to secure it. Clearly, the court didn’t quite surprise the winning team.

The path to Kenya’s Supreme Court denouement has been long and convoluted, sometimes defying easy comprehension, and has arguably left Kenya with a weaker, much less confident Judiciary.

These events point to sinister happenings within the Judiciary and, possibly, an on-going internecine power struggle, captured in the condescending and hectoring tone of the Supreme Court minority’s dissenting judgment in the first petition, and the rogue conduct of the Court of Appeal of dispensing selective late-night justice.

They do not augur well for the administration of justice. Not only is the ruling party contesting the Chief Justice’s authority, but also his own colleagues are. Can the Supreme Court’s newfound unity following the unanimous second verdict heal this rift and restore Justice Maraga’s administrative authority over the entire judiciary?

The erosion of the legitimacy of the court, especially of the Chief Justice’s authority and transparent procedures of determining political disputes, will increasingly only leave one avenue open for those who oppose Jubilee government, but are outnumbered in all the formal political arenas of Kenya’s democracy including parliament: the streets. However, this is a rough terrain, especially for the easily baited and undisciplined NASA street protestors, as recent events demonstrate. Street protests

Kenya’s street struggle for democracy has in part always been a gladiatorial contest between the police (including the paramilitary General Service Unit) and the urban poor. Since 2007, the securocrats opposed to Kenya’s democratization process have built a formidable and lethal police capacity against organized protest.

How the state has policed the street protest has also changed, borrowing a great deal from Apartheid South Africa: through masculine and menacing deployment of troops and specialized vehicles, mostly aimed at containing the protests within the slums, and turning broad party political disputes into a narrow ethnic and intra-slum violence. But this year’s pattern of state orchestrated violence suggests something more insidious.

The State has kept the protests far away from the business districts of cities like Nairobi and Kisumu, and from the high-income neighborhoods adjoining the hundreds of urban slums. This provocative posture by the police has easily lured the NASA protestors to respond in kind, but with slings, and acts of arson, which is clearly no match for the deadly arsenal of the police. The protestors’ casualties and location attest to this asymmetrical warfare. Nairobi’s Kibra, Mathare, Kawangware, Lucky Summer and Baba Dogo, as well as Kisumu’s Kondele, Obunga and Nyalenda “Carwash”, have borne the brunt of the political violence this year.

However, in pattern reminiscent of the Apartheid police’s repression of urban protests in South Africa, Julia Steers notes that police violence in the slums this August was aimed at decapitating the urban-poor’s political community’s leadership by turning some residents of the urban slums into snitches, who identify “ protest organizers and known opposition supporters” who are then marked for murder. These tactics tear apart the social fabric of the urban poor, brew mistrust, and valorize intra-urban poor violence.

Similarly, in a replay of the 1969 anti-KPU strategy of repressing protests, the Jubilee government has particularly trained its guns on the protestors in the counties of Kisumu, Homa-Bay, Migori and Siaya, with deadly outcomes. By targeting the beachhead of NASA’s core support base, this kind of violence courts a collective ethnic Luo backlash against the real or imagined supporters of the Jubilee party in living in these areas.

It also seeks to draw out a loud Luo response, which can be manipulated to reduce the broad-based NASA resistance against the Jubilee government into “a Luo only affair” for which several ready “cultural” and binary explanations abound. Such the “ dynastic feuds between the Jaramogi Odinga and Jomo Kenyatta families” or “the Luo-Kikuyu historical rivalries,” which mask the question of electoral justice at the heart of the current political conflicts.

In 2007, Mwai Kibaki’s regime executed political violence against the real or imagined opposition supporters, from above through the police, and GSU, as well as from below through the Kikuyu militia known as the Mungiki. In this, the police, and the Mungiki, largely acted separately. Conversely, ODM, the opposition, executed political violence through spontaneous protests and various organized militia groups in the urban slums of Nairobi, in particular and in the Rift Valley.

When finally delivered the ruling, Chief Justice Maraga was brief. There was no grand opening statement, no more soaring ecclesiastical aspirations or temporally lofty nationalist ambitions as in September. Faith and courage seemed to have deserted the now united six-judge bench. The court, it seems, had been “fixed” to its rightful Third World size. This year, though, the police and a militia group widely thought to be the Mungiki were acting jointly against the real or imagined opposition supporters. Many news reports suggest that the Mungiki were camouflaged in military fatigues or police uniforms. Numerous accounts of dread-locked police wearing jeans, gunfire from unmarked cars, of police armed with both machetes and guns as well as protesters in opposition strongholds with gun wounds, slit-throats or deep machete wounds, suggest a blurring of boundaries between the police and the urban slum militias.

If police violence against protestors was previously justified in the name of protecting private property, the recent footage of policemen, including those in senior ranks, hurling rocks at or lobbing tear-gas canisters or shooting into vehicles carrying the NASA politicians, suggests that the police now act as agent-provocateurs.

At any rate, how Jubilee has unleashed state violence and how the police have largely stood by as “unknown gunmen” shoot and kill hapless slam dwellers, tells a story of a regime that desperately wants to retain state power at any cost.

Politically expedient, these acts by the incumbent were calculated to achieve several outcomes: increase the cost of individual’s participation in protests, drive Kenya to the edge of apocalyptic genocidal violence and thus force the judges to rule in a particular way.

These acts suggests that Kenya’s dreams of ever bringing the armed forces under democratic control, through institutions such the Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA), and getting rid of political militias, especially during the elections, are slowly evaporating. Ominously, Kenya is increasingly criminalizing the police and militarizing the criminals.

The blurring of the difference between the police and the militia, or the police as the militia of the ruling regime, delegitimizes the Police. It might lead to an increase in the formation of gangs by the urban communities on the receiving end of the violence of the police-militia violence and an arms race within the slums.

It is a victory that has not only left many Kenya without a credible arbiter of political conflicts, precisely at the moment when political conflicts are escalating and divisions hardening, but also weakened both the Judiciary and criminalized the police. The police is steadily becoming the ruling party’s militia-writ large, with oversight institutions such as IPOA standing by as mere spectators in the agora of a deadly gladiatorial combat between the police and the urban poor. Kenya’s judiciary is shaken, precisely at the moment when Kenyans need a strong judiciary as the bulwark against Jubilee’s majoritarianism, its dictatorial ambitions, and a trigger-happy police force. While NASA’s protest movement has shown some creativity, it hasn’t truly demonstrated a disciplined non-violent or civic street protests, perhaps the only viable option out of the coming gladiatorial encounters.

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 Patrick Gathara

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 Patrick Gathara

As the 16th Assembly of States Parties (ASP) concluded on Thursday, December 14, 2017, at the United Nations headquarters in New York, one could not help but notice the diminished interest Kenya now has for the annual gathering since the country’s post-election violence cases ended with no justice for the victims.

The ASP is an annual meeting of States that are signatories to the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is based in the Hague in the Netherlands.

From the build-up to the representation, Kenya was literally missing in action – except for the candidature of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s close relative Margaret Wambui Shava – compared to a year or two ago,

Ms. Shava, who served in Kenya’s Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission, was elected as a member of the key committee of the ASP, the Committee on Budget and Finance. The committee “reviews the proposed programme budget of the Court” and “makes the relevant recommendations to the Assembly concerning the proposed programme budget.” The committee is also charged with the mandate of considering reports of the Auditor concerning the financial operations of the ICC before the said reports are transmitted to the ASP.

When the Kenyan post-election violence cases were active at the ICC, the government used to attend many preparatory activities, including shuttling within the continent to build up support for its anti- ICC agenda and identifying, marking and possibly influencing journalists who would travel to report on the annual meetings.

At the time, there was concerted effort in government to frustrate the ICC from prosecuting Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta and Mr. William Ruto, a task they somehow successfully accomplished by mobilising African support against the court and branding the ICC as a “toy of declining imperial powers.” In their bid for the presidency in 2013, the duo also urged Kenyans to view their election as a “referendum against the ICC”, a call that was apparently heeded when they won the election by a narrow margin.

The ICC had indicted Mr. Kenyatta and Mr. Ruto for crimes against humanity. They were accused of being the sponsors of the violence that took place in Kenya after the December 2007 highly disputed presidential election. Over 1,000 people died in the violence and hundreds of thousands of others were uprooted from their homes and businesses.

The Panel of Eminent African Personalities, led by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and convened by the African Union, eventually brokered a peace deal between the now retired President Mwai Kibaki and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga that eventually ended the post-election turmoil in February 2008.

However, since the cases against Kenyatta and Ruto collapsed, Kenya has adopted a curiously low profile on matters regarding the ICC. This year, partly because of the extended electioneering period, Kenya did not participate in the pre-ASP events. In fact, many Kenyans would be forgiven for not knowing that since December 4, 2017 the ICC member states have been meeting in New York.

Since the cases against Kenyatta and Ruto collapsed, Kenya has adopted a curiously low profile on matters regarding the ICC.

This is in sharp contrast to the period between 2010 and 2016 when Kenya would send high-level delegations, often including the Attorney General Githu Muigai, cabinet secretaries led by foreign affairs cabinet secretary Amina Mohamed, principal secretaries, MPs and Jubilee sympathisers under the banner of Kenya Citizens Coalition and the council of elders.

As these events were going on, according to the ICC prosecution, several attempts were made to weaken the Kenyan cases and to illegally influence and intimidate witnesses and their families so that they would not testify. The ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, blamed the collapse of the Kenyan post-election violence cases on “a host of reasons.”

“Some of them were within the control of the ICC, but overwhelmingly, it was outside of the control of the Office [of the Prosecutor] and of the ICC. By this, I am directly talking about the high level of witness interference and witness intimidation,” she said.

This year, the most senior Kenyan government official at the ASP was the Deputy Permanent Representative at the Kenya Mission to the United Nations headquarters in New York, Koki Muli. The thrust of Mr. Waweru’s statement had little, if any, relevance to Kenya. He called on the ICC to investigate the sale of African migrants as slaves in Libya, likening the situation to chattels in open slave markets, which he said was abhorrent, and even accused the ICC of being slow to act.

The task of delivering the country’s statement to the ASP was meanwhile left to Mr. James Waweru, a second secretary at Kenya’s UN mission in New York.

The thrust of Mr. Waweru’s statement had little, if any, relevance to Kenya. He called on the ICC to investigate the sale of African migrants as slaves in Libya, likening the situation to chattels in open slave markets, which he said was abhorrent, and even accused the ICC of being slow to act.

“It is high time that an investigation into migrant-related crimes in Libya is commenced in earnest,” he said. According to Mr. Waweru, the ICC needed to work with the UN Security Council to not only end the trade but also hold to account those responsible for “these atrocious crimes.”

The ICC has jurisdiction to try genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, the last of which Kenya argues encompasses the practice of slavery, which has been universally accepted as a crime against humanity.

As well as assigning the 16th ASP low key status, the collapse of Mr. Kenyatta and Mr. Ruto’s crimes against humanity cases has all but ended calls for the expansion of the jurisdiction to the African Court of Justice and Human Rights to handle international crimes against all but sitting heads of state and government, and other senior government officials.

In January 2015, two months before the ICC withdrew the crimes against humanity charges against President Kenyatta, the Kenyan leader had pledged one million US dollars to the African court during the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He had described the creation of the African court as urgent. “I urge you brothers and sisters to join me in ensuring that the necessary ratifications are in place and that the resulting court is fully owned, financed and driven by Africa. This is an urgent and historic task that cannot wait,” he said.

Whether or not Kenya made good on its pledge remains unknown. What, however, is clear that the “urgency” with which Mr. Kenyatta wanted African governments to sign the Malabo Protocol to give the African court jurisdiction over international crimes has almost gone mute. In fact, as of June 2017, the Malabo Protocol had been signed by only nine states and had not been ratified by other African countries, including Kenya, that were at the forefront of pushing for an African court.

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 Patrick Gathara

The spread of mobile phones across Africa has been one of the continent’s success stories over the past two decades, transforming lives through better communication and simpler banking. It has also resulted in huge profits for powerful international companies – and for some of Africa’s wealthiest and best-connected individuals.

But an investigation into the African interests of UK mobile phone giant Vodafone by the Finance Uncovered network has raised serious questions about transparency and the processes by which Western firms entered Africa’s telecoms markets.

Often Western operators that wanted market access in a particular country would have to choose between accepting a government stake in the venture, or sell significant shareholdings to “local investors”. But how partners were selected appears contentious, and questions have been raised over how some deals were structured. The International Finance Corporation, which is part of the World Bank, estimates that mobile phone revenue in sub-Saharan Africa grew from $100 million in 1995 to $40 billion in 2015.

The Finance Uncovered investigation has discovered that, in certain cases, politically connected elites secured shares in Vodafone subsidiaries by borrowing money from Vodafone itself. Such arrangements may strike outsiders as odd, but they are legal, and for the lucky few able to do such deals, the rewards have been huge. The International Finance Corporation, which is part of the World Bank, estimates that mobile phone revenue in sub-Saharan Africa grew from $100 million in 1995 to $40 billion in 2015. Last September, Vodafone raised $1.1 billion by selling a mere 5% stake in its main African subsidiary, Vodacom Group. And the month before, Vodacom Tanzania raised $213 million by selling a 25% stake. The flotation, the biggest on the Dar es Salaam stock market, was prompted by the introduction of a Tanzanian government regulation requiring 25% of Vodacom Tanzania’s stock to be in public hands.

For one of Tanzania’s wealthiest businessmen, Rostam Aziz, this proved that there was a strong appetite among investors wanting to buy into a company he retained a significant stake in. The scion of a successful Tanzanian trading family, with interests in mining, agriculture, ports and media, Aziz became an MP in 1994 and went on to become the national treasurer for the ruling party Chama cha Mapinduzi after he helped to fund and managed Jakaya Kikwete’s successful presidential campaign in 2005.

Two years later, in 2007, Aziz’s “extraordinary influence” was noted in a US embassy cable that later appeared in Wikileaks. The cable quoted a fellow politician saying of Aziz: “I don’t know what magic that guy has, but he is the power behind the throne.”

In 1999, the government of Daniel arap Moi allowed Vodafone Kenya to buy a 40% share in the state-controlled telecoms operator Safaricom for $42 million. It later transpired that Vodafone had been given “advice and assistance” on securing the investment by an anonymous Guernsey-registered company called Mobitelea.

In 2011, Aziz resigned as an MP amid corruption allegations that he has strenuously denied. At the time, he suggested that the unsubstantiated claims were the work of political rivals. “I have decided to relinquish all leadership positions in the party … my decision is based on a clear conscience to end these gutter politics and spend my time concentrating on my business,” Aziz said in his resignation speech. By this time he was a very wealthy man.

In 1999, while an MP, a company belonging to Aziz acquired a 10% stake in Vodacom Tanzania. Over the next eight years, Aziz increased his shareholding to 35% via two companies, Mirambo and Caspian.

Under rules that were common to shareholders in Vodacom Tanzania, local investors, such as Aziz’s companies, were obliged to lend the telecoms operator money to help it build its network. But Vodacom also lent Aziz’s company millions of dollars to help him with those shareholder obligations. None of the share purchases by Aziz were funded by these loans.

By 2012, Vodafone says, Aziz’s company owed Vodacom and Vodacom Tanzania a total of $52.5 million. This figure is disputed by Aziz. Two years later, Aziz’s company sold half of his shares for $240 million. His shareholding catapulted him on to the Forbes list of global billionaires. The principle shareholder, Vodacom Group, now wants to buy out Aziz’s company’s remaining share, which if it transpired would net him another hefty amount.

Vodafone says that the 1999 deal with Aziz took place before it gained majority control of Vodacom Group and that it was “not party to the transaction”. By 2006 it owned half of the group and then went on to control it.

Vodacom Tanzania is not the only Vodafone interest in Africa that has resulted in significant profits for influential and well-connected minority shareholders. In 1999, the government of Daniel arap Moi allowed Vodafone Kenya to buy a 40% share in the state-controlled telecoms operator Safaricom for $42 million. It later transpired that Vodafone had been given “advice and assistance” on securing the investment by an anonymous Guernsey-registered company called Mobitelea.

Now Vodafone has admitted to reporters at Finance Uncovered, an international journalism organisation, that it told the UK’s Serious Fraud Office who owned the Mobitelea shares. However, it is not clear when exactly Vodafone’s admission took place.

In 2001, Vodafone granted Mobitelea share options in Vodafone Kenya at 1999 prices, enabling it to buy a stake in Safaricom. Finance Uncovered estimates that these options eventually yielded Mobitelea a profit of about $51 million in 2009, a reflection of Safaricom’s spectacular success.

The involvement of Mobitelea did not surface until 2007, when the Kenyan government floated some of its Safaricom holding, and was required to list all current shareholders. But exactly who was behind the company has never been publicly disclosed. There is speculation that members of Moi’s inner circle may have benefited from the deal.

In 2007, after Kenyan MPs raised concerns of corruption involving Mobitelea, the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) approached Vodafone for further information. The company says that it worked closely with the SFO to provide documents and information relating to who was behind Mobitelea, and that the SFO decided to take no action. However, despite divulging the information to the SFO, Vodafone says it was legally obliged not to publicly disclose the identity of the beneficial owner of Mobitelea for reasons of commercial confidentiality.

Vodafone says all due diligence was done and that external lawyers drew up contracts that included anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses. It added: “We were able to provide this information to the UK Serious Fraud Office. We note that the SFO concluded that no further action was required.”

In 2008, the SFO stated that it did not believe it had the resources to ever get to the bottom of the case.

This explanation has angered many Kenyans. John Githongo, Kenya’s renowned anti-corruption champion and chairman of the Africa Centre for Open Governance, said he was concerned that the true beneficiaries behind Mobitelea have never been identified publicly.

Financial experts point out that foreign companies are often required by law to include an element of local shareholder investment if they want to expand into a particular country’s market. However, in certain cases, the deals require levels of finance that are typically beyond the means of many local investors, meaning that foreign corporations have little choice but to offer loan facilities to acquire the equity involved. “Reportage of these transactions continues with a bitter taste left in the mouth,” Githongo said. “How would the British media and NGOs respond to the same practices if they took place within the UK?”

A source close to the UK’s enforcement agency indicated that Vodafone was never approached by officers during the SFO investigation in 2007 and 2008. It is understood that the SFO investigation only lasted a few weeks before it was shut down.

Rather more is known about some of the shareholders in Vodafone’s operations in Mozambique. In 2007 Vodacom Mozambique lent Emotel, a telecom company owned by the economic arm of Frelimo, the country’s ruling party, nearly $1 million to enable the government to meet its obligations to become a 3% shareholder in the telecom operator.

Vodafone said Vodacom was told by the government that if it wanted to operate in the country it would have to partner with Emotel. Vodafone said the transaction preceded its acquisition of a majority control of Vodacom Group and that it was not a party to the deal. Another shareholder was Intelec, a company that administers the business interests of Armando Guebuza, president of Mozambique until 2015, and one of the country’s richest individuals. A third was the Whatana Investment Group, an investment company chaired by Graça Machel, the widow of Nelson Mandela and the wife of Samora Machel, the president of Mozambique, until his death in 1986.

The former chair of the public accounts committee, Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge, questioned whether Vodafone could have done more to ensure that ordinary Africans benefited from the transactions.

Vodafone insists that all loans were offered at arm’s-length commercial terms, with interest payments at normal commercial rates. The company said it “implemented specific governance and compliance measures” when it came to dealing with what it termed “politically exposed people”.

A spokesman for Vodafone said: “The matters you raise are historical in nature (in the case of Kenya dating back to 1996) with initial transactions that largely predate our current management teams, in most cases by many years. Personnel who were involved in these transactions – and who may have been in a position to provide information and context of potential relevance to your statements and questions – are no longer employed by Vodafone or Vodacom.”

The former chair of the public accounts committee, Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge, questioned whether Vodafone could have done more to ensure that ordinary Africans benefited from the transactions.

“Vodafone should not just hold its nose while the wealthiest in Africa get even wealthier,” Hodge said. “They could have used their power to ensure that, where there were local ownership rules, the ordinary people of the country benefited, rather than the wealthy elite.”

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.

Kenya will never forget their heroes

By Patrick Gathara

Kenya’s fiscal policy – the means by which the government adjusts its spending levels, revenue generation and collection, and debt to monitor and influence the economy- has been a defining feature of the current administration. The three have been characterised by almost consistent features and trends.

Some background information is useful. Kenya has had an annual growth rate of about 5.46 percent from 2004 until 2016. Initially, the economy was slated to grow at around 6 percent in 2017 but this has since been revised to 5 percent. According to Genghis Capital, it will actually be between 4.25- 4.75 percent due to the drought-induced contraction in agriculture, the negative effects of the interest rate cap on the financial sector and the prolonged electioneering period. The Government thinks the economy will grow by over 6 percent next year though the World Bank projects a lower rebound to 5.8 percent in 2018 and 6.1 percent in 2019.

Kenya’s economy is primarily services driven and according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), under the Kenyatta administration, growth has largely been on the back of government spending on infrastructure projects such as the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), the expansion of the road network as well as electricity generation and transmission projects. Other significant contributors to growth include a resurgent tourism industry and growth in information and communication, real estate and transport and storage.

Back to fiscal policy, we will address each component separately: expenditure, revenue generation and collection, and borrowing.

EXPENDITURE

Over the past 6 years, government spending has grown at an average of 14.7 percent, yet revenue growth has only increased by 12.7 percent. Under the current administration, spending has gone up by two-thirds, from Sh1.6 trillion in 2013/14 to Sh2.64 trillion in 2017/18. While some of this can be explained by inflation reducing the value of money, there is a consistent trend of notable increases in government spending.

(Source: Institute of Economic Affairs)

A fundamental problem in analysing fiscal policy at both national and county levels is determining the intended recurrent vs development budgets and comparing these to the actual expenditure pattern. The image below from the Institute of Economic Affairs Kenya (IEA) details this for the National Government:

(Source: Institute of Economic Affairs)

Overall, two key trends are clear, the first of which is that the national budget is still geared towards recurrent spending. Indeed, as the Treasury itself has admitted in the past, recurrent expenditure is reaching unsustainable levels.

There are several factors behind this aggressive growth in expenditure, the first of which is devolution. In 2010 Kenyans enacted a new constitution, which established a bicameral Parliament and 47 county governments. At the beginning of the implementation of devolution, a parliamentary report indicated that it would cost at least Sh36 billion to set up. Prior to devolution, it cost Sh6.6 billion per year to run Parliament, but that figure is expected to rise to Sh14.3 billion. The Parliamentary Budget Office has also stated that it will cost Sh21.75 billion annually to run the 47 county assemblies. Thus, while welcome, the reality is that devolution is expensive.

At the beginning of the implementation of devolution, a parliamentary report indicated that it would cost at least Sh36 billion to set up. Prior to devolution it cost Sh6.6 billion per year to run Parliament, but that figure is expected to rise to Sh14.3 billion. The Parliamentary Budget Office has also stated that it will cost Sh21.75 billion annually to run the 47 county assemblies. Thus while welcome, the reality is that devolution is expensive.

Linked to the point above is the public wage bill which, according to the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC), has ballooned from Sh465 billion when the Kenyatta administration took over to Sh627 billion in the 2015/2016 financial year, an annual average growth of 9 per cent. SRC’s projections show that it will be Sh676 billion in 2016/2017. Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised concerns, stating that Kenya is among countries that exhibit large increases in the wage bill, particularly in the run-up to elections. IMF is of the view that given Kenya’s rising debt levels (more on this later) the decision to increase spending on public sector wages is a concern as less funds are left over for economically productive development expenditure. The SRC pooh-poohed the IMF’s concerns, stating that wages were actually falling as a proportion of GDP: from 10.3 per cent in 2012/2013 to 9.5 per cent in 2015/2016.

A second factor behind the growth in expenditure, which the government has been eager to finger as the primary reason, has been the investment in infrastructure. According to the Capital Markets Authority (CMA), Kenya’s current estimated infrastructure funding gap is USD 2-3 billion per year over the next 10 years. To address this, government has allocated nearly a third of total budget expenditure to infrastructure between the 2016/17 and 2019/20 financial years.

The World Bank makes the point that the infrastructure investment drive in Kenya needs to be done in a way that is both efficient and sustainable. With such a robust commitment, key questions must be asked. For example, is Kenya investing in the right infrastructure? The Brookings Institution makes the point that a push for more infrastructure only raises economic growth and people’s well- being if the focus is on quality and impact, rather than quantity and volume. Has Kenya fallen short here? Has the government conducted an audit of infrastructure investment and the development it has engendered thus far? Has there been an audit of its quality? How efficient is our investment? Without an answer to these questions, the country risks wasting resources on aggressive infrastructure expenditure that generates no real benefits for its people.

Indeed, the link between infrastructure and economic growth is more tenuous than previously assumed. According to the London School of Economics, most recent studies on infrastructure’s contribution to growth tend to find smaller effects than those reported in earlier studies; this is linked to improvements in methodological approaches. Kenya, therefore, shouldn’t assume that infrastructure investment and development will automatically lead to significant improvements in economic growth. It is time for a fundamental rethink of the scale, nature and efficiency of the government’s spending on infrastructure.

Kenya, therefore, shouldn’t assume that infrastructure investment and development will automatically lead to significant improvements in economic growth. It is time for a fundamental rethink of the scale, nature and efficiency of the government’s spending on infrastructure.

The final issue regarding expenditure is linked to the mismanagement of public funds at both national and county levels. At the national level, allegations of corruption and financial mismanagement are legion and include: the National Youth Service (NYS) affair where the Auditor General stated a loss of Sh1.9 billion; Sh5.2 billion misappropriated at the Ministry of health according to an in-house audit report; mobile clinics valued at Sh1.4 million each being sold to the government at more than 7 times the price then abandoned in an NYS yard; inflated rig charges at the Geothermal Development Company (GDC) in which the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) found the tender committee culpable and six managers were sent on compulsory leave.

At county level, there are rising concerns with expenditure considering that the national government has sent to the counties more than Sh1 trillion since their establishment in 2013. Research by the International Budget Partnership Kenya (IBPK) reveals that county governments are not making available fiscal documents required by the Public Financial Management Act (PFMA). Only about 20 percent of key budget documents, including fiscal expenditure documents, meant to be online had been uploaded. Indeed, IBPK reports that in some cases, budget allocations are based on lists of projects drawn up by Members of County Assemblies (MCAs). There is no clarity on the criteria governing such allocations, and even less clarity on how county funds are actually spent. There is a distinct air of mischief informing this laxity. It is not a secret that the first iteration of devolution revealed how much autonomy county governments have in the planning and use of funds they receive and generate. This lack of transparency seems to be aimed at facilitating a culture of financial mismanagement and corruption at the county level in an environment where, frankly, no one is holding them accountable.

Further, county governments see themselves as expenditure units, not development units. This needs to change. Rather than concentrating on how much they have to spend, they ought to focus on the development dividends they are responsible for generating. Without this fundamental shift in thinking, county governments will continue to be like spoilt children, forever crying over what they are owed, but with nothing to show for the development they ought to deliver.

For example, 16 firms listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange issued profit warnings in 2016, which meant less corporation tax could be collected. Additionally, the 7000 jobs lost to downsizing and shuttering of firms, mainly in the banking sector, reduced Pay As You Earn receipts.

The greatest concern beyond the moral question of the financial mismanagement of the public funds of a poor African country, is the issue of how corruption affects spending efficiency. As will be explained later, Kenya is getting into significant debt, particularly to finance development expenditure. If such debt is not being used as efficiently as possible and instead funds are stolen or dubiously spent, the country will be saddled with onerous debt without he means – the improvements in economic performance that were to come from debt financed development projects – to pay it.

Given the factors detailed above, there are several broad changes that ought to be made. At national level, the first recommendation is for government to commit more money to development expenditure and put more effort into actually absorbing the allocations given to the docket.

Secondly, the national government ought to be more consistent in the manner in which it presents data and should make it easier to track planned versus actual expenditure, particularly across the recurrent and development dockets.

Thirdly, large allocations to infrastructure projects need to be audited and a determination made on the effectiveness of the allocations, how funds can be better spent and recommendations on how to improve efficiency.

Finally, national government has to clamp down on financial mismanagement and prosecute and punish culpable officials. Without this, the government’s commitment to ending corruption will be seen as insincere and ineffective.

At county level, there are several issues that ought to be addressed the first of which is that there needs to be a very clear hierarchy of accountability for county expenditure. Governors and the County Ministers of Finance must be held accountable for their spending and individuals need to be punished if found guilty of corruption.

Secondly, counties must comply with the PFMA and provide breakdowns of their expenditure which includes a delineation between recurrent and development expenditure.

Thirdly, the principle of fiscal discipline should carry considerable weight when national government makes county allocations such that responsible use of resources is rewarded and poor performers are punished.

Finally, a citizen-led effort to create a ranking of county governments according to fiscal transparency with a focus on expenditure would likely create pressure on county governments to adhere to their legal obligations. Included in the ranking should be how well they comply with PFMA stipulations, with the top and bottom performers widely publicised. REVENUE GENERATION AND COLLECTION

Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has been falling short of its revenue targets for some time. For example, in 2016/17 total collection stood at Sh1.365 trillion representing a performance rate of 95.4 percent, and a shortfall of Sh66.64 billion- a significant number. In the first four months of this fiscal year, KRA has already fallen behind by Sh40 billion. There are questions as to why revenue collection consistently underperforms. I am of the view that KRA is given unrealistic targets, more informed by aggressive increases in government expenditure and oblivious to the serious constraints that mute tax collection.

Without this fundamental shift in thinking, county governments will continue to be like spoilt children, forever crying over what they are owed, but with nothing to show for the development they ought to deliver.

Revenue generation targets tend to be revised upwards over the course of the year. KRA’s original revenue target for the 2016/17 was Sh1.415 trillion which was later revised to Sh1.431 trillion, an increase of KES 16.24 billion. This is a concern because motivations behind the increases in targets are not clear. Do they perhaps stem from a realisation in Treasury that it cannot raise as much as anticipated in borrowing?

The second constraint is that the macroeconomic environment informs the extent to which revenues deviate from targets. For example, it is estimated that a 1 percent reduction in GDP growth reduces revenue by Sh13.4 billion and as noted earlier, this has been something of a tough year. A similar increase in inflation also requires that revenue targets be raised by Sh13 billion.

This is linked to sectoral issues which can affect the ability of KRA to collect tax. For example, 16 firms listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange issued profit warnings in 2016 –a rising trend since 2013– which meant less corporation tax could be collected. Additionally, the 7000 jobs lost to downsizing and shuttering of firms, mainly in the banking sector, reduced Pay As You Earn receipts.

Third, government policy decisions, particularly those related to tax policy, affect the ability to generate revenue. For example, the non-implementation of changes to specific excise rates in 2016/17 reduced revenues by nearly Sh5 billion. Additionally, the duty-free importation of essential foods (maize, milk, sugar) led to a revenue loss of over Sh4 billion in the fourth quarter of the same financial year. Indeed, it is estimated that government policy decisions cost it Sh13 billion in lost revenue that entire year. The government tends to shoot itself in the foot in other ways too. For example, delays in remitting income tax from public institutions costs it Sh823 million.

Finally, revenue generation and collection in Kenya like the rest of Africa is negatively affected by illicit financial flows from the country. According to the UN, Africa loses more than US$50 billion through illicit financial outflows per year. Companies evade and avoid tax by shifting profits to low tax locations, claiming large allowable deductions, carrying losses forward indefinitely, and using transfer pricing.

The main reason why consistent subpar revenue collection is worrying is because the national treasury continues to construct budgets based on the unrealistic targets. For example, revenue generated was meant to play a bigger role in the current budget, financing 60.7 percent of the overall deficit and 58.7 percent of the development expenditure. Since it appears as though targets will again not be met, government will have to borrow more than anticipated.

There ought to be fundamental rethink of revenue generation and collection in order to effect a sustained increase. There are several factors to address, the first of which is improvements in the business environment that increase profits and thus taxable revenue. A key component that is often ignored here is the environment for the informal economy. Current assessments largely ignore the sector in which 90 percent of employed Kenyans earn a living. More ought to be done to make informal businesses more profitable.

At the same time, the government ought to seek to expand the revenue base by encouraging the formalisation of these businesses. Concerted efforts must be undertaken to pilot schemes that remove barriers to – and create incentives for – formalisation, particularly of larger businesses that easily evade tax yet are robust enough to consistently pay.

As recommended by the Africa Progress Report 2013, alongside demanding the highest standards of propriety and disclosure from their government, Kenyans should push citizens of the developed world to demand similar standards from their governments and companies.

Finally, Kenya needs to work on curbing illicit financial outflows. The UN makes the point that G8 leaders have committed to the 2013 Lough Erne Declaration, a 10-point statement calling for an overhaul of corporate transparency rules. Among other things, the declaration urges tax authorities to automatically share information to fight evasion. It states that poor countries should have the information and capacity to collect the taxes owed to them. Kenya should join other African countries in lobbying rich countries to enact stricter laws against tax evasion. As recommended by the Africa Progress Report 2013, alongside demanding the highest standards of propriety and disclosure from their government, Kenyans should push citizens of the developed world to demand similar standards from their governments and companies.

BORROWING AND DEBT

In 2013, the Jubilee administration inherited a debt of Sh1.7 trillion after a decade of the Kibaki government. Less than 5 years later, that has ballooned by nearly 250 percent to Sh4.4 trillion. This year’s borrowing has been particularly aggressive. The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) says that the government is borrowing an average of Sh86 billion per month, the highest level since the bank started listing public debt in 1999, and over Sh30 billion more than the monthly averages of 2015 and 2016.

Despite this, it seems the government’s debt appetite won’t wane any time soon. The Treasury recently announced that it is seeking to issue another Eurobond, which could be used to repay the outstanding US$750 million syndicated loan the government raised in 2015 and which came due in October. What seems to be clear is that given expanding expenditure and subpar revenue collection, borrowing from both foreign and domestic sources will continue to grow. Further, as a Bloomberg analyst points out, Kenya has among the highest debt levels in sub-Saharan Africa, partly a result of having neither the commodity revenue sources of Nigeria and Angola nor the budget support from donor countries enjoyed by neighbouring Tanzania and Uganda.

Before looking at the specific features of Kenya’s debt, it is important to state that debt itself is not necessarily a problem. If used wisely, it can fund investment into activities and projects that catalyse economic development, GDP growth and growth in per capita incomes. Concerns only start being raised when the pattern of debt accrual and servicing seems headed in an unsustainable direction. If expenditure is growing in the context of muted revenue generation, that creates momentum for more debt than cannot be sustainably serviced. Further, if debt is not used efficiently and linked to increases in productivity and GDP growth, it also saddles countries with burdensome repayments. At the moment, Kenya is on the cusp where the government can either take decisive action to put the country on a better debt path, or continue with current trends that are edging the country closer to an unsustainable position.

The IEA points out that as of June 2012, total public debt was composed of 52.9 percent domestic debt and 47.1 percent external debt. However, the share of external debt has been steadily growing and recent statistics show that today the situation is reversed, with external debt taking up more than half (52.3 percent) of total debt.

The National Treasury Report 2015 indicates that the external debt stock for Kenya is composed of multilateral debt (54.7 percent), bilateral debt (27.1 percent), export credits (1.5 percent), commercial banks (0.6 percent) and International Sovereign Bonds (16.1 percent). As the IEA points out, a large part of the external debt remains concessional (i.e. on terms substantially more generous than market loans) and mainly from multilateral creditors; however, the share of concessional loans has been falling over the last three years which means external debt is becoming ever more expensive for the country.

There are several factors affecting the composition of debt, the first of which is Treasury’s desire to reduce domestic borrowing in order to release domestic credit for the private sector. This was a major reason given for issuing the Eurobond. As shown by the statistics above, he government has stayed true to this intent in some ways. However, the cap on interest rates introduced last year, has perversely facilitated government’ ability to raise domestic debt as banks, reluctant to lend to the general public due to profit margin and risk concerns, have more aggressively pursued government securities. The attractiveness of government debt is thus pushing the domestic private sector out of the domestic debt market, which contradicts government’s original intent.

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) notes that the government is borrowing an average of Sh86 billion per month, the highest level since the bank started listing public debt in 1999, and over Sh30 billion more than the monthly averages of 2015 and 2016.

It is important to note that, as reported in The Standard, World Bank data indicates that the average grace period on repaying new external debt has shrunk by half in the last four years. On average, in 2013, the country was given 8.2 years before starting to repay loans. This had reduced to 4.6 years by 2016. Shorter grace periods reduce the government’s room for flexibility and could be an indicator of jittery lenders keen on getting their money back as soon as possible. Indeed, Bank of America Merrill Lynch notes that Kenyan debt underperforms its peers as evidenced by the fact that yield premiums over U.S. debt have not narrowed as much as those of other sub-Saharan debt. In short, Kenya is seen as riskier to lend to than other African countries.

Informed by the expansion in borrowing, Kenya’s fiscal deficit has also grown. Its ratio to GDP has widened significantly from 6.4 percent in 2013/14 to 10.4 percent in 2016/17. The IEA points out that the large increase in deficit partly reflected the financing of the first phase of Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project.

Fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP (source: IEA)

The government is targeting a fiscal deficit of 5.9 percent of GDP, in the 2018/19 fiscal year, down from an estimated 7.3 percent this fiscal year. Others however do not expect this will be met. Genghis Capital thinks Kenya’s budget deficit for this fiscal year will likely reach 8 percent of GDP. Further, the government doesn’t always hit its fiscal deficit projections. Indeed, according to Cytonn Investments, in the 2016/2017 fiscal year, the government’s deficit actually widened to 8.3 percent of GDP, some way above its revised target of 6.9 percent. In any case, despite the efforts it may be making to reduce the deficit, current government targets and performance are still higher than its own preferred ceiling of 5 percent.

The IEA points out that as the amount of debt held increased, the cost of debt has also gone up with debt servicing increasing from about Sh19 billion in 1990 to Sh400 billion by the end of 2015. A larger component of debt servicing emanates from servicing of domestic debt, but since the proportion of domestic and external debt to GDP are almost at par, it may indicate that it is costlier to service the former.

Debt service 1980 – 2016, KES billions

(Source: IEA) There are growing concerns as to how much revenue is being committed to servicing debt. In the first nine months of the 2015/16 financial year, the government spent four out of every 10 shillings it collected as tax to settle debts. In April, the IMF estimated Kenya’s debt-service to revenue-ratio at 34.7 percent against a threshold of 30 percent, and a report in the Business Daily pointed out that in the last fiscal year, the country spent more money to settle debt (Sh435.7 billion) than it did to finance development (Sh394.2 billion). If more and more revenue has to be locked into servicing debt, government will either have to ramp down spending on development (given the relatively fixed burden of recurrent expenditure) or borrow even more, none of which is good.

The IEA also notes that the ratio of debt to GDP rose from 40.7 percent in 2012 to 56.4 percent in June, which merited a ranking of 78 out of 138 countries on the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index.

Government Budget and Public Debt as % of GDP

(Source: IEA); GDP is for full year (FY) and measured in thousands; * Provisional estimates

As borrowing continues to grow aggressively, it will lead to higher imbalances that will raise concerns about sustainability.

Views differ on whether Kenya’s debt is sustainable. Some are of the view that given the massive gaps in key sectors such as energy and transport infrastructure, the country must continue to do everything possible to finance and address the gaps and that debt accrued now will pay off in the long term. Kenya remains below the World Bank’s debt-to-GDP ratio ceiling (or tipping point) of 64 percent. The IMF, in its review of Kenya a year ago, said Kenya’s risk of external debt distress remains low but notes there is need for reduction in the deficit over the medium term. While the IMF has raised concerns about Kenya’s public debt, it is below what they view as the applicable ceiling for Kenya – 74 percent of GDP.

The IEA points out that as the amount of debt held increased, the cost of debt has also gone up with debt servicing increasing from about Sh19 billion in 1990 to Sh400 billion by the end of 2015.

Others, however, are of the view that a debt-to-GDP ratio beyond 40 percent for developing and emerging economies is dangerous. The IMF itself envisages fiscal consolidation that targets a 3.7 percent of GDP deficit by 2018/19 (compared to the government’s own target of 5.9 percent) which it says is critical to maintaining a low risk of debt distress while preserving fiscal space for development priorities.

I disagree with the Treasury’s assertions that the national debt is manageable and that there is headroom for more. Kenya’s debt is only manageable if decisive action is taken to reduce expenditure, boost revenue collection and reduce borrowing. If this does not happen within the next three years, the country will start feeling the effects of debt distress.

The credit rating agency Moody’s has already raised concerns about the country’s accumulating debt. Indeed, the agency is currently assessing whether it needs to downgrade the country’s credit rating from the current B1 status on grounds of its weakening ability to repay debt. Moody argues that unless a decisive policy response is introduced, the upward trajectory in government debt will see the debt-to-GDP ratio surpass the 60 percent mark by June 2018, pushing financing costs for the private sector even higher. Its assessment points to the fact that in the latest fiscal year, the government spent 19 percent of its revenues on interest payments alone, up from 10.7 percent five years ago. It notes that persistent, large, primary deficits and high borrowing costs continue to drive government indebtedness ever higher. Further, government liquidity pressures risk, the danger that the government may not have enough readily available cash to settle its immediate and short-term obligations, is rising in the face of increasingly large financing needs.

Another credit rating agency, Fitch, has also indicated that it could downgrade Kenya’s rating due to its debt position. Fitch noted that the country was spending a larger proportion of its revenue on paying debt compared to its economic peers such as Uganda, Rwanda and Ghana.

Fitch gave Kenya a B+ rating, with a negative outlook. These credit ratings are important as a fall in rating will mean any new foreign debt taken on by the country will be more expensive.

There are several broad strategies Kenya can use to better manage its debt the first of which is to aggressively reduce expenditure. Government must implement austerity budgets and limit unnecessary expenditure. I also think here should be a fundamental downward review of salaries of those in government. While those of technocrats such as Cabinet and Permanent Secretaries as well as professionals such teachers and doctors should remain attractive, there are far too many people in elected office on overly generous terms, and the related wage bill is not sustainable for a relatively poor African country.

Secondly, government needs to improve its recurrent vs development expenditure allocations. As elucidated before, year after year, more money is allocated to recurrent expenditure which is not economically productive. A reduction in recurrent expenditure is crucial and this can be partially addressed by a downward review in wages as explained above. The IEA points out that although in relative terms the proportion of recurrent expenditure to GDP has slightly declined while that of development expenditure has nearly doubled from 5.7 percent of GDP in 2007/8 to 11.0 percent in 2016/17, recurrent expenditure still remains comparatively high.

In April this year, the IMF estimated Kenya’s debt-service to revenue-ratio at 34.7 percent against a threshold of 30 percent, and a report in the Business Daily pointed out that in the 2016/17 fiscal year, the country spent more money to settle debt (Sh435.7 billion) than it did to finance development (Sh394.2 billion).

Development expenditure should be prioritised by considering projects which bring immediate returns to the economy. More money must be committed to spurring the growth required to pay debts, if Kenya is to avoid a repayment crisis.

Thirdly, government has to create strategies to ensure more development expenditure is absorbed. A November 2017 report by Controller of Budget showed the use of development funds for the financial year ending in June was at 70 percent, the highest since 2013. While this is good news and higher than the 66 per cent rate recorded in the previous year, it is not good enough. Indeed, the organisation Development Initiatives notes that the 2017/18 fiscal year actually saw a decline in total allocations to development spending by 12.3 percent, as a result of lower absorption of development spending by ministries in 2016/17. The problem is at both national and county levels. As Price Waterhouse Coopers points out, if the entire amount allocated is not being absorbed, it defeats the purpose of the budget especially around development expenditure. Given that the country is getting into a great deal of debt for development expenditure, it is crucial that absorption rates in this docket increase in order to spur economic growth.

Fourthly, government needs to better track how the debt which is financing the development docket, is being used. Given concerns with financial mismanagement of public funds at both national and county levels, it is crucial that the debt spending is meticulously tracked. This is because financial mismanagement of debt funds poses the dangerous risk of pushing the country into debt unsustainability as money is pocketed rather spent to generate growth.

CONCLUSION

This article has elucidated Kenya’s fiscal policy and position in terms of expenditure, revenue generation and debt accrual. It is important that the country reduces expenditure, increases revenue generation and better manages debt spending to put the country on a more sustainable fiscal path. We are in a position where Kenya’s fiscal health can be dramatically improved by taking decisive action as per the recommendations herein. It is my hope that the government takes the required action to improve the country’s fiscal path so that fiscal policy plays the positive and important role it can in driving the country’s development.

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 Patrick Gathara

“You cannot sing African music in proper English.” – Fela Kuti

Now, more than 40 years later, it might be difficult to imagine that Kenyan Benga music was associated with freedom fighters in Rhodesia’s Bush War (the Chimurenga) in the late 1960s through to the late 1970s. In the fight to end white minority rule for the soul of a new Zimbabwe, the homeland of a black majority, Benga music embodied the liberation spirit. The music of D.O. (Daniel Owino) Misiani, George Ramogi, George Ojijo, Collela Mazee and Victoria Jazz is what Zimbabweans in the 70s in rural townships stamped their feet and swayed to in the hope of a new future for Zimbabwe.

How did Kenyan music that originated among the Luo spread like a wild bush fire far beyond the shores of Lake Victoria to different parts of Kenya and further to Southern Africa and the world? Who was Oluoch Kanindo and how did his name give birth to a new genre of music in Zimbabwe?

To get to the bottom of the Benga story, I went out in search of Tabu Osusa, who had just launched a much anticipated book, Shades of Benga: The Story of Popular Music in Kenya 1946-2016 at the Sippers restaurant in Nairobi’s Hurlingham area. Tabu is tall and looks in fit shape at 63. He wears a signature beret and glasses and carries himself with the fatherly disposition of a Catholic priest – until he leans forward and starts agonising over his pet peeve, Kenyan music.

Tabu is a music producer and founder of Ketebul Music. His motivation for starting Ketebul (Luo for drumsticks) was the glaring absence of originality in the Kenyan music he sampled. To his refined ears, it sounded too American and nothing unique. For over a decade, he has discovered and produced musicians whose musical identity was rooted in indigenous cultural styles. Makadem and Winyo are some of his better known protégés. In the early 1980s, along with Samba Mapangala, he co-founded the Orchestra Virunga band, one of the biggest musical acts in East Africa for close to a decade.

Presently, he is on a mission of piecing together Kenya’s musical history, delving into the pertinent question of Kenya’s musical identity. Tabu, under his Ketebul label, has produced several documentaries on what he refers to as a “Retracing Series”. The list includes Retracing the Benga Rhythm, Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music, Retracing Kenya’s Funky Hits and Retracing Kenya’s Songs of Protest. John Sibi-Okumu narrates the series in a distinct and posh accent and sounds like a British anthropologist on a BBC history channel. Shades of Benga is Tabu’s biggest project yet, taking up to three years of commitment to put together. He launched it alongside a photo exhibition at the Alliance Française Centre in Nairobi, tracing not just the pioneers of Benga music in Kenya but all the other greats from different genres that would define Kenyan sound.

We sit on the upper floor of the refurbished Sippers bar, which is very different from the cramped drinking dungeon stuck in my memory. Sippers has a cherished reputation as an artiste hub, where forgotten heroes gather to reminisce over the good old days over a drink and intellectual banter. Some heavy hitters have played live at Sippers, folks like Ayub Ogada, Makadem, Winyo and Suzanna Owiyo.

I ask Tabu about the title. “I called it Shades of Benga, because Benga is the dominant genre of music played in Kenya but the book is not all just about Benga”.

I got a courtesy advance copy on PDF for this review. Shades of Benga is published in a coffee table format and I was amazed by how rich Kenya’s music heritage is. Stuff they do not teach you in school. Tabu has put together a musical encyclopedia of Kenya, paying tribute to all the pioneers of diverse musical genres, from the 40s straight to the present day. The book tracks Fundi Konde, Fadhili Williams, Joseph Kamaru, Kalenjin sisters, Super Mazembe, Sal Davis, Sauti Sol, Eric Wainaina, to name a few. However, for all his attempts at inclusivity, the focal point of his book, rich in detail, is Benga.

Benga has a distinct African musical heritage that connects culturally and socially with diverse groups of Africans in search of “their sound”. In the villages and market centres of Western, Rift Valley and Eastern and in the informal settlements of Nairobi, Benga music is what the masses respond to with enthusiasm. Men and women let loose, unrestrained to the feverish plucking of the lead guitar, to live music in the Eastlands neighbourhood of Nairobi.

Benga artistes rarely get airplay on mainstream channels as they are deemed not polished enough for urban mainstream tastes. Benga’s working class label has relegated it to vernacular radio stations. The big Benga artistes in Kenya have nearly no presence to speak of in the ranks of popular Kenyan music. For many youngsters born after 1980, Benga is the kind of music one would probably only encounter in a frantic bus park of Kisumu.

Benga came to town with the rural labour migration from Nyanza who came to Nairobi in search of the Kenyan dream. They clung to their music to find a rooting and as a kind of reality check against the influence of the new urban and foreign musical genres that were the rage in Nairobi. Benga music spoke to the issues and realities of the marginalised lower and rural classes.

Tabu believes that Kenya has done a great injustice to its musical pioneers by refusing to acknowledge their contribution to the country’s musical heritage. Thus, Shades of Benga is a reaction to this glaring gap, a 70-year musical journey and a repository of not just Kenyan music, but a journey through Kenya’s social history.

The origin of the term Benga has being a matter of great debate. The term is attributed to the Benga great D.O Misiani who claimed it was drawn from his mother’s name. Another version is linked to the Luo meaning of a word drawn from obengore, meaning to let loose. When I put the question to Tabu, he dismisses the Misiani theory. ” Most of the people we interviewed believe the word was coined from the short skirts the ladies wore during The Ogara Boys’ shows and it was John Ogara who first popularised the term.”

The book begins in the mid-1940s in the post World War II period with the return of the soldiers in the King’s African Rifle regiment. The King’s African Rifles East African battalion fought in several campaigns for the British during the First and Second World War. Not all the men were on the warfront; some would be recruited as part of the entertainment unit that went around spreading cheer to the troops in far-flung bases. At the end of the war, they returned home with their instruments and skills, bringing back the box guitar, the single musical instrument that would change the face of music in Africa.

One of the pioneers was Fundi Konde, who became a breakout star and a sound engineer in his later years. Fundi Konde did time in Sri Lanka, India and Burma. His unit toured and performed 350 shows by the end of the war in 1945.

Tabu remembers working with an older Fundi Konde in the early 80s and holds some regret for not recognising the privilege of sitting at the feet of a master. “By then he simply struck me as an old fashioned sound engineer,” he remembers with a distinct remorse at the folly of youth.

Fundi Konde was influenced by the Afro-Cuban styles of beloro, chacha and rumba and he infused those styles into his music. The distinct tunes endure in his timeless hits, such as Tausi Ndege Wangu and Mama Sowera.

Fundi Konde came to fame in the African band formed by Peter Colmore, a British Army captain who morphed into East Africa’s foremost impressario in the 60s. The original members were Joseph Chuza Dias, Baya Toya, Ngala Karani, Charles Senkatuka and Nelson Gonzabato. Fundi Konde is credited as the first Kenyan to record using an electric guitar and is regarded as the father of modern Kenya music.

Kenyan musicians became widely recognised in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa at around the same time that Congolese music was gaining popularity in Kenya. Kanindo music is a source of nostalgia for Southerners. In 70s and 80s, Kanindo style, also known as Sungura, in Zimbabwe was bigger than the popular Chimurenga style founded by the legendary Thomas Mafumo.

His contemporaries include Paul Mwachupa. He also worked with Fadhili Williams of the iconic love ballad Malaika. Tabu addresses the controversy behind the origin of Malaika in Shades of Benga. What we know of as Malaika is apparently the second version. The first version was done by Grant Charo with Fadhili Williams in the background in the Jambo Band. It was a collaboration. However, Fadhili would enjoy the spotlight after renditions by Miriam Makeba and Harry Belafonte put the single on the world map. Cover versions were performed by Boney M and Angelique Kidjo, elevating Malaika to the realm of classics.

In the 1950s, with the Fundi Konde generation ruling the roost, something seismic occurred to Kenyan music and disrupted the party.

The two influential personalities in the nascent Benga scene were Mwenda Jean Bosco and Eduardo Masengo who came from Eastern Congo and introduced a finger-plucking technique. The duo greatly influenced pioneer Benga musicians such as the Ogara Boys. In this new style, the guitar was not strummed but plucked in a manner that mimicked traditional African instruments. The melody leads, then the vocals build to a no-holds-barred instrumental climax. The beat is hypnotic and the revelers would let loose as though possessed. These pioneer musicians, drawing inspiration from traditional music, began to define a new kind of sound that was distinctly different from anything on the scene at the time.

With the uniqueness of the new beat, Benga rose from a pairing of a sharp lead percussion guitar that dominated the track. The guitar was played with urgency steadily building up to a pure climax. The Luo musicians were the first to adopt this new guitar-playing technique that involved plucking and picking single notes, falling back on how the popular traditional fiddle like Orutu and the eight stringed Nyatiti are played.

A new sound was born and the imitators of this plucking technique would be credited as the pioneers of the Benga genre. George Ramogi and George Ojijo were among Benga’s original stars as they brought Benga to the mainstream by recording with different labels in Nairobi. However, in Tabu’s view, the Ogara Boys, which included John Ogara, Ochieng Nelly and Aketch Oyosi, were the true pioneers. As Benga gained ground in Nairobi, all the migrants who had moved into the city from the rural areas naturally gravitated towards it.

Two distinct cultures emerged in Nairobi – the ethnic and the foreign. Benga retreated to the backwaters of Nairobi where it was associated with village life, poor rural folk and urban filth. Foreign music, such as funk, disco and soul, became upper class identifiers and those who wanted to belong stopped listening to local tunes.

After Kenya’s independence in 1963, Fadhili Williams and Daudi Kabaka, another big star, rose to glory as the King of the African Twist, inspired by the King of Twist, Chubby Checker. The torch of Twist would be kept burning by John Nzenze. Daudi Kabaka, with his distinct head of white hair, created many classics and struck music gold with his most famous number Helule Helule. The song went global when the British band Tremeloes from East London did a cover and hit the top 20 in the UK charts. Other covers were done by Medium Terzett from Germany, Los del Sol from Spain and Dzentlmenu through the 60s. Sadly, Daudi Kabaka did not receive royalties for his hit song. Tabu would say, deadpan, “He sold it for a song”.

Benga moved from the shores of Lake Victoria to Nairobi. The role of the session musicians on River Road was significant in its spread to different parts of Kenya. They took Benga beyond its stronghold. During this time, musicians from Tanzania, Uganda and Congo would arrive to record in Nairobi and these groups of highly talented session musicians ended becoming the regular back-up instrumentalists for the different artistes who frequented their studios in River Road. They played the beats and people laid their tracks. River Road became the Mecca of music production and from that single street Benga spread like a virus. Luo fishermen who earned a livelihood around the lakes of East Africa came with Benga music and spread it from shore to shore.

But for all its glory, Benga could not escape its class trap. In the popular mind, Benga musicians were deemed inferior because they were not formally educated, unlike the Rumba guys who were college graduates – musicians such as Jose Kokeyo, the father of the flamboyant musician Akothee and Owiti Ger whose grandchild Beldina Maliaka has emerged as a contemporary musician in Sweden. This class bubble was responsible for the proliferation of Congolese Rumba in Kenya enjoying mainstream traction that Benga musicians craved for.

The 1960s was a vibrant time in Kenyan music. Indigenous record labels rushed in to fill the vacuum left by European producers.

David Amunga, who sang along Ben Blastos Bulawayo on the memorable composition Someni Vijana, was the first African to set up a record label, the Mwangaza Music store 1965. Joseph Kamaru was to follow with City Sounds in 1968 and it was from Kamaru’s stable that Kikuyu Benga would fluff its wings.

The 1960s would also produce Benga’s first major band Shirati Jazz, formed by D. O. Misiani who hailed from northern Tanzania.

By the 70s, Benga had captured the hearts and minds of cross-border populations, from Congo to Zimbabwe. Tabu describes the 70s as the golden age of Benga.

D.O Misiani was a bonafide Benga superstar from the 70s through to the 80s, earning the title of “The King of Benga”. Misiani’s socially conscious voice resonated with the times. Shirati Jazz launched a string of hits that were East Africa’s biggest songs throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Shirati Jazz’s biggest rival was Victoria Jazz, formed in 1972 by Ochieng, Nelly Mengo and Collela Mazee. George Ramogi and D.O. Misiani would enjoy some level of commercial success, though in Tabu’s view, John Ogara had a more versatile playing style.

The 1970s was also the period that Benga’s proudest ambassador entered the scene. He was a debonair and charismatic gentleman known as Phares Oluoch Kanindo, the Berry Gordie of Benga. Kanindo was a visionary marketer who decided to open a new Benga market in Southern Africa. Eager to establish new audiences, he organised Benga musicians into bands and started shipping Benga records to Zimbabwe, branded SP (Super Producer) Kanindo music under his AIT Records (Kenya) label. The independence war had curtailed music production in Zimbabwe. Kanindo who had a nose for opportunity set up shop and met the demand for an indigenous style that Zimbabweans related to. The music from East Africa struck a chord. Freedom fighters in the liberation struggle to free Zimbabwe from minority rule developed a fondness for the sound and today Kanindo music is associated with the birth of Zimbabwe.

Progressive Zimbabwean musicians started sampling the new sound and from this emerged stars like Moses Rwizi, Kanindo Jazz Band and Obadiah Matulana, stamping a new Southern African identity on Benga.

Benga music in Zimbabwe is known as Kanindo or Sungura music. If you switch to any YouTube channel and search for Kanindo music, you will come across a wide range of artistes, all from Zimbabwe, with Alick Macheso topping the list.

Music is a major transmitter of cultural expression. When we abandoned our music, we cut the throat of our culture, our identity and our spiritual essence. Tabu Osusa’s Shades of Benga is a worthy tribute to the forgotten pioneers of modern Kenyan music and a crucial contribution to the history of African music.

While Oluoch Kanindo was busy making inroads in the South, a Kenyan of Asian descent, Arvindkumar P. Chandarana based in Kericho, created a new Benga focal point in the Rift Valley. Musicians did not have to travel all the way to Nairobi, thanks to Chandarana’s Mambo label, which was directly responsible for the spread of Benga in the Rift Valley and Western Kenya and for the emergence of Kalenjin, Kisii and Luhya Benga acts.

The decline of Benga began in the mid-80s due to a number of factors. The major record companies, such as EMI and Polygraph, left and the local producers could not match their market spend and reach. Technology was also rapidly changing as the cassette player took over from turntables and records. The new urban generation that had lost links with their rural foundations had turned West. The video cassette record introduced foreign superstars. Kenyans gradually started to gravitate towards American music and were swept away by the disco culture whose glitz was too hard to resist.

In the home of Benga in Western Kenya, the rise of Rumba and Ohangla styles came after Benga’s crown. Luo musicians began to perceive Benga as too ethnic and gravitated towards rumba. Tabu labeled them with a trace of disappointment as the “the Rumba crooners”. “Currently, the only guys who have remained true to Benga could include Dola Kabarry, Atomi Sifa, and Winyo who sing something I call ‘Benga Blues’.”

“When you listen to West African or Congolese music, you know where it is from. Where is the Kenyan sound?” The question of identity and originality keeps recurring during the course our conversation. “There is an Ethiopian music, I am sure you don’t know somone called Malatu Astatke. He used to play American jazz that he studied at Berkeley but when he returned to Ethiopia, he decided to take leave of American jazz and experimented with Ethiopian music and came up with Ethio jazz.“ Benga is our beat and Tabu bemoans the young musicians who refuse to draw their inspiration from this source to create unique sounds.

Today Kenyan music is clutching at the straws for identity. Kenyan musicians have glamourised all these other styles and forgotten their own. We are everyone else but ourselves. Tabu is blunt, “We are trying to be Congolese, Americans, Nigerians. Kenyan music is the classic jack of all trades and master of none.”

Music is a major transmitter of cultural expression and when we abandoned our music, we cut the throat of our culture, our identity and our spiritual essence. Tabu Osusa’s Shades of Benga is a worthy tribute to the forgotten pioneers of modern Kenyan music and a crucial contribution to the history of African music.

The ancient said, when you lose your way, go back to where you lost your way and start again. It starts with remembering our roots. “We have to make ethnic cool again” preaches Tabu. “When we left the villages for the city, we left behind our culture, our values, our foods, our languages and our music”.

By Oyunga Pala Oyunga Pala is a Kenyan Newspaper columnist.

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.

Kenya will never forget their heroes

By Patrick Gathara The realisation that the aspirations for democracy in our region seem to have all run into one kind of very large obstacle or another is increasingly becoming synchronised thought in (opposition) political discourse, civil society and in media commentary. Their silent question is: is this terminal?

Two things seem to be not happening: prosperity, and the ability to choose who may deliver it. In other words, we are not getting the long-promised “development”, and we can’t elect the leaders whose promises on the matter we prefer. At least, not most of the time. And even when we do, there is every chance that they may then not want to leave when their time is up.

We live, and have lived, in the “meanwhile”, as decades of marking time sailed by, taking shattered dreams and stalled careers with them on a cruel sea of broken promises.

The dissatisfaction around election processes and outcomes, employment conditions, education provision and standards, and a few other things seem to be making a permanent migration from the board rooms and meeting halls to the streets and picket lines. Kenya has its nurses’ strike; Uganda has its doctors’ and judicial officers’. And peasants everywhere are in revolt.

Uganda’s election process cannot be said to be broken because it has never worked in the first place. A (now very silent) dissident general who was once a key regime henchman and fixer admitted as much a few years ago, and conceded that, in fact, the current main opposition figure Dr. Kizza Besigye had probably won each election.

The ruling of Kenya’s Supreme Court has rendered into official legal opinion what has long been repeated as a point in a heated political argument, not to mention an excavation of Philosophy’s Law of Identity (that “A thing is what it is, unless it is something else”). Badly organised election-like activity is not actually an election: do it again, please.

We live, and have lived, in the “meanwhile”, as decades of marking time sailed by, taking shattered dreams and stalled careers with them on a cruel sea of broken promises.

Tanzania makes things simpler. By law, any announcement by the elections authorities is final, and not open to legal challenge. Your president is whomever they say you voted for. Activists have been told that this law cannot change.

However, the words “term limits”, and “removal” are beginning to be heard within sentences following closely on one another within Tanzanian political discourse. That law, apparently, may be much more adjustable.

As usual, there is disappointment. Each of the leaders in question was initially touted as a breath of fresh air. Some of them were even pooled together as a “new breed” by some African-American foreign policy official who understandably did not go on into a career breeding valuable livestock.

In Rwanda, one of the candidates who was not even able to get nominated was later charged with insurrection. The intimidating display of the candidate’s co-accused elderly mother being “perp- walked” in handcuffs, flanked by two policewomen holding her in a firm double elbow and wrist grip, was added for good measure.

These leaders follow a classic script: first mesmerise everybody with huge political stunts that “deliver”, then cement your identity as a pro-mwananchi results-oriented machine. President Museveni made some undercover graft-busting hospital visits, and drank his tea from a simple metal mug. Mrs. Magafuli had to make do with getting medical treatment at a hospital within the borders of the very same African country presided over by her husband. President Kenyatta humbled himself and took an ordinary commercial flight to present himself at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Then, just as the wananchi are gagging for more, comes the hook: here’s the deal, they are told: to get more of that, you have to take more of me, and constitutions be damned.

These leaders follow a classic script: first mesmerise everybody with huge political stunts that “deliver”, then cement your identity as a pro-mwananchi results-oriented machine.

Back to the meanwhile. Tourists come and go, plantations harvest and export their crops, and amid a light cocktail of caveats and admonitions, our governors are told by international organisations that despite a few shortcomings, growth is going as it should be. Step forward to the dreams of independence and “move on” instead of griping over elections past.

Why are some people so happy with this state of affairs, and others so depressed by it? Between these two extremes must be an answer.

We need to consider two possibilities: either the states we live in are returning to their core functions, as intended by the great powers of Western Europe who designed them, or the subsequent superimposed idea of independence has simply outlived any usefulness it could ever have offered, making the state just a millstone around the collective African neck. Most worryingly, it could be both.

Consider the facts. Dictatorship, or autocracy, or whatever one may wish to call it, has not prevented Western-style economic “growth” in Africa. Certainly, at the beginning of the colonial era, it was a basic organisational requirement of the entire project. But things were much simpler back then, when the venal objectives were much more honestly organised.

Colonialism ended through the birth of a world were two White empires faced off for the following six decades, prepared to nuke the planet in order to own it. The collapse of one side (to be followed one day soon, of the other) led to the situation we have had until now: fresh attempts to re-work the cogs of colonially-designed states into representative institutions of governance.

But with the recent displays of intransigence at several of our state houses, it is a good time to perhaps accept that this phase too has come to an end. The body politic can no longer accommodate both the economic demands of the increasingly desperate Western paymasters and the natives’ aspirations for greater prosperity (and the choice, therefore, of who delivers it and how). Something has to give way.

As the incumbents fully realise the colonial logic of needing no more than just a few chiefs – The Governor (Security chief); someone to decide who was out of order (“Justice” chief); someone to oversee production (Agriculture, Industries and Fisheries headman); someone to measure the growth and count the money (Finance chief); and someone to create human resource labour (“Education” chief) – it becomes clear just how many of the mass of educated, modern human Africans, along with their customs and habits of expecting democratic representation, civic accountability, affordable social amenities and the freedom to assemble, speak out and have meaningful political careers, are completely surplus to the requirements. This is the root of our crisis: they do not need us here, but we do not belong anywhere else. We therefore fight right where we are standing. The Empire and its agents really still believe they can IMF us into oblivion. They are mistaken. We will not go; they will. There is no choice in this.

Of our post-colonial aspirations, the first on prosperity (as opposed to its Western cousin called Development) and then later, on democracy, we do not seem to have much of either.

This is the root of our crisis: they do not need us here, but we do not belong anywhere else. We therefore fight right where we are standing. The Empire and its agents really still believe they can IMF us into oblivion. They are mistaken. We will not go; they will.

This nearly happened before. “Modern” Africa’s dalliances with notions of democracy were basically a phenomenon of the late colonial period, which did not survive even the first decade of independence in much of the continent. However, back then the Africans remained convinced that revisiting the ghost of democracy would be the panacea to all their ills.

What we are witnessing this time round is a shedding, a disposing-off, of a cloak finally deemed too warm for the new climate.

There is to be no nostalgia, no turning back this time. Unless it is to the time before the time before the time: to the original design and management of the colonial state. Back to basics. 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.

Kenya will never forget their heroes

By Patrick Gathara

My friend “Derrick” has reason to be very concerned, scared even. He is a single father to three mixed race children of mixed ethnicity. And he is a Luo living in Pangani, a working-class suburb of Nairobi that borders some of the most expensive real estate in Africa. It should not matter that he is Luo or that he lives in Pangani – his home for over 6 years. But it does. We have been friends since childhood and have a lot more history than I do with most of my blood relations. We chat on Whatsapp almost every day. We talk about anything and everything. Single parenting can get very lonely. Tonight, it is more than lonely.

Thursday 19:54 WhatsApp

[Derrick] “Have you heard anything?”

The elections are in two weeks and he is surrounded by Kikuyus, members of an ethnic group supporting a party other than that predominantly supported by many of his community. He is concerned.

I have not heard anything. We chat about politics a little then go onto more pressing stuff. Teenage boys, what to do about slipping school grades, an idea for a show, the hustle of dating. We sign off.

Sunday 20:19 Whatsapp

[Derrick] “What do you know that I may need to know?”

[Me] “???” “Like?”

[Derrick] “I feel like a sitting duck, I told u…” (sic)

Violence is not new to Derrick. He was once confronted and accused of kidnapping by a rowdy mob of young men and matatu touts in downtown Nairobi. His offense was walking with three very young, clearly mixed race boys – his sons. The mob screamed at him, shoving and kicking him. They called him Deya [after the infamous Kenyan self-styled “miracle babies” pastor]. It took the intervention of his three terrified boys who, when dragged a little distance away from him as he was held down, confirmed that he is indeed their dad, despite their “light skin”, more chiseled facial features and the fact that one of his boys carries a Kikuyu name.

If you are mixed, whether ethnic or race, you are impure, belong to no one and, therefore a justifiable target for attack by everyone.

In 2008, he had “shipped” his wife and children to the City of Peace, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Their twin income could afford them the trip then. She was alive then. Today, he is a single father of three, scared in the run up to what should be a peaceful election. Already, the threats have begun.

I ask my sources. They reassure me. There will be no chaos. Government has put in place, measures to ensure a swift crackdown if there are pockets of violence. The intelligence service is on the case. Be easy. We are safe. I pass the message to him.

Monday 16:32

[Derrick] “Chic, is there anything you know that you are not telling me?” [Me] “No. Honestly.”

[Derrick] “If there was, would you tell me?”

I don’t know what to say. I have never thought he would even think that I would ever put him or the kids in danger. We are blood. Aren’t we?

It is this kind of suspicion and mistrust that the systematic promotion of tribalism in Kenya does. It pervades even the most innocent of friendships and corrupts them. It forces people to relate with each other with suspicion, then uses that same suspicion to justify the need to promote and preserve itself.

Do we ever ask, or care, about the effect of making 11-year olds, 15-year olds, choose a parent or disown another based on tribe? Who are we raising when young children are routinely separated from their families, friends and environment “until the election is over”?

The problem in the case of a parent with mixed ethnicity/race children is that they belong always to the “enemy”, the “weaker side”. When narrating the story of the Rwandan genocide, the highlight is very often on the millions of Tutsis killed by their Hutu neighbours. What is not often addressed is the number of Rwandans of mixed ethnicity who were killed by their relatives because they belonged to “the other side”. Derrick knows that his children are easy targets. And that his friends or neighbours could sell him out if chaos erupted. His question is not without context.

I have a riddle for you.

What is the difference between a tribal based campaign, apartheid’s so-called justification or the Nazi superior race argument? The answer is none.

The Nazis believed that they were entitled to expand territorially, that they were under threat from “inferior” races and they were divinely appointed. Proponents of apartheid believed in the superiority of their race, their divine right, the threat by the inferior races and the need for purity. The tribe argument… well, you can see the trend now.

If you are mixed, whether ethnic or race, you are impure, belong to no one and, therefore a justifiable target for attack by everyone. This is a problem particularly in urban Kenya where, increasingly, many children are born of mixed ethnicity and those who are not, very often do not know enough of their own mother tongue to be identified by language.

Tribalism. Nazism. Racism. They all play the same tune. The lyrics are simple. We are superior. They are inferior.

I tell Derrick to send his children away for the election period and go spend the week in a safer neighbourhood. It is more prudent to separate him from them. He, their own father, is a liability because of his physical features. Sound familiar? Trevor Noah, the famous South African comedian, often had to walk across the street from his own father, and pretend that his mother was his nanny just so they would not get into trouble for having birthed him during the apartheid era.

Or do we not care? Does it not matter?

The tribal card is deliberately played up by political manipulators at election time, to shore up their feudal egos with no regard to the consequences. When one national leader calls for the expulsion of “foreigners” -people not of a particular tribe- from an area; when another, also a national leader speaks exclusively in a language understood only by the ethnic group from which he comes; they are deliberately playing up the tribal sentiments and creating well calculated tension. Their “tribesmen” are not “their people”. They are their vassals – available for use, abuse and if need be, disposal, as they watch and pronounce utterances from their gilded castles behind armies of bodyguards deployed to ensure their own safety.

Tribalism. Nazism. Racism. They all play the same tune. The lyrics are simple. We are superior. They are inferior.

“They are the villains. We are the victims.” [Insert historical distortions here. Remember when “they” stoned our president? Remember how “they” stole our presidency?]

“It is God’s Will. He chose us to lead.” [Insert scoff here. Only a god who does not know the pain of birth, or the sacrifice of rearing an offspring can afford to play favourites.]

They will overrun us if we do not put in place measures to save ourselves from them.” [Insert appropriate call to arms under the guise of “safeguarding democracy”. Remember 2008? No Raila, no rail! Uthamaki ni witu! And suchlike. Be sure to dish out money “ya kutoa panga kwa nyumba” (to bring the machete out of the house)]

And the chorus?

Altogether now regardless of political divide,

“It’s us or them. There is no room for both. Our time has come. God is on our side.”

There is no room for logic then. It is all about survival. No one remembers that we have coexisted for eons, or that tribe as a negative, is a construct by those who were once a common enemy to both.

The political overlords are happy. Their troops are ready. And those who are hesitant either flee to safer areas or arm themselves in anticipation that they may have to “retaliate in self defence”.

Once the lords get what they want, they will remind their vassals that the vassals once lived together in harmony. That violence solves nothing. That Kenya is a peace-loving island in a sea of unrest. They will point to Somalia and South Sudan as they wave from large wooden dais draped in blood- red coloured carpets. The vassals must now live cheek by jowl. Forgive. Forget. Bible and Koran quoted in equal measure as piety replaces provocative pronouncements. Live and let live to both rapists and raped. Murderers and the families of those murdered. The children, the “future generations” in whose name the “aluta” must “continua”, the children watch and learn that elections mean separation, hate, rape and death.

At a mid-morning meeting in May 2017, a 23 year old journalist scoffed at me when I asked her where she was going to vote.

“Me? Vote? You are so funny!” she said, laughing in bemusement.

“Why?” I asked.

She laughed again, a little sadder, shaking her head.

“In 2008, I had just finished Standard 8. One night when the violence broke out in our area, the farmer next door brought a tractor and trailer to our house at night. Mum told us to lie down on the floor of the trailer. They put planks of wood supported by building blocks on top of us then piled the trailer high with hay. We slept there the whole night. The next morning, our neighbour set off with the truck. Along the way, he kept getting stopped. The guys were asking the farmer, “What is in the trailer?’ as they stabbed the hay with spears and pangas. “Nyasi ya ng’ombe tu [only some hay for the cows]”, he would reply. One group of young men threatened to set the hay on fire, convinced he was smuggling people. He responded angrily in the local language and they walked away, voices fading out of earshot. When he finally brought us to a safe town he waited until night and pulled us from under the hay by our feet then told my mum to run. We never went back home. Till today, I have never even gone back to visit. I never went to my high school of choice. Even though my elder sister had finished her school there. It is in an area where we would have been killed if 2008 happened again. I will never, ever, ever, vote. To vote is to choose sides and no matter which side you choose, someone has to die or be displaced or be raped.”

“I will never, ever, ever, vote. To vote is to choose sides and no matter which side you choose, someone has to die or be displaced or be raped.”

Unsurprisingly, millennials, young people who experienced the horrific events of 2008 as teenagers, are increasingly choosing not to vote. They are referred to as “lazy, spoilt, selfish”. It is easier than hearing their stories and healing their wounds.

A week after the election, a colleague, “Owino”, resident of Kangemi, calls me on Whatsapp in the middle of the night. I pick the call. He does not say a thing. He just holds the phone to his window. I hear the screams that tear into the night and rip my heart. Then he hangs up and texts that he is fine. It is “his guys” “peacefully demonstrating” tonight. It’s “the other guys” in trouble. “Our guys”.

The overlords sleep on, undisturbed. Tomorrow, they will call for more peace. More demonstrations. But tonight, well, tonight, democracy expresses itself in bludgeoned babies and gang rapes.

“F@#k Government!!” translates to “Drag young men and women from their homes, sodomize, rape and assault them!”.

“Let peace prevail” is buried in the pieces of shattered skulls and torn flesh in children too young to spell the word “democracy”.

Democracy. The will of the people, By the people, To the People, For The People.

Democracy. I win. You lose. Democracy. Majority rules. Or is it, muscle rules.

Democracy. Power by the powerful. “Pole sana” to the weak.

Democracy. A struggle in which the common people function more like pawns rather than any kind of sovereign authority.[i]

Democracy: a concept attributed to Greek era men with arms or power jostling for position.

Maybe, to paraphrase Hadeel Ibrahim of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, when she spoke at the Women Advancing Africa Conference in Dar Es Salaam, maybe we need to dream a new dream. A dream where everyone wins. A dream where a few men with power and arms do not “democratize” the rest.

Maybe it is time for us to emancipate ourselves from Greek history. Maybe it is time to create a new form of leadership called Inclusivity. Where every voice counts and leadership is more than democratic.

Until then, democracy will be raped into more men and women, shot into more children and crushed into more babies’ skulls.

Wikipedia referencing [i]Bailkey, 1967, pp. 1211-1236

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.