The Last Bullet!

By Victor Ndula 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.

Follow us on Twitter.

The Last Bullet!

By Victor Ndula 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. Follow us on Twitter.

The Last Bullet!

By Victor Ndula

Four years ago, David Njenga graduated from University of Nairobi (UoN) with an upper second- class honour’s degree in biochemistry. A year to the August 2018 presidential elections, his mother reminded him that electing Uhuru Kenyatta for a second term represented his best chance of getting a job. Apolitical and not one to argue with his mother, he cast his vote for President Uhuru. Four years on, he has yet to find employment.

Ambitious, intelligent and optimistic, Njenga’s hopes of getting a job, any job, are fading fast. From his class of 103 students, only five have found steady work, and many of his former classmates are engaged all manner of hustles – the latest politically twisted jargon for one’s means of eking out a living. Njenga told me that the five that had found work had powerful connections in President Uhuru’s Jubilee government. “One of them is a pastor’s daughter whose father is one of the evangelical pastors who attends the national annual prayer breakfast with President Uhuru,” said Njenga. “The pastor’s daughter is my friend. I used to help her with her class assignments and writing term papers, so occasionally she will call me to have lunch.”

Njenga’s background is a world apart from that of his friend, the pastor’s daughter, but she befriended him at Chiromo campus because of his big brains; symbiotic relationship is the best way to describe their platonic friendship – he wrote her schoolwork and she regularly bailed him out financially. “C’est la vie,” said the 25-year-old Njenga. “She’s the one who got a job and I’m still writing assignments and term papers for rich students.”

I asked Njenga about the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), a document that, if implemented, is supposed to ameliorate the lives and prospects of his peers. “Have you read the report?” He gave me a blank stare, the kind of stare that says, “You even have the temerity to ask me that question?” “Should I be reading a political document or researching about my students’ homework? If my parents had powerful connections, I’d not be suffering like this. That’s all what matters in today’s Kenya. My degree counts for nothing, I might as well have ended up being a plumber.”

Njenga was among the students who graduated top of their class, but even hoping to get a job in the corporate sector has become a flight of fancy. “It is the same as in the government – you must know people.” Njenga said the situation got worse with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. “Many companies have used coronavirus as an excuse to sack their employees. How then do you go to ask for a job when people are being laid off? We’re on our own and all what Uhuru is interested in, is how to succeed himself and safeguard his family’s empire and political interests post-2022.”

He gave me a blank stare, the kind of stare that says, “You even have the temerity to ask me that question?

Still living in his mother’s house — “I never imagined I’d still be staying with my mother, four years after campus.” — Njenga said none of his former campus mates cared about BBI: “They’ve not read it, some really don’t know what it’s all about, I mean even as students, we couldn’t find time to read stuff on our degrees. Can you imagine me finding time to read an obsequious document? For what?” But the real issue, I gathered from Njenga, wasn’t even finding time to read the BBI; it was the disdain that he and his former campus mates had for President Uhuru and his government, their disconnect with the political processes in the country, their lack of interest in how government is run or ought to be run.

“What can Uhuru claim to have done for the country, for the young people in the eight years he has been president?” posed Njenga. “I’m worse off than when I entered campus, the country is reeling in utter corruption, the economy is tumbling down, people now steal openly from the government and he has no idea how to fix anything. The youth’s biggest problem is the economy. We don’t care about anything else. The president said he knows how much is stolen from the state coffers every day, yet he doesn’t know what to do about it. Why is he the president then?”

Njenga said he voted for Uhuru because his mother asked him to. “I was just doing my duty and of course, it was a tribal thing.” The biggest problem with the youth, reckoned Njenga, is that they will vote for you tribally, if they have to, but if you won’t fix the economy, they will have no time for you. “This is where the Kenyan youth is right now with Uhuru’s incompetent government. Many of them contemplate migrating daily, to seek greener pastures wherever they will find them.”

Mwangi Waithera, 29, is just like Njenga — he voted for Uhuru because his beloved mother told him to. “I don’t care about politics, I wasn’t going to vote because politics is not my thing, but my mother repeatedly reminded me, even on the material day, that I should vote for the president.” A mitumba (second-hand clothes) seller with assorted customers — civil servants, lawyers, college students, among others — he has seen his business dwindle since 2017 when President Uhuru was voted in for a second term. He has listened to his customers, usually men of his generation, come to grumble in his tiny downtown shop.

“Do you know our salaries now come late?” laments one of Mwangi’s client, a civil servant. “Nobody cares about this BBI nonsense in the ministry offices,” he said. “Uhuru can afford to pay hundreds of millions of shillings to some so-called consultants to write a useless document called BBI, but our meagre salaries are being delayed up to the 10th of the following month?” The civil servant told Mwangi that his colleagues scoff at the report and have no time for President Uhuru. “He is the most colourless president Kenya has ever had. He is not respected among the younger cadre of the public officers, even worse among the older civil servants.”

Njenga said he voted for Uhuru because his mother asked him to.

One of Mwangi’s customers, a lawyer, showed up one evening as we were talking in his small shop. Barely 30, Denis voted for President Uhuru twice. “That’s how much I believed in him. I couldn’t stand anybody criticising him. I couldn’t countenance Raila being the President, so I made sure I voted again on October 26. I wasn’t going to let down my parents on this. They had warned us children on how we should vote.” said Denis, adding, “My parents told all four of us children that the greatest disaster that would ever befall this country was allowing Raila to be president. ‘I know some of you have liberal ideas’ said my father. The liberal ideas remark was a stab at my brother, who had voiced his disenchantment with President Uhuru’s first term performance.”

Then the “handshake” happened and his parents baulked. The children often meet for dinner at their parents’ home, a middle-class couple from Kiambu County. “During one of those dinner meetings, my ‘dissenting’ brother asked my parents, ‘so what is going on?’” The bubble had bust — the economy was tanking and the handshake with the devil had taken place. “For once my parents didn’t seem so sure and my younger brother looked like he could have been right after all,” said Denis.

But Denis’s parents knew things were going south when their firstborn lawyer son started struggling. He postponed his wedding. He was increasingly going back to his parents to borrow money. “I’d so much expectations, I did a few ‘stupid’ things with some of my cash. I knew good times were coming, so I didn’t worry, we’d re-elected Uhuru and I believed big legal work was beckoning.” Denis said that today some of his lawyer colleagues are doing so badly they literally chase for work that pays as little as KSh3000.

Denis is so angry with President Uhuru, he told me, that he “is done with voting. It’s a complete waste of time and energy. I’m also very angry with my parents for misleading us, only that I can’t pick it up with them. But my bold brother did, especially on their berating of Raila. ‘Please dad, explain to us why Raila is suddenly now a darling of Uhuru?’ My parents looked abashed. ‘Uhuru has been such a huge disappointment’ is all they could muster to tell us over dinner.”

As a lawyer, Denis told me he had taken the trouble to read the BBI document. “It is a document meant to entrench President Uhuru’s powers. Some of my colleagues and I easily saw through it. By the way, I know some of the lawyers who participated in its writing. For them, it’s all about making hay while the sun shines. They were paid handsomely – any lawyer likes to make real good money quickly.” Denis’s declaration that he will never voting again has become a standard response among the youth I interviewed; they vowed that they would not expend their energies engaging in a predetermined outcome again. “I voted for the first and possibly the last time,” said Njenga. “Everybody knows what happened during the elections, the refusal to open the servers, even my mother knows the games that were played, but we can’t discuss that. Her vote has since shifted to Ruto.”

I asked Mwangi whether he had read the BBI document. “I’m a busy person and my work doesn’t allow me to engage in meaningless ventures,” he said dismissively. “I hear we may have to vote for it in a referendum. On that day, I’ll stay at home if I can’t open my shop, and that’s what I’ll do in 2022, during the elections.” Mwangi said he would never again wake up early to please both his mother and Uhuru. “I’ve learned my lesson, I’ve no time for politics, let me concentrate on my life and business.”

Denis told me President Uhuru was keen on a referendum “so that he can extend his term. I’ve become the wiser. At the dinner meetings, I’ve become bold like my brother. My parents are no longer as enthusiastic about Uhuru as they were before. They are completely miffed with him. They cannot explain, leave alone understand, how Raila is now supposed to be the darling of the Kikuyu people. My parents form part of the generation that took the Gatundu oath of never ceding state power to Luos.”

…………

The graduate touts

Allan Kinuthia is, just like Njenga, a UoN graduate. Kinuthia graduated from Kabete campus in 2019 with an agricultural economics degree but he is a matatu tout. He started touting when he was a student “because I needed to raise some money for myself. Then it was a hobby and a hustle.” He voted for Uhuru and Jubilee in 2017. “I did it because that’s how my family voted. I voted on tribal basis, I couldn’t care less. If it worked for my family, why couldn’t it work for me?” Three and half years later, the truth of the matter is that it isn’t working for the family, much less for him. “There was this expectation by my family that, by the time I was graduating, I’d get a job – what with having voted for Uhuru and I having an economics degree,” said Kinuthia. “So even as I touted, I knew it was just a matter of time. I looked forward to a salaried job.”

“I’ve written countless job applications and I’ve given up,” said Kinuthia. “Jobs are there for those who are well-connected, not for people like me.” So far, none of those who were in his class has found a job. “As people trained to be professionals, it is important to get a job, practice what you learned in college, even as Kenyans keep on telling us students that we should think outside the box, meaning we shouldn’t always think of getting a salaried job.”

A happy-go-lucky, jolly fellow, Kinuthia tells me that the other touts are always taunting him; here’s a university graduate who is facing the reality of life outside the cosy world of college. “What do you think of BBI?” I asked him. Have you read the report? “No and I don’t have the time to,” he replied. So, how will you know whether it’s good for you or not? “You think I’m touting because I’m having fun? Uhuru is a failure. I studied economics; we’re where we are because of his incompetence. After taking the country down, Uhuru is busy crafting how to remain in power. That’s what BBI is all about.”

When not touting, Kinuthia is an online writer. “One time, I met a fellow student at UoN, who saw me touting in Kikuyu town. He asked me, ‘do you tout all the time? I can open an online writing account for you. Would you like to write and earn some decent cash?’ I took the deep end, learned the ropes and I’m doing it. My friends I was with in college don’t know or care about BBI, just like I don’t want to know about it. To many young people, Kenyan politics is b***s*** Instead of addressing the massive theft, BBI document is apparently advocating for more executive seats.”

Noisy and every inch the tout, Jimmy Kanogo is actually an entrepreneurship graduate from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology (JKUAT). Until you engage him, it is impossible to tell he has ever stepped inside a lecture hall. “But it is what it is”, said Jimmy. After graduating in 2018, he quickly realised there were no jobs for graduates. “Those days are long gone, even medical students are nowadays not assured of getting a job.”

“Jobs are there for those who are well-connected, not for people like me.”

“Have you acquainted yourself with the BBI report,” I asked him. “Don’t get me started,” Jimmy said. “What is BBI? My elder brother graduated from university in 2016, he has yet to get a job. How does BBI contribute to the GDP in our house? My parents thought that once they sent us to university and we graduated, we’d be a relief to them. We thought so too, but look at where we are,” moaned Jimmy.

It was the same story repeated in many Kikuyu homesteads: vote for Uhuru, he will straighten the path for you young guys, their parents told them. “And of course, we listened,” said Jimmy. “He lied to our parents, he lied to all of us, they are so angry they keep on cursing and vowing revenge. My mother can’t believe I’m indeed a tout, that after going to university I’ve been reduced to the level of the ne’er-do-wells, whom she always sees hanging around matatu stops and who she has utter disdain for.”

Jimmy said he struggled to read long essays throughout his university studies, “so you’ve to be nuts to expect me to read a document that has no relevance to my life. To fix the economy, you need a report? To curb massive looting, you need a report? To provide youths with jobs, you write a report? What is it that Uhuru wants?” His questions are rhetorical questions but it is obvious that the drafters of the BBI document have lost Jimmy and his peers.

“It’s been a long time since I saw my parents quarrelling, now they seem to quarrel so often,” said Jimmy. “My father cannot believe the money he leaves weekly for my mother is finished so quickly. ‘What’s these you are buying?’ he angrily asks her. Life has become triple difficult and it’s not a pleasant thing to see your folks quarrelling over cash. It isn’t that my mother is overspending or buying things she has not been asked to. But I also understand where my father is coming from.”

Jimmy isn’t interested in BBI, in Kenyan politics, in elections, in referendums. “My survival is my utmost interest. Let Uhuru do whatever he wants to do with power, but one thing is guaranteed – I’m never trooping to a voting booth again.” Jimmy said he wasn’t even really expecting to be employed per se, “but I’d hoped that by the time I was leaving university, the country’s economic climate would be such that it would allow for creativity and imagination for some of us to set up shop.”

Peter Chege is the opposite of Jimmy: slight of build, quiet, reflective, speaking only when spoken to. A UoN graduate, it is difficult to believe he touts, yet he does. “What options did I have?” he asks. Peter graduated in 2019 with a degree in sociology. The following year COVID-19 struck. Peter is from a poor peasant background and this meant that he had to quickly decide what to do with his life post-university. “My parents had struggled to put me through university; they were, in a manner of speaking, through with me.”

So he came down to Limuru, where he had friends among the manambas (conductors) and matatu drivers. They took him under their wing and taught him the ropes. “Can you imagine the people who inducted me into the industry are guys who left school either at primary level or at most secondary school?” When I asked him what BBI means to him, he said, “It means nothing, I don’t know what it is. I hear people talk about it. I keep away from such discussions. I don’t want to be upset and left with a foul taste in my mouth.”

Until you engage him, it is impossible to tell he has ever stepped inside a lecture hall.

Peter told me that his friends at the matatu stop taunt him: “Peter, please tell us, what’s the use of a university education? The drivers, manambas and fellow touts are the ones who like discussing BBI. So they ask me, ‘Peter, you’re the one who’s educated amongst us here; can you explain this document for us? If Peter is the most educated among us, and he isn’t interested in the report, why should we be interested?’” Peter and his matatu friends are agreed on one thing: none has read the report, and they will never read it, but they know one thing for sure: “BBI is about power arrangements and dynamics by the political elites that want to hold onto it, even as they organise us for 2022. It has got nothing to do with us. It is a route being mapped by Uhuru and his cabal to retain power.”

…………

Apologists for Uhuru

“Raila has been played,” said Victor Oluoch, “but you know what? We can’t say it loud; this is supposed to be an ethnic project, so no Luo should be heard badmouthing it. But there’s a discomforting disquiet around the issue; all’s not well on the home front. We welcomed the handshake and its appendage the BBI in 2018, but three years down the line, we are not sure any more.” Victor, a 33-year-old IT specialist, said the handshake had stopped the killing of Luo youth by the state security apparatus and rescued the community from being used by all and sundry as the bogeyman of opposition politics.

“Opposition politics in this country [is] anathema: you’re anti-development, anti-state, anti- communal cohesion. The Luo community were branded all these and it reaches a point where you say, ‘Ok guys, somebody else can carry the cross,’” said Victor. “So we welcomed the handshake and its relative the BBI. We were also quietly told that BBI would bring development to Luoland and we said hoorah, why not? The many years of fighting the state had denied the region development.”

Development is a loaded word; it can mean many things. “But whatever it meant, we the Luo people needed it,” pointed out Victor. “Therefore, it was very odious to hear Raila say the other day that the developments that have apparently been taking place in Nyanza counties, courtesy of the handshake, were after all not meant to be a favour, but a countrywide thing. I didn’t understand where that came from, but certainly, it is not the only misgiving that some of us now have with BBI.”

On 7 June 2021, Raila was quoted as having said, “None of the projects launched or mentioned during the Madaraka period are owned by or meant to serve Kisumu alone. They are meant to, and will serve the entire Kenya.”

The ongoing development projects in the Nyanza region are something that BBI supporters in the region are pointing to as a positive. Ojijo Orido said to me that, over and above everything else, BBI was good because it had brought development to Nyanza. “Factories are being opened up, roads are being built, the port is being resuscitated, the railway line is alive once again, the airport is being expanded . . . development is now being shipped to Nyanza more than everywhere else in the country. We Luos have benefited from BBI and that’s why we support it.”

“But was that the real agenda of the handshake and its aftermath the BBI?” asks Victor. “I’ve taken the trouble to read the document. Nothing could be further from this proposition. Instead, the report, which has mutated a couple of times, proposes other things.” The issue of an additional 70 constituencies, for example, is very troubling, said Victor. “How is it that Nairobi and Mt Kenya region end up with more than 33 new constituencies, while the entire Nyanza region gets less than 4 extra seats? Is this not gerrymandering?”

Victor said the handshake had stopped the killing of Luo youth by the state security apparatus.

According to the BBI proposal, the extra constituencies will be distributed as follows: Nairobi 16, Kiambu 6, Nakuru 5, Meru 2, Embu 1, Kirinyaga 1, Murang’a 1 and Laikipia 1. In contrast, Homa Bay has been allocated 2 seats, Siaya 1 and Kisumu 1. The rest of the new seats are to be distributed across the rest of the country.

Yet Victor told me that among the Luo people this disturbing question is not supposed to be raised. Why? “Oh, you know, I’ve heard it being whispered in Raila’s inner sanctum that mzee has been promised the big one, so it’s imprudent to bring up the offending question. So, what’s BBI really about? Is it about “favoured” development, which Raila is now denying? Was it about ensuring the Luo youth are not gunned down? Is it about being promised the ‘big one’?”

Woe unto the Luo people if BBI doesn’t succeed, warns Victor. “Because it will mean the Luo youth could again be fodder for the police, development will be stopped forthwith and the promise of the ‘big one’ will vanish just like that. Is that how we should be conducting our national politics?”

“It is unfortunate the Luo people have become the biggest apologists for President Uhuru’s incompetent government,” said Ken Owiti. “We behave as if the indiscriminate killings of our people didn’t occur in 2017. We’ve forgotten all the violence that was visited upon the Luo people, prior to the repeat presidential elections on October 26, 2017. We have all forgotten the Baby Pendo incident. We can’t continue to live in the past, some of my folks say, but what does the future hold? The future of the Luo people is pegged on Raila cosying up to the system and being promised the presidency. That’s all.”

Ken showed me a video clip of Orido, a journalist, waxing poetic about President Uhuru’s development record. In the clip, Orido cites Outer Ring Road as an example of the strides President Uhuru has made in developing Kenya. “Is that all what Orido can talk about? Outer Ring Road is a project started under President Kibaki. Development is not a favour to Kenyans; it’s their right because the money borrowed to build and expand these roads is used in their name. But anything to prove you’re a BBI and a Raila cohort.”

The self-flagellation of the Luo people during President Uhuru’s visits to Kisumu has been a trifle embarrassing, said two Boda Boda riders. “What point have we been trying to convey? That we’ve forgotten the brutal violence that took place in Kibera and Kondele not too long ago? That we’re now loyal followers of President Uhuru and his inept government? That we’re a pragmatic, forward- looking people? That we should forgive and forget? Just like that? No questions asked?” The boda boda riders said that among a section of the Luo people, the force of reason seems to have been trumped by reason by force. “If you raise these critical questions, Raila’s adamant followers threaten you with violence, ‘you must be a Ruto supporter – are you a Luo? Who are you to question Raila? BBI is Raila and Raila is ours’.” Raila’s magnetism among the Luo people is waning, especially among the younger generation, said Otieno Magak. “His politics has ceased to be spellbinding and the handshake didn’t help matters. You can’t question BBI. To question BBI is to question Raila. You can’t ask how supporting BBI, wholly, unquestioningly, will translate into determining the price of sugar in your house. You must support it because Raila has said so. If you prod, nasty epithets are thrown at you. You’re deemed a traitor to the cause, you can be physically attacked.”

Woe unto the Luo people if BBI doesn’t succeed.

The Luo people are being corralled into supporting BBI because this could be the “bullet”, pointed out Magak. “How many ‘one bullets’ can one possibly have? How many times can you promise a political tsunami? The younger generation of Raila supporters are saying ‘we’ve done our civic duty. We’ve lent our unwavering loyalty to him and his political cause, but there comes a time when we must think about our own future and our own future cannot be tied to an aging opposition doyen.’”

Magak said to me that indeed there is a quiet movement sweeping across the Luo nation, of the millennial and generation Z that is keen on charting their own political path away from BBI, away from Raila’s stranglehold, away from the politics of patronage. “Raila has really fought hard, no one can take that away from him, even his greatest detractors concede the man has been resilient, even as he has been cheated out of victory several times. But BBI is a con game which, if it backfires, will have much wider ramifications on a community that has never sat well with status quo politics.”

As BBI proponents and antagonists square it up in court, engaging in legalese and subterfuge, Kenya’s largest voting constituency, the youth — disillusioned, dispossessed, disaffected — have given the report a wide berth.

Postscript

The 2 June 2021 decision of the seven-judge bench to issue their ruling on 20 August 2021 doesn’t augur well for BBI said Magak. “Whichever way you may want to look at it, at the end of the day, one party seems to have been lied to all throughout. It is significant to note that immediately after the judges gave their date, after the final submissions, the IEBC chair reiterated, soon after, that the general elections will be held on 9 August 2021. It is not for nothing that Wafula Chebukati found it prudent to remind Kenyans at this juncture that the election calendar is on course. But don’t take my word for it.”

–

This article is part of The Elephant BBI Judgement Series done in collaboration with Heinrich Böll Stiftung (HBF), Dialogue and Civic Spaces Programme. Views expressed in the article are not necessarily those of the HBF.

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.

Follow us on Twitter. The Last Bullet!

By Victor Ndula

The rapprochement of March 2018 between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, now famously referred to as “the handshake”, which kick-started the BBI consultation process and culminated in the Report of the Steering Committee on the Implementation of the Building Bridges to a United Kenya Taskforce Report, is emblematic of the rough-and-tumble that is the country’s tumultuous political history.

The report of the taskforce provided long-awaited principles and recommendations for the construction of “a new Kenyan nation,” including several changes in the current constitution. But a portion of Kenyatta’s Mashujaa Day speech on 20 October 2020 suggests a need for caution. It was rather ahistorical, and unfortunately, oblivious of numerous imposed top-down attempts at constitution-making and other general attempts to foist government declarations or policy documents on ordinary people.

Hoping to, perhaps, prepare the ground for elite-led changes to the 2010 constitution, the president’s speechwriters sought to arrive at this end by using a portion of the speech to remind citizens that constitutions are not static but often change. This process, the writers asserted, should be a product of “constant negotiation and renegotiation of nationhood”, and building a constitutional consensus. The italicized end of the president’s paraphrased speech is instructive, and erroneous in the light of the country’s constitutional history.

Moreover, referring to the Steering Committee’s report, the speech sought to prepare the ground for constitutional and other changes by calling for the building of “a sense of national ethos” that will emphasize belonging and inclusion. This, as the committee rightly observed, must include “documenting our history honestly”. But not so the president as per his speech, notably.

Most historians and citizens would agree that a key element in such an honest history must be factual accuracy regarding past events and interpretations solely based upon such facts. It is this latter point that the speechwriters disregarded in putting forth an account of constitution-making. While correctly emphasizing the need for a constantly moving exercise requiring, again, note, a consensus among political leaders and wananchi, the examples from which they drew during the colonial era demonstrate no such thing. Neither the Lyttleton Constitution of 1954 nor the Lennox- Boyd Constitution (announced in 1957 and implemented in 1958) were the product of a consensus.

First, both constitutions were imposed by the secretaries of state for the colonies after whom they are named, and the terms were dictated by the then governor Sir Evelyn Baring and his advisors—does this ring a bell yet? Elitist. Moreover, the Kenyan population, and particularly Africans, had no input whatsoever in the Lyttleton Constitution, which was imposed even though all six of the Africans appointed to the Legislative Council (LegCo) refused to accept the Lyttleton plan. That plan was not about inclusion at all, but its main purpose was to create a multiracial council of ministers in which, in the early stages of planning, no African would hold a portfolio. Lyttleton eventually agreed for one ministry to be headed by an African, but it ought to be recalled that the constitution provided for three European settler ministers to join the two settlers already holding the important portfolios of finance and agriculture.

Neither the Lyttleton Constitution nor the Lennox-Boyd Constitution were the product of a consensus.

The key group for Lyttleton and the governor in Kenya’s racial politics of the time was thus the European settler politicians. The acceptance of the plan by most of them constituted Lyttleton’s success and left the African population, among whom none could vote for representatives to the Legislative Council, totally excluded. While there was little inclusion, African LegCo members did gain a promise from Lyttleton that the colonial government would take steps to provide for African representation. The promise, imposed without the agreement of settler representatives, led to the first African elections of March 1957. The eight African Elected Members (AEM) immediately launched a campaign for change that would produce a more inclusive constitutional order (European voters elected 14 LegCo members and Asian voters 6).

Amazingly, Kenyatta’s speechwriters cast this as consensual by the statement that if the Lyttleton Constitution “was wrong, it was made right” by the Lennox-Boyd Constitution. This interpretation has no basis in fact as all the European settler members of LegCo opposed the AEM campaign, which included a refusal to accept the two ministerial positions reserved for Africans in 1957. Significantly, most Asian political leaders came to support the AEM demands. Just as in 1954, then Secretary of State Alan Lennox-Boyd, in response to the AEM campaign, flew to Nairobi in late 1957 to implement constitutional changes suggested by Baring. He was prepared to increase the number of AEM in the LegCo and determined to make them accept ministerial portfolios and introduce what came to be known as specially elected members to the LegCo. AEM rejected these proposals, including the six additional LegCo seats for Africans and the creation of a council of state.

Convinced he knew best, and that the only views that mattered were those of the European settler population, an infuriated Lennox-Boyd went ahead anyway, giving up his attempt to build consensus and ignoring the opinions of most of the Kenyan population. The result was continued political exclusion, and a period of on-going political tension and racial hostility. The AEM boycott of the Lennox-Boyd innovations (except the six additional LegCo positions) by April 1959 forced the British government to accept that the Lennox-Boyd plan had become unworkable. The solidarity of the AEMs won the battle.

But it was a glaring distortion of history to single out Oginga Odinga, Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, and Masinde Muliro as heroes in the president’s speech while at the same time seeming to say that as AEMs they consented to the changes desired by Lennox-Boyd and Baring. Nothing could be further from historical fact as the archival records of the discussions leading to the Lennox-Boyd Constitution clearly illustrate. Asian political opinion supported the need for constitutional change, but several of the European elected members of LegCo did not favour discussing constitutional changes. The years 1959 and 1960 brought an end to consensus among the settler political elite.

The first Lancaster House constitutional conference (LH1) thus brought together Kenyan LegCo members who viewed constitutional change very differently with few apparent grounds for agreement. While the settlers were divided, the 14 AEM delegates were united in a firm stand in favour of a rapid democratic transition for Kenya leading to self-government and independence within a short period of time. European delegates were, by contrast deeply divided, with the right- wing United Party favouring continued colonial rule and the New Kenya Party (NKP) delegates favouring a gradual transition to independence, and a multiracial executive and parliament with reserved seats for Europeans and fewer for Asians. The new Secretary of State Iain Macleod, like his predecessors, was unable to find or facilitate consensual agreement on a new constitution. Contrary to the claims of the speechwriters, therefore, there was no common ground negotiated among the delegates.

Macleod moved beyond this stalemate by putting a set of proposals before the by-now weary delegates that they were required to accept in full or reject. This was a quite different approach than in 1954 and 1957. Macleod then cleverly manoeuvred the African, Asian, and NKP delegates into acceptance of his terms that went some way toward meeting the demands of African delegates, but not others, for instance, universal suffrage, the appointment of a chief minister, and the release of Jomo Kenyatta. In a real sense, for that reason, the LH1 constitution was an imposed one, and indeed many living in Kenya at the time rejected it.

The 14 AEM delegates were united in a firm stand in favour of a rapid democratic transition for Kenya leading to self-government and independence within a short period of time.

Nonetheless, the AEM accepted it as ending European settler political predominance in Kenya and the new plan as a step on the way to independence. Over subsequent months, however, the consensus that had united the AEM disappeared as bitter divisions developed regarding the type of constitution Kenya should adopt as an independent nation. The competing visions of the two political parties, KANU (a unitary republic) and KADU (majimbo or a federal republic), were difficult to reconcile. This formed the background for the second Lancaster House conference in 1962. The absence of agreement on the basic constitutional structure was clear from the first meeting, and again, a British colonial secretary was forced to impose a settlement that did not take the form of a constitution but of a framework on which a coalition government in Kenya would work out the final document. This took a year and required the British government to draft the self-government constitution and decide key provisions because the KANU and KADU ministers could, well, not agree.

This brief narrative serves to make it clear that there was no consensus here anymore than with the three previous constitutional talks. It is thus, rather puzzling, if not amusing in an odd way that, in a desire to promote negotiated and consensual constitutional innovation under the auspices of the BBI in the year 2020, and by the president no less, these should be the examples put before the Kenyan public in justification. Rather, an accurate account and analysis of earlier or past constitutional innovations demonstrate very clearly the need for wide consultations among the populace (unlike the episodes described above where only a narrowly defined political elite participated) and a broad- based consensus. In other words, the same message can be got across to the public by relating the correct facts. As the speechwriters noted: “The more we ponder our history in its truest form, the more liberated we become.” It is always best to heed the lessons of history, not to ignore it altogether, and repeat the same grievous mistakes.

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The Last Bullet!

By Victor Ndula Uhuru Kenyatta seems to be Kenya’s least powerful president – at least as suggested by a number of recent developments.

Kenyatta has spent much time and energy during his second term in office defending the basis of his Building Bridges Initiative, otherwise known as the BBI. He has also had to defend his rekindled dalliance with his closest challenger for the presidency in both the 2013 and 2017 elections, Raila Odinga.

Uhuru’s famous March 2018 handshake with Raila is not only wreaking havoc within his own Jubilee Alliance party, but has also made his Mt. Kenya political base restive. The climate of intolerance that he attempted to create – unleashing the security agencies on recalcitrant members of his party – following his détente with the leader of the largest opposition party in parliament, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), seems to not have yielded much for him, after all. Kiambu Woman Representative, Gathoni wa Muchomba, is now the latest supporter from the president’s base to decamp to the Tangatanga movement, the Jubilee wing associated with the Deputy President William Ruto, which has opposed the handshake and the BBI process.

For several months following the handshake, Kenyans grew accustomed to an increasingly irritable and angry president, demanding but not quite able to command full loyalty, especially within his party. The country became used to bitter public diatribes that the president unleashed in his mother tongue, targeted at people who disagreed, or criticised his leadership. Uhuru Kenyatta continues to be on the defensive regarding his under-performing administration and his expensive mega- infrastructure projects. With his party the Jubilee Alliance declared damaged by his deputy president, Uhuru constantly distances himself from what he now describes in public as “politics”.

Now, whenever Uhuru speaks at the launch of various “development” projects, the president is careful not to mention the Big Four Agenda – affordable universal health care, food security, manufacturing and affordable housing – a dim prospect given the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic and the disastrous economic record that preceded it. Not only has the judiciary complicated the progress of his BBI plan, but the entire legal fraternity has been up in arms over Uhuru’s decision not to appoint six judges out of a list of 40 that was presented to him over two years ago by the Judicial Service Commission. While the president has insisted that the six judges have outstanding integrity issues — based on information he claims was provided to him by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) — the newly-appointed Chief Justice, Martha Koome, together with her predecessors, David Maraga and Willy Mutunga, have all insisted that the president must appoint the 6 judges or disclose the evidence he claims he has against them.

Since 2013, for Uhuru and members of his administration, the space for making and swiftly implementing public policy has been severely constricted. The requirements for public participation and the involvement of multiple players in the governance process have slowed down the wheels of authoritarian-technocratic rule.

Uhuru’s administration has also had to grapple with constant public criticism, especially when he fails to abide by the law.

Broadly, this is the result of the ramifications of a public language of rights, public participation and consultation, which has been given prominence across the country by the Kenya 2010 constitution.

Limiting the executive branch

While recent analyses and other writings celebrating the 13th May 2021 ruling of the Constitutional and Human Rights Division of the High Court of Kenya in David Ndii and Others vs the Attorney- General and others — widely referred to as the BBI judgement — have been informative and measured, they have elided a crucial understanding of how politics actually works in Kenya.

While focusing on the judgement’s attention to Kenya’s constitutional history since independence, the commentators have glossed over a critical political matrix that underlines Kenya’s constitutional and legal transformation. This is to say that Kenya’s constitutional history did not develop in a vacuum, and that to understand the recent limitations on the powers of the executive, the case for viewing Kenyan politics in the long durée remains compelling.

In her analysis of the judgement, Ambreena Manji highlights the emphasis that the judges, who declared the BBI process unconstitutional, put on Kenya’s constitutional history, arguing that the BBI judgement should be considered historic in two ways: in its elaboration of the basic structure doctrine and in its historical reading of the struggle for constitutional reform in Kenya.

Recent analyses and other writings celebrating the 13th May 2021 ruling of the High Court have elided a crucial understanding of how politics actually works in Kenya.

But the question still remains: why was it possible for Kenyans to bequeath themselves a progressive constitution that limited executive authority in 2010 and not, say, the 1970s, a time of hyper- amendments, and where the “Imperial Presidency” had already emerged?

How then was it possible to write a constitution that seemingly stands against the interests of a political elite whose ideological origins (and for some, biological origins) can be traced to the 1960s, and who were still in power in 2010 and still are? How were Kenyans able to protect the constitution from destruction by the political elite?

Kenya’s constitutional and legal transformation, I argue, is the outcome of Kenya’s own aggressive politics of ethno-regional coalition building, where elites claiming to represent certain ethno- regional communities have become useful in legitimising the political regime.

Put differently, the current transformations in Kenyan politics — where limits can be placed on the extent of the president’s power — are part of the contradictions inherent in the very system of elite domination that historically produced the “Imperial Presidency” under the previous constitution.

Allow me to explain using historical analysis.

The era of elite consensus

As mentioned, the ideological origins (and for some, the biological origins) of Kenya’s current political elite can be traced back to the 1960s.

The power of Kenya’s post-colonial elite to dominate the rest of the population and key sectors of the economy, and to maintain socio-economic inequalities, has best been exemplified when there are high levels of trust amongst the political elite, or essentially, high levels of elite consensus regarding the “rules of the game”.

Following Kenya’s independence in 1963, elite domination rested on the reification of Jomo Kenyatta as Baba wa Taifa (father of the nation), an alliance, or consensus of ethno-regional elites, the demobilisation of opposition forces, and the ability of those elites to reproduce their political and economic power, while precluding fundamental socio-economic reforms.

It was in this context that, from 1964 to 1992 — the year of the return to multi-party politics — the constitution was amended over twenty times. The amendments served to empower the executive branch of the government at the expense of parliament and the judiciary. At the height of this madness (in 1990), the Office of the President (OP) had a staff of 43,230, representing a ratio of 1 in 6 civil servants. The OP became a parallel government, with considerably more executive power than actual ministries. According to the BBI judgement, the constitution had been “stripped of most of its initial democratic and social justice protections” such that the country “had effectively become an authoritarian state.”

The situation was not improved by the fact that Kenya had emerged out of colonial rule with a profoundly unbalanced institutional landscape.

Parliament, political parties and the judiciary were largely underdeveloped compared to the executive and the bureaucracy. For purposes of mobilising the population for development and for political legitimacy, the ruling party — the Kenya African National Union, or KANU — was immediately replaced by the bureaucratic machinery that was directly answerable to the head of state. In fact, it was the provincial administration, answerable to the executive and with a demonstrable capacity to exercise top-down political and administrative control across the country, that was responsible for the maintenance of law and order, keeping the entire population in check, and maintaining the socio-economic inequalities that have been a hallmark in Kenya’s economic trajectory since independence.

Why was it possible for Kenyans to bequeath themselves a progressive constitution that limited executive authority in 2010 and not, say, in the 1970s?

Before the colonial government departed, it ensured that it had demobilised the Mau Mau and left the instruments of power in the hands of elites who would be sympathetic to British interests. This is why, shortly after he became Kenya’s first Prime Minister, Jomo Kenyatta — who had been declared by a colonial governor as “Kenya’s leader unto darkness and death” — rushed to Nakuru to urge white settlers not to leave the country.

Inside the smoke-filled room, Kenyatta dismissed recent clamours for the redistribution of land and wealth by many of his supporters as “young blood boiling” that he would soon quell down.

Kenyatta went on to assure his audience – many of whom had been alarmed by the impending independence – that he was a farmer like them, that they had something in common, the subtext suggesting that he was a “responsible” African leader.

These managerial arguments were not a simple placating of white settlers.

By the time Kenyatta was addressing his newly embraced compatriots in Nakuru, the colonial government had already co-opted sympathetic African elites into the bureaucracy, the legislature and the private-property-based economy. A coalition between the executive branch of government, the allies of colonialism, and representatives of global capital thus emerged, and Kenyatta was keen to deepen that arrangement. This also meant that colonial loyalists and representatives of transnational capital would come to reap the full benefits of independence. It was during this time, the late 1950s and early 1960s, that these elites not only took control of the means of production, they also assumed the political and institutional capacity to reproduce their dominance in the decades to come.

In particular, the ability of this alliance to reproduce itself over the years since independence lay in its capacity to demobilise popular forces and progressive movements, especially those elements of the nationalist movement that questioned both the social and economic inequalities of the post- colonial state. The ability to demobilise opposition forces lay in the strength of the bureaucracy that was itself beholden to the elites that had taken over the executive branch in the early 1960s.

Representative institutions, such as parliament and local governments, were downgraded and diminished. Amendments to the constitution made easy, in this context, became a sharp tool in the exercise of authoritarian power. This is why, bequeathed a Westminster-style parliamentary system of government in 1963, Kenya quickly became a republic with an executive president in 1964.

The independence constitution had also made provisions that took considerable power and significant functions of government away from the Nairobi-based executive through a system of eight regional governments of equal status known in Swahili as majimbo. By 1964, the majimbo system had been dismantled.

The ability to demobilise opposition forces lay in the strength of the bureaucracy that was itself beholden to the elites that had taken over the executive branch in the early 1960s.

With majimbo gone, the independence senate lacked rationale, and it too was abolished. Just before this happened, the Kenya African Democratic Union, or KADU, the main supporter of majimbo, had folded, citing frustration from the executive.

By abolishing the regional majimbo governments, and getting rid of the senate, the parliamentary system and the first post-colonial opposition party, the post-colonial elite pact of domination was complete. The era of elite fragmentation

Daniel Arap Moi — whose political base was outside the central region that had dominated politics since the early 1960s — grew more and more paranoid when he became president in 1978.

First and foremost, Moi knew very well that he did not command the respect that Kenyatta had commanded as the founding father, but in addition to this, the resources that Kenyatta relied upon to reward other elites who eventually legitimised his rule became thinner during Moi’s time.

An attempted coup in 1982 poisoned the chalice, and Moi resorted to more strong-armed tactics. He began interfering with elections more brazenly, and eventually surrounded himself with a coterie of loyal political cronies who did not carry much political weight in their own regions.

With the return to multi-party politics in the 1990s, the core that had held together the elite pact of domination during the 1960s and 1970s gave way. This ushered in a period of elite fragmentation, which was combined with the instrumentalisation of ethnicity and violence in the political marketplace.

The situation was not improved by the fact that Kenya emerged out of colonial rule with a profoundly unbalanced institutional landscape.

In an attempt to maintain his grip on power, Moi resuscitated the majimbo idea in the Rift Valley, Western and Coast regions. While the majimbo idea regained prominence in these regions, its ethnically-exclusivist language engendered massive violence that targeted Kikuyu peasants and Luo workers, especially during electoral periods, in an attempt to evict them from these regions.

A brief coalition of Luo and Kikuyu elites in 2002 removed Moi from power. But the next president, Mwai Kibaki, assumed power under Kenya’s former top-heavy constitution, that which had created what we now remember as the “Imperial Presidency”. Kibaki had won the 2002 elections on a platform of constitutional reform, but differences quickly emerged in his coalition — the National Rainbow Alliance, or Narc — regarding what would be the new constitutional order.

The differences revolved around two main questions regarding the structure of government. The first question was: should Kenya adopt a presidential or a parliamentary system? The other question was: what should be the extent of decentralisation?

One of the Narc coalition’s partners, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that was led by Raila Odinga, favoured a parliamentary system, but with a dual executive, that is, a president with a strong prime minister, and extensive provisions for decentralisation, that is, a three-tier system involving eight regions akin to the majimbo system of the 1960s.

The other coalition partner, the National Alliance Party of Kenya, that was led by the then President Mwai Kibaki, favoured a system with a single executive, that is, the president as the primary holder of executive authority, and a modest form of decentralisation, preferably deconcentration.

Kibaki’s group, of course, was in control of the executive branch, and as such, worked to ensure that the Bomas of Kenya draft (named after the venue at which it was deliberated), and which had provided for the system most favoured by Raila Odinga’s faction of the Narc coalition, was altered.

The Bomas deliberations had begun in the twilight years of Moi’s rule and were continued by Kibaki during his first term in office, becoming Kenya’s National Constitutional Conference, a people-led, constitutional review process. However, the draft that was presented at the 2005 constitutional referendum was not the one agreed to at Bomas.

Tampered with by the then legal advisor (the Attorney-general) of the executive branch, Amos Wako, the draft that became known as the “Wako draft” retained a powerful president and watered down the provisions on decentralisation.

Essentially, the “Wako draft” rebuffed the greatest assault on the power of the executive since Kenya gained independence.

As a result, it was defeated by a vote that was mobilised by a new coalition, the Orange Democratic Movement, the ODM, largely led by Raila Odinga, and which was named after the “No” symbol (an orange) of the 2005 plebiscite vote. Kibaki’s government became more and more alienated from the non-Kikuyu public. The seeds of the 2007 post-election violence had been planted.

Birthing the 2010 constitution

The process of elite fragmentation that had begun in earnest during the 1980s and 1990s had exceeded its limitations by 2007. Trust amongst the political elite was at its lowest immediately before and after the 2007-08 post-election violence.

Believing that he was operating in the institutional landscape within which Jomo Kenyatta had operated in the 1960s and 1970s, Kibaki deployed the machinery of the executive to quell opposition protests against his declared victory in the 2007 elections.

The outcome was disastrous.

Over 1,300 lives were lost and more than half a million people were displaced in violence that was sparked by the disputed electoral results.

Without an alliance of elites representing Kenya’s multiple ethno-regional formations backing him up, Kibaki was forced to enter into a deal with Raila Odinga, ODM leader and his challenger during the 2007 elections.

Since trust amongst Kenya’s political elite was at an all-time low, the deal had to be brokered by a foreigner, the late Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, and through it, Raila became Prime Minister in a coalition government with Mwai Kibaki as president.

Important to note – and central to this piece’s argument – is that it was within this context of lack of political trust amongst the political elite — or elite fragmentation, with one side always trying to “fix” the other — that far-reaching constitutional reforms saw the light of day, culminating in the Kenya 2010 constitution.

A marriage of convenience, with mutual suspicion and at times, non-cooperation, became the best description of the operations of the grand coalition government of 2008-2013. In short, the political elite had been forced into a weak alliance following the 2007 post-election violence – nothing to match the strong alliance of elites, and hence, elite domination, that was witnessed in the 1960s and 1970s.

The “Wako draft” rebuffed the greatest assault on the power of the executive since Kenya gained independence. In addition, the 2007-08 post-election violence meant that the political elite had lost the moral authority to define the future political direction of the country without consulting ordinary citizens. This meant that, inadvertently, the political elite came to share the power to decide the country’s political affairs with civil society organisations and human-rights activists, most of whom were lawyers. These lawyers and activists had also taken part in the then twenty-year popular struggle for a new constitution, a struggle that begun with the re-introduction of multi-party politics in the 1990s.

The lessons and the pain of that struggle informed the strong guardrails that were placed against amendments to the harmonised draft of previous draft constitutional documents, work that was done by a Committee of Experts (CoE) appointed in 2008. At the Great Rift Valley Lodge in Naivasha, the CoE-crafted and harmonised draft was presented to a Parliamentary Select Committee of 14 Party of National Unity (PNU) members, Kibaki’s party, and 13 ODM members, Raila’s party. During the Naivasha proceedings, the PNU side was surprised by ODM’s willingness to relax its demands for a three-tier decentralised system based on eight regions in favour of devolution based on 47 counties; and to let go of the parliamentary system altogether in favour of the presidential system.

The deal that would eventually lead Kenya into a pure presidential system under the 2010 constitution, it was reported, was struck by none other than Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta, the principals of the BBI process eight years later – in a room at the lodge.

A pure presidential system in the sense that, not only would cabinet ministers be appointed from outside parliament, but the losers of the presidential election, no matter how many votes they garnered during an election, would not be accorded any public office. The Naivasha draft, presented to parliament for debate in mid-2010, also scrapped the regional tier of government, and fixed the number of parliamentary constituencies at 290. Given the strong parameters that had been placed by the CoE process to changing the draft in parliament, nothing much changed after that.

Of course, the electoral experience of 2007 had shown both Raila Odinga and William Ruto — the leading ODM politicians at the time — that they too, could ascend to centralised power by becoming president directly through the ballot, and not through control of regional governments, or by having to go through parliament. In light of this, they abandoned the clamour for majimbo and for the parliamentary system.

The proposed 2010 constitution was good to go. The political elite, believing that it would be a useful tool in the waging of their battles for power, did not raise major questions around the structure of the executive and decentralisation. As a result, the 2010 constitution was adopted through a popular vote in a referendum in August 2010, and was promulgated shortly thereafter.

Enter the BBI

The first disappointment, at least for Raila and his supporters, arrived in 2013.

Raila Odinga lost the presidential election by a slight margin under the 2010 constitution to a new (Jubilee) alliance led by Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto. This was repeated in 2017, when Raila again lost to Uhuru amidst reports of irregularities during the transmission of results.

Despite his considerable political influence over vast swathes of the country, Raila held no public office between 2013 and 2017. In 2017 he had successfully contested Uhuru’s presidential victory at the Supreme Court and proceeded to boycott a repeat poll, citing lack of a competent and impartial electoral commission.

Two months before the two leaders met and shook hands on the steps of Harambee House, launching the BBI as a result, Raila had also made real his threat to take a symbolic presidential oath in defiance of Uhuru as the “people’s president”.

Meanwhile, 76 people, including ten children, had died during opposition protests by the time Uhuru was sworn in for his second term as president. Pressure from civil society organisations and the international community to find a political settlement was piling. A debt-burdened economy was threatening to stall. Uhuru, like former President Mwai Kibaki before him, was probably worried about tarnishing his own legacy.

It was within this context of lack of political trust amongst the political elite that far- reaching constitutional reforms saw the light of day, culminating in the Kenya 2010 constitution.

It was in this context that the BBI process came about — to create additional positions within the executive so as to accommodate, essentially, more ethno-regional elites that, as Kenyan history has shown, are often useful in legitimising a political regime.

In sum, one could argue that the BBI proposals were, and still are, meant to curb the excessive elite fragmentation that has marked the country’s political history since the 1980s and 1990s in order to produce the elite pact of domination that existed during the 1960s and 1970s.

In fact, before the Constitutional and Human Rights Court complicated the BBI process by declaring it unconstitutional and null and void, the BBI report had yet again tightened control around the presidency. If successful, the president would get to appoint a prime minister from parliament, who will also be the leader of the largest political party or the largest coalition of political parties. The president will also appoint two deputy prime ministers and cabinet ministers drawn from within and outside parliament. The report had also recommended the disbandment of the National Police Service Commission and the creation of a National Police Council to be chaired by a cabinet secretary, that is, a presidential appointee. It had also established the office of an ombudsman within the Judiciary, to be appointed by the president.

As Uhuru Kenyatta and his allies continue to wish for the return to a more “orderly” past, where a few individuals with disproportionate political and administrative power could decide the fate of the entire country, it would be to their advantage to know that that system of elite domination carries inherent contradictions.

The more the political elite expands, the more we shall witness fragmentation within its ranks.

As this piece has shown, at its worst (and as was the case during the post-election violence of 2007-8) elite fragmentation births legal and institutional transformations, such as the 2010 constitution. Put differently, the more the political elite becomes busy fighting amongst itself for resources at the disposal of the state, the more constitutional transformations the country will see.

The more the political elite expands, the more we shall witness fragmentation within its ranks.

In my view, the BBI judgement, the current limitations placed on the president and the executive by the constitution, the restiveness within Uhuru’s political base, and the associated political realignments in the run-up to the next general elections in 2022, should all be understood within this framework.

–

This article is part of The Elephant BBI Judgement Series done in collaboration with Heinrich Böll Stiftung (HBF), Dialogue and Civic Spaces Programme. Views expressed in the article are not necessarily those of the HBF.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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The Last Bullet!

By Victor Ndula 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.

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The Last Bullet!

By Victor Ndula

There has been an ongoing debate in the last couple of months about the hefty cash donations politicians make to churches and to individual clergymen in Kenya. There have also been debates about the impact of money on the relationship between the church and the state, and about by the political class co-opting church leaders. There is even talk now about politicians radicalising thousands of angry, disenfranchised, jobless youth through cash donations and political and religious ideologies. An emerging Christian nationalism that is inspired by populist politics in many parts of the world also has many observers worried. Money, economic disenfranchisement and religious ideologies are blamed for this emerging trend.

A large section of Christian evangelicals in Africa, for example, support populist politicians including former President Donald J. Trump. In Kenya, money, ethnicity and religion have apparently taken centre stage in national politics in the last couple of years and this could lead to seriously compromising the religious leaders’ ability to stand up to the political class.

Deputy President William Ruto has caused a furore over the millions of shillings he has been donating to the churches. Ruto has sought to create an image of himself as a God-fearing generous giver, as demonstrated in the many churches he has visited, the questionable source of the money donated notwithstanding.

The clearest example of this is the dichotomy now playing between the president-led Kieleweke and Deputy President-led Tanga Tanga factions of the ruling Jubilee Party. When they took their battles to the African Independent Pentecostal Church of Africa (AIPCA) in Kenol area of Murang’a County on 4 October 2020, it led to the deaths of two young men. The commotion created at Gaitegi AIPCA church by the two opposing factions is the latest testament of how the church has been infiltrated by the dark forces of political rivalry.

On 11 January 2021, Bishop Margaret Wanjiru of Jesus is Alive Ministries (JIAM) was back in the limelight. A video circulating on social media showed the evangelist-turned-politician-turned-Ruto supporter dishing out money to scores of people.

While some church leaders in the Anglican and the Catholic churches have clearly told politicians to keep their money off their pulpits, the majority of Kenya’s clergy, especially those of the evangelical and the pentecostal persuasion — and particularly the prosperity gospel-allied churches — see absolutely nothing wrong with this. Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK) Archbishop Jackson Ole Sapit, while speaking in a multisectoral initiative against corruption in 2019, warned ACK clerics against accepting corrupt money. “Let us not allow Harambee money to become a subtle way to sanitise corrupt leaders,” said Sapit. Deputy President William Ruto and a coterie of politicians allied to him promptly answered Sapit: “We will continue to worship Jehovah God with our hearts and substance. We are unashamed of God and unapologetic about our faith.”

In Kenya, money, ethnicity and religion have apparently taken centre stage in national politics.

On 24 October 2020 Ruto held a fund-raising meeting for the St Leo Catholic Church in Sianda, Mumias East. Evidently, the COVID-19 crisis and the lockdown had not locked up the DP’s purse. Clearly, it’s not only the evangelical leadership that covets politicians’ money. While the Anglican and Catholic churches’ leadership have clearly specified their criteria for receiving donations, and have at the same time asked the politicians to keep off their pulpit and keep their money, evangelical and pentecostal churches, especially those aligned to the prosperity gospel, see nothing wrong with accepting money from politicians. There have been public spats and bitter exchanges in the country that essentially encapsulate a debate that has not only refused to go away, but one that divides Christians and non-Christians alike.

The Kenyan Church and its credibility

Struggling with a legitimacy crisis since the 2007/8 post-election violence (PEV), the church leadership seems to have abandoned its flock, divided by ethnicity and politics as it is. Archbishop David Gitari (ACK), Archbishop Raphael Ndingi Mwana a’Nzeki of the Catholic Church and retired Rev. Timothy Njoya of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA) fought for democracy, freedom of expression and multiparty politics during Daniel T. arap Moi’s dictatorial reign and have often been described as the architects of social justice and as the conscience of the nation. The emergence of evangelical pastors driven by the gospel of prosperity seems to have undone all the foundational work that these mainstream church leaders fought so hard to set up. The PEV exposed the underbelly of the Kenyan church as it were and since then, the church has never been the same and it has struggled to recover its image as the moral compass of the nation. The National Christian Council of Kenya (NCCK), the umbrella body that brings together all the protestant churches, even offered a public apology, acknowledging that the Church had let down Kenyans.

Given the fact that liberal democracy thrives where the secular and religious domains keep a safe distance from each other, the churches’ acceptance of hefty cash donations from politicians has led Kenyans to question the very credibility and legitimacy of these churches’ leadership. Yet the co- option of religious leaders by the state and politicians is nothing new. The Deputy President’s donations to churches have brought to the fore the causal inter-play between church and state, the intersection between faith, politics and governance issues. The donations have also raised critical questions about the relationship between Christianity and religio-ethnic politics.

Christianity and religio-ethnic politics

Religio-ethnic political competition and mobilisation have increasingly become the defining features of electoral politics in Africa, Kenya included. In Kenya, God, politics, money and ethnicity are often inseparable. Yet church politics, money and ethnicity have recently assumed centre stage. During the 2013 and 2017 general elections, for example, political competition was increasingly defined and characterised by the use of the notions of God and tribe. The appropriation of biblical language and rhetoric and its imagery by politicians during the campaign periods sought to paint their politics as God-driven and God-ordained, while casting their antagonists’ politics as driven by the dark, evil forces of Satan and witchcraft.

Prior to the 2013 general elections, the Jubilee Coalition presidential candidate and his running mate, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, faced criminal charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC). To fend off the ICC, the duo turned to religious rhetoric and portrayed their tribulations as the work of the devil and the opposition, then led by Raila Odinga. They also referred to the civil society as the “evil society.” Uhuru and Ruto traversed the country, holding political rallies camouflaged as prayer meetings, accompanied by a retinue of clergymen who would lay hands on them and anoint them with special oil, as they prayed fervently, casting away ICC demons, castigating the opposition and condemning the “evil society”.

Their political nemesis, Raila Odinga of the National Super Alliance (NASA), equally appropriated religious rhetoric. Raila promised to lead Kenyans to a new dawn by taking them to Canaan, the Promised Land that flows with milk and honey. He appropriated the biblical imagery of the Book of Exodus, where he likened himself to Joshua, who would lead the people out of slavery into the “promised land”. The imagery became a rallying call for millions of his followers. In 2019 and 2020, Deputy President Ruto not only appropriated Christian theological language, but also became one of the biggest church funders just like President Moi before him.

In a bid to outdo everyone, Ruto has elevated the prosperity gospel and its proponents, the self- styled prophets and bishops, to unprecedented levels of self-importance. In the process, he has cleverly cultivated a Christian nationalistic image, subtly appropriating pentecostal language in his public speeches. He has also been accused of taking advantage of the socio-economic vulnerabilities of unemployed youth in a way that could potentially radicalise them.

Ruto’s cosy relationship with the clergy should be understood in the light of religio-political and ethnic mobilisation that has now become the defining feature of post neo-liberal politics in Kenya and beyond. During the 2010 constitutional referendum, Ruto aligned himself with the Christian clergy to oppose the new constitution. Since then, the relationship between the Deputy President and the Christian right in Kenya has blossomed, the allegations of corruption made against him notwithstanding; Ruto has his allies in the church.

Liberal democracy thrives where the secular and religious domains keep a safe distance from each other.

In a country reeling from massive debt, loss of employment and the coronavirus pandemic, the clergy has been silent as Kenyans go through unprecedented suffering, massive job losses, a weak public health infrastructure, corruption, and the theft of medical equipment donated by humanitarian people and organisations. Their loud silence in the wake of the high numbers of deaths of medical personnel, the doctors’ strike and the controversial BBI politics, has been deafening.

But Ruto’s disturbing relationship with the clergy is not anything new. Moi heavily appropriated religion and created for himself an image of a God-fearing politician who not only attended church service ritually and piously every Sunday, but who also heavily invested in the churches and the clergy by contributing large amounts of money and allocating them large tracts of land.

Politicians have perfected the art of appropriating religion in times of crises. With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, politicians have been calling on religious leaders to offer prayers as they call on the people to repent their sins. While there is nothing wrong with politicians asking for frequent and collective prayers when the country is faced with crises, Kenyans also need to question how they are governed and what the priorities of their politicians should be. No amount of prayers will ever take away bad governance, corruption, disease, inequality, poverty, road accidents and violence. These are policy issues that have everything to do with ethical and just leadership, the rule of the law, governance of national resources, respect for human rights, well-equipped and functional hospitals and efficient public service delivery, and little to do with religion.

Deputy President Ruto’s relationship with the clergy must be understood through the prism of, not just the politicisation of religion, but also its implications for good governance, and for the church and the state. The Jubilee Party administration has since 2013 been weakening the church’s leadership by compromising it with money so that the clergy does not call out on its excesses.

In Kenya, the church and the state have always had a symbiotic relationship. The clergy has always tried to co-opt political leaders while the state has always been involved in schemes to co-opt the church. This is not to ignore the fact that the leaders of certain mainstream churches have, in certain critical political moments, stood their ground and urged the government to abandon its authoritarian tendencies, and even pushed for constitutional reforms.

After the promulgation of the new Constitution of Kenya 2010, mainstream churches took a back seat as pentecostal and evangelical churches occupied the centre stage of the country’s political arena. Ruto has ostensibly found dependable allies in the majority of evangelical churches, who see him as a generous giver and one who fits in well with their health-and-wealth gospel.

This is not peculiar to Ruto. Politicians across the country continue to appropriate religious idioms, language, rhetoric and symbolisms. We are witnessing the same developments in other African countries like Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda — politicians appropriating religion as a means to their political ends. In 2016, Donald Trump appealed to the evangelical right and their unwavering support helped him win his presidential bid. In 2020 Trump again appealed to the same Christian right to try to win a second term. He appropriated religion and mobilised the evangelical right to cast himself as the protector of religious rights from neo-liberals, socialists and leftists.

The Ruto factor in churches and its implications for governance

William Ruto projects the image of a God-fearing man under perpetual siege from the political dark forces of Satan. He gives the impression that his Christian faith has helped him overcome the forces that his political enemies are using to fight him. While his enemies are busy working hard to make him look bad in the eyes of the electorate, the church, it seems to me, has also been working overtime to paint him in the light of a generous servant of God who is largely misunderstood. Even as his enemies describe him as a most corrupt, divisive and ambitious politician, the church makes him look humble and decent and “a fearfully made child of God” who is a victim of political machinations.

Ruto’s spirited efforts to be allied with the clergy must be understood within the context of a search for a Christian legitimacy and social respectability. The Deputy President could also be looking for approval and acceptance from the clergy. He is looking to his faith to repair a badly damaged public image that has refused to go away: the image of a fabulously wealthy politician who passes himself off as a humble servant of God who speaks the language of the downtrodden. And so the apparent association with the church is a quest to portray himself as a victim of dynastic politics that are jealous of his “hustler” beginnings and that do not want him excelling in national politics. In short, Ruto is using the church to advance his overarching political ambitions.

Like many a politician before him, Ruto has appropriated religion during this period of turmoil in his political career to draw, not just admiration, legitimacy and respect, but also empathy and pity. The late President Moi appropriated the Christian faith to cleanse his autocratic regime. Zambia’s President Fredrick Chiluba declared himself a Christian and Zambia a Christian nation, despite the massive corruption dogging his country. The recently deceased President John Magufuli declared that God had healed Tanzania of the COVID-19 pandemic. He appropriated religion and notions of God in his populist politics in a way that appealed to millions of religious people wish want to see God at the centre of politics and governance.

Intent on getting money and socio-political power to influence public policy, the Church has opened itself to the vagaries of political pedlars. To that extent, hunger for power, particularly political and social power play, is no longer the preserve of politicians. The Kenyan clergy also wants a piece of that power and influence. Hence, spiritual power is hardly the driving force of these religious leaders who no longer view politics as a dirty game. On the contrary, many clergy now see politics as a means to financial, social and political power. African pentecostal and evangelical clergy (with the exception of a few who are well-grounded in proper theological training) lack the philosophical and theological tools to engage the state or politicians. Many rely on the Holy Spirit to interpret scripture and socio-political phenomena. Pentecostal clergy are also prone to populist politics and, more importantly, they are less likely to criticise a dictatorial government. They prefer to pray away issues including pandemics like COVID-19. They are beholden to faith healing, miracles and the gospel of prosperity. Human rights, social justice and poverty are not issues they like to engage with, let alone seek to understand their primary causes; they much prefer spiritualising issues.

The church leadership of the pentecostal and evangelical churches believes in creating social transformation by transforming individuals’ morals and personal lives, which is commendable. Individual transformation is not necessarily a bad thing, but it would be even better if the whole society were to be fundamentally transformed. Pentecostals also place greater emphasis on the heavenly realm and the hereafter than in the hell in which many Kenyans already live. In a country under bad governance, the theology of individual transformation must be questioned. And we must ask critical the questions: how is it that a highly religious country like Kenya, where more than 80 per cent of the population identify as Christians, has not seen it fit to embrace meaningful socio- political transformation?

Religion “cleans” up people, gives them a veneer of credibility, respect and acceptance. That is why politicians align themselves with the Church. When politicians are under siege, they take refuge in the Church, even as they seek to mobilise their ethnic bases. In a kind of symbiotic relationship, religious leaders use politicians such as Ruto to access state resources and political power. In return, politicians give the clergy not just money, but personal appeal, social power and a sense of self-importance. Such clergy crave to be seen as special “big men and women of God” who are powerful, rich and have friends in high society. One would hope that spiritual leaders would be the salt of the earth, that they would champion social justice causes as well as human flourishing, but unfortunately, like the political class, they seek power, prestige, money and state recognition for their own sake.

There are a myriad other reasons why the clergy courts politicians. In its effort to push its conservative agenda on reproductive health and rights, sex education, sexuality and gender empowerment among many other issues, the clergy’s romance with the political class is strategic: they are partners when it comes to controlling society for their own selfish ends. Kenyans have not forgotten that religious leaders coalesced around Ruto to oppose the adoption of the 2010 constitution; he clergyviewed the constitution as too liberal in matters of sexuality, reproductive health rights and women’s place in society.

There has also been religious mobilisation and contestation over sexual and reproductive health rights and choices in Kenya, as recently witnessed with the Reproductive Health Bill (2019) and during the 2019 UN Conference on Population and Development (ICPD25) held in Nairobi. On the two occasions, religious leaders and their powerful lobbies employed mobilisation tactics to oppose the Reproductive Bill and the ICPD25 conference. Demonstrations were recently held against the Reproductive Health Bill — also christened the abortion bill or the Susan Kihika bill — because of its supposedly neo-liberal agenda.

Kenyans have not forgotten that religious leaders coalesced around Ruto to oppose the adoption of the 2010 constitution.

The influence of the American evangelical far right is also evident in Kenya’s conservative churches, especially in the area of sexuality and reproductive health rights. The American evangelicals’ support for President Donald J Trump — who is not a Christian by any standards but uses Christianity for his own political ends — is alive in African evangelical circles. Some of the evangelical pastors here in Kenya are reported to have prayed for Trump as he battled to win a second term in the 4 November 2020 elections. One of the reasons evangelicals support Trump is because he aligns himself with the Christian right’s ideologies and conservative positions on a score of social and political issues.

It is also a fact that evangelical churches here in Kenya receive a lot of funding from the American evangelical right. The same logic explains the clergy’s relationship with politicians in Kenya. It is a money thing. And it is not hard to see. In its 10th month now, the COVID-19 pandemic has left many Kenyans vulnerable and in dire need of financial help. Yet the Church leadership has chosen to pursue its narrow agenda of cavorting with the political class in exchange for financial gain, self- aggrandisement and the opportunity to influence public policy.

A dozen years after PEV, the church leadership in Kenya does not seem to have learnt any lessons. It has become the butt of crude jokes on social media from a woke generation that does not fear and is not beholden to the “touch not my anointed servants” cliché. It has refused to be spiritually blackmailed and financially manipulated. That generation is daily debunking the myth of spiritual power and torment.

Religious institutions and religious leaders are important actors, key elements and important forces within civil society. Religion is also important in the lives of many Africans, Kenyan’s in particular. A recent Pew Research Poll found that more than 85 per cent of Kenyans said religion was very important to them. There are a number of reasons why religion is important to Kenyans. First, religion provides Kenyans with the language to make sense of their suffering. Secondly, religious people want to see good people voted into government because they believe they can bring ethical leadership and decency to public life. Christians want to see good people voted in, people who promote healing, national cohesion and economic betterment.

The Church has become the butt of crude jokes on social media from a woke generation that does not fear and is not beholden to the “touch not my anointed servants” cliché.

But this is not the case. Instead what we have is a clergy that is in bed with the political class. Co- option of the clergy is bad for democracy and governance. When the Church and its clergy accept monetary contributions from politicians, it compromises them. The Church loses its voice, conscience and ability to hold politicians and the state accountable. In a country reeling from corruption, bad governance, gender and sexual abuse, high incidences of teenage pregnancy, police violence, poverty, ethnic marginalisation, inequality, ethnic tensions and the coronavirus pandemic, Kenya needs a clergy that can boldly speak up against the state and hold political leaders accountable even as they set a good example of moral leadership themselves. Kenya needs a new moral compass and consciousness, an alternative imagination from both citizens and religious leaders. But such leaders in Kenya today are few and far between; partisan politics always has its consequences, more so for the church leadership.

The Ruto factor in church can therefore be understood as a weakening of the structure of the church and the co-option of its leadership. Yet, it also speaks of the church’s lack of philosophical and theological tools to deal with such infiltration, a lack of ethical and moral underpinning to resist such an injudicious relationship. Yet I proffer that it is not too late for religious leaders to rethink their nebulous association with the political class and to re-engage the Kenyan people in their quest for social justice and human flourishing.

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.

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By Victor Ndula

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

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

The Building Bridges Initiative was birthed immediately after President Uhuru and Raila Odinga shook hands on 18 March 2018. Three years into the handshake, President Uhuru’s backyard has shunned the document and basically ignored the President’s pleas to support it. The exclusively ethnic meeting with the Kikuyu radio and television presenters and the Sagana State Lodge baraza were a concerted effort to bring the Kikuyu rank and file to his side.

Among the salient issues that were contained in the MPs’ 12-page letter, four stood out for me: “In Nyamakima, Gikomba, Kamukunji and on Taveta and Kirinyaga Roads, businesses have closed as besieged traders relocate to the rural areas to dress their wounds.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Njogu said Kikuyu hatred for President Uhuru had gone grassroots. “The angriest are those that voted for him twice in 2017. They cannot now believe that he’s wining and dining with Raila.” The mzee said that Kikuyus consider this to be the ultimate insult. “After poisoning them against Raila for such a long time and to now tell them that he’s the man they should work with was just mindboggling.”

Faced with the threat of being taken to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2012, Uhuru Kenyatta whipped up ethnic Kikuyus in a well-choreographed tribal mobilisation the likes of which had not been witnessed in modern Kenya. By election day on 4 March 2013, Kikuyus were so filled with anti-Raila venom that they could have died or killed for Uhuru. “Uhuru succeeded in dangerously balkanising the Kikuyus, telling them that Raila was planning to send him to the ICC once he takes over as President of Kenya,” said a lawyer from Kiambu County that I interviewed in 2012. That lawyer is one of the writers of the BBI (II) document that proposes a powerful presidency.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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The Last Bullet!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kenyatta fatigue

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

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

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

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

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

The garden path

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nested games

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

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

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

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

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

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

Raila’s isolation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Last Bullet!

By Victor Ndula

Kenya is in the throes of another agonised constitutional debate. Proponents of the new push for amendments argue that the time is right to cure deficiencies in the 2010 constitution. Yet that document is only a little over 10 years old, and followed a referendum that ushered in the most comprehensive constitutional reforms since independence in 1963. A look back in history helps us understand Kenya’s perennial quest for constitutional change.

In the colonial era, constitutional demands were led by white settlers who ruled over the African population. Africans had no rights to land or civil amenities. In 1907, Britain conceded to white settler demands and created the Legislative Council. It began as a nominated, exclusively European institution with no provision for natives. Eventually, it became an elected body and a white missionary was nominated as the first official member to represent the interests of the African community. African elites challenged the privilege of white missionaries speaking for Africans.

Policy changes followed. The government appointed Eliud Mathu the first “native” to the Legislative Council in 1944. His appointment gave birth to Kenya African Union, the predecessor of the independence ruling party, Kenya African National Union. In the 1950s, demands by African led to the Mau Mau War. The armed movement sprang up in protest over colonial land alienation, economic inequalities and political oppression under British rule. The organisation’s mobilisation forced further governance policy adjustments.

In 1960, 1962 and 1963 Britain organised three Lancaster House Constitutional Conferences to decide Kenya’s future. On 12 December 1963 Kenya finally became an independent state.

From then on in constitutional power play became a domestic affair as local power brokers competed against one another. This resulted in power-hungry politicians faulting existing structures and demanding changes to the constitution. This was the case at the outset of colonialism and is still the case in 21st Century post-colonial Kenya.

The current push for constitutional change is reminiscent of these earlier trends – it is all about competition for power among the country’s elite.

Moments of crisis

There have been three major phases to constitutional reform in post-colonial Kenya.

The first followed the death of Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s first president. The second revolved around the consolidation of power, and the survival, of the country’s second president Daniel arap Moi. The latest is to push to amend the 2010 constitution.

When Kenyatta began ailing, rival politicians engaged in constant mischief as they schemed to identify a suitable successor. Constitutional Affairs Minister Tom Mboya, who belonged to the ruling Kenya African National Union, ensured that the 1963 constitution sidelined his party-mate, Kenya’s first Vice-President Jaramogi Oginga Odinga in the succession line up.

Ruling party honchos then turned to infighting as the then Vice-President Daniel Moi, formerly the chairman of the opposition’s Kenya African Democratic Union, looked on. Moi began to see how he could use the wrangling to ascend to the presidency. His first opportunity came in 1968 when successful constitutional amendments ruled Mboya out of the succession picture.

The law stipulated that in the event the president died, the vice-president would take office for 90 days and then call an election. In addition, the president was granted powers of detention without trial, meaning that he could detain his opponents as he saw fit.

Moi’s second opportunity came in the 1970s when he himself was the target of proposed constitutional amendments. His proponents wanted to return to the previous formula. Moi outwitted them by forming alliances with influential players across the country. When he ascended to the presidency in August 1978, part of his control strategy was to constantly remind the public about how he foiled the amendments. That narrative ignored the successful constitutional change in 1968, of which he was the main beneficiary.

Moi’s survival amendments

Moi held the presidency for 24 years. Crafty in exploiting perceived weaknesses, his main constitutional concern was to consolidate his grip on power.

To secure his position, he engineered a constitutional amendment in June 1982 to make Kenya a one-party state. KANU was the “party”. This was the “Section 2A” amendment to the constitution the purpose of which was to stop the former vice-president Oginga Odinga from starting another political party.

A number of additional amendments were added, also designed to give Moi more power. These included the removal of tenure for constitutional office holders and an egregious amendment that replaced secret ballot at elections with voters lining up behind their candidate or agent at the 1988 elections.

These amendments backfired on the president, produced new national heroes, and eventually forced the repeal of Section 2A in December 1991 to pave way for the 1992 multiparty elections.

Following the repeal, the debate centred around Moi’s survival. In 1992, when he was still in control of Parliament, he took three far reaching steps. First, he introduced an amendment that required winning candidates to obtain 25% of votes cast in five of Kenya’s eight provinces. This made it difficult for any opposing candidate to win outright.

Second, he imposed a two-term limit for future presidents, just in case he lost. And third, he appointed retired judge and ally Zacchaeus Chesoni chairman of the electoral commission. Chesoni declared Moi the winner in the contested 1992 elections, despite the president garnering just 36% of the vote, and swore him in immediately probably to avoid court challenges.

After he won the 1992 election, Moi became preoccupied with repealing the two-term limit he had previously imposed. The period between 1993 and 1997 became charged with the constitution debate. This led to the formation of the Inter-Parliamentary Party Group, which committed to a review of the constitution after the 1997 election.

Two other groups had also emerged: the Ufungamano House group comprising religious leaders and civil society activists, and the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission, which was convened by Moi and opposition ally Raila Odinga, son of former vice-president Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.

Moi and Raila recruited lawyer Yash Pal Ghai who unified the review commission and Ufungamano initiatives, and together the two groups prepared a draft constitution. That draft became the basis of constitutional debate between 2003 and 2005. The debate culminated in the 2005 constitutional referendum. The draft was voted against, setting the stage for the chaotic 2007 elections.

Beyond 2007

The third post-colonial phase of constitution-making came about as a direct result of the 2007 election chaos.

What finally emerged was a grand coalition government between Raila Odinga and the incumbent Mwai Kibaki. The two finally agreed to a co-presidency with Kibaki as the president and Odinga in the new position of prime minister.

The co-presidency shepherded in the 2010 constitution because they were required to pass the new law as part of the national accord agreement that set up the grand coalition government.

But the document had many flaws which meant that its promulgation created new constitutional conflicts.

Ten years on and gyrations around Kenya’s constitution continue. The current drive for change is happening under the guise of the Building Bridges Initiative. This suggests that, once again, constitutional reform is being driven by political power agendas.

The changes that are likely to be effected will, therefore, not be the last because there always will be groups or individuals who will question the existing power structure. They are interested in grabbing power, not the effective functioning of constitutional structures in a state.

–

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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.

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The Last Bullet!

By Victor Ndula 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.

Follow us on Twitter.

The Last Bullet!

By Victor Ndula 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.

Follow us on Twitter.