Rebranding Al Shabaab

Nowhere to Run: How Urban Terrorism Is Impacting Nairobi’s Architecture and Public Spaces

By April Zhu

It is nearly impossible to go a single day in Nairobi without going through “security.” It is a part of the urban landscape. Surveillance cameras, sniffer dogs, metal detectors, and concrete walls are all meant to deter terrorists and petty criminals; they communicate fortification, even in grocery stores and gyms.

But the visual language of security is full of paradoxes; while the quasi-militarised architecture seeks to reassure the public that we are safe from attack, it simultaneously acknowledges that we are indeed under attack, and all the time – only one unpredictable, unfortunate moment away from siege.

Another paradox: we endorse these forms of security through our daily acquiescence, but at the same time acknowledge its superficiality. Each time a bored or underpaid guard waves a metal detector wand around us –ignoring the beeping sound – and glances through our bags, we tell ourselves that this the whole exercise is pointless. Yet few complain or change their behaviour. And terrorist attacks continue to happen. On 15 January, in 14 Riverside, which hosts the DusitD2 hotel and various commercial offices, a suicide bomber detonated himself at the Secret Garden Café. Other attackers forced their way through the single entrance using hand grenades and automatic weapons. Many victims were, tragically and fatefully, barricaded inside a “fortress.” While the vast majority of people trapped within the compound were rescued by private and state security forces, by the end of the siege, 21 people had been killed. Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack.

George Musamali, a security analyst and CEO of the security firm Executive Protection Services, argues that the method of terrorist attacks evolves following the path of least resistance and that Kenya’s security apparatus has failed to keep up with the terrorists. Airplane hijackings, for example, were more common until heightened airport security made them more difficult. Then, car bombings like the twin attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998, became more common. Musamali says that after that restrictions on acquiring and transporting large quantities of explosives made this type to terrorist attack more difficult.

Now, of all the attacks in Kenya that have been claimed by Al Shabaab since 2011, the majority have involved active shooters. In the case of 14 Riverside, the same provisions that would have protected people from a bomb blast may have sealed victims in. Musamali says, “If you look at the modus operandi of Al Shabaab, they force their way in. More measures being recommended are not being implemented, so that’s why you find it so easy for Al Shabaab to use the same method in 2015 as in 2019. They see no change in tactics.”

The 14 Riverside attack has reinvigorated valid concerns about the security of commercial complexes in Nairobi, as key gaps in security at 14 Riverside are replicated in many other malls and compounds throughout the country. Perhaps the question we need to ask is what security really means for the public. Until then, we will continue to be sniffed, scanned, patted – and let through.

Guards, gadgets and now guns

Nairobi has always been a city obsessed with insecurity and, as a result, its residents are accustomed to security and surveillance. Because Nairobi did not truly ever break out of its original colonial, race-segregated lines, it got a head start on the privatisation of “public” space in the name of “securing” it. Mike Davis, writing about Los Angeles in the 1980s, pointed out that “the universal consequence of the crusade to secure the city is the destruction of any truly democratic urban space…. The ‘public’ spaces of the new megastructures and supermalls have supplanted traditional streets and disciplined their spontaneity.” He could just as well be describing Nairobi.

A mosaic of fences and walls is designed to provide social insulation for upper class residents from the threat of the public poor. In this way, Nairobians have come to develop a peculiarly comfortable relationship with security apparatuses that would seem severe in other cities. Through perimeter walls, barbed wire, guards, and gates, Nairobi polices its social boundaries. “The fear of the criminal other has shaped Nairobi’s built form in profound ways,” writes anthropologist Constance Smith, “but has also led to a new architecture of desire and aspiration, influencing architectural aesthetics.” The security apparatus is not only an extension of fear, but also a marker of aspiration. Because the public is so inured to life behind high walls and barbed wire (or outside of them) – in contrast with other cities where “the right to the street” is taken for granted – in Nairobi the extraordinary ubiquity of security is tolerated. It is more important that security is seen rather than guaranteed. Security consultant Andrew Franklin criticises what he calls the “industry of fear,” which is the market’s response to urban terrorism: “guards, gadgets, and now guns.” If this were not the case, perhaps there would be more investment in tactics that are less visible but equally effective.

For a mall, the bulk of the work in detecting and preventing a terror attack is painfully mundane. It is unglamorous, says Franklin, like examining food delivery boda bodas that move in and out of compounds, often unchecked. Or scanning deliveries that come in before dawn and get loaded in the morning. Franklin suggests that at least some of the ammunition used at the 14 Riverside attack was already within the compound – an insight echoed by other analysts with whom I spoke – indicating large gaps in security that have nothing to do with what people see when they enter and exit every day.

Because the public is so inured to life behind high walls and barbed wire (or outside of them) – in contrast with other cities where “the right to the street” is taken for granted – in Nairobi the extraordinary ubiquity of security is tolerated. It is more important that security is seen rather than guaranteed.

Another important but undervalued tool is counter-surveillance. Musamali recommends that malls, in addition to hiring trained observers to monitor suspicious activity, should also equip tenants with specialised observation skills. In London, for example, the city combatted terrorist attacks by the Irish Republican Army in part by training ordinary people to spot and flag behaviours that mark intention to plan a terror attack.

Locked city

Sometimes, in addition to being inconvenient, the architecture of security may actually compromise security. With its single entry point, the design of the 14 Riverside complex may have jeopardised the lives of those inside. One independent security analyst I spoke to (who chose to remain anonymous) said that there were originally meant to be twelve attackers at 14 Riverside. “Logistics made it difficult for the other to pursue. One group was supposed to actively engage in killing of hostages and the other six were supposed to engage the responders,” he said. “The other team did not arrive on time. [14 Riverside] only has one entrance. It could have been devastating.”

The former analyst added that he knew the independent security company that previously completed a security assessment at 14 Riverside. Because the compound was originally intended to be only an office space, he said, there were additional recommendations the security company made to accommodate the presence of a hotel. Those suggestions were not heeded.

“We’re living in a concrete city where everyone has locked themselves in,” says Musamali. “If someone manages to break your access control, compromise it, and get in, then you definitely have given them easy targets because people do not have escape routes.” Indeed, there is no legal obligation for building managements to achieve a certain standard of security, and those that do exist are seldom enforced. For example, the Occupational Safety and Health Act (2007) requires that all employers ensure that their employees are familiar with fire escape routes. Nevertheless, fire drills are few and far between. In the case of 14 Riverside, not all who were trapped within the building knew of or were able to access the small pedestrian walkway in the rear.

Furthermore, and equally disturbing, there are scant standards or guidelines for private security companies in Nairobi. Byron Adera, a pioneer Kenya Special Forces officer and security consultant, says that mediocrity runs throughout the sector: “You see different uniforms, different malls, but it’s the same kind of searching that is done. They’ve got a wand in their hands, and they sweep you without asking questions if it beeps.”

To fill the void in industry standards, Adera and other former military personnel have formed the Association of Corporate and Industrial Security Management Professionals, an organisation that liaises with the government, security providers, building managements, and other stakeholders to develop and enforce standards for security providers.

But, even if there are standards of quality for security provision, there is no obligation for mall managements to invest in it—and, perhaps worryingly, little financial incentive to do so. Previously, the (anonymous) analyst had been approached by the management of a well-known mall in Westlands to run a security audit, but, after quoting the cost of his services, the management decided not to move forward, citing cost. “The management of these properties only look at the bottom line,” he said. “They don’t look at other factors.”

In other countries, it is understood that the intention of terrorists is to make crowded spaces “empty” – to terrorise the public into retreating inwards in fear. But in Nairobi, where inclusive, truly public spaces have long been “designed” out, where the attack happened in one of the most insulated, formidable-looking, closed-off, “safest” places, the horror of urban terror attacks runs deeper.

On 4 February 2019, the U.S. Embassy issued a warning to its citizens to avoid areas frequented by tourists and foreigners, as there was risk of another terror attack. The risk will not wane. For the first time, for the city’s walled-off elites, there are no “safe zones” left. Not only are the trappings of security to which we comply daily ineffective but they are perhaps the very thing which makes us targets.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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

By April Zhu

On Thursday, January 24, Felix Tshisekedi became the fifth president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Like many others in the region’s recent history, his was a contested victory, its legitimacy marred by suspicion regarding a range of issues throughout the electoral cycle, as well as by damning evidence that his main competitor, Martin Fayulu, another opposition candidate, was the true victor.

Tshisekedi’s inauguration, delayed for three days as controversy over the legitimacy of the results raged, was notable for significant gaps in attendance. The powerful Catholic Church, whose observers disputed the legitimacy of Tshisekedi’s victory, was absent. Representatives of Fayulu’s coalition also declined to be present. The European Union merely “noted” the result, and the African Union, usually reluctant to express any serious disagreement with members’ official results, also declined to congratulate Tshisekedi.

There was one foreign dignitary there, though: Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta. His lone presence was striking, a vivid reminder of the contention that has marked all four of the elections in which he has participated. Indeed, from his vantage point in the audience, President Kenyatta may have experienced a case of déjà vu. It is, after all, difficult to look past the multiple similarities that marred both of the most recent Congolese and Kenyan election cycles.

In addition to a slew of irregularities in the lead-up to election day, civil society and opposition candidates in both countries provided hard evidence of important variations between official announced outcomes and what had been shown to the public. In both cases, electoral victories did not correspond to election results.

It is now possible to “win” elections without garnering the most votes; democratic elections have given way to electoral coups.

Hope deferred

The most recent Congolese and Kenyan electoral cycles began in a charged atmosphere, alive with hope and anticipation of change. In the DRC, the 2018 election was a long-awaited milestone: it marked the end of Joseph Kabila’s 18-year rule and was a first chance for the transfer of political power through democratic means. Despite ongoing violence and instability in some parts of the country, as well as Kabila’s moves to ensure his continued influence the country’s politics, citizens were highly engaged. In fact, the Catholic Church (CENCO) mobilised and deployed more than 40,000 observers around the country in a rigorous observation exercise.

Vibrant campaigns were also inspiring, and two of the three leading candidates were opposition figures. Two days before the election, one of them – Martin Fayulu – was polling with 47 per cent of voters’ support, almost double that of the next most popular candidate, opposition candidate Felix Tshisekedi. New York University’s Congo Research Group described the results as indicative of an electorate “eager for change.”

In 2017, Kenya’s citizens were similarly hopeful. Months of street protests, civil society advocacy campaigns, court battles and a joint parliamentary review of electoral administration had reformed significant parts of the electoral process. In fact, hard-won, new leadership at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), more fully integrated biometric voter registration and identification kits, rules requiring the IEBC to honour polling station-level results, and the creation of an online portal promising to show results forms in real time had renewed public faith in the credibility of the electoral process.

In both contexts, though, hope quickly eroded as it became clear that key parts of the electoral cycle had been taken over by power-hungry elites who used the trappings of elections to engineer their own “victories”.

State violence

Although a broad array of technical irregularities contributed to low electoral integrity in the DRC and Kenya, it is critical to remember that the state’s use of violence to intimidate, threaten and silence the public’s questioning and criticism exerted an insidious influence over the entirety of both processes. In Kenya, the violent repression of peaceful protesters began as early as 2016, when security forces descended on anti-IEBC demonstrators. In 2017, the electoral cycle was bloodily punctuated by incidents that included the murder of infants and violent house-to-house operations in opposition areas.

In the DRC, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern over reports of the state’s use of excessive force, including live bullets, against opposition rallies. Human Rights Watch also reported the state’s use of arbitrary detention of opposition party activists, the firing of teargas and live ammunition to break up largely peaceful opposition rallies, and the closing of an international border to prevent a presidential aspirant from filing candidacy papers. Six months before election day, ongoing repression prompted the Catholic Church to write to the African Union. Its letter described “a crisis of confidence” in the electoral process.

The use of state-sanctioned violence indicated the authorities’ complete unwillingness to engage with the people; it was clear that elections would not be fair.

Voter registration

It was clear from early on in the process that something was amiss. In fact, registration processes in both countries revealed how deeply problematic political and logistical contexts – both of which presented significant challenges to inclusive processes – cast an early pall on the legitimacy of elections. In the DRC, rebel groups attacked DRC electoral commission (CENI) officials and attempted to prevent certain groups from registering. CENI itself was accused of incompetence, discriminating against certain ethnic groups, and accepting bribes in return for illegal registrations. In Kenya, certain minorities described their struggles to obtain the national identity cards that are necessary for voter registration, a process which has taken some individuals upwards of five years. Research revealed that “special vetting procedures,” which essentially ensured that IDs would not be processed, are discriminatorily applied to ethnic minorities. Registration was also marred by the continued use of the much-maligned “green book” and an audit that used sub-standard methodology and that failed to make its full report publicly accessible.

When the final voters’ rolls were released, there were more problems. In the DRC, an audit of the voter register revealed that the records of more than 6.5 million voters (16.6 per cent) lacked all ten fingerprints. It was reminiscent of the 2013 Kenyan election, when a “special list” of approximately 36,000 registered voters, also lacking fingerprints, appeared during the Supreme Court trial challenging the integrity of the election. In both cases, the election commission had failed to be forthright about the existence of such lists. In the DRC, five political parties demanded that voters lacking fingerprints be removed from the rolls altogether; protesters agreed. In 2017, the Kenyan voter register was similarly contentious, marked by the presence of, for example, more than a million records of deceased voters, thousands of incorrect records, and tens of thousands of duplicate records.

The courts

The Congolese and Kenyan processes both concluded with court cases challenging election results, and in both cases there was suspicion of serious executive interference. In the DRC, the Constitutional Court, made up of Kabila’s close allies, dismissed Fayulu’s petition as “unfounded” and claimed that it had failed to prove any inaccuracies in the results. The Court’s ruling was made in spite of widely reported evidence that Fayulu had won 60 per cent of the vote.

When the final voters’ roll was released, there were problems. In the DRC, an audit of the voter register revealed that the records of more than 6.5 million voters (16.6 per cent) lacked all ten fingerprints. It was reminiscent of the 2013 Kenyan election, when a “special list” of approximately 36,000 registered voters, also lacking fingerprints, appeared during the Supreme Court trial challenging the integrity of the election.

In Kenya, the Supreme Court boldly nullified the results of the August election. Its decision hinged on evidence of fraudulent forms and the IEBC’s refusal to comply with court orders that it open its servers for inspection. Although the petitioners in the October repeat election case also demonstrated evidence of irregular forms and differences between the IEBC’s “official” results and what the Commission had posted on the public portal, the Supreme Court ruled that there was insufficient evidence.

This ruling came after President Kenyatta made his intentions with regard to the Court clear. In fact, in the aftermath of the nullification, he publicly referred to the judges as “crooks” and promised to “revisit” the judiciary. Insecurity heightened days before the fresh election in October, when Deputy Chief Justice Mwilu’s driver was shot and seriously wounded. One day before the election, Chief Justice David Maraga announced that the Court, which had failed to achieve quorum, would be unable to hear a case that sought to postpone the elections.

By exerting influence over the judiciary, the state not only protected certain elites’ victories, it also controlled the narrative, establishing a certain amount of legitimacy around what would otherwise be a questionable result at best.

Equipment

The use of electoral technology also tainted both elections. In the case of Kenya, post-election investigations have made it clear that technology was little more than a tool for elites’ personal enrichment. Procurement scandals tainted the reliability of the equipment as well as its immunity to external hacking and interference. The reliability of digital systems became even more doubtful when, days before the August election, the IEBC’s head of IT was found murdered; his case has yet to be solved. Indeed, it was unsurprising when the electronic results transmission failed – just as it had in 2013 – and the IEBC once again turned to the manual collection of more than 40,000 paper forms from around the country.

In the DRC, voters were also suspicious of technology. In fact, public protests called for authorities to abort the idea. Days before the election, a fire destroyed 70 per cent of the machines slated to be used in Kinshasa; authorities suspected arson. CENI’s decision to use such technology, especially in light of poor infrastructure to support it, was questionable. In Kenya, the IEBC even attempted (unsuccessfully) to justify its abandonment of the results transmission system by claiming that the lack of 3G connectivity in some locations made it impossible for the system to work.

What has become apparent is that technology, while claiming to increase the credibility of elections, actually does more to build a wall between electoral processes and the voters. In fact, the complexity of digital systems makes them inherently inaccessible to the average voter. It is thus easier for manipulation to occur and go undetected.

Voting and results

Kenya and the DRC also restricted voting altogether for some citizens. In the DRC, roughly 1.2 million voters in three opposition strongholds were barred from casting their ballots because of health risks and security threats. In Kenya, voting in the October presidential election was first postponed and then cancelled altogether in 27 constituencies; nine per cent of registered voters were thus disenfranchised.

The last straw in both cases, however, was the state of the results. In the DRC, the powerful Catholic Church deployed more than 40,000 observers to polling stations across the country and found that election day was marred by the delayed opening of polling stations, the establishing of stations in prohibited areas, and problems with voting machines. It also scrutinised results forms, finding that Fayulu won 60 per cent of the vote, making him the clear victor. The African Union and the European Union both “noted” Tshisekedi’s apparent victory, pointedly choosing to withhold any congratulations.

Kenya’s domestic observers also found multiple problems on the day of the election—in August and in October — including delayed opening of polling stations, insufficient materials in the stations, violence, malfunctioning voter identification kits, and problems with reliability of the voter register. These issues were compounded by evidence of highly questionably polling station forms, which were rife with errors. Forms featured mathematical inconsistencies, missing information, altered figures, the lack of IEBC signatures, and irregular printing. In fact, petitioners’ scrutiny of October results forms revealed that the IEBC’s “official” forms differed from forms that had been posted on the public portal and submitted to petitions as part of the Supreme Court case. Although these problems were sufficient for the Court to nullify the August elections, the Court ruled that there was insufficient evidence to annul the October polls.

Clearly, results have little value anymore.

Reclaiming elections

It is time for citizens to reclaim elections and the democratic power that comes through the polls. For far too long, the state has been in control of a process that is, at its heart, about the people.

First, it is critical for voters to demand some basic minimum standards of election administration. This begins with a clear and verifiable record of results. In Kenya, the IEBC has failed to publish polling station-level results for any of the elections it has overseen, leaving the public without the means to analyse, understand, and validate their own votes. In the DRC, CENI has to yet to publish polling station-level results.

Election results go hand in hand with voter registration details. In the aftermath of the August election, Kenya’s IEBC announced voter registration totals that differed from the officially gazetted totals; civil society questions about the differences remain unanswered. In the aftermath of the October repeat election, a summation of the county-level numbers of registered voters again showed differences. Public demands for greater transparency should start here; resulting questions and clarification will reveal the way forward in terms of urgent reforms.

Second, a re-engaged citizenry should think deeply about what elections mean and how to modify laws and practice to shape polls into participatory, meaningful exercises. This kind of evaluation begins with and is based upon the premise that elections are not a privilege; they are universal rights and it is the state’s duty to facilitate voters’ access to and participation in them. It is time for citizens to reclaim elections and the democratic power that comes through the polls. For far too long, the state has been in control of a process that is, at its heart, about the people.

If voters understand elections as public services, as part of what governments owe their citizens, they may understand the importance of rethinking the status quo. This means questioning the very nature of political interaction. Elections do not have to be divisive, dangerous affairs that include “zoning,” hate speech and highly unequal playing fields. In fact, a shift away from the first-past-the post could incentivise and encourage politicians to broaden their support bases and adopt more moderate political platforms. In the long term, such a system could help bring voters on extreme ends of political divides closer together.

Third, citizens should demand more from their elected representatives. In an age of advanced digital technology and increasingly diverse ways of being in touch, the public may be able to interact with representatives on a more regular basis, questioning decisions and tracking things like parliamentary voting patterns. Such tools could enhance accountability and arm voters with better information for their future voting decisions. Widespread use of such tools could also result in more policy-oriented parties.

Finally, citizens can and should be proactive about claiming their space throughout the electoral process. This may involve watching and questioning things like boundary delimitation, voter registration and decisions about the use of technology. The more questions people raise over time, the greater the chances that electoral processes will become easier to understand and more transparent.

Votes matter; it’s time to make sure that results do, too.

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.

Nowhere to Run: How Urban Terrorism Is Impacting Nairobi’s Architecture and Public Spaces

By April Zhu

In the last several months, students in Kenyan universities have been involved in translating the amendments of the University Act into their student body constitutions. The amended Act requires student councils to be voted in not by all the students, but by electoral college representatives elected by the students.

The amendments to the University Act, and their protection by the High Court following the legal appeal by some student leaders, are a serious blow to constitutionality in Kenya. The need for university students to entrench these undemocratic requirements into their constitutions is the opposite of the path that led to the 2010 constitution. Unlike the constitution that was the fruit of struggles for freedom, the Kenyan university students are being forced by law to deny themselves their own constitutional rights.

The anti-democratic roots of electoral colleges

The amendments to the Universities Act in 2016 were made by then Education Cabinet Secretary, Fred Matiang’I, as a way to rein in the multiple and chaotic terms of office in the Students Organisation of Nairobi University (Sonu) held by Fred Ogili, commonly known Babu Owino. But rather than simply limit the terms of office of student officials, Matiang’i made one draconian addition. He drafted a law that required university student councils to be chosen by electoral colleges, rather than by direct popular vote.

There are at least two disturbing implications of the amended Universities Act. First, the Kenya Parliament passed a law not on principle, but to prevent a single man from running for office. Laws are supposed to be written for the public good, not to target a single individual. This is a bad precedent, with snowballing effects already simmering with the recent proposal to amend the country’s constitution based on the failed presidential ambitions of a single candidate. Rather than deal with the political, managerial and root causes of the crisis in university student politics, the country’s legislators chose to pass a law that, as the African proverb says, burns down a whole house to catch a single rat. It is because of the abuse of the students by Babu Owino and other university student leaders that legislators have now written a law that denies students a say in how they are governed.

The second, and more disturbing aspect, of the amendments was the recourse to electoral colleges – a system that is rooted in racist slavery in the United States, and which has led to the absurdity of American presidents who do not win the popular vote. The most recent case is that of the current president Donald Trump who won the presidency but received 3 million votes less than Hillary Clinton.

Rather than deal with the political, managerial and root causes of the crisis in university student politics, the country’s legislators chose to pass a law that, as the African proverb says, burns down a whole house to catch a single rat. It is because of the abuse of the students by Babu Owino and other university student leaders that legislators have now written a law that denies students a say in how they are governed.

Rooted in slavery

Electoral colleges were created by the founding fathers of the United States as a bargain between the northern, more populated states, and the southern slave-holding states. During the constitutional conventions in 1787, the delegates realised that if the president was to be elected by popular vote, meaning including votes from slaves, it would present a political problem for whites, because the slaves would choose their own candidate, which the white men in power could not allow.

In response, then, the suggestion was that voting should be limited to “free people”, meaning that only whites would vote. However, the southern states opposed that suggestion because in many of the states, slaves were a huge size of the population, sometimes even more than the whites. That meant that the northern states, which had a larger white population, would always dictate who would win the presidency. So southern states wanted to exploit the numbers of black people for electoral mileage, but without giving them an equal political voice.

In order to resolve the stalemate, the states reached what is known as the “three-fifths compromise”. The compromise would decide representation by counting the slave population as three-fifths of its actual size.

Electoral colleges are, therefore, by design, intended to limit the voice of actual people. Electoral colleges exploit the numbers of people without allowing the same people to have an equal say in how they are governed, which continues in the United States to this day. Indeed, American legal historian Paul Finkelman was right to say that the electoral college is “the last legacy of slavery in the US constitution that is still affecting our political lives”.

It is clear then that the intention of the Kenya government in requiring electoral colleges was to limit the voices of the students while giving students the illusion of having a say in how universities are governed. This conclusion raises two questions. Should student elections matter anyway? And, why did the High Court decline the appeal by students against the amended law?

Why do student elections matter?

One uncomfortable truth for university administrations, not just national governments, is that students do have an impact on how a country is governed. Many of the anti-colonial freedom fighters, like Frantz Fanon and South Africa’s Steve Biko, fought against racist oppression as university students. In the United States, it was black university students’ struggles that were a major pillar of the civil rights and black power movements, and that led to the introduction of African and African American studies in US universities.

Because university students have such an important national voice, how they conduct their affairs has implications for the nation’s future. In her article on the Universities Act, Nerima Wako-Ojiwa, one of Kenya’s important youth voices, reminded us that “for whatever happens in our universities, it is only a matter of time before it comes into national politics”. Therefore, if we want democracy and good governance in Kenya, universities must be places where students model what they envision for the rest of society.

Wako-Ojiwa is justified in seeing the curtailing of democracy in student elections as a preparation of the youth for the proposed amendment to Kenya’s constitution to have a parliamentary system, where the head of government is chosen not by the people, but by their representatives. Both the parliamentary system and the electoral colleges allow politicians to negotiate and play around with numbers while not consulting the people, and at the same time give the people the illusion that their opinion matters.

In other words, the amendments to the University Act are designed to not only disenfranchise students, but also to prepare the youth for the same disenfranchisement in their larger public life. It is, therefore, very sad that the first attempt of this generation at constitution-making is an exercise in putting shackles on themselves. This process is not only anti-constitutional; it is at its very essence anti-human.

But the second disenfranchising element of the electoral colleges is that they make manipulation of student elections even easier, rather than more difficult. Once the electoral college representatives are chosen, the representatives can sell their vote to the highest bidder running for office, or the candidate’s godparent. It will also mean that unscrupulous deals and negotiating will become more rampant as students seeking office or administrations seeking to manipulate the vote have fewer students to appeal to.

The legal challenge

That said, university students did challenge the anti-constitutional amendments in court. On January 24, 2017, a number of students, led by Were Samuel, argued before the High Court that the amendments were made without adequate public participation, and that the amendments violated the students’ right to vote, as enshrined in Article 38.

The government responded with a dubious argument that the amendments were made necessary by the violence and manipulation of student elections by politicians. However, as I’ve already noted, electoral colleges make the problem worse, because with electoral college representatives, there are fewer students to bribe more or manipulate in choosing the student council. But the bigger problem is the principle of the government’s argument, which is that it is necessary to curb electoral malpractice by limiting students’ rights even further.

Perhaps the joke of the government’s response was in what constituted public participation. A mistake which the government made, and which it repeatedly makes, is to equate public participation with consulting stakeholders. Public participation should be defined as seeking the views and input of the people who will be most affected by a policy or law, in this case, the students. Stakeholder consultation, its neoliberal substitute, is not the equivalent of public participation, because stakeholders are the people whose profits and power are affected by the law or policy, unlike the public which is the people whose lives are directly affected by that law or policy.

Indeed, the government’s evidence of public participation reads like a who’s who list of people with an interest in suppressing the democratic voice of students, namely employers, government and university administrations. According to government affidavits cited by the High Court, the stakeholders called to a workshop were the Association of Professional Societies of East Africa, the Commission of Higher Education, the Federation of Kenya Employers, the Kenya Private Sector Alliance, the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS), the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB), vice chancellors of public and private universities and principals of university colleges.

Sadly, the High Court accepted that this list of “stakeholders,” and an announcement in the Daily Nation of 25th February 2016 by the National Assembly, were reasonable effort in involving the public in discussing the amendments. The Court also agreed with the government that the inclusion of the two-thirds gender clause in the rules on student elections was enough proof that the elections were, in fact, more democratic than the previous system of student elections. It is ironic that the gender clause was used as evidence of democracy in universities, while Parliament is yet to implement the same clause.

Although the Court argued that public participation should meet a certain level of reasonableness, it is amazing that the counsel for the students argued that the stakeholder workshop and a single announcement in a newspaper hardly constitute reasonableness. Since the government knew that the primary affected constituency is the students, it should have required, at the very least, that the university administrations announce the discussions of the amendments to their entire student bodies. Sending letters to vice chancellors’ offices, with no requirement for dissemination of the information, is a cynical wink at university administrations to keep students in the dark and deny them participation in a law that so directly affected them. The decent thing for the government and university bodies to have done would have been to actually visit some of the universities and have town hall discussions with the students. Instead, they met with fellow stakeholders in a workshop. Probably in a hotel.

Sadly, the High Court accepted a list of “stakeholders,” and a single press announcement by the National Assembly as reasonable effort in involving the public in discussing the amendments. The Court also agreed with the government that the inclusion of the two-thirds gender clause in the rules on student elections was enough proof that the elections were, in fact, more democratic than the previous system of student elections.

All in all, the amendments to the Universities Act, and the requirement for students to abide by them, is a sad testament of how the older generation continues to undermine our youth’s opportunities to fully exercise their rights as citizens. The height of cynicism is to require students to write and promulgate a constitution which denies themselves their own rights.

The struggle must continue

I hope that in the near future, a more robust case challenging the amendments to the University Act will be presented that will leave the courts no option but to declare the amendments unconstitutional, because accepting this disenfranchisement of our youth will eventually evolve into the wider disenfranchisement of the Kenyan people.

Until then, students will have to employ their creativity to find ways to ensure that their voices remain heard. The current Universities Act negates the struggles that led us to the constitution which the Kenyan people promulgated after decades of struggle, blood, sweat and tears. And worse, it reifies the painful legacy of slavery that still haunts Africa and her descendants in the world’s most powerful country.

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.

Nowhere to Run: How Urban Terrorism Is Impacting Nairobi’s Architecture and Public Spaces

By April Zhu It is that time of the year when the Auditor General’s annual report, released at the end of December, is drip-fed to Ugandans, query by query. The majority of the population will only ever know headlines such as “Uganda’s Public Debt Worrying”. Along with the news that Uganda’s public debt has risen by 22 per cent, the latest report carried the first official confirmation that the country’s sovereignty has been put at risk by the terms and conditions of some loans. These two alarming pieces of information received minimal response from the public.

What did not make the news was that significant amounts of the petroleum fund set aside for infrastructure development is being used instead to fund the recurrent budget (wages, consumables, transport etc.) amounting to UGX.125.3 billion ($34,137,671).

Revenues receivable from oil developers amounting to UGX 12,877,415,932 ($3,508,073), have not been collected. A number of other entities have failed to collect monies due to them and it is possible the receivables have been diverted. Outstanding Receivables

There is a real risk of loan default given that borrowing and on-lending to parastatals has increased by 975 per cent, from UGX 431 billion ($117,409,571) in 2015/16 to UGX 4,634 billion ($1,262,612,871) in 2017/18 even as parastatals continue to fail to repay earlier loans. Parastatals have traditionally been conduits for public funds in to private hands.

The debt to revenue ratio is now 54%, the highest in the region and projected to rise to 65% in 2020 when some loans expire. Historically, nothing above 40 per cent debt to revenue ratio has been sustainable. Interest payments as a percentage of revenue collection, at 17 per cent, are also above the accepted threshold of 15 per cent. The AG first flagged unsustainable interest payments in 2016 when they were still at 16 per cent of revenues.

Other areas of deterioration in financial management reported are: a rise in contingent liabilities (including potential court awards) to UGX 9.4 trillion ($2,560,731) from UGX 7.5 trillion ($2,043,187) a year ago; unpaid court awards and compensation against the government have risen to UGX 655 billion, from UGX 648 billion ($176,509,616) in 2017. Interest on a section of judgment debts is UGX 124 billion ($33,790,210). Yet awards made in favour of the government amounting to UGX 20.6 billion ($5,611,883) have not been collected.

The country has continued to fall short of the amounts it is required to contribute to donor-aided projects. In 2017, the shortfall was UGX 43 billion ($11,714,056) and rose to UGX 1.6 trillion ($435,891,546) in 2018.

The Youth Livelihood Programme attracted more attention than the debt situation, with its salacious details involving revolving loans being made to youth groups, 67 per cent of which do not exist. A small minority will find out from Twitter that 79,000 army veterans haven’t been paid their pension and gratuity arrears worth UGX 500 billion ($136,211,575) or that UGX 65.6 billion ($17,843,484) was released by the Treasury for pensions but was returned after the recipients could not be verified or were being deliberately frustrated by ministries, departments, agencies and local governments. (The latter is more likely. This writer was involved in arm-wrestling the Education Service Commission and the Ministry of Education for an elderly friend’s gratuity. A Ministry of Education official demanded an unspecified “share”; it was denied to him, and so the gratuity was not paid.)

The full report will come into its own with daily television coverage later in the year when the Parliament Accounts Committee (PAC) gets round to debating it. There will be further scrutiny if and when COSASE, Parliament’s committee on commissions, statutory authorities and state enterprises, debates its management. COSASE might spend some time trying to understand why out of the 11 public enterprises in which the government has invested UGX 70 billion ($19,067,642) only Kalangala Infrastucture Services is operational. KIS first came up for mention by the AG in 2016 when it was discovered that it had been paid UGX 16 billion ($4,358,994) to run two ferries between Ssesse Islands and the mainland while the nine other ferries countrywide were operated on a combined total of UGX 10 billion ($2,724,196). The AG pointed out that a new ferry can be acquired for UGX 14 billion ($3,813,865). KIS has never declared profits since the project began in 2012.

All except two of the government’s non-operational commercial enterprises are in the agricultural sector and were designed to transform smallholdings into commercially viable farms (See the State of the Nation Address 2018), fruit and sugar factories and tea factories and growers.

Non-operational Projects. Source: Auditor General’s Report, December 2018

This should come as no surprise given that the AG had earlier warned against these investments made without strategic plans or feasibility studies;

Lack of guidelines for strategic investments

“The government, through the Uganda Development Corporation, is undertaking investments countrywide in the areas of fruit processing and helping others to set up industries in Soroti, Luwero, Kabale and Kisoro districts. These investments cumulatively amounted to UGX 26.6 billion ($7,246,598). However, I noted that there was no policy to guide the establishment of these investments.” The Auditor General’s report of 2016 also shows that some of the investments have been undertaken without feasibility studies on marketability and commercial viability.” (Auditor General, 2018)

The competence of parliament and the general public to oversee public expenditure is also in issue. Kira Motor Corporation (KMC), recently in the news for test-driving a car supposedly made in Uganda, was audited and is listed as non-operational in 2018.

It was only noticed when in February 2019 a parliamentary committee visited KMC and found that the plant does not exist. Where foundations and scaffolding worth UGX 15 billion ($4,087,095) had been expected, there was only bush. Like other presidential initiatives announced to fanfare and outside the NDP, KMC is being revealed as a scheme for gaining access to Treasury funds that have been embezzled.

Nugatory expenditure is a useful indicator of competence in the public service. The AG defines it as avoidable and therefore wasteful “expenditure that does not achieve any result”. In 2017 UGX 2.74 billion ($746,508) was wasted on “delayed settlements of obligations arising from contracts for construction services, court awards.” In 2018, the Ministries of Water and Education lost UGX 1.6 billion ($435,900) on “interest charges including on interest on delayed payments, litigation costs for wrongful termination of contracts and refund of embezzled funds”.

Masked corruption

However, the details are no longer important and not many more can be taken in by an exhausted polity. It is more productive for Ugandans to focus on the underlying incompetence in public administration that gives rise to audit queries such as these and to devise means of increasing public oversight of the Treasury. Some audit queries arise out of incapacity but most mask corruption.

Take wetland management. It has been government policy for at least a decade to halt encroachment on wetlands. The reasons are both to prevent environmental degradation and to maintain access for communities that derive livelihoods from them. The Wetland Management Department has not updated the inventory of wetlands since 2000; they are neither demarcated nor gazetted. This omission is convenient for those who acquired illegal title in the wetlands in anticipation of the planned standard gauge railway and the compensation that would have to be paid for them being vacated. In 2017 the National Environment Management Authority announced that the titles were to be cancelled. In 2018, the AG found that the cancellation exercise was not funded and therefore did not take place.

The target of restoring 12 per cent of destroyed wetlands by 2020 is unlikely to be met. Degradation of the wetlands outpaces restoration, with only 0.3 per cent of the targeted restorations having been implemented.

Furthermore, it has been found that reclaiming wetlands as part of irrigation schemes has led to enclosure of the irrigated land and exclusion of the local populations dependent on them for their survival. Land management generally is in similar straits with two million hectares belonging to the police, prisons and Ministry of Agriculture encroached upon. At the time of writing a massive tract of wetland is being filled with earth on the Bombo Road – a highly visible highway leading north out of Kampala. The public is mystified.

Thirty-four per cent of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) and local governments are understaffed. The level in 2016 was more or less the same – 119 local governments were understaffed by over 40 per cent. “This affects service delivery as a majority of these are critical jobs like doctors, clinical officers, Professors, Commissioners.” (Auditor General). The most affected are public universities and local governments. Following[1] is a sector by sector list of audit findings for MDAs highlighting the understaffing and other difficulties they face.

Then there is the usual corruption, such as the case of six officials in Apac District receiving over UGX 2 billion ($544,883) without supporting documents; financial controls are still being overridden because the twenty-year-old IFMIS has still not been rolled out country-wide. Where it does operate, controls have been by-passed to allow UGX 369 billion ($100,531,084) in expenditure not related to the relevant budget line (up from 168 billion in 2016), unaccounted for expenditure of 21.7 billion ($5,912,119) and nugatory expenditure of 66.9 billion ($18,226,765). Undisclosed arrears, which may or may not be genuine, amount to UGX 377 billion ($102,707,560). Overall responsibility must be ascribed to the top leadership of the public service, the planning departments of the Ministry of Finance, line ministries and local governments. Unfortunately, that is where the largest gaps exist between expected services and outcomes.

In 2016, a large number of MDAs failed to submit strategic plans “as a result most sector plans and targets are not aligned with the National Development Plan (NDP) and assessing service delivery and level of implementation of the NDP is difficult without service delivery standards and regular interviews.”

Low debt absorption is understandable now that it is clear that money is borrowed without plans. In 2016, UGX 18 trillion ($4,903,604,818) was committed but was not disbursed. The Treasury paid UGX 20 billion ($5,448,388) in wasted commitment fees for those loans. In 2018, the trend continued; municipal councils under the Uganda Support for Municipal Infrastructure Development failed to utilise UGX 95,006,243,857 ($25,881,547) while the project support unit did not utilize UGX 6,722,829,229 ($1,831,386). This occurred against the background of “various incomplete and abandoned works due to non-payment of contractors. Work on Mbarara-Nkenda and Tororo-Lira transmission lines was delayed for almost 8 years resulting into cancellation of the loan by the funder with an undisbursed loan amount of USD 6.5m”.

The same loan was audited in 2016 when the unabsorbed amount was UGX 94.783 billion. Officials at that time attributed the failure to a lack of specialised staff (understaffing), which in turn limited their capacity to procure specialised equipment, such as for land surveys.

A minor but interesting detail is that 115 properties under the management of the Departed Asian Custodian Board (DAPCB) have been repossessed by their former owners who were compensated for these properties in 1999. These properties may be lost to the State once the winding up of the DAPCB is complete.

Class action suits

Returning to the issue of an appropriate response to the Auditor General’s findings, the aggrieved have a number of options. The most promising would be to file class action suits for negligence and any losses consequent upon that, be they avoidable deaths in hospital or those caused by bad roads.

Where funds have been available and commitments made, the failure to transmit electricity for eight years and resulting loss of industrial capacity and simple comfort of the affected population is similarly actionable. Nugatory expenditure is actionable in its own right but various communities can demonstrate in lawsuits how it has adversely affected them and obtain compensation.

It is the right of affected populations to petition the Ombudsman, individual MPs, as well as COSASE. If they appear toothless, it may be because the public they represent has abdicated responsibility for the economy.

[1] ANNEXURE II: SUMMARY ENTITY FINDINGS OF MDAS Table 2.1 Adverse Opinions 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.

Nowhere to Run: How Urban Terrorism Is Impacting Nairobi’s Architecture and Public Spaces

By April Zhu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every time there is a shift in the political relations at the national level, between the Kikuyu and Kalenjin elites, every time these elites engage in a public spat, the Kalenjin people of the greater Rift Valley allude to foreigners among them who should be ejected To replace the departing Kalenjins, the colonial government brought in the Kikuyus from Central Kenya to work in the settler farms arguing that the agrarian, sedentary Kikuyus were hardworking and attuned to plant cultivation, unlike the “lazy” pastoralist Kalenjin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the South Rift, largely composed of the Kipsigis, Kalenjin’s biggest dialect, a simmering anger of volcanic proportions is going on, brought about by the eviction of the Kipsigis people from the Mau Forest beginning 2018. Many were settled there, originally by President Moi in the early 1980s, soon after becoming the second president of Kenya, and for some as late as 15 years ago during the tenure of President Mwai Kibaki. The Kipsigis are now accusing the Deputy President William Ruto of ominous silence, as they are forcefully being kicked out and their property burned.

Daniel Burgei told me the Kipsigis helped marshal Kalenjin vote for Jubilee Party through Ruto, “now he is mum about the evictions. This is very troubling as we watch this whole spectacle in bewilderment. The Kipsigis have been practicing shamba system in the Mau Forest, where the soils are rich, do not need fertilizer and are good for cabbage, maize potatoes and tomato production. They also have been keeping livestock; cows, donkeys, goats and sheep.” Yet, in the process, they have hived huge chunks of the forest by cutting trees, hence destroying the natural environment, all in the name of giving way to farming, said Burgei.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prof Boone gives the example of Likia location, in Molo division, Nakuru District, “where most land belonged to Kikuyus in the early 1990s, local Kalenjin politicians reminded the people of the past ownership of the land and encouraged them to reclaim it.” On January 10, 2019, a former Molo MP, Joseph Kiuna held a press conference in Likia area of Molo and reminded the Kalenjin that they had not forgotten what they had done to the Kikuyus in 2007/2008post-election violence (PEV). “All this time the Kikuyus have been pretending that they had forgotten and moved on,” said Kip. “We Kalenjin are very much aware they have not forgotten anything.” Even though thousands of Kikuyus were internally displaced – up to 600,000 people were dislocated from their homesteads in the greater Rift Valley during PEV, by the marauding Kalenjin warriors – many a Kikuyu nevertheless returned to Rift Valley. The allure of fertile soils, the armistice arrived at between Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta and a desire to go back to their lands, which they had occupied for many years, was greater than the ominous existential threat of a repeat “ethnic” attack on their farms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kigotho Njuguna, Mbugua Gachani, Danson Kangonga Mbugwa, John Muchuri, Wanguhu Githiomi (who hailed from Kijabe) and Peter Kinyanjui – one time Democratic Party of Kenya (DP) point man in Trans Nzoia) formed part of the earliest pioneers of Kikuyu settlers in Kitale. DP was an opposition party once led by Mwai Kibaki, the third President of Kenya. The others were: Lawrence Waweru, Kirima Githaiga, David Kiberu, Waigi Mwangi (originally from Ngecha in Limuru) and Apollos Mwangi. All these men are dead and many of them hailed from Nyeri district.

As the theatre of the politics of succession leading to 2022, plays out in the expansive Rift Valley region, the spectre of the ever-simmering land question looms large. William Ruto, like his predecessor Moi, and not Seroney, finds himself in a dicey position of canvassing the entire Kalenjin vote, amid unsettled land ownership saga that remains an unresolved issue.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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Nowhere to Run: How Urban Terrorism Is Impacting Nairobi’s Architecture and Public Spaces

By April Zhu

Before 2:30 pm on 12th February 1944, everything on SS Khedive Ismail was as normal as things aboard a troopship could be. In the music room on the upper decks, someone was playing the Warsaw Concerto on the grand piano. In the lower decks and the cargo hold, which had been converted into barracks mainly for the black soldiers, it was hot and humid. Both spaces would become death traps within a matter of seconds, and the grand piano, a weapon.

A lookout, probably bored out of his mind, noticed a periscope peeking from the water. He raised the alarm, alerting the gunners to the position of the Japanese submarine deftly charging towards SS Khedive Ismail. The troopship was on a routine mission to deliver troops, mainly East Africans, from Mombasa to Colombo in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) before their onward journey to Burma (now Myanmar). It was part of a convoy codenamed KR8, which had begun its journey from Kilindini port in Mombasa a week earlier.

The alarm was a little too late. Just as the gunners opened fire, the submarine fired four torpedoes. Two missed, but the other two found their target. The first struck the engine room. The second hit the boiler room. The troopship listed, and in less than two minutes, disappeared under the water. The other troopships and the destroyers in the convoy, codenamed KR8, barely had time to react or help. They fled to safety before two destroyers doubled back to face the Japanese submarine and to rescue survivors.

As the troopship sank, survivors clutched onto whatever they could get their hands on. The Japanese submarine, I-27, hid beneath them as the destroyers in the convoy doubled back and tried to hit it with depth charges, killing even more of the survivors. The submarine was eventually forced to surface, and one of the destroyers, Palladin, rammed into it. The hit breached the destroyer’s hull, forcing it to retreat and leave the work to the other destroyer in the convoy, the HMS Petard. The Petard’s torpedoes hit the submarine at 5:30pm, three hours after SS Khedive Ismail had sunk. The sub broke into two and sank with everyone on board.

Aboard the SS Khedive Ismail before the sinking had been 1, 511 people, 996 of whom were members of the 301st Field Regiment, East African Artillery. Only 215 people would make it out alive. The survivors were rescued once the submarine had been sank and moved on to Ceylon, where they got survival leave for two weeks before rejoining the war effort.

Of the 1, 296 people who died that day, only four of them were given a proper sea burial. The rest were left in the shark-infested waters, far from home and virtually forgotten.

***

The sinking of SS Khedive Ismail is the subject of Brian J. Crabb’s 1997 book Passage to Destiny. In an email conversation, Crabb says his interest stems from his father, Percival Crabb, who “…was a fortunate survivor of the sinking, escaping through an open porthole with his leg still in plaster!”

In the book, Crabb includes an extensive appendix with all the names and ranks/roles of everyone, black and white, on board the doomed ship. The list of East Africans, mainly from Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, takes up several pages. The troops are ranked by names, rank, and number. That’s all we know about Warrant Officers Alfani Ndagile, Kathuka Ndajo, Mua Kilonzi, Muema Ileli, Selemani Mzee, Shabani Mbaraku and Siligwi Mwita. The seven of them were the highest ranking enlisted men among the hundreds of East African troops who died that day. Most of the East African casualties were gunners.

The sinking of SS Khedive Ismail suffers from the same historicity issues that World War II in general suffers from in former colonies. It was a war (mainly) away from home, driven by issues that most of the one million Africans who enlisted had little or nothing to do with, at least at a socio- cultural level.

When World War II began, there were only 2,900 men in the Kings African Rifles (KAR). The real threat of an Italian invasion from Ethiopia, and the entry of Japan into the war, drove the need for fast mobilisation.

Although the Great Depression (1929-1939) was a relatively prosperous time for Kenyan farmers, it gutted the settler economy and the colony’s budgets. Job opportunities in urban areas and farms dwindled, and crime levels in the former rose for a time. Combined with the crop failure of 1939, it meant that the best option for young men was to join the military. Any able-bodied man could enlist, although there had been restrictions as late as 1941 based on ethnicity. The Pioneer Corps, for example, were initially recruited from Western Kenya.

In his memoirs, Fan to Flame, John G Gatu, the future Reverend and Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, writes that he joined the armed forces because he was unemployed. Gatu joined the Signal Corps and served in Ethiopia and Somaliland. Like Gatu, Waruhiu Itote (General China) joined the military because he was unemployed and “to escape the boredom”.

For some, the economic benefits were a result, not a motivation, of being recruited. Kenya’s first four-star general, Jackson Mulinge, accidentally found himself in the military after he chose the wrong day to go to Machakos to sell a chicken. A recruitment officer grabbed the teenager and conscripted him, marking the beginning of a journey that would see him climb up the ranks over the next three decades.

The contracts the new recruits signed stated that they would be discharged “after the cessation of hostilities”. Most of them were in their early 20s, still single, and because of the education policies at the time, barely literate, if at all. By the end of the war, in 1945, there were nearly 100,000 Kenyans in the military either as members of the Kings African Rifles or the Pioneer Corps, a successor of the Carrier Corps.

Being a soldier meant a steady income and other benefits, such as being exempt from excruciating hut and poll taxes. It also gave the soldiers a common martial identity as well as exposed them to unprecedented trauma and horrors that would also go largely undocumented.

In the heat of war, despite concerns from the settler community about everything from labour supply to the economic and security risks, thousands of Kenyans were trained, armed, and deployed to fight in Northern Kenya, North Africa, and Asia. They were all enlisted men, meaning they could never rise beyond the rank of Warrant Officer. That would be one of the challenges in the lead up to and immediate aftermath of independence two decades later.

Discipline was still enforced mainly with corporal punishment. Major infractions were punished with a kiboko, while cowardice was punished with execution. There were at least three incidents of retaliation, once when a sergeant shot and killed three officers, and then when two enlisted men were executed for shooting officers and wounding others with a grenade.

In 1945, a quarter of those who survived the war were discharged. The demobilisation went on for two more years, which meant that tens of thousands of young men who had seen war and death were expected to resume their pre-war status. The Kenya that the veterans returned to had barely changed, but they had. They had not only seen the perils of war but they had also been exposed to a new lifestyle, and had had a steady income and developed new habits. Gatu, in his book, offers that the war was the beginning of unparalleled drug use among the troops. Every week, the soldiers would be issued with matches, soap, and cigarettes.

But they were also liquid and most of them were still young, single and raring to go. Studies of the post-war period mention a rising discomfort with the power held by chiefs and elders, as well as inflation in the social scene as bride price was hiked.

The money they had made could not last forever. Many of them applied for trade, shop and transport licences, only to be met by a racist bureaucracy that expected them to fall back to wage labour, primarily in agriculture. Some re-enlisted into the Kings African Rifles, while others struck out in new businesses. Others, like my grandfather, used the training they had obtained during the war to eke out a living as health officers and drivers.

A number of the former soldiers were involved in the political upheaval of the late 1940s and the 1950s, but not to as significant a level as one would imagine. Dedan Kimathi, the de facto leader of the Mau Mau, was only a soldier for a month in 1940 before he was dishonourably discharged for violence and drunkenness.

Some rejoined the KAR and other disciplined units, but a large number disappeared into the normalcy of reserve life.

What’s less acknowledged in our history books are the number of enlisted men who died or suffered during the war, and the trauma the survivors came home with. Because a large number of the survivors did not have any formal education, and there was little interest in chronicling their experiences, we can only glean aspects of them from scattered memoirs and academic studies. Several memorials and cemeteries in major towns celebrate their lives and sacrifice, but very few black soldiers are named.

The sinking of SS Khedive Ismail was also problematic because of its magnitude; it was the single largest loss of East African troops, and third worst Allied mercantile shipping disaster of World War II. Publicizing it in the immediate aftermath would have affected recruitment and morale as the sinking of SS Mendi during World War I had done with South African troops.

What’s lesser acknowledged in our history books are the number of enlisted men who died or suffered during the war, and the trauma the survivors came home with. Because a large number of the survivors did not have any formal education, and there was little interest in chronicling their experiences, we can only glean aspects of their experiences from scattered memoirs and academic studies.

Despite Kenya’s central role as the home of the East African force, the Eastern Fleet, and also as a war front with Italy, the war itself is merely a footnote in the events that followed in the next decade. Thousands of enlisted men who died for a cause they didn’t necessarily believe in remain mainly nameless and unacknowledged. The unit that suffered the heaviest losses, the 301st Field Regiment, had been formed just two years before and had already served in Madagascar. The only thing that remains in their memory is a plaque at the Nairobi War Cemetery. Few of the thousands of Kenyans who died on different fronts and missions are named, and their stories have all but disappeared. Even the wounds of war, such as the bombing of Malindi and the Italian excursion 100km into Kenya, are now mere footnotes in history.

It is a significant gap in our military history, and if the lacklustre coverage of our eight-year war in Somalia is anything to go by, a part of our national ethos.

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.

Nowhere to Run: How Urban Terrorism Is Impacting Nairobi’s Architecture and Public Spaces

By April Zhu David Murathe’s cameo appearance in the drama of the Kenyatta II debates seems to have provoked many questions about the Uhuru Kenyatta succession: Is the Kenyatta II succession unfolding in the mould of the Kenyatta I succession? Is history repeating itself? Will William Samoei Ruto, like Daniel arap Moi, ascend to the presidency, either in spite or because of opposition to his ambition by a cross-section of the Gikuyu elite? Does Ruto have a historic date with destiny, one that has all the marks of Moi’s tribulations, and complete with a happy ending? And what will Ruto do if the Kenyatta II courtiers were to force a crown of thorns on his head instead?

Intrigued by Murathe’s declaration of a multi-pronged war against William Ruto’s ascension to the presidency, one might be tempted to quickly dust off Joseph Karimi and Philip Ochieng’s 1980s’ potboiler, The Kenyatta Succession, which details the machinations of a cross-section of the Jomo Kenyatta era chauvinistic Gikuyu elite’s opposition to Moi’s ascension to the presidency.

Dusting off Karimi and Ochieng’s The Kenyatta Succession may be a good idea, despite the misgivings of both Bart Joseph Kibati and Professor Micheal Chege about the veracity of the existence of the Ngorokos as a stand-by assassination squad under the command of some of the then Nakuru-based powerful Gikuyu civil servants opposed to Moi becoming the second president of Kenya.

Still, the current presidential succession battle retains some of the complicated dynastic plots of the Kenyatta Succession: the heady State House courtiers’ cocktail of conspiracies, intrigues, jealousy, greed, ambition, betrayal, revenge, back-stabbing, murder, and the spectre of all-consuming political violence. Like Moi, Ruto is viewed by the ethnic chauvinists either as a temporary guest or a gatecrasher in the presidential succession party.

@HistoryKE, a history buff, who runs an online museum of Kenya’s colonial and post-independence history, posted some facts about the 1976 Change-the-Constitution movement’s rally in Nakuru. At this historic rally, some of the most rabid of the Gikuyu, Embu and Meru Association (GEMA) ethnic chauvinists, MPs and cabinet ministers, such as Kihika Kimani, Njoroge Mungai, Njenga Karume and a few of their allies from other ethnic communities, held a historic rally to openly ratchet up their opposition against the then Vice President Moi’s constitutional ascension to power in the event of the death of Jomo Kenyatta, the then sitting president. Still, the current presidential succession battle retains some of the complicated dynastic plots of the Kenyatta Succession: the heady State House courtiers’ cocktail of conspiracies, intrigues, jealousy, greed, ambition, betrayal, revenge, back-stabbing, murder, and the spectre of all-consuming political violence. Like Moi, Ruto is viewed by the ethnic chauvinists either as a temporary guest or a gatecrasher in the presidential succession party.

The tweets drew varied responses. One Kioko@Done_Dusted retorted, in part, “Give us a break with your Ruto obsessions subtly disguised as history…”, to which @HistoryKE responded, “Sir. Please re-read my article and stop seeing shadows behind every bush,” a response that seems rather evasive about @HistoryKE intentions. The tweet seemed to speak so eloquently to the present political debates, which had been provoked by Murathe’s no-holds-barred attack on Ruto, who was assumed to be the undisputed Jubilee Party’s flag-bearer for the next presidential election, and the successor to Uhuru Kenyatta.

It’s tempting to draw parallels between the Kenyatta I and the Kenyatta II successions, especially after Murathe’s cameo appearance. On the surface, it looks like history is repeating itself. William Samoei Ruto, the Deputy President, a Kalenjin, the constitutional heir-apparent, and an ethnic outsider, who is presumably the undisputed presidential candidate of the Jubilee Party, is waiting in the wings, only a heartbeat away from the presidency, to succeed Uhuru Kenyatta (a scion of Jomo Kenyatta, a Mugikuyu), the sitting president.

Yet William Ruto, like Daniel arap Moi in the mid-1970s, now faces “a cabal of powerful” Kenyatta II Gikuyu elite who are also contemplating a constitutional change, among other measures, to stop him from becoming Kenya’s fifth president upon the end of Uhuru Kenyatta’s constitutionally-mandated two terms as the president of Kenya, barring any constitutional amendment.

Will William “the Czar of Sugoi” Ruto, as @JerotichSeii calls him – he of humble peasantry background, chicken-hawking-by-the-railway-crossing origins, and able hatchet man for various Kenyan political dynasties – having waited in the wings for ten years, finally turn the tables on his past masters, and alas, be ensconced in the bosom of Kenya’s state power, the presidency?

Looking at the Kenyatta II succession solely through Karimi and Ochieng’s book could block one’s view of the surprises and new elements in the Kenyatta II succession. The Kenyatta II succession has got the makings of a rollercoaster of a political drama, unfolding as a great Greek tragedy, with Ruto cast as the tragic hero who is tone deaf to the chorus of civil society human rights and democracy pleas.

The Kenyatta II succession might be couched as a democratic contest, complete with a referendum, but it will be anything but democratic; it will be a struggle, styled as constitutional and democratic, but lacking the substance of either. It’s a succession defined more by the character of the protagonist, chance, conspiracies, intrigues of a palace coup and the risk of political violence.

Moi’s lucky break

If Jomo Kenyatta’s second stroke in 1968, as Charles Hornsby tells us, had sent him into the mythical world of Weru wa Mukaaga, as the former Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, Duncan Ndegwa, recalls, then perhaps his ailing heart dictated the frequency and pace of the Kenyatta I succession. With hindsight, it seems, the Kenyatta I courtiers, with an ear to Kenyatta’s failing health, were in panic mode, which landed a bullet in Tom Mboya’s heart in 1969, and in J.M. Kariuki’s body in 1975, eliminating the most credible threats to their dream of succeeding Kenyatta. Only Daniel arap Moi, the constitutional heir-apparent, was left standing between them and the presidency by 1976.

But, as Daniel Kalinaki points out, the controversial visit of Dr. Christian Bernard, a leading apartheid era South African cardiologist, threw spanners into the works. His visit sent the elite Gikuyu chauvinists’ song of Change-the-Constitution chorus to a crescendo in 1976. Daniel Kalinaki writes that Dr. Bernard examined Jomo Kenyatta and returned a not-so-clean bill of health. At a dinner held in his honour, he told the Kenyatta I courtiers that “Mzee had two years, tops, to live.”

Stopping Moi’s ascension to the presidency then became even more urgent. But unlike the charming and charismatic Tom Mboya and J.M. Kariuki, Moi was lucky. Several times lucky. The Kenyatta I era Gikuyu courtiers were divided. Moi’s character flaws, too, worked in his favour. Where charm, flamboyance and charisma brought Mboya and J.M. squarely within the cross hairs of the regime’s assassins, colourlessness kept Moi safe. Moi was variously thought of as stoic, humble, naïve, uneducated, gullible, and overawed by the settlers, Jomo Kenyatta and state power generally. He was just “a passing cloud” while the State House courtiers searched for a worthy successor to the king.

However, they had underestimated Moi, who got the support of some of the most feared and effective members of Kenyatta’s kitchen cabinet, the unelected deep state civilian servant types, who were strategically placed in the security, provincial administration and the Attorney General’s office. His humble character earned him the sympathy of some of the most powerful men in Jomo Kenyatta’s kitchen cabinet, civil service, and cabinet, men such as Charles Njonjo, the Attorney General, Geoffrey Kariithi, the head of the civil service, Charles Nyachae, the Provincial Commissioner of Central Province, and Eluid Mahihu, the Provincial Commissioner of Coast Province, men who, perhaps, thought that they could take advantage of his presidency or easily overthrow him. These men were more than effective counterweights to their rabidly ethnic counterparts in Nakuru, who included James Mungai, Isaiah Mathenge, Arthur Nganga Njuguna Ndoro, George Karanu, and Kim Gatende, the men, who Bart Mugo tells us, had no respect for Moi, and “gave Moi sleepless nights” when he was the vice president. As Charles Hornsby points out, Moi was also lucky that Jomo Kenyatta died in his ally’s fiefdom, Eluid Mahihu’s Mombasa, and not Isaiah Mathenge’s Nakuru.

What’s more, the ailing president, who treasured large landholdings, having exported Central Kenya’s land crises mostly to the Rift Valley, seemed to have seen in Moi a worthy successor, a man who not only facilitated his government’s export of the Central Kenyan land problem to the Rift Valley against a strong regional opposition from his rivals, such as Jean Marie Seroney, but one who could also secure his legacy and landholdings – because Moi also had substantial landholdings.

Duncan Ndegwa says that Jomo Kenyatta, speaking in riddles, asked Kihika Kimani, a leading proponent of the 1976 Change-the-Constitution Movement, to think about a situation in which a dying man wants to pass on his herds of cattle. “Would he hand over his herd to a man who has his own or to a man who has none? This man you fear will, in fact, take care of the herd while minding his own. You want to hand over the stewardship of your land to a man who has no land? He will say, ‘Those lands owned by these people are too large. Let us give them away.’” Ruto: Not quite Moi

However, Ruto, it seems, is everything but what Moi was at the height of the Kenyatta I succession. Unlike Moi, the legends, true or false, about Ruto’s rise within Kenya’s politics cast him as a megalomaniac, a ruthless, arrogant, condescending, diabolical, acquisitive, vindictive, and hardly ever magnanimous character in victory. Ask Reuben Chesire, the late former MP for Eldoret North, his onetime allies such as Raila Odinga or his namesake, Isaac, the former Governor of Bomet, and the whole lot of Mt Kenya leadership who lost the Jubilee 2017 nominations.

In victory, Ruto gloats. His lieutenants, like Adan Duale, gloat even more. Ruto’s angry disposition and penchant for mocking other leaders, gloating, and chest-thumping, can easily goad his nemesis into a strong coalition against his presidential bid, especially if he loses Uhuru’s support – just the kind of coalition David Murathe proposes.

If Ruto and Uhuru were joined at the hip by the International Criminal Court (ICC) dilemma (which is now water under the bridge), does the Kenyatta family’s recent acquisition spree and its consolidation of its economic hold on Kenya’s financial, media and dairy sectors be the glue that binds the two together? Can the Kenyatta family, which is now in the process of strengthening its political and economic stranglehold on Kenya, truly trust Ruto to be a good custodian of their most recent acquisitions? Does Ruto, a character who has variously been described as a wannabe king, vicious, vindictive, megalomaniac, and hardly magnanimous in victory, fit the bill of a good custodian of such wealth? Can he be trusted in this era of footloose international finance capital to not upset the apple cart? What does the trauma of the Moi presidency portend for his political ambition?

If Ruto and Uhuru were joined at the hip by the International Criminal Court (ICC) dilemma…does the Kenyatta family’s recent acquisition spree and its consolidation of its economic hold on Kenya’s financial, media and dairy sectors be the glue that binds the two together? Can the Kenyatta family, which is now in the process of strengthening its political and economic stranglehold on Kenya, truly trust Ruto to be a good custodian of their most recent acquisitions?

It’s hard to tell what type of deep state support Ruto enjoys. But in the dust-up between the pro-Ruto Tanga Tanga group and the anti-Ruto Kieleweke group, we got a glimpse of what a piqued Ruto might do and where sympathies for his presidency presently lie in Central Kenya and the Rift Valley. Unlike Moi, he did not turn the other cheek for the legendary James Mungai or Isaiah Mathenge’s political slap. He hit right back and hard through some of the most rabid Gikuyu and Kalenjin ethnic chauvinists, who are probably a retinue of elected politicians on weekly or monthly retainers, more driven by the convenience of cash rather than conviction.

In the Kenyatta I succession, Charles Njonjo, speaking in a Hobbesian dialect, astutely put an end to the debate by invoking the law on high treason: “It is a criminal offence for any person to encompass, imagine, devise or intend the death or disposition of the president.”

In contrast, the heads that bobbed out in defence of William Ruto, including elected leaders such as Moses Kuria, Kimani Ngunjiri, and Oscar Sudi, spewed out some of the ugliest, most nauseating, and inflammatory political rhetoric. (It is worth noting that not a single hawkers’ association chairperson came out in Ruto’s defence.)

Oscar Sudi, one of many intellectual Lilliputians in Ruto’s orbit, has admitted that Jubilee is a two- ethnic-group racket, with a few non-Kalenjin and non-Gikuyu tokens thrown in to lend the Jubilee elite a veneer of national inclusivity, the mythical face of Kenya. The anti-Uhuru rhetoric on the failure of the Jubilee government to develop Central Kenya energised Ruto’s base, but it also galvanised Central Kenya’s opposition to Ruto’s lieutenants. It saw the return of leaders like Peter Kenneth and Martha Karua into the fray.

Ruto’s patronage network in Central Kenya is thus being tested. It seems to rest with some of the vilest elected ethnic chauvinists of questionable political clout or those who can’t stand their ground. If Ruto’s sympathisers are the rent-weekly or rent-monthly political types, then Uhuru Kenyatta’s selective war on corruption, which Ruto’s legal adviser laments, and the termination of some of the lucrative contracts between companies owned by Ruto and the Government of Kenya, such as the Kenya police housing, could easily downgrade Ruto’s patronage capacity, that is, his ability to rent and resist.

The question remains on how State House courtiers will treat the Rift Valley question. Will they see it as a political problem or a security problem, or both? If push comes to shove, will Ruto, like Moi in the 1990s, drive a Faustian bargain: State power or slaughter and eviction and dispossession of non- Kalenjin farmhands, peasants and small traders, especially the Agikuyu in the Rift Valley? Will he, like Moi, rage, and rage, and extract his fair share of political and economic pound of flesh if he ascends to the presidency against all odds?

Or, in defeat, will he, like Raila Odinga, mourn, forgive, and find friendship at last? Does Ruto represent the sum of all the fears of the political dynasties in Kenya? What does the spoken and the unspoken trauma of the Moi presidency, especially among a cross-section of the Gikuyu elite, portend for Ruto’s presidency?

Pedigree and dynastic politics

Kenya’s dynastic politics of self-preservation might have renounced some unsavoury political tricks of the Kenyatta I succession, such as the assassination of political competitors, but it hasn’t renounced the advantages of evil, the dirty and devious tricks, of seizing state power, securing economic interests, and dynastic longevity. The Ngorokos may well be phantoms of Moi’s propaganda machinery, but since the days of James Mungai, presidential elections have greatly been defined by Kenya’s lack of effective democratic control of the security forces and strategic roles of militias.

Certainly, Ruto has a date with history. But his biggest stumbling block to the State House is neither the Gikuyu elite, who have reneged on the promise to coronate him as the fifth president of the Republic of Kenya, nor the sudden vapourisation of the much-touted Jubilee Party’s stellar development record in Central Kenya, which in the heat of the first round of the debates on the Kenyatta II succession, seems to vapourised, like ethanol, into thin air. Rather, Ruto is caught in the strong cross-currents of the political dynasties he’s excelled in manipulating and through which he has amassed a fortune and built a war chest while undermining democracy and human rights.

The biggest hurdle in Ruto’s race to State House, is, to say it pithily, in the words of the late Job Omino, the MP for Kisumu Town: “Dr. Ruto is all degree(s), no pedigree.” Historically, he’s not a biological son of any of the dynasties of Kenya’s politics, and he hasn’t any traction with the struggle for liberal or social democracy.

Ruto has neither the pedigree of Kenya’s dynastic politics nor the credibility and gravitas of those who participated in Kenya’s struggle for democracy, human rights and transitional justice. As David Ndii once pointed out, together with Uhuru Kenyatta, he missed the democratic lessons of the 1990s. He’s caught in the twirling currents of these political forces in a vortex of opposed political forces now shaping his destiny. Yet he seems to think he can beat the dynasties in their game by faking an ordinary citizen’s credentials or feigning a new-found affection for the common mwananchi, posturing as their leader, and winning either the party ticket or the presidency without a credible, free, fair and democratic system in place. As @JuliuMmasi’s tweets suggest, Ruto has been an astute student and co-builder of the three leading Kenyan political dynasties: the Moi, the Odinga and the Kenyatta. But he now decries these dynasties as the stumbling block to his quest for presidency. If the Moi, Kenyatta and Odinga are dynasties, all defined by similarities and no differences, then charitably, Ruto can only be a stepson, or worse, a son who’s twice removed from the State House patrimony – not an heir- apparent, but an heir-presumptive who represents the sum of the worst fears of all these dynasties.

As a fresh graduate and a member of the venal youth movement, Youth for KANU (YK92), Ruto fought against multiparty political reforms in the 1990s. In 2002, as a minister in Moi’s government, he notably supported Moi’s bid to enthrone Uhuru Kenyatta as the third president of Kenya. In 2007, he reluctantly supported Raila Odinga’s bid for the presidency, bending more towards the pro- Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) regional political pressure in the Rift Valley than towards a confidence in Raila’s leadership. He promptly bolted out of ODM in the wake of the maize import scandal, and in 2010 led the NO-Campaign against the current constitution.

More recently, he’s firmly been in Uhuru Kenyatta’s corner in a joint desire to sabotage the ICC cases of crimes against humanity against them. He has run a mostly male-dominated and alternately Gikuyu or Kalenjin elite-led government, fighting against justice for the victims of the 2007/8 political violence, the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) process, free, fair and credible elections, and rolling back Kenya’s nascent democratic gains in several sectors, especially security reforms.

Development as a substitute for democracy

Ruto might be regretting the political life he’s led. He’s been working at cross-purposes, and is not about to stop. With a religious zeal, he’s championed development as a perfect substitute for liberal democracy, thinking that personal prosperity, by hook or by crook, heavy investment in nation-wide patronage networks, and a strong identification with various “development” projects across the country will generate popular support for his candidature.

Yet the Jubilee government, unlike the Chinese or the Rwandan governments, is too undisciplined and corrupt to generate popular legitimacy out of the ability to deliver services. Instead, Jubilee’s development projects have mostly been conduits for kickbacks and procurement rackets, bleeding the public coffer dry, and generating windfalls for a few rather than real economic opportunities for the multitudes of unemployed youth. Some, like the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) have auctioned Kenya’s sovereignty, committed Kenyans to Beijing bondage, and, as the loan repayments kick in, effectively taken away Kenya’s ability to formulate a friendly tax and revenue policy for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

In his quest for the presidency, Ruto now postures as the representative of the ordinary suffering citizens, a self-styled “hustler” who lives precariously, mostly from hand to mouth, occasionally visiting a kiosk or stopping by the roadside for a cob of roasted maize to lend his presidential bid a common citizen’s touch.

But Ruto has never had a stake in Kenya’s social/liberal democracy or human rights game. He’s never championed the common citizen’s cause or fought against power or income inequalities. Instead, he has an unrelenting and ruthless desire to pursue state power without compassion for the ordinary citizens. He told Rift Valley farmers to grow avocados instead of maize after a cartel bolted with the Kenya Cereals and Produce Board’s national maize kitty, leaving maize farmers in his own stronghold desolate. He’s reportedly built a palace worth Sh1 billion (US$10 million) in Sugoi, where he regularly entertains delegations of mostly self-seeking leaders of various ethnic groups and holds court. Like Daniel arap Moi, he wears evangelical Christianity on his sleeves, ostensibly investing in heaven through fund-raising and various donations to the clergy, perhaps to deodorise an ever- strong whiff of sleaze that swirls around him and his close associates.

Ruto knows in his bones the pain of losing or winning the Kenyan presidential elections. Unlike the ancient Olympics, in which only the Greeks – by blood and character and bound by a code of honour, “to respect just decisions, use no fraud or guile, to secure victory” – competed for a priceless branch of wild olive, Kenya’s competition for state power knows no ethical bounds. It’s not a patriots’ game, either, and the victor’s prize is the bottomless national and transnational material spoils: Eurobonds, capture and monopolistic control of key national markets, and Chinese business kickbacks. Loots, only for keeps, if you can hold onto state power.

If the Kenyatta I succession played out as the politics of a dynasty (because Kenya was then a de facto one-party state) then the Kenyatta II succession might also play out as the politics of dynasty, in spite of Kenya’s lauded democratic reforms, and because, since 2007, the incumbents have successfully subverted the popular democratic will of the people by executing electoral coup d’états.

In 2007, Ruto was in ODM, the team that lost. Subsequently, he joined the team that has won all the disputed presidential elections since 2013. He knows too well that all the winners of the presidential election since 2007 have won, in spite of the popular vote, and not because of it. The winners of these presidential elections have approached the election as a coup d’état: state power to be seized through a conspiracy to subvert popular will, the use of deception, and control and use of strategic levers of state power, especially the security organs, the electoral commission, and the courts.

In contrast, the losers of all the presidential elections since 2007 have approached the elections as an exercise in liberal democracy. They have campaigned hard, written good manifestos, mobilised aggrieved and disaffected voters and sometimes, gone to court to seek reprieve, where they have faced non-democratic forces.

Chickens coming home to roost

Ruto’s quest for the presidency is a bid to bring down Kenya’s political dynasties. He wants to be king, an insider of sorts, taking on the dynasties in their own terrain. But he will be taking on the dynasties like a tragic hero, a hero whose character flaws and tribulations in the hands of mentors- turned- tormentors are strikingly different from those of Raila Odinga and Daniel arap Moi. But he still might generate some sympathy in various constituencies, especially if, as Dauti Kahura shows, he can deftly lay blame for the failures of the Jubilee government on Uhuru Kenyatta. Still, he’ll have a hard time turning these sympathies into popular votes.

Ruto’s chickens, it seems, are coming home to roost. In the week when the Kenyatta II succession talks were crackling, two of his legal and political advisers, Korir Sing’oei, and Kipchumba Murkomen, took to a newspaper and television, respectively, to extol some aspects of liberal democracy. Sing’oei, once a human rights activist, had a year ago, in the wake of the Jubilee government’s violation of a Kenyan’s rights – when Miguna Miguna was illegally detained, abducted, exiled and stripped of his Kenyan citizenship – argued that the government had broken no law. Now he argues that the Director of Public Prosecution’s “gung-ho and gunslinger approach” to fighting corruption smacks of abuse of public office and that it is more a pursuit of political vendetta than of justice.

Kipchumba Murkomen, Jubilee Party’s Senate Majority leader, now sees a big democratic deficit in the ruling party. It has dawned on Murkomen that internal party democracy matters and that it is better to hold regular party or parliamentary group meetings than to wait for the occasional trumpet from State House to assemble for the latest presidential edict.

Both Sing’oei and Murkomen seem to have swiveled 180 degrees – from legitimising impunity to thinking about what should be the ethical limits of state power or good democratic practice. No prize for guessing why they’ve taken the sudden shift. Since the Jubilee government’s selective prosecution of the corrupt, the boot is firmly on the other foot, William Ruto’s. And they’ve rediscovered that some salutary aspects of liberal democracy are sorely missing in Kenya’s political context and contests.

It’s a belated but heartening rediscovery. It’s heartening because William Ruto’s camp seems to have woken up and smelt the Mt Kenya coffee: only a truly liberal democratic system can sufficiently guarantee anyone and everyone a fair shot at the presidency. But presently, the ethos of the competitors for Kenya’s state power is as far removed from the ethos of the ancient Greece’s Olympics as the Czar’s of Sugoi’s multi-billion seat of power is from State House.

In the battle between the Kenyatta, Odinga, Moi, and Mudavadi dynasties, Ruto might remain the eternal outsider. Without Daniel arap Moi’s good luck and the help of highly placed Mt Kenya movers and shakers who have successfully executed several electoral coup d’états (two bloody ones in 2007 and 2017, one bloodless one in 2013 and one abortive coup on 1 September 2017), it might be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for Ruto to capture the highest political office in the land.

It will be extremely hard for Ruto to win an amoral dynastic political game, however big his election war chest is, if the contest for state power is largely defined by the dynasties’ control of state power and by a retrogressive political ethos – a political competition that brooks no internal dissident and eschews fair play in regional strongholds or at the national level, or both, and which is hell-bent on self-perpetuation.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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Nowhere to Run: How Urban Terrorism Is Impacting Nairobi’s Architecture and Public Spaces

By April Zhu

With a spring in his walk, an upright lanky physique, reminiscent of the world famous marathon runners from the idyllic town of Iten, in Elgeyo Marakwet County, Paul Kimaiyo Kimuge aka “Sirikwa” looks ageless, making it difficult to estimate his age.

At 77-years-old, Kimuge would easily pass for a 50-something year old man: he has a medium sized body, head full of hair and a beguiling moustache that makes his smile wearily sly. “Since I stopped drinking several years ago, I’ve been on natural honey which I make at my farm,” said Kimuge. “I’m a beekeeper with lots of beehives and harvest honey and I used to make local brew from the honey.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The farmers’ barns themselves are packed with their own maize, because they have no one to sell to. “Eventually, the maize will rot.” He said the millers are not buying any maize from the farmers, but buying from the government, which has all the ‘imported’ maize. “Even if they were to sell their maize, they would sell it at a loss; the production cost is anything above KSh2200 per bag, whichever way for the farmer, he is screwed,” said the farmer.

Maize has been politicised and has become a weapon to fight the Deputy President William Ruto. I refuse to believe that it is Ruto and his henchmen who are behind this maize ordeal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The farmer told me North Rift farmers had huge farms, that they had been farming for eons and come to understand and anticipate the seasons, learned how to predict the rains, that are heavy and good for maize farming. “What does Ruto mean when he says we should diversify and start growing other crops like Avocado?” The Kalenjin, the farmer said, had taken this pronouncement by Ruto to mean that they should vacate maize farming so that he can be the sole importer and distributor of all the maize in the country, for as long as it was lucrative. “Ruto does not care whether our children starve to death or not, whether we educate them or not, all he is interested in is, more money and the powerful presidential seat.” The maize scandal has become an explosive matter and that is why Ruto is quiet and cannot do anything about it, observed the farmer. “He cannot do anything about the mess because he is the one behind this humongous scandal alongside his boys.” Yet the problem of the Kalenjin farmer does not now even end with the apparent lack of a market and price distortion of their chief crop: “These Ruto henchmen also have been messing about with the flow and quality of fertilizer in the country,” alleged the farmer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

During the 2017 presidential campaigns, Ruto’s point men in the Rift Valley region would assure their supporters that the DP was as good as on the driver’s seat, “since the President himself is always busy enjoying (read drinking) himself, all the time,” a Ruto loyalist confided in me in Eldoret town. “Let us vote for Uhuru: while he will be drinking, the DP will be the one calling the shots. Look at the number of our sons and daughters in parastatal positions…sisi ndio serikali…we are the government.”

Once back in Nairobi, I asked a friend of President Uhuru whether this was true – about these allegations made by the DP’s men in 2017 campaigns. “Well, as you can now see for yourself: you can enjoy yourself and be equally tough”, he said in jest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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

Nowhere to Run: How Urban Terrorism Is Impacting Nairobi’s Architecture and Public Spaces

By April Zhu If Thomas Joseph (TJ) Mboya was the young man that Kenya wanted to forget, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga is the grand old man who Kenya can never forget. Jaramogi and Tom Mboya were both were nationalists of great distinction from the Luo community who as seasoned politicians posed a threat to the founding president Jomo Kenyatta’s autocratic national designs. Tom Mboya died young, by an assassin’s bullet, on July 5, 1969. Jaramogi died an old man, a mzee, at the age of 82 years on January 20, 1994, after having been tormented by both Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi regimes effectively from 1969 after his fall out with Kenyatta and through the 80s and 90s during iron-fisted Moi’s reign. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga death anniversary on January 20th, twenty-five years since his passing, was marked quietly in a manner that diminishes his immense contribution to the Kenyan national project.

If Thomas Joseph (TJ) Mboya was the young man that Kenya wanted to forget, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga is the grand old man who Kenya can never forget

No history book on Kenya would be complete without his mention. Jaramogi was the vice president of the nationalist party Kanu when Kenya African Union (Kau) merged with Kenya Independent Movement to form Kanu on May 14, 1960. He was later to become the country’s first Vice President, after Kanu won the 1963 general elections under Kenyatta. When his friend Pio Gama Pinto was killed in 1965, Jaramogi knew he was a targeted man because of his ideological position. Pinto, then was a nominated MP and an avowed communist who was Jaramogi’s confidante. Jaramogi would form the socialist party, Kenya People’s Union in 1966, banned in 1969 leading to his detention under house arrest by his former ally Jomo Kenyatta.

I first set my eyes on Jaramogi on November 16, 1991. Bethuel Oduo my collaborator on this writing project and my senior, had met Jaramogi much earlier, but this day in November, remains fresh in our memories. It was the first licensed political rally organized by the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (Ford), the fledging opposition movement led by Jaramogi as the interim chair. Oduo and I attended the meeting held at the symbolic Kamukunji Grounds, a historic public space that hosted a number of significant nationalistic political rallies during Kenya’s pre-independent agitation struggles for freedom in the late 50s and early 60s. This was my first time I was attending a political rally as an impressionable young man in my twenties. I had never seen such a mass of people in such diversity, gathered in one place for a common cause. The atmosphere was electrifying. I could feel the palpitations, as throngs of humanity waited anxiously for the address by the opposition leaders. 1991 was the year that Kenya restored political pluralism after being a de facto one party state since 1969. The old Kenya Lancaster negotiated constitution, previously criminalized a meeting of more than 10 people through Public Order Act 56, which was repealed, just like Section 2A, that proclaimed Kenya to be one party state.

I gathered that many people, young and old, had come specifically to see the legend Jaramogi, a man who had borne so much in the tumultuous and vicious climate of politics in Kenya. “I last saw and heard Jaramogi in 1969,” a man next to me said, “I wonder what he looks like today, but he’s going to talk to us today…what a great feeling.”

A group of emerging opposition politicians, christened the “Young Turks”, among them James Orengo, Paul Muite, Prof Anyang Nyong’o, Raila Odinga, Gitobu Imanyara banded together with veteran politicians Martin Shikuku, Masinde Muliro among others in what was threatening to be an unprecedented opposition coalition set to end Moi’s dictatorial 14 year rule. The force behind this movement was the enigmatic Oginga Odinga and the man of the moment.

Jaramogi was about to address his first meeting after 22 years of state imposed political isolation. Jaramogi spoke in a shrill voice. The microphone held by Prof Ouma Muga, one of the masters of ceremony for the event. The other master of ceremony was Kimani Wanyoike. Jaramogi seemed to voice my thoughts.

“I have never seen so many people gather in my lifetime,” said Jaramogi “This is the first time most of you are attending a political meeting out of your choice.” It felt like he was talking directly to me and he had my full attention as he launched into a 45 minute address.

“Why is Kenneth Matiba not with us today? Why is George Anyona, Edward Oyugi, (Augustine) Njeru Kathangu, Rumba Kinuthia, Koigi wa Wamwere, Ngotho Kariuki and many other freedom fighters not with us?”

“Why are our sons and daughters still in exile? Why are brilliant people who can teach in our universities wasting their lives overseas? Why was Robert Ouko murdered? Was he murdered for speaking about corruption? Was he murdered for speaking his mind in the cabinet? Why was (Alexander) Muge murdered? Was it because he exercised his freedom to preach the word of God to condemn sin and corruption?” He had captured the mood in the country in distress and the masses of people were beyond ecstatic.

Of the six ford movement founder members, Jaramogi Oginga, Philip Gachoka, Ahmed Bahmariz, Martin Shikuku, Masinde Muliro and George Nthenge, only Nthenge is alive today. George Nthenge who became Kamukunji constituency MP in the first multiparty elections in 1992 recalls the moment. “Jaramogi was an old man and he knew that if he brought nine other elders together, the government would not risk international condemnation by arresting us. This is how Masinde Muliro and Martin Shikuku were sent to recruit me. Ahmed Bahmariz was also recruited, but we could not get three other elders to bring the total to nine.” Today Nthenge still runs his curio shop at the City Market, a shop he has maintained for well over four decades.

Jaramogi was not only the doyen of opposition politics in Kenya. He was a noted Pan Africanist and his credentials remain unquestionable. In January 1992 during an interview with the Nairobi Law Monthly magazine, Jaramogi spoke of his relationships with people like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Nelson Mandela, who had just been released from prison in 1990. “Kwame lived before his time. He had seen Africa through and through. And he lived as if Africa was one country. He was very diligent, hardworking and a person that one could admire. He was instrumental in dedicating me to struggle for Kenya. He told me: ‘you fight in your own country for Kenyatta, Kenyatta is in London, but he is a nationalist of the first order’”.

Although exiled in Guinea in 1966, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s former President was very close to Jaramogi to the extent that he still found time to pen a foreword to his book Not Yet Uhuru, Kenya best political treatise to date.

On Nyerere, Jaramogi had this to say: “I know Nyerere as a very intelligent person and great nationalist. He refused a big salary and lived on the minimum that he could…Nyerere actually considered public opinion important.”Jaramogi himself would later talk of how he could not justify earning a salary, (making reference his role as VP in the independence cabinet) while his duties had been distributed to other cabinet ministers, in a bid to punish and tame him. So he quit government.

Jaramogi considered many global leaders and Pan Africanists as close friends. The list included Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Milton Obote, President of Uganda, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, Ahmed Ben Bella former Prime Minister of Algeria and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia.

In the Nairobi Law monthly interview, Jaramogi also spoke on the icy relationship that had existed between him and Tom Mboya before his violent death. “Mboya was for the West and had a liking for America. On my part, I had been to the Soviet Union, China and Japan and generally the East to find out what went on there. People took this to mean I was the ‘good boy’ of the East and Mboya of the West.” The politics of the Cold War, the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union had ramifications on Kenyan politics.

Jaramogi was detained at Hola detention camp, a remote town on river Tana, Tana River county between 1970-1972. Former chief justice Willy Mutunga who spent a stint in Hola after the abortive (August 1st) 82 coup, remembers occupying the same cell as Jaramogi. “Jaramogi was a selfless nationalist, who was never interested in self-aggrandizement and Pan Africanist, who truly loved his country and continent,” observed the former chief justice.

After his release from detention in Hola, Jaramogi remained under house arrest in Kisumu until Kenyatta’s death in 1978. President Moi on assuming the power attempted to rehabilitate Jaramogi by appointing him the chairman of the Cotton Lint and Seed Marketing Board in 1979. It was a way of telling him to revive the cotton farming, which had collapsed after his disagreement with Kenyatta. Jaramogi said as much in the Nairobi Law Monthly interview: “The cotton industry had really gone down and Moi needed somebody to bring it up. I did my best and people actually saw that the cotton industry was coming up.”

But as fate would have it, in April 1981, Jaramogi’s tongue ‘slipped’ during a fundraiser in Mombasa when he sensationally claimed Kenyatta had been a land grabber and that is why they had differed with him. Subsequently, Moi relieved Jaramogi of his position. It is rumoured that the inner circle of Moi’s cabinet that included the powerful attorney general Charles Njonjo engineered the sacking. A retired politician from that era who requested anonymity recalls Njonjo allegedly telling Moi. “’If indeed it’s true you are following the footsteps of Kenyatta, is Odinga saying therefore, you are also a land grabber?” When Moi took over from Kenyatta, after his demise on August 22, 1978, he broadly proclaimed ‘Mimi nitafuata nyayo za Mzee, (I will follow in the footsteps of Mzee Kenyatta) and in a sense he had to save political face. That sacking essentially meant that Jaramogi was back into “political Siberia.” In 1981, the then MP for Bondo, Jonas Ochieng Ougo suddenly tendered his resignation, occasioning a by-election. The truth of the matter was that he was hoping to pave way for Jaramogi, to be elected as the next MP. The Siaya Kanu sub-branch on orders from Moi effectively barred Jaramogi from contesting and that is how William Odongo Omamo aka Kaliech found his way back as the MP for Bondo. Ougo had been Jaramogi’s student at Maseno who would later teach Raila Odinga at Maranda School before moving on to become the head teacher at Friends school Kamusinga, in Kaimosi, Bungoma county.

When Moi took over from Kenyatta, after his demise on August 22, 1978, he broadly proclaimed ‘Mimi nitafuata nyayo za Mzee, (I will follow in the footsteps of Mzee Kenyatta) and in a sense he had to save political face. That sacking essentially meant that Jaramogi was back into “political Siberia

The idea to form another party came to Jaramogi after his attempts to re-enter parliament had hit a brick wall. The following year in 1982, teaming up with George Anyona, the firebrand politician from Gusii land, Jaramogi and Anyona walked to Sheria House and asked the registrar of political parties to register their party, the Kenya African Socialist Alliance (KASA). John Khaminwa had written Kasa’s constitution. This would mark the genesis of Khaminwa’s reputation as the lawyer for detained Kenyans; become a marked man by Moi’s regime. Indeed after the August 1982 abortive coup de ’tat, he was detained alongside politicians and university dons, considered rebels by Moi. Jaramogi’s son Raila would also begin his long spell of detention for his role in the coup but also as many believed for the sins of his father who Moi could not detain.

Always a paranoid man, Moi could not fathom another party rivaling KANU. It was the fear of Kasa that drove Moi to ask Parliament to pass one afternoon a bill that later become law stating that changed Kenya from a defacto to a dejure one party state.

With the return to plural politics in December 1992, Jaramogi was elected the MP for Bondo constituency in Siaya, while his son Raila was elected the MP for Langata constituency in Nairobi. For the first time, a father and son were both elected MPs. A year later, Jaramogi was dead and his first-born son Oburu Odinga replaced him. The two Odinga brothers were duly elected MPs of the August House.

When the Luo people migrated from Uganda and Sudan and landed on the other side of Lake Victoria in the 15th century, they were led by one Ramogi Ajwang, who is believed to be the patriarch of the Kenyan branch of the Luo. That is how Oginga Odinga acquired the name ‘Ja- Ramogi’. ‘Ja’ is a prefix which means ‘he who belongs to.’

In his life time, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga came to assume a persona that was larger than life and sometimes stranger than fiction. Mzee Odungi Randa, Jaramogi’s former handyman told us in Kisumu.

“Jaramogi was labelled many things by his detractors,” “Communist, dissident, rebel, tribalist, trouble shooter, rogue element, yet he remained firm and resilient and focused on his nationalist ambitions.”Although wealthy by all standards, he never flaunted it and throughout his life, he embodied the philosophy of egalitarianism, said Randa.

By the mid 1940s Jaramogi had formed Bondo Thrift and Trading Corporation. As the company grew, he toyed with several names to rename the expanding corporation. In 1947, he settled for Luo Thrift and Trading Corporation (LUTATCO). Jaramogi said he named the company Luo Thrift, because he wanted the Luo people to feel the company was part of them, hence proud of it.

“Kenya People Union was formed after Jaramogi felt those who risked their lives for Kenya to attain independence had been short changed and sidelined by the very same people they had fought colonialists together,” observed Randa. “It was the case of the Mau Mau freedom fighters versus the home guards that was repeating itself.”

In Nairobi, we went looking for Jaramogi’s one time neighbour at his Jerusalem estate houses in Eastlands. Thomas Onyango Daniel, now his late 40s, grew up in the same block that his family shared with Jaramogi. He remembers a quiet old man with an aura of wisdom. “It was not easy to see him leave or come to the flat,” recalls Onyango. “He remained an elusive figure to my mind until 1990, when the clamour for multiparty started in earnest. All of a sudden, Jaramogi’s house became a beehive of important people coming to see him”. Despite his elusive character, Onyango remembers Jaramogi as a kind man. “When he was around, he would invite us children to the house to drink brown uji (porridge).

Jaramogi had two houses near Jerusalem shopping centre: one on the ground floor and the other up the stairs. “When around, he spent most of the times in the upstairs one, that is where he would meet and entertain his guests,” said Onyango. “I remember him always dressed in a khaki shorts and his signature trademark, the akala (rubber sandals made out of motor vehicle tyre) shoes. All the time he was there, there was a constant stream of people flocking to see him.” To date, the matatu stage near his houses is referred to as Kwa Jaramogi.

Thomas Odoyo 65, from Agoro Nyakach recalled the year 1966 when there was a heated campaign rally in Pap Onditi, as two contestants went for each other’s neck.“Yusto Nyamolo Okal was running against Jaramogi’s candidate Ondiek Chilo. At the rally, fracas ensued between Okal’s supporters and Jaramogi’s youth wing led by Ndolo Ayah.” Odoyo described Ayah as Jaramogi’s ardent supporter. He could not stand Tom Mboya whom he had fundamental personal differences with.”

Interestingly, Ayah had been a student at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda in the early 60s. Together with him was Pamela Odede, the daughter of Walter Odede, the late freedom fighter and member of the Legislative Council (Legco). Ayah and Pamela were an item in college. On the invitation of the Makerere Students Guild, Tom Mboya, went to give a talk at the university campus. Pamela, who attended the inaugural lecture, was smitten with the young flamboyant politician from Kenya. TJ persuaded her to abandon her studies at Makerere, to become one of the pioneers of the 1961 airlift which TJ had organized. In her group, were Wangari Muta Mathai, Ojwang K’Ombudo, Muthoni Muthiga, Beth Mugo and Nicholas Mugo. Nicholas married Beth and Tom married Pamela and Ayah never forgave TJ.

It is at the Pap-Onditi rally that Jaramogi’s mystical powers came to light. “When the two opposing crowds became really hostile Jaramogi pointed at Nyamolo Okal with his left hand and told him in Dholuo, “Nyamolo Okal in ema iketho bucha kamae, wanane ka nine od bura?” (Nyamolo Okal, you are the one who is messing up my rally, we shall see whether you will see Parliament). After the confrontation, the rally aborted and people dispersed cursing the ‘spoilers.’ Nyamolo became a marked man in Jaramogi’s political terrain. Nyamolo was the first Kenyan to head Kakamega High School after graduating from Makerere. “For being anti-Jaramogi Okal acquired Equatorial Printing Press located in Nairobi’s Industrial Area. The business was the first African owned commercial printing facility. He was rewarded by being single sourced to supply books and stationery to the then Kenya School Equipment Scheme,” said Odoyo. And true to Jaramogi’s word Nyamolo never saw the gates of Parliament. “He unsuccessfully contested the Nyakach constituency seat in 1966, 1969 and 1974. After the assassination of Mboya, things started going south for Nyamolo Okal. His business empire collapsed and he eventually died a poor desolate soul.” According to Odoyo, Jaramogi’s curse ‘his left hand’ had come to pass.

“Yes it is true that Jaramogi’s left hand was shorter than the right one, but really, did it have extraordinary powers to condemn people to political oblivion?” posed Mark Otieno. Otieno narrated a story about Jaramogi and his political son James Orengo. “One day in the mid-1980s, Jaramogi was in a good mood, so Ajimmy (as he referred to Orengo) asked Jaramogi whether it was true his left hand had magical powers and if he pointed at anyone with that hand, he would remain cursed. Jaramogi laughed sarcastically and replied ‘Mano ji ema wacho ok an” (It is hearsay and not from me).’”During this period, both Jaramogi and Orengo were constant victims of state humiliation.

“ Orengo took his frustrations to Jaramogi: ‘Ka en adieri, kare Moi machandowani ok isieme gilwetino chieng’moro owere kodwa.’ (If it is true about (Jaramogi’s hand), why then don’t you use it on Moi, who is giving us trouble, so that he can leave us alone?) Jaramogi ended that discussion by stating, ‘Piny nonene nyasaye ema ong’eyo’. The world (in reference to Moi) will deal with him…it is God who knows.)” Otieno said that was vintage Jaramogi: people tendered to build mystery around his personality. “Just like his son Raila, he was considered an enigma of sorts and invisible. Many of his staunch followers believed it was not easy to harm him in any way.”

Orengo was Jaramogi’s legal adviser and Jaramogi treated Orengo like his real son. Jaramogi knew Orengo’s dad, Apollo Orengo Onunga, who was a police inspector. That is why Orengo, being a son of a cop has on numerous times said he does not fear the police, because he grew up in a cop’s homestead. Still, Jaramogi’s dotted on Orengo because of his sharp legal mind.

“At the age of 29, Jaramogi made Orengo an MP for Ugenya constituency,” narrated Otieno nostalgically. “Jaramogi one day during the campaigns came to Ugenya, he didn’t get out of his car, but people gathered around it. He told them: ‘you know I’m not allowed to speak, so I was just passing by, but, by the way, when you see that son of Apollo, please pass my regards.’ The people quickly understood what Jaramogi had told them. Orengo was voted in overwhelmingly. His son Raila, somehow took over that mantle and whenever he endorses you, consider yourself elected.”

Mzee Solomon Owino told us that Jaramogi would deliberately give nicknames to some of his political friends and loyalists. “He coined names like Ondiek‘Chilo’Miguda, Okuto Bala (the former ambassador to Russia), Achieng ‘Nyakech’Oneko. Ondiek is the Luo word for hyena, okuto is salty rock and nyakech is an antelope or a gazelle. He nicknamed Oneko nyakech, because of his tall slender body frame. Jaramogi said some of his supporters in their great support for him were like the vicious hyenas. They would stop at nothing in his defense.”

Among the Young Turks, Jaramogi also had a special nickname for Paul Kibugi Muite: Obiero –the true son of the home. But the literal translation of Obiero in English language is placenta. “Jaramogi was fond of Muite because he would tell him he had the dark complexion of a Luo man,” opined Mzee Owino. Jaramogi surrounded himself with emerging young and versatile oppositionist politicians, who were quickly given the moniker Young Turks by the Kenyan mainstream media. They included, Gitobu Imanyara, James Orengo, Kiraitu Murungi, Mukhisa Kituyi, Paul Kibuge Muite, Prof Ayang’ Nyong’o and Prof Ouma Muga. Achieng Oneko was a bosom buddy of Jaramogi. It is Achieng Oneko who introduced him to Jomo Kenyatta in 1952 in Kisumu for the first time before he was detained. They had a closed meeting at Maseno Store, a big shop that was part of LUTATCO initiative.

Elated by Kenyatta’s visit to Maseno Jaramogi would later write him a “thank you” note in his book Not Yet Uhuru.

“You can’t imagine the happiness I derive from your one day visit to Maseno on Tuesday. I really enjoyed your company heartily and hope we will have more moments like this in the coming days of our self-government. In this, I am your disciple to the hilt. You were so much at home and felt so very native to the house, as if Maseno had been your home Kikuyuni. I will never forget that memorable day…when you return again to us in August as you have promised to do. I hope to attend many meeting with you and give you as much assistance as will be possible from nationalist and businessman.

I remain, always,

Your disciple in nationalism.”

That meeting could possibly have been the first where the Luo-Kikuyu unity was mooted. In that meeting, Kenyatta told Jaramogi: “We must get to know one another. The Kikuyu must know the Luo thoroughly. The Luo should select 12 influential elders to tour Kikuyu country, to travel as far as Mombasa and that 12 influential Kikuyu elders would travel to Luo country. The conclusion of the two delegations would be inevitable; that we are Africans, one and the same. United, we would be formidable. I have lived with these people (whites) in Great Britain, I know they fear unity.”

Scholar David Odemba from Kaksingri in Mbita believes the silent but often times open rivalry between Tom Mboya and Jaramogicould have been a blessing in disguise. “The divergent ideological approaches helped advance academic achievement among the Lake people. Both the protagonists were competing to send as many students as possible to Europe and America,” pointed out Odemba. “The airlifts to the East and West were the foundation upon which the latter Luo youth found role models whom to date they emulate. Mboya and Jaramogi emphasized the need to acquire higher education as a form of social security. They saw the gift of formal education as the future community’s insurance in its sustainability. They are both credited with the deliberate glorification of academia in Luoland.”

Newspaper vendor Okungu Kerry of Kisumu, remembers Jaramogi fondly: “Jaramogi saved the Nyanza sugarbelt area from being grabbed by outsiders. The areas around Koru, Songhor, Muhoroni, Chemelil and Miwani were once occupied by Indian sugar cane farmers or white settlers. Through legislation on resettlement of landless Africans, Jaramogi ensured victims of floods from Kano plains were given first priority after Kenya’s first El-Nino rains of 1961.My grandfather was settled in Kibigori after their home was destroyed by the same floods.”

Many of his Jaramogi’s followers believe his political persecution led to the ‘Luo’ cash crops being targeted and profiled for destruction. “Either by design or default, cash crops grown in Luo land became political crops. Because of this the Luo farmer suffered greatly. This was a deliberate, quiet and systematic dispossession of their only source of livelihood. Cotton which was the agricultural mainstay of the Luo was the first to be wiped off. All the ginneries closed down and farmers were rendered paupers. Sugar remained the crop the people could rely on. Sisal had earlier succumbed to global technological changes that brought in synthetic fibre,”

Many Luo people believe that according to their ethnic epistemology, only one person can inherit a father’s strong genes and possibly mystical powers. There is a stark difference between the two surviving Jaramogi sons, Oburu Oginga and Raila Odinga. The first born Oburu is a colourless and uninspiring politician. “Oburu has never persuaded anyone that he is his own man,” said an observer of the Jaramogi dynasty.“One wonders whether he could ever survive politically without his younger brother Raila.”Plucked from a civil service job as a provincial planning officer and living in a humble Mosque estate in house in Kisumu, Oburu has remained in Raila’s shadow since 1994, when he replaced Jaramogi as MP for Bondo.

Jaramogi’s legacy will continue to be felt for a very long time especially in Nyanza where several iconic institutions have taken up his name. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Referral Hospital and Oginga Odinga Road are just some of the main landmarks that will forever keep his name alive.

Like his father Jaramogi, Raila has developed own his international networks making him known beyond Kenya. Twenty five years down the road, many of Jaramogi’s believers said his political fervour and determinism has been kept alight by his son Raila Odinga.

Jaramogi and Raila are political enigmas that very often defy easy classification and political analysis. Each personality comes with his own nickname. Jaramogi was initially named Obadiah Adonijah. In Not Yet Uhuru he says “I never liked the names. I never used them though in those days it was important to be known if you were Christian by your baptismal name”. He instead adopted Ajuma Oginga Odinga but the first name ‘Ajuma’ also fizzled out with time leaving the double ‘O’ intact. Raila is variously known by his nicknames like Agwambo, Tinga and RAO.

Whether the spirit of Jomo Kenyatta and Jaramogi has influenced the current working relationship between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila, their respective sons is a story for another day.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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

By April Zhu

Jesus Christ’s vision of an anarchist world was where the state’s monopolisation of “legitimate” coercion is countered by communities that forge their own destinies based on principles of agency, autonomy, and cooperation. As I have previously argued, Christ invited early Christians to break hierarchical barriers that stood in the way of their direct relationship with God. He was crucified for his views because they posed a threat to the Temple priesthood and Caesar’s rule.

But first, let us explore the meaning of anarchy a bit further. Anarchy, as a descriptive meaning, is the absence of a ruling body with a claim to a monopoly (a centralised authority) over legitimate coercion. When we observe our current world, we notice ruling bodies called States that have monopolies on coercion, but the legitimacy of such coercion is what is in question. But more importantly, underlying the quest for the legitimacy of the State’s monopoly on coercion is another question: Is coercion ever legitimate?

Anarchy is marked by the absence of a State, but not the absence of coercion.

To answer the question simply: Yes, coercion is legitimate in certain circumstances. The apocalyptic Christ challenges us to be steadfast with the message against State power and really, all coercive arrangements in whatever forms they appear. Admittedly, this is too simplistic. This discussion is at the core of the disagreement between various anarchist factions: whether anarchism allows an autonomous individual to consent to a coercive arrangement or whether it calls for the end of all coercive arrangements, leaving individuals no choice but to be in non-coercive ones. I assert the former, which is not a traditional concept of anarchism, I confess. I believe that it is not for me to illegitimately force another autonomous self-agent to follow my ideas or rules.

The predominant reason why coercion can be legitimate is because in a world where an individual has agency and autonomy, such an individual can make the autonomous choice to voluntarily engage in a community where coercion is built into the arrangements (such as taxes, division of resources, ownership over means of production, whether there are private possessions and property, enforced gender roles, punishment, etc.). In other words, such coercion is legitimate when every autonomous individual experiencing the said coercion has consented to those coercive arrangements. To say otherwise is to logically conclude that a force is needed to prevent the iteration of coercive arrangements when chosen by otherwise autonomous individuals, which would obviously contradict the principle of the agency and autonomy of individuals.

Moreover, it might even be considered coercion when an individual or a group of individuals autonomously choose(s) to not engage in a community. This instance of coercion would be legitimate because forcing individuals to engage in a community breaks a fundamental principle of anarchy—individuals are self-agents and autonomous. Therefore, the choice to not engage in a community is legitimate. Coercion based on the rejection of individual agency and autonomy could never be legitimate, then. Hence, it is this notion of coercion that Christ challenges us to be steadfast against. Anarchy, therefore, is better defined as the absence of a ruling body that possesses a monopoly on coercion based on the rejection of individual agency and autonomy.

Another legitimate coercive force is socialisation. Socialization is defined as “the process of learning to behave in a way that is acceptable to society.” I define it as the process by which the individual internalises norms and beliefs from various sources, direct and indirect, within society. Indeed, there is an ongoing exchange in the marketplace of ideas from the moment we are brought into the world. Ideas compete against one another for our assent or we sometimes imbibe beliefs without really thinking, like when we observe and imitate our surroundings.

Naturally, socialisation is a tool that could be used for illegitimate ends but it is in and of itself a legitimate coercive force because it is the fundamental way in which human beings realise their agency and autonomy. For example, states most assuredly use socialisation to maintain their hold on power by issuing narratives and beliefs to the populace about the normative nature of their particular system. However, competing narratives and beliefs from anarchists serve to counter such hegemony by socialising individuals to internalise agency and autonomy of the self as norms. Read Also: IN PRAISE OF ANARCHY: Christ’s Vision of a Stateless Society

We see elements of coercion in the stateless societies of pre-colonial Africa that were consistent with the principle of the agency and autonomy of the individual. For example, according to Sam Mbah and I.E. Igariwey, authors of African Anarchism: The History of a Movement, the Igbo controlled the affairs of their village community with four institutions: the general assembly of all citizens, the council of elders, the age grades, and the secret societies, as well as with the Umuada, a body of women born in the village or married into it. “It was impossible…to make a decision on an issue that directly affected women or children without the consent of the Umuada” (emphasis mine). Furthermore, other issues affecting the community had to be discussed in detail and be resolved with a consensus from all.

Mbah and Igariwey describe pre-colonial African societies as democratic. They wrote:

“Pre-colonial Africans enjoyed most of the rights that today would fall under the rubric of civil and political rights, such as freedom of association, freedom of movement, and freedom of expression. Basic economic and social rights, like the right to the use of a piece of land, the right to work, and the right to an education, were also common in traditional African societies. And these rights were recognized and protected. ‘Adjudication,’ if it can be called such, typically consisted of a fair ‘hearing’ for opposing parties before the entire village or a council from it; the decision reached was respected and usually considered final.”

The principle of the agency and autonomy of the individual, alongside traditional African principles, presents a relevant framework for how the Church should approach political issues and engagement with the State, both in Kenya and abroad. Specifically, the Church’s role is to be a force of socialisation in its respective locality, educating its members as well as the general populace about the said principles, but also implementing (living) the principles by engaging with the State in arrangements that maximise the agency and autonomy of the individual while disengaging with the State in arrangements that reject this principle. (Disengagement altogether is also a valid decision.)

This is, of course, not without its difficulties. First, the Church must recognise difficult political realities when deciding to engage with the State. For instance, the legal systems of America and Africa restrain the advancement of anarchism. “The extant body of laws in both systems is capitalist inspired and is designed to perpetuate the status quo and the state system [while] in most parts of Africa, military dictatorships and civilian autocracies have introduced decrees and statutes that prohibit workers from organizing themselves into unions.” Moreover, most jurisdictions outlaw advocating the overthrow of the state and punish such advocates with death. This is not the Church’s role.

Disengagement with the State, though coercive, is not an active violence synonymous with overthrow. So, what does either engagement or disengagement look like to the Church?

Disengagement is complex. It would mean both the withdrawal of participation in any process or disobedience to any rule of law that rejects the agency and autonomy of the individuals involved, and, if it so warrants, the active, cooperative effort to provide a fundamentally consistent alternative to that unprincipled process or rule of law. For example, some anarchist Christians have been known to disengage with the State’s tax regime because the monies derived from it fund the State’s illegitimate processes and the enforcement of illegitimate laws. These Christians, instead of explicitly disobeying the tax law, disengage by intentionally making less than the taxable rate and supplementing each other’s needs in a distributive community. This tactic essentially defunds the illegitimate State and allows them to not participate in the tax regime while simultaneously building an alternative community based on principles of agency, autonomy, and cooperation. Ultimately, the Church’s role is to discover many more creative ways to disengage with the State and build a principled, divine community.

Engagement, on the other hand, looks like participation with processes and laws that are consistent with the principle of the agency and autonomy of the individual. I believe that the State does not have processes or laws that are consistent with the principle of the agency and autonomy of the individual due to its inherently illegitimate nature as an organisation that does not have the express consent of the individuals over whom it exercises authority. However, I believe that insofar as the State pushes for the expansion of human rights and freedoms for minorities in the democratic process, the Church should engage with such efforts, however minimal or redundant they are to its own alternative efforts.

Second, the Church must recognise difficult ideological realities during its socialisation of members and citizens in its respective localities. The educational systems of America and Africa are centres of Western imperialist thinking. African educational systems themselves have, unfortunately, been dominated by colonialist educational dynamics that have left the few who have benefited from it with a tendency to view themselves as elite individuals and caused the philosophical thinking of the population to readily accept European class assumptions. Mbah and Igariwey wrote:

“Traditional African education, in contrast, emphasized the interdependence of individuals within the community rather than competition between them. It instilled a group social consciousness and fostered an egalitarian spirit; this in turn naturally led to an emphasis on common endeavors and the sharing of the products they generated. On the other hand, colonial education emphasized individualism and made social existence competitive. The communal spirit was supplanted by the concept of the isolated self and greed, materialism, and an unbridled desire for domination.” It is the Church’s role to offer competing narratives and beliefs from traditional African values to counteract such hegemonic thinking. This socialisation of members and citizens is a force for allowing individuals to internalise agency and autonomy of the self as norms and may occur in its regular teaching services, its campaigns, in reading materials, etc.

Some may counter this by saying that the Church itself has a core teaching, namely, Judgment Day, when Christ demands repentance or assigns one to an eternity in hell. Such an argument, however, would be incorrect for several reasons.

First, it is coercive and ultimately legitimises violence against people who do not believe and, as such, would not be a proper framework in which to couch anarchist principles.

Second, every teaching, Christian or not, is coercive since teaching is a kind of socialisation. As discussed, socialisation is a legitimate coercive force. Second, Christ’s actual judgment against unbelievers (and believers, cf. Matthew 25ff) is consistent with the principle of the agency and autonomy of individuals for a couple of reasons. Theologically speaking, the Judgment is essentially the official recognition of the parties’ decision to not “engage.” Some scholars characterise hell as simply the separation from God where individuals who decided not to engage with God in life have essentially chosen to be separate from God after life. Judgment Day is the unfortunate recognition of that autonomous decision.

Moreover, Christ himself has the agency and autonomy not to engage with whomever he chooses. Separation from God would therefore be legitimate coercion. An alternative, yet unorthodox, theological reason is that God has legitimate authority over the universal community, not only because God created us but also because individuals have given God their consent in a pre-existent state. This is not a necessary interpretation for our purposes – Christianity is replete with theological justifications for a variety of things.

Nevertheless, the Church can no longer be silenced and told that it should not involve itself in political issues for the Kingdom of God is politics and the agency and autonomy of every human being is the Kingdom of God.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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

By April Zhu

Nationalist scholarship has it that every national group across the space of time and place is more or less a successful melting pot where diverse population groups are merged, acculturated, and eventually assimilated. This process occurs at different rates and in different ways, depending on each population group’s place in the political and socio-economic systems. Successful nationalist projects always produce a nationalist myth, portraying the origin, place, and mission of the nation in the global scheme of things.

For instance, the history of race and ethnicity in the United States has been fraught with tension, rivalry, and conflict. The English arrived on the continent, not as immigrants entering a foreign society forced to acquire a new national identity, but as a colonial vanguard keen on recreating a New England in the image of the England they had left behind. From the beginning, they were the predominant ethnic group. They enjoyed a political and cultural hegemony over the life of the American nation-in-the-making.

The non-English populations that followed, namely, the Dutch, the French, the Germans, the Irish, the Italians, the Poles, and the Russians, were regarded as aliens forced to adapt to English rule in terms of both politics and culture. The establishment of English as the American lingua franca was thus a critical first step in the gradual assimilation of the multiple ethno-racial groups of the so- called colonial era in the American nationalist project. These non-English immigrants were a major source of labour originally imported to populate the American landmass, and later to provide cheap labour for industrial development as indentured labourers. As indentured servants, however, they were both scarce and expensive. Moreover, as contract labourers, they could bargain for acceptable terms and entered the ranks of free labour once their contracts expired. This is the genesis of slavery as the second source of ethnic pluralism in the United States with the forced importation of more than half a million Africans. The system of chattel slavery was more expedient and more profitable for the southern plantation owners. Whereas the indentured servant from Europe expected land at the end of his contract, the African slaves – who were conspicuous by their skin colour and ignorant of the white man’s ways and language and who had been abducted from their homeland and forced into perpetual servitude in a strange land – could be kept permanently in servitude, divorced from the land they worked. Racial differences were utilised to rationalise slavery and to exact resignation and complete mechanical obedience akin to a plough-ox or cart-horse.

The third ethnic pluralism in the United States was originally rooted in conquest. Native Americans were systematically uprooted, decimated, and banished to reservation wastelands. The Mexicans in the southwest were conquered and their land annexed by an expansionist nation under the rationale of “manifest destiny”. The warfare against the American Indians, which included broken treaties, expropriation of their land, rebellion and ultimate defeat, was based on the stereotype of Indians as nomadic hunters and “uncivilized savages”. As one early seventeenth-century document put it: “Savages have no particular propertie in any part or parcell of that country, but only a general residencie there, as wild beasts have in the forests” (sic). Their land was thus taken and they were herded to reservations, where they still remain, crippled with poverty, hunger, disease, and wanton neglect. If the American Indian was the nation’s first minority, the future did not bode well for the many minorities that followed.

In spite of America’s brutal and convoluted history, the American nationalist myth constructs the United States as a deep comradeship of middle class society – as a land of liberty and opportunity; a shining city on a hill; a beacon of hope for the oppressed. America is characterised as a land of the free and home of the brave. Seymour Martin Lipset, a foremost American nationalist scholar, argues that whereas societies like the British, Canadians, French, and Germans are rooted in a history of nationality related to community as a basis of their legitimacy, American society is defined by ideology. Being an American is an ideological commitment rather than a matter of birth.

American society is organised around an ideology that embraces a set of dogmas about the nature of a good society. The American creed is summed up in four words: anti-statism, egalitarianism or meritocracy, individualism, and populism. Americanism is thus regarded as a highly attenuated, conceptualised, platonic, impersonal attraction toward a system of ideas, a solemn assent to a handful of final notions, including democracy, liberty, and opportunity, to all of which the American is said to adhere rationalistically as a socialist adheres to socialism. The most ardent American nationalist is wont to cry out: “Give me liberty or give me death!” Indeed, the state slogan of New Hampshire, one of the thirteen founding colonies of the union declares: “Live Free or Die!”

Accordingly, virtually every American president, from the most conservative Republican to the most progressive Democrat, has historically embraced this idealised notion of the United States, which has defined their behaviour both at home and abroad. Every American president prior to Donald Trump (at least since the twentieth century) has viewed the global role of the U.S. as the promotion of democracy, human rights, and liberty by persuasion and the power of example where possible, or by coercion and force of arms where necessary. The notion of the U.S. as a land of the free and home of the brave, as a shining city on a hill, a beacon of hope for the oppressed, and a place where “freedom rings” has provided American leaders with the moral authority to demand the same for oppressed peoples around the world.

The emergence of Donald Trump, however, has had the effect of upending and disrupting this state of affairs. Trump’s actions and behaviour both at home, and especially abroad, have negated the very essence of the ideals upon which the American nationalist myth is constructed, with serious implications for the standing of the U.S. both domestically and internationally. Of the four concepts upon which the American creed is constructed, Trump’s onslaught has been focused on three – anti- statism, egalitarianism/meritocracy, and populism.

How has Trump’s behaviour effectively subverted these concepts and what are the implications of this subversion?

The first key value representing Americanism is anti-statism. The argument here is that the American Revolution weakened the social values of an organic community and strengthened individualistic and anti-statist ones. The U.S. is deemed to be dominated by pure bourgeois and individualistic values. The U.S. is posited as having been born in the spirit of revolution against a government perceived to be tyrannical. Its anti-tyrannical bias was written into the constitution as the separation of powers, to ensure that no executive would ever again become too powerful. The weakness of the state and the emphasis on constitutionally-mandated division of powers hands lawyers a uniquely powerful role in America and make its people exceptionally litigious.

President Trump’s assault on the notion of separation of powers is manifested in his demand that the Department of Justice, especially its head, the Attorney General, should serve as the president’s personal lawyer and protector rather than as a public defender and protector of the rule of law. When Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from overseeing the Special Counsel investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, Trump went ballistic and eventually sacked him, arguing that he would not have appointed him had he known he was going to recuse himself from the Robert Muller investigation. Indeed, if Trump had his way, he would want all governmental powers concentrated in his office.

Trump has displayed a fondness for authoritarian leaders, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, and the Philippines’s Rodrigo Duterte, who he considers as strong leaders who have strong control over their countries. This betrays his craving for similar powers – like the ones he enjoyed as the all-powerful head of the Trump Organization. Unlike his predecessors, President Trump finds himself stymied and frustrated by the constraining effects of the institutional limits on the U.S. presidency.

The second value that defines Americanism is meritocracy or egalitarianism. American egalitarianism is defined as equality of respect and opportunity. Equality of respect places emphasis on egalitarian social relations and the absence of the demand that those in the lower social order give overt deference to those in the upper classes. Equality of opportunity stresses meritocracy and equal opportunity for all to rise economically and socially. The practical impact of this principle has been a reinforcement of social etiquette, empathy, and compassion in inter-personal relations. President Trump has subverted this principle, dismissing it as an unnecessary baggage of political correctness. This was on display right from the start of his candidacy for president when he went on to derogatorily refer to Mexican immigrants as rapists who bring drugs and social problems to the U.S.

Uncharacteristic of any and all public figures in American politics, Trump has also taken to insulting and bullying his political opponents. Those he does not see eye to eye with bear the brunt of insulting sobriquets. During the 2016 Republican Party Presidential primaries, Marco Rubio became “Little Marco”, Ted Cruz became “Lying Ted”, Jeb Bush earned the nickname “Low Energy Bush”, while Hillary Clinton was branded “Crooked Hillary”.

Trump’s does not just insult his opponents, but even those within his inner circle who get a taste of his wrath when they fall out with him. Former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, went from being “a world class dealmaker” who would “be a star” at the time of his appointment to “dumb as a rock” and “lazy as hell” upon his sacking. Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign manager who briefly became the White House Chief Strategist, was once described by the president as “tough and smart” but then became “Sloppy Steve” who had “lost his mind” after he was extensively quoted in a book critical of the president. Omarosa Manigault Newman went from “loyal friend” to “not smart”, “low life” and “whacky Omarosa”. Following his recusal, the president mocked Attorney General Jeff Session by calling him “mentally retarded”, “a dumb southerner”, and “Mr. Magoo” (a cartoon character).

Populism as an American value is elaborated as the belief that the will of the people should dominate the elites, that the public choice is superior to professionalism. This is institutionally reflected in the early extension of the suffrage to all white males. Subsequently, it was reflected in the passage of the sixteenth amendment providing for the popular election of senators, in the direct election of judges in state and local jurisdictions, in the emergence of the primary system of nominating candidates for public office, in the judicial procedure of trial by a jury of one’s peers, and in the diffusion of the use of a referendum and public opinion surveys.

Central to this is the importance of a free media and freedom of expression. President Trump has sought to subvert this through his morbid dislike for media reports that are critical of him and his policies, declaring any and all news he doesn’t like as “fake news” and going so far as labeling the press “an enemy of the people”. This kind of rhetoric is usually associated with authoritarian leaders rather than with leaders of the so-called free world. Indeed, no other American president, despite their feelings of being unfairly criticised by the media, has ever gone after the media this brazenly.

President Trump’s subversion of American nationalist ideology has had major implications both nationally and internationally. At the national level, by talking up strongman tactics, derogatorily dismissing his political opponents, and dismissing the media as an enemy of the people, Trump helps shape the character and behaviour of Americans, especially his most ardent supporters, in a way that doesn’t augur well for a democracy like the U.S. His behaviour has emboldened white supremacists. The direct results of this include the mailing of pipe bombs to key Democratic Party leaders and a media house in October 2018 and the racist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017. The president’s equivocation in condemning the rally, which turned violent resulting in one fatality, made matters worse. The white supremacists now see in him an ally in the White House. Indeed, White nationalist leader, David Duke, thanked President Trump for his “courage and honesty” in blaming the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the alt-left.

At the international level, Trump’s jettisoning of American exceptionalism has had him commit to withdrawing the U.S. from leadership of the world. He has questioned the existence of NATO and demanded that other members step up their defence spending. He constantly berates his generals about what the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Syria, and even in South Korea and has declared he wants out of these places. In other words, the impact of Trumpism is American retreat from global leadership under the guise of “America First”, and an end to U.S. commitment to spreading democracy, civil and political liberties, and human rights across the globe. Furthermore, Trump’s rhetoric and style have helped embolden authoritarian leaders around the world. They have been afforded the leeway to harass the opposition and the mass media without fear of sanction from the so-called leader of the free world.

In the final analysis, when Barack Obama won the U.S. presidency in 2008, Trump was on the forefront of the birther movement that sought to delegitimise the Obama presidency by insinuating that he was un-American, Kenya-born, a foreigner who had conned his way to the presidency. Paradoxically, by subverting the key elements of American nationalist ideology that has formed the bedrock of American exceptionalism, Trump is proving, so far, to be the most un-American of American presidents.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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

By April Zhu

“Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians.” – Nelson Mandela

Bethlehem, 2013: On Christmas Eve, I was among the crowds flocking to Bethlehem, the Palestinian city known as the birthplace of Jesus. Following festivities in the city’s famous Manger Square, I embarked to see how the Israeli occupation is still alive, away from the throngs of tourists. I headed to the separation wall, which encloses the West Bank in concrete, and is covered with vivid graffiti in protest. This segment of the wall houses some of Banksy’s famous works of art, and in 2018, a mural of Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teen who has become the face of resistance to the Israeli occupation, also cemented its place on it.

Nairobi, 2018: Wandering around the Bizarre Bazaar craft fair in Nairobi’s Karura Forest, one particular vendor caught my attention: Baraka Israel. Their booth was teeming with people sampling wines against a bold backdrop that read “Golan Heights Winery”. The sourcing of wines from a region under illegal occupation by Israel wasn’t new to me – my graduate work focused on the history and politics of the Middle East– but seeing these grapes being sold in my backyard was disturbing. And it didn’t stop there; Eliad olive oil was also being sold. Christmas was soon approaching and in keeping with the spirit and Biblical symbolism, wine and olives “from the holy land” were intended to entice. Barely holding my breath while pondering which olive groves this oil was sourced from, I was transported to a passage from Susan Abulhawa’s novel, Mornings in Jenin:

“As the dark sky gave way to light, the sounds of reaping that noble fruit rose from the sun- bleached hills of Palestine. The thumps of farmers’ sticks striking branches, the shuddering of the leaves, the plop of fruit falling onto the old tarps and blankets that had been lain beneath the trees. As they toiled, women sang the ballads of centuries past and small children played and were chided by their mothers when they got in the way.”

My foraging revealed that Eliad olive oil also originates from the occupied Golan Heights. This becomes more unsettling in the context of the occupied territories, where violence by Israeli settlers increasingly includes attacks on olive groves and farmers. In 2016, more than 1,500 Palestinian olive trees in the West Bank were damaged or uprooted by settlers; this was in addition to the 2.5 million trees uprooted since 1967.

Research carried out by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) uncovered a shift towards agricultural and price tag attacks by settlers that involve destroying property and vandalism, including racist graffiti. An Israeli soldier’s 2013 testimony from Hebron, recorded by the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence, uncovered how these attacks are carried out:

“There was one incident where already the night prior, they said a ‘price tag’ action was going to be carried out. And the next morning, a whole grove of olive trees was discovered chopped down. To chop down 60 trees you’d need something like eight hours of work and three saws…I don’t believe that the military, with all its observation points on an olive grove located on the main road, didn’t see that taking place.”

The decision to buy unethically sourced products, which are increasingly making their way to our shelves, is a topic worth discussing as a nation. The Profiteers, the investigative documentary unearthing Kenya’s role in contributing to the conflict in South Sudan, jumpstarted conversations about how Kenya was being used to commit atrocities beyond its borders. A segment of activists and concerned citizens took to the streets, calling for greater accountability in how the Kenyan government and financial institutions facilitate the transfer of arms and resources used to wage war on civilians.

And the support of many Kenyan activists, writers, and well-wishers to the Ugandan musician- turned-politician, Bobi Wine, during his detention is another example of conditions being ripe for a discussion on what it takes for Kenyans to be on the right side of history. The consciousness to do better by all peoples, regardless of nationality, is critical. We can no longer pretend that events outside our borders have no bearing on our lives or are unworthy of our attention and solidarity. Edward Said captured this well when he said, “Humanism is the only – I would go so far as saying the final— resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.”

Resisting the force of politics of money from outweighing principles of humanity and justice needs to be sustained. Our government may be succumbing easily to foreign money, but we need to safeguard our interests and public assets, and ensure that our moral compass is not lost. This may be a struggle when also faced with the large military-industrial complexes of today. And you don’t have to look far to see how big money is behind war. Despite its size, Israel is believed to be the eighth biggest arms exporter in the world and the largest one per capita. Kenya is among the growing African nations using Israeli-manufactured weapons, especially aircraft, artillery, and communications equipment.

Settler colonialism is not dead

2017 marked half a century of Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as the Golan Heights, which was grabbed from Syria. Much light has been shed on the expansion of Israeli settlements— the cities, towns, and villages built on occupied land. In 2017, Israel began building the first new settlements in two decades, moving further into the heart of what is legally Palestine. At least 160 government-approved settlements and 100 unofficial outposts are home to more than half a million Israelis living in colonies beyond the recognised borders of their state. And the population of Jewish settlers in the West Bank has grown four times faster than Israel’s itself since 1995. Although settlements violate international humanitarian law (under the Fourth Geneva Convention, an occupying power cannot transfer parts of its own population into the territory it occupies), they are authorised and subsidised by the Israeli Government.

This disturbing development has historic parallels closer to home: Advertisements by the British colonial government also sought to entice settlers to move to Kenya, and thousands responded.

“Settle in Kenya, Britain’s youngest and most attractive colony. Low prices at present for fertile areas. Its valuable crops give high yields due to the high fertility of the soil, adequate rainfall, and abundant sunshine. Secure the advantage of native labour to supplement your own effort.” – From Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya by Caroline Elkins

While Israeli settlers live in fenced and gated communities, Palestinians are effectively barred from staying in them. Palestinians’ movement is further restricted by roadblocks, checkpoints, and settler- only roads. Some of these discriminatory policies, as well as the exploitation of land and resources by a settler movement, are reminiscent of Kenya’s experiences under British colonial rule. Kenyans moving around segregated cities were required to wear an identity pass around their necks, which were designed to keep Africans out of European and Asian areas. Fast forward today and Palestinians in the occupied territories must carry their ID cards for internal travel between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and into East Jerusalem and Israel. These ID cards are colour-coded depending on where Palestinians reside and they affect everything from freedom of movement to family unity.

In colonial Kenya, many Africans were moved to free up fertile land for colonial plantations. The Jordan Valley and the northern part of the Dead Sea are among the most fertile areas in the West Bank; 40 per cent of the dates produced in the occupied Jordan Valley settlements are exported to the European Union, and Israeli companies generate around $3 billion annually from the sale of Dead Sea minerals. Contrast this with the discrimination leveled against Palestinians in the provision of water and other resources: More than 70 per cent of Palestinian villages in Area C of the West Bank, which is under full Israeli civilian and security control and home to most of the settlements, are not connected to the water network.

In Kenya, as explained by Caroline Elkins in her book Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya, the British settlers’ self-interest was “based on a perception of profound racial superiority, and the foundation of the settler community was the alienation of African land. Seeking to expand their numbers and increase the value of their land, they pushed for continued immigration into the colony.” Today, Israel continues to fund Birthright tours and to encourage the immigration of Jews into the country. However, the initial refusal to allow a group of Ugandan Abayudaya Jews to visit Israel on a Birthright tour showcased that not all Jews are equal in Israel’s eyes. Examples of the racial prejudice documented against Africans by the state of Israel are ubiquitous. In 2018, Israel was forced to backtrack on a plan to expel thousands of African migrants to Rwanda and Uganda. And ironically, though rejected, Britain’s proposal in 1903 allocated land for a Jewish state in the British East African Protectorate.

Colonisation in connection to wine

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, a non-violent movement founded in 2005 to pressure Israel to comply with international law and end its occupation and human rights abuses, was inspired by international sanctions imposed on the apartheid regime in South Africa. Given that settlements thrive on economic exploitation at the expense of the natives, the movement calls for a global boycott on settlement products. Airbnb, bowing to pressure, recently announced that it would remove properties in Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank.

Unsurprisingly, there is a countermovement that includes Israeli wineries “proudly” displaying the Israeli flag on their products. The BDS Wine Club, for instance, features wines from “Judea and Samaria” (what we know as the occupied West Bank) and their retail selection also includes wines from the Golan Heights Winery—the source of wines imported and sold in Kenya by Baraka Israel. The company brazenly markets this winery and its products as “Israel’s finest”. They have a noticeable presence at Nairobi’s wine-tasting events, as well as in restaurants and bars. Yummy magazine, Nairobi’s food and drink guide, featured Baraka Israel’s entry into the Kenyan market in 2017. It announced that “Israel has been a wine-making country over the last 3,000 years…and the diversity of Israel’s terroir makes it suitable to grow a variety of grapes.” Any further elaboration or exploration of the origins of their wines was conveniently or perhaps unknowingly omitted.

According to a 2015 UN General Assembly resolution, Syrians in the occupied Golan, the majority of whom are Druze, depend heavily on agricultural income but are disadvantaged by restricted water supplies and fewer economic opportunities. They also face throttled land access, building restrictions, and property destruction. The UN’s displeasure has not stopped Israel from building settlements, wineries, and even a ski resort in this territory. The region is strategically significant, agriculturally rich, and draws millions of tourists. And the Israeli wine industry, which benefits from accessible land, tax benefits, and other government incentives, is catching on. Settlers have discovered that the wine industry is a tourist magnet, bringing in additional income while normalising the settlement enterprise.

Over ten Israeli wineries, mostly founded between the late 1990s and early 2000s, are based in settlements in the occupied Syrian Golan and produce their wine from grapes grown in the occupied territory. In Kenya, the most common wines from this region are those produced by the Golan Heights Winery under the labels Yarden, Gamla, and Golan. The oldest of the wineries based in the occupied Golan, the Golan Heights Winery, was founded in 1983 in the settlement of Katzerin where it operates to this day. Owned by four kibbutzim and moshavim (agricultural and cooperative communities), it produces around 5.4 million bottles of wine annually.

Planting the seeds of BDS

The BDS movement made headlines again after Ilhan Omar, the recently elected U.S. Congresswoman who spent some of her childhood in a refugee camp in Kenya, voiced her support for the movement. On home soil, although BDS campaigns have yet to be established, there is a solidarity movement, Kenya na Palestine, which raises awareness of the movement and promotes educational activities during the global Israeli Apartheid Week.

They may seem innocuous, but profits from millions of dollars’ worth of settlement products exported internationally, including to Kenya, sustain the discriminatory policy of settlements, which also unlawfully appropriate natural resources. Common exports from Israeli settlements include cosmetics, fruits and vegetables, honey, olive oil, and wine. Israel’s wine industry is part and parcel of the settlement and colonisation project, and this is raising eyebrows worldwide: Yarden, Gamla, and Golan wines featured on lists of products boycotted by student groups at UK universities, for instance, and a major department store in Japan cancelled the participation of an importer specialising in wine from the Golan Heights at a wine fair last year.

Israel continues to face censure from its trading partners. For instance, while short of a boycott, European Union members can mark products coming from Israeli settlements. South Africa also adopted regulations to prevent the labelling of goods from settlements as being produced in Israel given that this misleads consumers. Thus, there is a growing sentiment that business activity in settlements entrenches discriminatory systems. If the Government of Kenya won’t ban settlement products for fear of jeopardising bilateral relationships, as citizens we should boycott these products and advocate that they be labeled correctly. Israeli wine, olive oil, and other such products being sold by Baraka Israel are highly substitutable by the Kenyan consumer even when it comes to quality. Further, these products are not integrated into value chains in the country and can be easily replaced.

Israel is joining the scramble for Africa

From a diplomatic perspective, Israeli-Kenyan ties have been growing stronger over recent years and are centred on security, religious and development cooperation. Two recent visits by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu represent a push to improve ties with Kenya, among other African countries, and to open up markets to Israeli products.

These economic efforts are also intended to improve Israel’s diplomatic position by getting African countries to stop voting against Israel in international forums. In late 2018, upon recommendations by the UN’s Special Political and Decolonization Committee, the General Assembly voted in favour of nine resolutions on Palestine and the Syrian Golan Heights, urging an end to settlement construction. Kenya voted in favour of all resolutions and it is this voting record at the UN that Israel is hoping to sway. However, Kenya did not participate in the UN vote that rejected U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The official reason given was the closure of the Kenyan mission for the holidays, but this may have been tactical given President Donald Trump’s threat to cut aid to countries that voted against the U.S. Despite international condemnation, Kenyan diplomats were among representatives from 33 countries that nonetheless attended the opening of the U.S embassy in Jerusalem in May 2018.

The arms trade

Israel’s weapons trade in 2016 included a 70 per cent jump in sales to Africa. In 2017, its defence exports reached a record $9.2 billion, mostly comprising military hardware, such as missiles and aerial defence weapons.

Though details often remain opaque, it is no secret that security and intelligence cooperation between Israel and Kenya remains strong. This has grown in the aftermath of terror attacks, including the targeting of Israeli tourists at the Paradise Hotel in Mombasa and the attempt to down an Israeli airliner taking off from the coastal city in 2002. And in the wake of the 2013 Westgate mall attack, there were local and foreign media reports of Israeli advisers and security personnel assisting Kenyan security forces in their operation to end the siege.

Israel has been among the top 15 arms exporters for decades, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Arms sales are integral to the Israeli economy, accounting for possibly as much as 8 per cent of GDP. Israel’s occupation has also gone global: Revelations emerged that Israel was sending weapons to Myanmar in defiance of a U.S. and European arms embargo, thereby abetting the persecution and massacre of the Muslim-minority Rohingya, who have also been subjected to “apartheid-like conditions” in Rakhine, as detailed by Amnesty International.

Israel has also been selling weapons and military services to human rights violators on the continent. A 2015 UN report found that Israeli arms were fuelling the civil war in South Sudan, and a retired IDF General was recently found to have used an agricultural company as cover for the sale of weapons to the government. Kenya is not lagging behind: From 2006 onwards, Kenya transferred large quantities of arms, including T-72 tanks from Ukraine, to South Sudan. These transfers only became public when Somali pirates hijacked a ship carrying some of the tanks in 2008. In 2013, the South Sudanese government used the tanks to quell protests and destroy homes.

Netanyahu has now befriended Chadian President Idriss Deby, one of Africa’s longest- serving leaders. Security sources say the country has acquired Israeli equipment to help battle rebels in the country’s north. Kenya too uses Israeli-manufactured weapons and is a recipient of military training and counterterrorism support. Inside Kenya’s Death Squads, an investigative film by Al Jazeera, found Israel complicit in the perpetration of extrajudicial killings in Kenya by counterterrorism police through its intelligence and training of the General Service Unit to eliminate suspects. And in keeping with its approach of building walls and barriers in the name of security, Israel has pledged to help Kenya speed up the construction of a wall along its border with Somalia.

A growing tribe: The ethically-conscious consumer The rise of a consumerism culture in Kenya may present economic opportunities but it is also fraught with challenges. There is a market in Kenya for fair-trade products, as well as ethically and sustainably sourced products, including those that don’t harm the environment, animals, and I would add to this list, human beings. Consumers are rightly demanding more transparency from businesses and companies, and the latter are slowly responding. Green Spoon, the online store in Kenya targeting consumers “who care about what they eat”, stocks products and brands supporting local producers and communities. These include unadulterated pork from farms near Mount Kenya, free- range chickens from the highlands of Tigoni, and craft-beer made from 100 per cent spring water. Their philosophy emanates from the need to no longer worry about the “source of the food, how it was made, who made it, and what went into it”. It may come as a surprise that Baraka Israel is among their featured producers, “bringing Israel’s finest quality products to Kenya”. Whether this is aligned with their philosophy is a question they and their consumers need to contend with.

Information about supply chains can be an inspiring part of a brand, but this information can also be hidden and spun. Yesterday Romans made slaves crush grapes by foot; today Baraka Israel will selectively educate you about their ancient wine-making culture, playing to the ignorance of many. As citizens we have voiced our indignation about the mercury-laden sugar we have been consuming and the poor quality tilapia imported from China. As we advocate for quality products that don’t poison us, we should likewise refuse to consume products that explicitly harm others.

Mandela’s words, alluding to the collective importance of achieving freedom for the Palestinians, serve as a reminder to fight discriminatory and unjust systems at home and abroad. And this resistance can begin in the pantry or cellar. Wine and food lovers may have revelled in the innocence of consuming these products but these products’ sinister history and continued tainting is inching upwards from the vines, blossoming, and will soon be harvesting on your tongue. Will you be ready?

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.