This video is many things, from a critique of “the development industry” to just good old making fun of bimbo tourists/foreigners who try too hard to create an “other” when they visit new places.
HT Mackenzie
going to “Africa”
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Category Archives: africa
what next for the kenyan political class?
The truth of the matter is that the whole political class in Kenya is implicated in the murder of 1300 people and the displacement of hundreds of thousands following the post-election violence of 2007-08. Their continued contempt of the ordinary mwananchi is evident in the fact that three years on the displaced still live in IDP camps littered across the country. The lack of widespread moral outrage at this fact speaks boatloads about Kenyans’ moral character.
The ICC appears to be closing on the “Ocampo six” – individuals identified by the ICC prosecutor Moreno Ocampo as most culpable at the highest level for the violence that rocked parts of the Rift Valley in early 2008. An ICC pre-trial chamber ruled yesterday that there is evidence to suggest that six prominent Kenyans are criminally responsible for crimes against humanity committed in 2007-08. The six include Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, Cabinet Secretary Francis Muthaura, former Commissioner of Police Hussein Ali, former ministers Henry Kosgei and William Ruto and radio personality Peter Sang.
After the 2007 general elections Kalenjin speaking supporters of Raila Odinga attempted to drive out members of the “Kikuyu diaspora” in the Rift Valley Province, the “ethnic homeland” of the Kalenjin. Raila’s opponent in elections, President Kibaki, is a Kikuyu. It is suspected that local ethnic leaders, including William Ruto, Henry Kosgei and Peter Sang, were in charge of directing these attacks. In the most gruesome episode in Kenya’s darkest hour mobs locked ethnic Kikuyu women and children in an Eldoret church and set it on fire. More than 30 perished. Kikuyu elites, allegedly lead by Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and Cabinet Secretary Francis Muthaura, retaliated by mobilizing the proscribed Mungiki gang to carry out reprisal attacks. It is also alleged that the former Police Commissioner, Hussein Ali, conspired to keep the police off Mungiku’s back. Hundreds of ethnic Kalenjins and Luos, among other supporters of Raila Odinga, were killed or uprooted from their homes in Nakuru and Naivasha.
Ever since the announcement by the ICC prosecutor that he would go after the six a radically political realignment has taken place in the country. William Ruto and Henry Kosgei ditched the party led by Raila Odinga and joined alliances with Uhuru Kenyatta to oppose the ICC indictment. President Kibaki, who at the beginning appeared to be willing to throw Uhuru under the bus, also became wary of the ICC after his chief lieutenant Muthaura was named as a key suspect. Presently, Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka has embarked on a “shuttle diplomacy” mission to convince African leaders and the P5 of the UN security council to lean on the ICC to defer the charges against the Ocampo six. Many African leaders, given their own records at home, have supported the initiative. But the mission at the security council hit a snag yesterday when US representatives indicated that they will veto any attempts at deferral.
What then for Kenyan politics? Any analysis must focus on the Kibaki succession. President Kibaki is term-limited and must step down in 2012. Two members of the Ocampo six – Uhuru and Ruto – are key players in the succession game. If the two are convicted Raila Odinga stands to gain the most. But it all depends on what alliances ensue following such an eventuality. Uhuru and Ruto might remotely throw their weight behind Vice President Musyoka to enable the latter to capture State House. Indeed, the three have publicly declared to be members of the (unfortunately named) KKK alliance (the three are from Kikuyu, Kalenjin and Kamba ethnic groups, respectively). The more likely scenario, however, is that the Kikuyu and Kalenjin communities will experience internal fractures once their key ethnic chiefs are out of the game. Uhuru is already facing an insurgency led by the fire-breathing former Justice Minister Martha Karua. Ruto has maintained a facade of unity in his ethnic bloc but money can do wonders in Kenyan politics, and his potential detractors among the Kalenjin – including a son of former President Moi – have wheelbarrows of it.
In short, everything is in flux right now. The substantive reaction of the political class – beyond the shouting match that is currently underway – will only be apparent when parliament resumes in a few weeks. Lawmakers need to pass crucial laws needed to implement a new constitution that was ratified last August. The breakdown of the voting patterns will almost inevitably show some nascent realignment. Like the wikileaks records of Kenyan politicians bad-mouthing one another to low-level US embassy officials have shown, Kenyan politicians are an incorrigibly unprincipled bunch who will not hesitate to jump ship if they realize that their party leader is in trouble.
The political temperature in Kenya will no doubt go up in the next few days. The unfortunate thing in all this is that the hullabaloo is will continue to be a distraction from the fact that 1300 innocent KENYANS died and hundreds of thousands were displaced in 2007-08.
interesting research work on kenya
Check out Blattman’s Blog.
icc finds six kenyans culpable for ethnic violence
The ICC has ruled that six prominent Kenyans have a case to answer for the murder of 1300 people and the displacement of hundreds of thousands in the 2007-08 post-election violence in Kenya.
The spotlight is now on President Kibaki. About two of the president’s closest allies – Finance Minister Uhuru and head of civil service Muthaura – a local daily opines:
Retaining them in Government will send a signal to the ICC and the world that Kenya is not ready to co-operate and is a hostile State, putting it at par with Sudan, which has refused to hand over President Al-Bashir who is charged with crimes against humanity over Darfur.
More on the political reaction to this soon.
In related news, I am absolutely loving the wikileaks stuff on the drama that is Kenyan politics. Most politicians believe that Kalonzo is a janus-faced intellectual lightweight who pretends to love Jesus Christ. Raila is depicted as accessible but power-hungry and really bad at management. President Kibaki is sick, condones corruption and has been captured by vested interests in his inner circle. Ruto and Uhuru fret at the idea of taking all the blame for 2007-08. Uhuru Kenyatta is “lazy.”
This is valuable information, the effects of which will not be apparent any time soon. In the minds of Kenyans, a clearer image of these little men and women who parade as gods is slowly forming. It is only a matter of time before the myth of tribal loyalty is shattered and these tribal chiefs are seen for who they really are: a bunch of unprincipled and venal goons.
kenyan elites conspired to kill peasants in rift valley, and are getting away with it
President Kibaki’s embarrassment regarding the 2007-08 post-election violence continues. The latest information from wikileaks suggests that the top brass of the Kenyan military armed the proscribed group Mungiki which then went on to kill peasants in Kenya’s Rift Valley Province. The outgoing US Ambassador detailed to Washington how co-ethnics of Mr. Kibaki tried to arm-twist the army into providing guns and aerial support to Mungiki in their campaigns against Kalenjins in the wider Nakuru area.
In light of this new information the natural question that follows is how much Mr. Kibaki knew. I find it hard to believe that he had no clue about this. I find it harder to stomach the fact that the President of Kenya may have Ok-ed a move by some of his lieutenants to murder innocent women and children simply because they spoke a different language.
Here is an excerpt from the Standard:
In the cables published on the wikileaks website, the envoy reported he received information retired military generals from Central and Rift Valley provinces were involved in organising militias that were meant to play a bigger role in the violence.
Ranneberger identified a former commandant of the National Defence College as the main player in the deadly plot. “At one time he put pressure on serving military generals to arm the outlawed Mungiki sect with G3 rifles, and also provide them with helicopter support,” read part of the cables.
In one cable titled ‘Kikuyus Not Afraid to Strike Back’ Ranneberger quoted sources claiming elements of the “Kikuyu-dominated Party of National Unity (PNU)” were backing the so-called “Forest Guard” militia, which included members of banned Mungiki sect.
“He (name withheld) has reportedly put pressure on the current Kenya Army Commander, Lieutenant General Augustine Njoroge to release G3 rifles and provide helicopter support to the Forest Guard,” read part of the cable.
Lt Gen Augustine Njoroge has since left the force and is now Kenya’s Ambassador to Israel. It is not clear if he executed orders from his superior.
The cable claimed the Lieutenant General in question was assisted in his efforts by a retired Brigadier General who was “acting as Chief of Staff for the effort”. The name of the former presidential aide-de-camp has also been withheld for legal reasons.
The ambassador further wrote Mungiki was receiving funding from two businessmen, one of them based in Muthaiga.
Prof. Ndung’u should stay, away with the whining MPs
For once Kenya has a responsible academic running the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK). Prof. Njuguna Ndung’u has exuded nothing but confidence in his first term in office. Given that finance is a confidence game, this has been a most welcome scenario. It is therefore weird that there are MPs out there crowing that his reappointment be reviewed. Given the country’s political temperature this seems like a dumb misguided move. You remove Prof. Ndung’u and you might end up with someone who is down with printing money to pay for next year’s elections. I say let’s not play politics with the Central Bank.
I fully support Prof. Njuguna Ndung’u remaining as CBK governor. Just one request, echoing Jaindi over at the Daily Nation:
A piece of advice for Prof Ndung’u. You will go down as the best governor in the country’s history if you get the banks to reduce banking spreads. Commercial banks are fleecing borrowers.
institutions, culture and economic development
I am currently taking a class taught by Avner Greif, an economist/economic historian at Stanford in the tradition of New Institutional Economics. The class introduces ideas about economic development from a perspective that does not get much attention from economists, i.e. culture and its impact on long-run institutional development.
In one of the readings Tabellini argues that:
Well functioning legal institutions breed good values, since legal enforcement is particularly relevant between unrelated individuals. …… better informal enforcement sustained by ongoing relations in a closed network may be counterproductive for values.
Thus, the model predicts that clan based societies develop very different value systems compared to modern societies that rely on the abstract rule of law.
That’s in The Scope of Cooperation.
The paper provides a model of the recursive interaction between good institutions and culture. The scope of cooperation and interaction matters for institutional and economic outcomes. Clannishness, whether in Southern Italy or Mogadishu, is bad for economic development.
But you need a functional state system for people to be able to even contemplate abandoning the insurance scheme that is the clan. The model predicts two steady-state equilibria. Institutionally speaking, you are either Botswana or Chad.
kcse results through sms
For those out there who have been asking about how to get your KCSE results, I believe there are a bunch of sms services that help with this. Here is one from last year, I am not sure if it asks. I will keep looking around for a guaranteed service provider.
child-bride index
African states dominate the Economist’s child-bride index, with the Sahelian states of Mali, Niger and Chad in the top three. They also have the lowest literacy rates among their female populations.
This is one of those problems associated with “culture” that most development experts shy away from. My take on this is that the cultural defenses of such practices is a lot of horse manure.
There is nothing African about marrying off a 12 year old girl.
Most child marriages have deep-rooted economic motivations. In most cases it boils down to the bride-price. Solving the problem will therefore require not just laws that throw “human rights” at young African girls, but a concerted effort that also includes development practitioners to provide alternative income to men who marry off their 12 year-olds in exchange for goats.
kcse results to be released monday
The Kenya National Examination Council, through the Ministry of Education, will release KCSE results on Monday. Key stats will include whether gender and regional gaps persist in performance.
The Kenyan education system is in need of urgent restructuring. The content of most of the curriculum is outdated, as the Minister of Education himself admitted. Nearly 60,000 students who qualify for university education never get admitted to the country’s public universities because of lack of space. Private universities are oftentimes too expensive and, in a growing number of places, of dubious quality.
Instead of promoting class mobility, the education system continues to perpetuate the existing class system by heavily subsidizing higher education at the expense of students from poor households who fail to qualify for admission because of the low quality of their primary and secondary education.
this while his people starve
Despite its large amounts of oil reserves and a tiny population of just under 700,000 souls, Equatorial Guinea remains one of the poorest countries on the planet.
This is part of the reason why.
As I have screamed elsewhere:
It is commonsensical that a country like Equatorial Guinea – small in size and with an abundance of oil – should never wallow in want. It takes a great deal of stupidity to plunge a whole 60% of the population in abject poverty with this much wealth. 700,000 people, Obiang. Just 700,000. You can keep track of every one of your citizens, providing for their basic needs and granting them a decent education, healthcare, housing and what not. Seriously. It is not rocket science. And even after all this you would have enough to pocket for your son’s playboy fantasies.
kibaki withdraws unconstitutional nominations
The much-awaited showdown in the Kenyan parliament was aborted when President Kibaki’s allies made a tactical retreat and prevailed on the President to withdraw a list of nominations to constitutional offices. The pro-Kibaki camp had earlier planned to initiate a motion to censure Speaker Kenneth Marende and overturn a ruling he made last week that rejected debate on the President’s nominations because they were unconstitutional.
What does this mean? well, for one, it adds to the growing list of historical references Kenyans now have in which the will of the people has won against unlimited executive authority. It also signals that the president’s camp cannot do it on their own. As I keep reiterating, Kenya may have already overcome the culture of wapende wasipende in which presidents and their men did whatever they wanted regardless of the consequences.
The events this afternoon are another step in the right direction in Kenya’s long match to constitutionalism and limited government.
museveni is on the ropes
With 72 cabinet ministers Uganda reeks of instability. Leonardo Arriola, a Political Scientist at Berkeley, has made argued that African presidents create bloated cabinets to buy off opponents when they feel insecure in power. Uganda’s Museveni might be doing just that. In office since 1986, Mr. Museveni just won another 5-year term in office with 68% of the vote, or so the Ugandan electoral commission would like us to believe.
The opposition parallel vote tallying system was sabotaged by security forces in cahoots with cell phone companies (these companies should be fined in other countries in which they operate…). The main challenger, Mr. Kizza Besigye, claims that the last count he got showed Museveni at 50.8% with him second at 42.5%. The final official tally gave Mr. Museveni a landslide win of more than 40 points.
It is now quite possible that a majority of Ugandans do not want Museveni in power. Given his long tenure and the recent terror events that could have boosted him with a “rally around the flag” effect, his poor performance at the polls should be cause for concern for stability in Uganda. Too bad he will soon have oil money to create even bigger cabinets and buy more tanks and anti-riot gear, if he so wishes.
Ugandans may have to wait for quite a while before they experience their first ever peaceful transfer of power.
new lows for Kenyan politics
The battle lines have been drawn for a showdown in the Kenyan parliament tomorrow. Most reasonable Kenyans, including the current Chief Justice, the Attorney General (Mr. Kibaki’s government legal adviser) and Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs oppose the move by a faction allied to Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto to censure the speaker and shove president Kibaki’s questionable nominations to constitutional offices down Kenyans’ throats.
The media owners association, the Law Society of Kenya, and most of the Kenyan civil society have also rejected the unconstitutional nominations.
I have defended President Kibaki numerous times. I believe that it is because of his leadership style that Kenyans have experienced a resurgence of self-confidence that had long been lost after the fiasco that was 1966.
That said, I find his present actions deplorable. President Kibaki has chosen to risk plunging Kenya back into the abyss because of two of his lieutenants who masterminded the chaos that killed 1300 Kenyans and displaced hundreds of thousands. President Kibaki has chosen to spend public money and resources in defending this same duo. President Kibaki may also have been aware that state resources were used by his second wife and daughter to facilitate drug-trafficking. I stand disillusioned. For far too long I saw in the son of Othaya a Mang’u Man above petty the politics and mediocrity that characterizes Kenya’s political class. I may have been wrong.
The Kenyan presidency has been hijacked by Messrs Francis Muthaura and Uhuru Kenyatta. My only hope is that as they begin their descent for their sins from 2007-8 they do not take the rest of Kenya with them. I also hope that Mr. Kibaki will listen to the rest of Kenya, including the many bright legal minds allied to him, and rescind his wapende wasipende nominations.
His co-principal Mr. Odinga should also show some restraint and engage in grown-up politics. Engaging in a food fight with Mr. Kanyatta will not do Kenya any good.
Macharia Gaitho of the Daily Nation writes:
The crude personalised attacks both are displaying illustrate the depths to which Kenyan politics has sunk. Prime Minister Odinga and Deputy Prime Minister Kenyatta are demonstrating that they are truly the sons of their fathers.
They are privileged scions of the political and mercantile elite who got the best education money could buy and the richest heirlooms that could come out of public service, but when cornered, they abandon all pretence at cosmopolitan sheen and retreat to atavistic and crude ethnic demagoguery.
The saddest thing is that it might not just be a fight between two spoilt and overgrown brats, but a much wider one that carries their respective communities along.
The ordinary Luo or Kikuyu stands to gain absolutely nothing by hoisting Mr Odinga or Mr Kenyatta to reach the fruit. That fruit will not be shared, but kept within the family, as amply demonstrated by Kenyatta and Odinga Mark 1.
Yet you can bet that when it comes to reactions to the current Odinga-Kenyatta brickbats, it is the ordinary and downtrodden Kikuyu and Luo who will be incited to come out most rabidly in support of their man.
museveni wins another term, Gaddafi using African mercenaries
Long-term Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, in on course to a comfortable win in the country’s general election. With over 70% of the votes counted Mr. Museveni leads his closest rival, Besigye, with over 40%. President Museveni, ruler of Uganda since 1986, started off as a different kind of African president, presiding over a decade of sustained growth, drastic reduction in HIV infection rates and general peace and stability. But he stayed for too long. Beginning in the mid-1990s Uganda transitioned – under intense domestic and international pressure – from a “no-party democracy” [whatever that means] to a multiparty electoral system in which Museveni allowed for opposition at the margins.
The new dispensation created pressures for greater levels of patronage in order for Museveni to stay in power. He scrapped constitutionally mandated term limits, created a cabinet of over 70 ministers and went crazy with what Ugandans call “districtization” – the act of creating new local government jurisdictions purely for patronage purposes. Uganda’s new found oil reserves will certainly continue to fund the long-term autocrat’s stranglehold on Ugandan politics. Rumors abound that he intends to install his son and head of the presidential guard as his successor.
In other news, Col. Gaddafi is reported to be using African mercenaries to quell rebellion in the east of Libya. For decades Gaddafi has been a Guevara wanna-be, funding armed rebellions all over the Continent (Including the infamous Charles Taylor of Liberia). He seems to have done all that in the hope that the rebels he funded would come to his aid, like is happening now. But the presidents/rebel leaders who have sent soldiers to kill Libyans demanding for their natural rights should be aware that it is precisely such acts that have landed Jean-Pierre Bemba at the Hague.
kenopalo.com 