Category Archives: Kenya

mps should pay taxes…… and look at the poverty figures

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I was not particularly surprised when I read that Kenyan MPs had yet again threatened to cripple the government by denying it funds if the Minister of Finance mandated them to pay taxes. I was not surprised because our MPs are mostly selfish, vision-less clowns. They are leaders by name and nothing else. Kenya is a third world country with a dismal economic record and yet they earn salaries comparable to those of MPs in the developed world. And it is not a question of rewarding talent. These clowns do not show up for work most of the time. Many of them are not particularly smart – judging by the nonsense they constantly spew on tv and by their lifestyles. They have failed to forge a national identity or patch up a Kenyan national narrative to make us all feel like we are one people with one teleological trajectory.

I am disappointed at Raila and Kibaki. These two men have sat on the sidelines and let the MPs refuse once again to pay taxes. They can raise their salaries at will but refuse to pay taxes. It is time we took away their power to pay themselves or determine whether they paid taxes or not.

And as we do that we should make sure that all of them have an idea about just how poor Kenyans really are. I don’t think these clowns have an idea about this. Otherwise they would be ashamed into doing something about it. If they knew Ruto and Raila would not be talking at each other through the media like they do not have each other’s phone numbers. If they knew PNU would get its act together and finally serve the people instead of having weird power plays four years out of the next election. If they knew God knows they would bury the ghost of tribalism once and for all. But they don’t. They really don’t. And because of that 97% of members of Turkana Central live below the poverty line. The figures from many other districts are not any different. It is a sad dystopia we live in.

when will we have lasting political parties?

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True democracy is not just about holding elections every five years. It is also about having a constructive deliberative process. A process that focuses on issues. This is only possible with the creation of important institutions to mediate this process. In a true democracy, political parties are just as important as the legal provision for loyal opposition. Disorganized and unarticulated opposition is just as bad as, if not worse than, having a single party state. It breeds instability and degenerates into politics of contingency.

Sadly, Kenya’s democratic experiment is once again emerging as having failed. With the formation of PNU and ODM, I was hopeful that these two parties would consolidate and dig in their heels to become the peddlers of policies to the people. But sooner than later PNU started unravelling. Now we have ODM going throught the same trials. Members of parliament from the Rift Valley are threatening to quit the party – on what appears to be purely tribal grounds.

That Kenyan politicians are tribalistic is not a secret. It baffles me how nearly all MPs from a given area can always have the same positions on issues. Kenyan politics is such that just by knowing someone’s last name you can accurately predict their position on any political issue. This is total buffoonery. Absolute insanity. And at the very least extremely shameful.

I am disappointed in William Ruto. For a while I thought that he would be the man that detribalises the Rift Valley. While appreciating the concerns he may have over the implementation on the Waki report, he should not have come so publicly against it. He could have been more subtle and negotiated with the government – which he is a part of – from within.

Strictly speaking, I think the members of the Rift Valley have a point. The youth that were detailed for having engaged in violence were mere pawns of the political class. They should be freed. The people that should be in jail are the leaders who incited the youth. And Raila, Kibaki and Kalonzo should own up on their mess. Kibaki for not providind Kenyans with an open electoral process and Raila and Kalonzo for reacting to Kibaki’s mischief with mischief of their own.

this is total bull, and we should not be scared by it

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I just read a BBC piece that the Islamist terrorists in Somalia are threatening to attack Kenya if it goes ahead with plans to train about 10,000 Somali soldiers. Really? Seriously? Are we supposed to be scared by this?

Somalia has been a mess since Siad Barre was deposed in the early 90s. Thugs and war lords have made normal life impossible for millions of Somali from all walks of life. For well over a decade the country has not had a functional government. While I opposed the Somali invasion to ged rid of the Islamic Courts union government, I think that that is all water under the bridge now. And quite frankly in retrospect that might have been a good idea. There is heavy Western investment in Kenya and the last thing we needed was a government that pals around with terrorists, to borrow from that now famous Alaskan.

Training these soldiers, is a good idea. It is time Somalia had a government to impose peace and stability. Due to the rampant clanism in the country, democracy will not work. At least not in the short term. The best thing to do is have a functional government that is moderately legitimate and have it use all human-rights-respecting means to quell the violence and bring some order and civility to Somali life.

Now, these thugs might carry out their threat and kill Kenyans. And I would find it hard to justify sacrificing Kenyan lives on behalf of Somalis – or vise versa. But sometimes we have to stand up for what is right. Kenya should not feel threatened by pirates and common thugs with kalashnikovs. We are stronger and braver than that. I say let’s go ahead and train these Somalis and if these thugs attack us we shall take it to them. We can do it.

the 2008 world hunger index: it is not pretty

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So the 2008 world hunger index (WHI) published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) from the US and Welthungerhilfe from Germany is out and it is ugly. No, I am not talking about the horrible pictures of African children covered in ashes or an emaciated South Asian woman and her child which are prominently displayed in the report. I am talking about the fact that Sub-Saharan Africa still remains the hungriest part of the world. The DRC, Eritrea, Burundi and Niger are among the worst performing countries in Africa and in the world.

Kenya (55th out of 88) is hungrier than Mauritania, a desert country. The least hungry continental Sub-Saharan African country is South Africa.

It is embarrassing that over 10,000 years after humans invented agriculture over 900 million people still go hungry worldwide (South Asia and Africa being the worst affected areas). It is sad that many African countries still cannot feed their own people. A combination of wars, bad politics and a dearth of planning has ensured that millions of Africans continue to go hungry. When are we going to start thinking seriously about agriculture, population control and food stability?

time for the kenyan government to come clean on arms

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So this is turning into child play. It is out there, government of Kenya. Everybody knows that the arms are not for sure yours and that they might be destined for Southern Sudan in complete contradistinction to a UN embargo against selling arms to Sudan. Denying it only makes you look stupid and clueless. Give us facts and documents to back them. The other day I saw something that appeared to be an invoice on the BBC which was supposed to prove that the arms and tanks really are Southern Sudan’s.

Frankly, with Northern Sudan being crazy and the LRA continuing in their deranged rebellion in Northern Uganda, I think Southern Sudan should be armed to the teeth. If Kenya can help them do that so be it. We need to coddle up with them anyway – they have oil and we can permanently lock their dependence on our roads, railways and ports for trade. Not to mention our banks, schools and even to some extent the use of Swahili.

So I think we have no apologies to make to anyone. The US and the UN understand that Southern Sudan needs arms – to defend Abeyi and to keep the North in check. Plus they are going to be an independent country soon and so need a stable modern or pseudo modern army – I doubt if the Ukrainian tanks make that much of a difference on the military modernity scale. Alfred Mutua and the government of Kenya should stop acting like an embarrassed child caught with sugar all over his cheeks and own up. Yes we were transporting the arms to them, but it was all for a good cause.

On the other hand if the tanks are ours, well and good. Let’s produce the documents to back that up and demand an apology from the US ambassador to Kenya.

and on another note ….. perhaps to avoid any future embarrassments we should do something concrete about Somalia and their pirates. We need a regional initiative. Ethiopian invasions or Ugandan half-hearted peacekeeping will not take Somalis anywhere.

these somali pirates must be stopped now

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As I whined about the resignation of Mbeki and the ineluctable ascendance of one Jacob Zuma to the most powerful position on the continent, the story of Somali pirates seizing a ship with militray cargo destined for Kenya made me even more worried. 33 tanks, among other military hardware, were on the Ukranian ship that was hijacked by pirates from Somalia while on international waters off the coast of the failed state in the horn of Africa.

These developments raise a very serious question. For how long will the world sit back and watch as a few greedy men with guns terrorize an entire country, killing innocent women and children and depriving them of a decent livelihood? So far the consensus has been that as long as the mess is confined within Somalia then everyone (save for Ethiopia and the CIA) would pretend that nothing is going on. But now there is an overflow. Tired of the boredom of pillaging within their borders the rag-tag bandits of Somalia have decided to extend their activities to the sea, routinely hijacking ships for ransome and booty. They need to be stopped.

These 21st century pirates need to be stopped not just in the sea but also within the borders of Somalia. It is imperative that countries within the wider East African region come up with a plan of solving Somalia’s problem once and for all instead of merely containing it, as seems to be the policy of the regional military powerhouse Ethiopia and the United States. Somalis are people too – just like the Kenyans or Ivorians who elicited much international sucpport in their times of crises – and need to be allowed to have an existence worthy of human beings. The last eighteen years have shown us that Somalis, on their own, cannot rid themselves of the dystopia that they’ve made of their country. The international community should – in a Rousseauian sense – impose peace and set in motion a more transparent re-education on government and institutions instead of the current puppet government arrangement. Sounds too optimistic to you? To the gainsayers I say it can be done. It can be done because the vast majority of Somalis want it to be done. An international intervention will not be an Iraq, not even a Somalia-’93.

after kenya, zimbabwe …. bad precedences?

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So the big news coming out of the continent today is the big signing of a deal between Robert Mugabe and his long-time foe Morgan Tsvangirai. The deal guarantees Tsvangirai, the legitimate winner of the last presidential elections in Zimbabwe, powers for the day to day running of the country while Mugabe still leads the military and the cabinet.

This deal is kind of the same that Kenyans adopted after the disputed presidential elections last December. While in Kenya’s case it wasn’t as clear as to who won the election, in Zimbabwe it was as clear as the springs of Nyandarua that Morgan Tsvangirai beat the senile Mugabe in the polls. The sharing of power with a political thief in the mold of Mugabe is an affront against democracy. The nature of democratic elections is that winners take it all. Losers should accept the results and wait for the next election cycle. This applies equally to incumbents and the opposition. I was mightily pleased with the poise by which UNITA handled its loss in the just concluded elections in Angola – although if you ask me I think they should pull up their socks and grants Angolans true democracy by being more competitive.

Anyway, as happy as I am for Zimbabweans, I hope this phenomenon – of presidents stealing elections and then appointing the real winners prime ministers – does not catch on on the continent. I hope that Kenya and Zimbabwe are the last to go through this weird electoral circus.

angola – another chance for democracy in africa

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The sunny optimism that greeted the democratic awakening in Africa in the early nineties may be nearing twilight but there is still hope. Even as states like Kenya, Zimbabwe and even Senegal waver in their quest for liberal democracy, there is still a sliver of hope in the likes of Angola – a former war zone which holds elections tomorrow.

Angola has been for some time one of the fastest growing countries in the world. It is Africa’s soon to be largest oil producer (mainly because the Nigerian behemoth can’t get its act together) and with the help of the Chinese has recently embarked on a mission to build infrastructure throughout the country. The wealth may not be evenly shared out, but the country as a whole is better off than it was a decade or so ago.

So it is really hopeful that they will be having elections tomorrow. Yes there will be problems. Dos Santos has all the power in Angola and will definitely not hold completely free and fair elections. But this is a start. A few times over and the Angolans will internalize voting as a human right and realize their duty and moral call to chart the way forward for themselves through the ballot.

I am almost certain that Dos Santos’ MPLA will win the Friday election. But UNITA should not give up. Democracy is as cultural as it is political. Their time will come. Get to parliament, constructively oppose the government and be the watch-dog for the people. And help spread the idea that Africans are and ought to be in charge of their lives. Not governments. Certainly not NGOs. Not the church. Not the West. But Africans. Africans in Angola, Africans in Sudan, Africans in all war-ravaged regions of the continent.

communication, communication, communication

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So  I am a bit frustrated this morning. I am frustrated because after about fifteen minutes of searching, I cannot find any contact information for the offices of the Prime Minister and several other ministries of the Kenyan government. How hard can it be to put these up? How hard can it be to have someone check the mail and/or the email and at least respond to inquiries and all – I am sure there are lots of Kenyans who can do this as a part time job with almost as much pay as the clowns running our government spend on mineral water whenever they attend their many conferences and workshops.

Speaking of workshops. Do we really need all of them? Can’t government be run by competent people who don’t need training in expensive hotels every two days? My hypothesis is that the only reason we have so many workshops is because we have way too many people from villages in Vihiga, Karachuonyo or Maragua in high places. The Kenyan government need not be as expensive and complex as we’ve (or more accurately they’ve) made it.  In reality, it ought to be a team of experienced and knowledgeable technocrats focused on delivery of services and the betterment of Kenyan lives and not the hordes of half-illiterates who invariably betray their ignorance whenever they open their mouths on tv – my latest favorite being that prisons guy who said the buck never stops (I am not sure he understands what this means).

But I digress. All I wanted to know is the contact information of the vice president and prime minister of the Republic of Kenya. Anyone with this information?

PS: The Kenyan Olympic team did me really proud. Hongera!!!

kenyan new aids figures, cause for concern

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Late last year I wrote a peace congratulating the Kenyan government and all those involved of having done a commendable job in reducing the HIV prevalence rate to 5.1%. But new figures out indicate that things are much worse than this. It turns out that the prevalence rate is 7.4% with about 1.4 million Kenyans between the ages of 15 and 64 infected.

Even more worrying is the fact that more than 83% of those infected do not know that they’ve been infected and less than half of them use condoms. The new figures also reported that 10% of married couples in Kenya are infected.

It goes without mention that this should sound an alarm among Kenyans. The truth needs to be put out there. It is true that Kenyan men, and to some extent women, are behaving badly. It is also true that they are not using condoms while at it.

What needs to be done is (I am no expert but this is sort of common sense):

1. The public should be educated bluntly about proper sexual behavior. There is no point in acting like people are not having indiscriminate sex while they are. Men especially should be constantly reminded that they should not be putting their families in danger by their bad habits.

2. Condoms. Condoms. Condoms. I don’t care what the church says. People are having sex. Abstinence is, I concede, the best prevention method. But what do you when people, in their fallibility cannot put down the natural urge to have sex? I say the government should avail condoms, not just to teenagers but to married men as well.

3. Empower women. Empower women. Empower women. Empowered women will be able to say no to unprotected sex. Empowered women will not be forced to have sex in exchange for food on the table for their children. Empowered women will raise well mannered, morally upright children who will not grow into deviants running around having indiscriminate sex.

EMPOWERED WOMEN WILL PROVIDE A SOUND FOUNDATION TO SOCIETY.

These are just three things that the government can do to prevent the figures rising further than 7.4%. They may seem sort of naive, but the truth is they are achievable. They are achievable if the folks in Nairobi behaved like the leaders they ought to be and strove at changing society – for this is part of leadership. Kenya and indeed African leaders can change the course of this terrible disease if they want to.

Some of them like our dear president have more than one wife (or some other hazy definition – partner, wife, concubine etc). What message are we sending to the young. When leaders are allowed to run around having illegitimate children we set a bad example. It should start with leaders having responsible sexual relations and then preaching to the masses to have responsible sexual relations.

Otherwise millions more will die. Millions more will be orphaned. And millions that could have been spent building roads and schools will instead be spent on funerals and health costs.

Kimunya exit a loss for kenya

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Politics is a dirty game. To that let me also add that all human beings made of bone and flesh are fallible. These two truisms proved their worth once again today when Kenya’s Finance Minister Amos Kimunya resigned in connection to the fraudulent sale of the corruption tainted Grand Regency Hotel.

Corruption accusations, whether valid or not have robbed Kenya of one of its better Ministers in the post-Moi era. Kimunya was, for the most part, a man of principle sprinkled with pragmatism. He is credited for having brought macroeconomic stability to the Kenyan economy and restoring some sanity in the formulation of the government’s monetary policies. Most of all he is the man who was at the helm when Kenya had its best annual growth rate outside the first two decades of independence.

Most of his political detractors may have taken mileage out of the Grand Regency saga but the true loser in this case is not Mr. Kimunya but the Kenyan economy. Yes the man may have erred but by throwing him out we risk discontinuity in the setting of the economic agenda, which besides security, is the most important function of any self respecting government.

I am not saying tha there are no more Kimunyas out there or that corruption in any form should be tolerated. All I am saying is that the chances of our next Finance Minister being as successful as Amos Kimunya was are pretty slim. Most of our cabinet ministers are total clowns – I picture Kajwang singing and dancing on tv, Martha Karua with her vitriol etc etc. To me, Kimunya was one of the most level headed cabinet members and his loss is a real shame.

xenophobia in south africa

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The images were heart wrenching. Seeing the body of a supposed immigrant on the ground, partly burnt and bleeding made me wonder what got into South Africans this past week. Apparently their excuse for killing and chasing away immigrants is that the foreigners took away their jobs and are fuelling rising crime rates.

But who exactly are the criminals here? I’d say it is the mobs that are necklacing foreigners and burning down their houses and business establishments.  And who exactly is responsible for the lack of jobs? Is it really the immigrants, some of whom have created jobs – like the Kenyan whose supermarket was razed? I would say it is Thabo Mbeki and his men. These are the people that have over the years allowed the immigrants into South Africa to begin with and have failed to create a vibrant economy that provides for all south africans. They are the ones to blame and not innocent Zims and other (Southern) Africans fleeing poverty and tyranny back in their home countries.

And in other stories, I read that there were lynchings of witches in Western Kenya. It is shocking that this type of thinking still exists in people’s heads. African governments still have a long way to go in instilling the rule of law and rational-legal attitudes in their people. It is extremely sad that almost none of them realise just how much they need to do to change the lives of their people and put them on the path to true modernity – the African way.

the new kenyan cabinet, bloated and expensive

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President Kibaki and Premier Odinga are two men without much of a strong will. This is evidenced by their capitulation to the demands of their cronies and allies in the naming of the new cabinet. 42 cabinet including the president and AG was announced by these two men. And this in a country that struggles to feed its people, educate them and keep them alive. Did we really need separate ministries for medical services and public health and sanitation? or education and higher education? And what exactly will the minister for fisheries development do that the minister for agriculture or water cannot do?

It’s insulting how these two men turned a completely deaf ear to the calls made by Kenyans for a leaner, cheaper cabinet. It’s tax payer’s money you are spending Messrs president and premier.

I understand that there was need to please as many people as possible following the events of February, but at the same time I do believe that there could have been a cheaper way of doing this. Perhaps having a more transparent system of government where ministers did not run their ministries like personal fiefdoms would have made people feel included in the government and obviated the need for tribal representation in the cabinet.

And now that we have a cabinet, it will be interesting to see how it actually functions, given the animosity that exists between the ODM and PNU and the rest. I can speculate that there will be a lot of mission creep across amorphously defined ministerial portfolios resulting in intra-cabinet power struggles. I can also see the members of the cabinet continuing in their bad habit of addressing each other through the media like they don’t have each other’s contacts (I seriously think that the media should give such exchanges a black out to teach these men and women a lesson).

Oh, and on all those promises of better government, a new constitution, land reforms, prosecution of corruption, roads, schools, hospitals ………. etc : I am not holding my breath.

do we really need this circus?

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The back and forth tussle that has become of the negotiations between Kibaki and Raila over a coalition cabinet is very unseemly. More than twice, the two men have met and agreed on a deal only to have their mouthpieces issue statements on the contrary.

What surprises me is how PNU is acting like they did not know what they were getting into by signing the Feb. 28th agreement. By agreeing to share power with ODM, they essentially admitted guilt to the shady mess that was the previous December’s general election and thereby allowed ODM to put one foot into government. If PNU thought that ODM would be contented with the ministry of fisheries and such then they were way off the mark. Like any political party these people want power and they will not settle for less.

What Kibaki ought to do now is just give them what they want and then control them via the Finance Ministry. The two most contentious posts seem to be Foreign and Local Government Ministries. Kenya’s foreign ministry is not that big of a deal. Who cares about summits and talk shops around the world? Plus it’s not like the country has any coherent foreign policy that would be severely changed by an ODM apparatchik in the post. And with the ministry of Local Government, I say give it to ODM. It’s not like the major towns and cities – outside of the wider Central region – are not pro-ODM already. Having to fight councils and city residents selling tomatoes in the streets might even make them unpopular come 2012.

My two cents on this is that the tussle is about nothing really. The president can continue to run the entire cabinet through control of the treasury and concentrate power in the hands of the Finance minister. Kenyan ministers are not an ambitious lot so I don’t think any of them will want to do anything revolutionary simply because they are now in charge of local councils or the ministry of heavy industry (I can’t believe they are actually creating these superfluous ministries).

So save us the drama Mr. President and name a cabinet already. Your government will be a joke anyway, with its 40 cabinet posts. Kenyans will pay over 500 million Shillings every year paying for the bloated cabinet and expect and get absolutely nothing in return. Shame shame shame.

I put it to you that what really matters to Kenyans is not what post some fat cat gets in your government but the stuff that increases the number of sufurias of ugali in their homes : equitable economic development.

Kenya sees HIV prevalence rate drop, more needs to be done

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The government has announced a drop in the HIV prevalence rate in Kenya from a high 14% to a relatively low 5%. These figures were announced by Prof. Were, the chairperson of the National Aids Control Council. Prof. Were also added that the number of people on ARVs had increased from a paltry 2000 five years ago to 150,000 in 2007.

This is good news. However, a lot more needs to be done. West African countries like Senegal have showed that with government commitment and cultural changes the scourge of AIDS can be kept at bay.

Among things that ought to change are traditional practices that belong in the pre-AIDS era. I am talking about wife inheritance in my home province of Nyanza and sharing of material during communal circumcisions across the country. Other areas to be looked at are religious practices and teachings that may encourage the spread of the disease. Being a Catholic, I am embarrassed by my church’s insistence that people should not use condoms even as they die like flies from this terrible malady. The government should talk straight with the church on this issue and require them not to preach from the pulpits anything that might jeopardize the success of the national anti-AIDS campaign.

Kenyans also need to change certain social practices. A friend of mine told me that when she visited Africa – South Africa and Swaziland – she was struck by the utter lack of faithfulness among couples. This might explain the high AIDS prevalence rates in Southern Africa and is also true in East Africa. Kenyans need to be more responsible with their sexuality by planning well with regards to matters sexual. The government and interested groups ought to be more aggressive in their family planning and sexual education initiatives in order to ensure that the gains that have been made in the last six years are improved upon.

I believe that with a concerted effort from the government, churches and cultural icons – like the Ker in Luo Nyanza for instance – Kenya can achieve a prevalence rate of less than 1% in the not so distant future. The majority Muslim countries of West Africa have managed to have low infection rates with little resources and so can we in the East, and possibly lend our ideas to the Southerners who are the worst affected by this scourge.