Tag Archives: Kenya

Africa’s budding narco-states?

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UPDATE:

The Kenyan Prime Minister just admitted to the presence of drug money in Kenyan politics. Huge. Also, check the UNODC’s drug trafficking patterns for East Africa.

Also, does anyone out there have a copy of the report on drug trafficking in Kenya? Care to share?

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I have written before about the growing problem of drug-trafficking that is creating new problems for already fragile African states.

Of note is the fact that the problem is not just limited to the usual suspects – weak or failing states – but also extends to countries that most would consider to have it together, like Ghana, South Africa and Kenya.

According to Reuters, “cocaine moves through West Africa” while “heroin transits through the eastern part of the continent.”

The most alarming thing about this new trend is that in most of these African countries drug-trafficking happens with the consent of those in government.

For instance, in Guinea the son of former president Conte was for a long time a leading drug kingpin. In Guinea-Bissau President Vieira’s and Gen. Na Waie’s deaths in March of last year were a result of drug-related feuds. In Ghana President Atta Mills has lamented that the drug lords are too powerful to rein in. In Kenya, a woman (rumored to be) close to the president and other elites have been linked to the drug trade. Indeed on June 1st President Obama listed a sitting Kenyan Member of Parliament (Harun Mwau) as a global drug kingpin.

In South Africa former Chief of Police, Jackie Selebi, was jailed for 10 years in 2010 on drug charges. More recently the wife of the South African Intelligence Minister (Sheryl Cwele) was found guilty of having connections to the illicit trade. In 2009 a Boeing 727 crashed and was later set ablaze by suspected drug traffickers in Mali. The plane is believed to have been a drug cargo plane from Latin America destined for Europe. Other African states whose drug connections have also come to light include The Gambia (where rumors abound that President Jammeh is himself involved in the trade in drugs and arms in collusion with the Bissauian army) and Mozambique (H/T kmmonroe). You can find related news stories here and here.

Clearly, this is a real problem that if not nipped in the bud has the potential of growing to Mexican proportions, especially considering the already low levels of state capacity in most of Africa.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy also addresses this issue in their newly released report:

In just a few years, West Africa has become a major transit and re-packaging hub for cocaine following a strategic shift of Latin American drug syndicates toward the European market. Profiting from weak governance, endemic poverty, instability and ill-equipped police and judicial institutions, and bolstered by the enormous value of the drug trade, criminal networks have infiltrated governments, state institutions and the military. Corruption and money laundering, driven by the drug trade, pervert local politics and skew local economies.

A dangerous scenario is emerging as narco-traffic threatens to metastasize into broader political and security challenges. Initial international responses to support regional and national action have not been able to reverse this trend. New evidence suggests that criminal networks are expanding operations and strengthening their positions through new alliances, notably with armed groups. Current responses need to be urgently scaled up and coordinated under West African leadership, with international financial and technical support. Responses should integrate
law enforcement and judicial approaches with social, development and conflict prevention policies – and they should involve governments and civil society alike.

Happy Madaraka Day!

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Happy Madaraka Day to all fellow Kenyans back home and around the world. Hongera!

Najivunia kuwa mkenya.

Judges reject kenya’s bid to stop icc case

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The government of Kenya has lost in its bid to convince the ICC that it has the political will and capacity to try key perpetrators of the 2007-08 post-election violence (PEV). Kenya had asked for six months to get its justice system in order and convince the ICC that it could bring to book those who planned and carried out the murder of over 1300 people and the displacement of hundreds of thousands in 2007-08. More on this here.

The Kenyan political elite find themselves in a pickle. Less than two years ago parliament thought that they could punt on addressing the PEV by deferring the cases to the ICC. It turns out Ocampo and the court were actually serious. Realizing this, they (the Kenyan gov.) attempted to hurriedly create a local process with the hope of persuading the court to stop the proceedings at the Hague.

But even a blind sheep could see through the government’s insincere attempts to clean up the judiciary or “investigate” the key suspects.

The Kenyan civil society remains adamant that the government has neither the capacity nor political will to prosecute the crimes committed in relation to the 2007 general elections.

Now the clock is ticking. With parliament and the Kenyan legal epistemic community largely in charge of naming the new judges that will staff the supreme court (and the wider judiciary) the accused and their political godfathers are in a panic. They must try and clean up shop under the current system or they will lose big, soon. Realizing the gravity of the situation, the same ethnic chiefs demigods politicians who were running around screaming “sovereignty” and “neo-colonialism” have since gone silent.

The Kenyan case has also generated a lot of heat with regard to the geopolitics of the ICC.

Many in Kenya and across Africa have (sometimes rightfully) criticized the ICC. But in my view it remains to be a necessary institution in the fight against impunity and murderous dictatorship on the Continent. (Pardon the phrase) We cannot throw out the baby with the bath water.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Without the ICC the families of those women and children that were burnt alive in a Church in Kiamba, Eldoret or those killed in retaliatory attacks in Naivasha will never get justice. That is the reality.

Remember, more Kenyans were killed in the months before the elections of 1992 and 1997 than in 2007-08 and yet the Kenyan political class merely pushed the unbearable truth under the rug. Also of note is the fact that the present anti-ICC crusade comprises those suspected to have financed opposite sides of the PEV.

The situation is a grim reminder of the Swahili proverb that says when the elephants fight it is the grass that suffers.

To those who talk of the ICC’s infringement on African nations’ sovereignty I’d like to pose a question: Who’s sovereignty is being violated? Is it al-Bashir’s or the Darfuris?; is it the Central Africans’ or Jean Pierre Bemba’s?; is it the Kenyans’ across the Rift Valley or the sovereignty of the Ocampo six?

whiggish history of kenya

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The caution in the title of this post applies.

A few good things have happened in Kenya since 2001:

  1. The powers of the presidency have been dispersed. Many tend to forget that Kibaki inherited the same powers as Moi. The only difference was that by 2002 the elites around the president had accumulated enough wealth to make theirs an oligarchical dictatorship rather than the one man show that were the 24 years of baba na mama (dad and mon) Nyayoism.
  2. Parliament has become strong. Kenyan MPs are among the highest paid in the world. Their incomes are comparable, if not better than, what US congress people make. In PPP terms the Kenyan parliament is a mint. MPs obscene incomes have bought them some independence from the executive. Now they run their own committee systems and routinely defy the executive. A few months ago the chief of Gen. staff Gen. Kianga appeared before the committee on defense and foreign relations to explain reports of corruption in procurement. I wonder what Moi thought about this.
  3. The civil service is no longer the place for have beens. The Business Daily reports that since Kibaki took over top civil servants have been making good money, sometimes even better than comparable individuals in the private sector. This is good in two ways. Firstly, it stanches the much maligned hemorrhaging of talent to the NGO sector. Secondly, it encourages the development of a talented and well connected epistemic community of technocrats. The politicians might think that they are merely providing goodies for their relatives in the civil service, but they are also laying the foundation of a well connected class of bureaucrats that in the future will lead to a more professional civil service.
  4. The judiciary is being cleaned up. This will take time, but the signs appear to be in the right direction.

All four mean that, in Kenya, it is no longer possible for a single individual or faction to run things with a wapende wasipende (like it or not) mentality. The sprouts of limited government are beginning to emerge.

Of course all this could go up in smoke in next year’s general election.

I wouldn’t short Kenya, though. The remarkable speed with which it rebounded after 2007 and the nature of reforms and negotiated settlements that emerged from the tragedy suggest a more lasting steady state. The Kenyan-model of power sharing could only work in Kenya because both parties could not govern alone.

blurring the line between church and state

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The Catholic Church has urged Parliament to interrogate the moral values and family principles of two judicial nominees before approving them.

The Church came short of rejecting the nomination of Dr Willy Mutunga and Ms Nancy Barasa for the positions of Chief Justice and Deputy Chief Justice respectively, over questions raised about their controversial moral standing.

“The excessive emphasis on academic excellence and radical reformism is not sufficient. Justice fundamentally involves moral order,” said the Church in a statement signed by all the bishops and read by Cardinal Njue.

That is Cardinal John Njue as quoted in the Kenyan daily the Standard.

As part of the implementation of the new constitution the Judicial Service Commission recently nominated Willy Mutunga, a card carrying liberal and reformer. Many in the Kenyan right, including the Church, have come out against Dr. Mutunga – some even pandering to Kenya’s overall conservatism by claiming that Dr. Mutunga might be gay (notice Njue’s comment about “moral order”). Weird stuff.

A part of me thinks that the church is being used by people who know they will lose big time if Kenya’s judiciary gets cleaned up. This talk of morality is horse manure mere hot air. Dr. Mutunga is not a threat, at all, to the country’s conservative character – wrongly conceived or not. He is, however, a nightmare from hell for those who have benefited from corruption since 1963.

The church was on the wrong side of the constitutional debate in 2010 – and lost. It appears that they have not woken up to reality yet. Kenya is changing. If it wants to remain relevant it must change, too.

general kianga should be a little bit embarrassed by this

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The Kenyan army is one of the most professionalized on the Continent. When their counterparts across the region were going nuts with politics through most of the 60s, 70s and 80s they opted instead to stay in the barracks. The coup attempt of 1982 died before it began. Just to illustrate how disinterested they are in politics, many Kenyans, including yours truly, cannot name the top generals in the armed forces.

But I think they are taking their dormancy too far. Uganda illegally occupied the Kenyan island of Migingo a while back. Now they are trying to annex yet another Kenyan island.

Most recently the Daily Nation is reporting that a group of Ethiopian tribesmen who attacked and killed 20 Kenyans within Kenyan territory stopped Kenyan officials from visiting a Kenyan village on the Kenyan side of the border.

“Prime Minister Raila Odinga and five Cabinet ministers were barred from accessing a Kenyan village occupied forcibly by Ethiopian tribesmen for fear of being attacked.”

Really? Seriously?

Where is the Kenyan army?

perspective: land issues in Kenya and zimbabwe

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This quote made me pause for a moment:

“As seen in this work, the naked exploitation of land rights has a far longer and more illustrious history in Kenyan than in Zimbabwe. Further, the human cost of such exploitation of land rights in Zimbabwe pales in comparison to Kenya. Human Rights Watch, which is not known to underestimate rights abuses, reports that, by the year 2000 seven white farmers and several tens of black farmers had been killed in Zimbabwe in such violent exploitation of land rights. By the year 2000, these activities in Kenya had resulted in the deaths of thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands”

That is Onoma in his book on the Politics of Property Rights Institutions in Africa.

Notice that the figures quoted do not include the victims of Kenya’s 2007-08 post election violence. 1300 died, and just over 300,000 were displaced.

In 1980 6000 (white) Zimbabweans owned 42% of the land in the country. How anyone, including the white farmers, thought this was sustainable in the long run beats me.

In some sense Zimbabwe was inevitable. South Africa is next.

drug trafficking and african politics

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UPDATE: Obama names Harun Mwau as a drug kingpin.

President Obama, in a letter to the US Congress, named a prominent Kenyan member of parliament and one of the wealthiest Kenyans, Harun Mwau, as a drug kingpin. Mr. Mwau is a renowned Kenyan businessman with links to container depots, retail and banking interests, among other investments.

I am still waiting for official reaction from the Kenyan government on the Obama letter to the US Congress.

Kenya, Gambia, Ghana, South Africa, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea. All these countries have experienced allegations that people high up in government – sometimes individuals very close to the heads of state – are involved in drug trafficking. Africa is a major transit point for drugs from Latin America and Asia into Europe.

The latest news on this subject is the jailing of Sheryl Cwele, the wife of South Africa’s intelligence minister. Ms Cwele was found guilty of recruiting women to smuggle drugs in and out of the country. It is hard to imagine that the intelligence minister was not aware of the fact that his wife was a drug trafficker.  Cwele refuses to resign.

In the recent past a woman close to President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya was allegedly linked to a ring of East European drug traffickers. The murder of President Joao Vieira of Guinea-Bissau was also thought to be connected to a dispute involving Latin American drug lords. Ghana’s President Atta Mills has publicly admitted that it is hard to deal with the problem of drug trafficking because powerful people in the country’s security apparatus are involved.

The South African, Kenyan and Ghanaian cases are particularly alarming. Most people would imagine that only incorrigibly inept kleptocracies such as Jammeh’s Gambia or Vieira’s Guinea-Bissau would engage in drug trafficking. If better run places with stronger states cannot tackle drug trafficking who will?

africa’s Middle class

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Elizabeth Dickinson at FP reports:

Given all this, perhaps the only thing about Africa that isn’t changing quickly is our perceptions of it. There’s an image impressed in all of our minds of a starving child, symobilizing an impoverished continent. If that was ever true, this is an excellent reminder that today, it’s at most a snapshot. Yes, there’s great human suffering and it’s not hard to find. But Africa as a whole is becoming a middle class continent.

It is hard to completely buy Dickinson’s optimism given the fact that Somalia, the DRC, Chad, Central Africa Republic, Sudan, among others are still far from being stable polities. The precarious nature of the stability in the more stable African states such as Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda e.t.c. are also cause for concern.

That said, the reality is that there are many Africas. Those who fail to internalize that fact continue to do so at their own peril. Just ask the Indians and the Chinese.

remembering J.M. Kariuki

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J. M. Kariuki was murdered by government unknown operatives in 1975. One of his more famous speeches goes to the heart of Kenya’s problem…

A small but powerful group of greedy, self-seeking elite in the form of politicians, civil servants, and businessmen has steadily but very surely monopolized the fruits of independence to the exclusion of the majority of the people – we do not want a Kenya of 10 millionaires and 10,000,000 beggars.

I believe firmly that substituting Kamau for Smith, Odongo for Jones and Kiplangat for Keith does not solve what the gallant fighters of our uhuru considered an imposed and undesirable social injustice.

This is a deplorable state of things. Nepotism and tribalism have set in …. These are evil and must be condemned in no uncertain terms. We must all join hands to eliminate them and restore credibility to our public life. We must strive to ensure that the next generation will not blame us for having failed to correct the strains of public life.

signs of grand corruption in the kenyan treasury

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Every year, the Treasury presents the Controller and Auditor-General a revenue statement, disclosing details of revenues received on income tax, VAT and corporation taxes.

The accounts for all revenue categories are kept separately. The gist of the new report by Mars Group is that the Auditor has discovered several cases where records of revenues received by KRA does not tally with what was actually received by the Treasury.

There are also cases where accounts of revenues banked at the Central Bank differ from the records kept by the receiver of revenues.

Where there are material differences, what the Auditor-General has been doing has been to exclude such revenue categories from the general certificate issued to the Treasury at the end of the year.

Is it just a matter of sloppy accounting? We all know that accounts which cannot reconcile are a recipe for irregular dealings.

That is Kisero writing in the Daily Nation. I am trying to get a soft copy of the actual report from the Mars Group. More on this soon.

Kenyan politician loses $10 million at airport

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UPDATE: The blogosphere is already abuzz with the potential absurdity of the Standard story. Apparently $ 10 million in $100 notes weighs 100kg. It is hard to see if someone could carry that much weight around with them, much less be allowed onto a plane. There is vital information missing somewhere. The Standard editorial staff might have been asleep on the job,  again.

The East African Standard reports that a high flying Kenyan politician (either Uhuru or Ruto) lost $ 10 million at the Jomo Kenyatta  airport in Nairobi.

Police are investigating the case. It is believed the said politician had carried the money to the Hague in case he needed cash bail? [whatever happened to wire transfers??? This guy should fire the troupe of yes men around him, and his hapless bodyguards]

The incident raises the question of the legality of carrying such large sums of money in and out of the country. Did the Kenyan authorities know about this? How about the Dutch authorities?

The Kenyan blogosphere is already generating rumors about money laundering and what not. I say the CID should get their noses into this mess.

In unrelated news, parliament will, in a week’s time, be told the names of suspected gold smugglers from the DRC. A few weeks ago the president of the DRC, Joseph Kabila, flew into Nairobi to lodge a complaint with his Kenyan counterpart Mwai Kibaki. Mr. Kabila believes that a Kenyan cartel is smuggling minerals out of the Congo and denying his useless government of vital tax revenue.

ethnicity and public employment in kenya

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The Daily Nation reports:

The survey undertaken by the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) gave shocking details of how political patronage and personality-based leadership had reduced the civil service into an exclusive club of the big communities at the expense of the so called small communities.

According to the survey, members of the Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luhya, Kamba and Luo communities occupy 70 per cent of all jobs in the civil service.

Keep in mind that Kenya has about 42 ethnic groups.

I personally did not find this very shocking. The report indicates that the two ethnic groups that have occupied the Kenyan presidency since independence, the Kikuyu and Kalenjin, together make up 40% of the civil service.

My hope is that this report will initiate debate over merit in public employment. It is about time we had standardized and transparent ways of hiring public servants and not leave all the discretion in the hands of venal pols.

sovereign hypocrisy and the icc: exposing african impunity

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UPDATE:

Keating at FP reacts to the UN resolution against Gaddafi.

In 2000 Stephen Krasner, a renowned academic and member of my department, published a book that outed the “organized hypocrisy” that is state sovereignty. The book noted that leaders of states want to stay in power and have violated or allowed their own sovereignty to be violated numerous times as long it suited them. We should therefore be wary of any leaders that go nationalistic and invoke sovereignty. The Chinese and Russians have done it to protect domestic human rights abuses. The US has done it to protect its leadership and generals from prosecutions for crimes committed during foreign military campaigns. The genocidal president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, has done it. The mullahs of Iran keep crowing about it.

Presently, the Kenyan government is doing the same to protect members of the political class that are suspected of having organized the murder of over 1300 and displacement of hundreds of thousands in 2007-08. Six prominent Kenyans, including two of the president’s closest allies, are expected to stand trial for crimes against humanity at the ICC. The African Union, a bastion of kleptocracy, impunity and ineptitude, has come out in strong support of Kenya’s efforts to have the trial of the six deferred, or even dismissed by the UN Security Council.

A section of the African media, including prominent academics and people of repute, have also come out against the ICC. They contend that it has mainly concentrated on trying African strongmen. Some say it is a racist and neo-colonial institution. Many have demanded that the ICC stay out of Africa’s business.

I say this is all horse manure.

The ICC is not perfect. Some of the drudge that has been thrown at it sticks. But that said, it represents a voice for the hundreds of millions of voiceless Africans who for half a century have been virtual serfs to their political elite. Charles Taylor, Idris Deby, Daniel Moi, Mobutu Sese Seko, Emperor Bokassa, Robert Mugabe, Francois Bozize, among many others, have for far too long used “sovereignty” to loot, rape and pillage. They have used their own people as pawns in a dangerous game of sovereign rent extraction. They have over-taxed farmers through marketing boards. They have siphoned away foreign aid intended to build schools and hospitals into Swiss banks. Worst of all, whenever it suited them, they have started wars that killed millions.

Robert Mugabe is starving, jailing, exiling and killing Zimbabweans. Kenya’s Moi engineered “ethnic clashes” in 1992 and 1997 that killed thousands. Charles Taylor fanned the flames of a brutal war in Sierra Leone. Omar al-Bashir continues to kill Sudanese, in the north, in Darfur and in border areas with the south. Mobutu destabilized the east and south east of his country, leading to the 1997 Congo civil war, the deadliest conflict since WWII. Over 5 million died.

If this is what it means for African states to be sovereign, then count me out. To be frank, 50 years of African independence has left Africans with not much to be proud of. Disease, abject poverty, conflict, and all sorts of maladies continue to define the region. This while most of Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, other regions that have been comparably poor, have sped off toward economic development and political stability.

Before 1945 war made states. States fought to best each other in classical Darwinian fashion. The UN has since taken that off the table. In most parts of the world peaceful competition has replaced war. Brazil competes for jobs, markets and resources with other BRICs. But in Africa, competition is still lacking. What you have instead is collusion among inept dictators. The African Union exists to protect the likes of Robert Mugabe and Omar al-Bashir.

In my view, the ICC represents a much needed international threat to an inept and murderous African leadership.

I reiterate. The ICC is not perfect. But I am perfectly willing to hold my nose and support it in its attempts to end impunity on the African continent. Idris Deby, Theodore Obiang’, Paul Biya, and their ilk should know that it is no longer acceptable that they live like gods while deliberately confining millions of their own citizens to 16th century levels of poverty and incessant conflict.

what next for the kenyan political class?

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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.