Tag Archives: Kenya

icc finds six kenyans culpable for ethnic violence

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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

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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

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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.

kcse results to be released monday

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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.

is kenya at last getting limited government?

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On Thursday Speaker of the Kenyan Parliament Kenneth Marende ruled that President Kibaki’s appointments to constitutional offices were unconstitutional. The politics of the decision aside (it is a war between Premier Odinga and others intent on succeeding Mr. Kibaki in 2012) it is a good sign that finally Kenya may have gotten a system of political balance of powers. No single faction appears to be able to do whatever it wants, wapende wasipende.

Scholars like Nobel Laureate Douglas North, Barry Weingast (of my Department), among others, have argued that limited government (in which centres of power balance each other to prevent tyranny) is one of the key ingredients in the quest for long-run Economic growth and political stability.

Kenya appears to be on the threshold of obtaining limited government. It began with President Kibaki’s laid back approach to governing which empowered centres in the political structure outside of the presidency. Raila Odinga, William Ruto, Uhuru Kenyatta, Martha Karua etc are all politicians who have elevated themselves to an almost equal footing, politically speaking, with the president himself.

And the change has not just been about personalities, typical of politics in Africa. Institutions have had a hand in it, too. The Kenyan parliament – which Barkan thinks is the strongest in SSA – with its committee system and relative autonomy from the executive has been at the forefront of checking the powers of the executive in general and the presidency in particular. The new constitution reflects this new equilibrium condition.

The new constitution also empowers the judiciary, previously seen as a rubber stamp institution in the pocket of the president. Although nominations to the institution has gotten off on a rocky start, it appears that the law society of Kenya and the Judicial  Service Commission might be strong enough to (self)regulate judges on the bench, regardless of who appoints them.

I am cautiously optimistic.

Uhuru wins latest round in battle for central supremo

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The just concluded Kirinyaga Central by-election was not an ordinary one. The actual contest between Messrs Gitari and Karaba was secondary to the meta-contest between Gichugu MP Martha Karua and Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta. Karua backed Karaba while Uhuru campaigned for Gitari.

Given the high salience of ethnicity in Kenyan politics, the latter contest will determine who emerges as the chief voice of the Central Kenya voting block ahead of the 2012 general elections. Mr. Kenyatta must be happy with the latest score in Ms. Karua’s backyward given his own drubbing a few months ago in his own backyard in the Juja by-election.

Reacting to the loss Ms Karua twitted: “We have lost the battle not the war. Congrats to our team no retreat no surrender. Narc kenya marches on!”

Mr. Kenyatta, son of Kenya’s first president and very much an establishment candidate, is hoping to succeed President Kibaki as the ethnic chief of Central Kenya when the latter retires in 2012. The ultimate insurgency candidate, Ms Karua is an outsider and relatively new money who is increasingly championing the cause of the central Kenya underclass who have been marginalized by the region’s old guard elite since independence.

This blog has previously confessed a soft spot for Ms Karua, a rare breed of a principled fighter among Kenyan politicians. Mr. Kenyatta has been accused by the ICC to be among the masterminds of the 2007-08 post-elections violence that killed 1300 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. He also has tons of money.

the African Union and its problems

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The just concluded AU summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia had two key problems to address: the political crisis in Ivory Coast and the legal battles involving six Kenyans who face charges at the ICC. So far the continental body appears to have failed on its attempts to address both problems.

In the Ivory Coast, Mr. Gbagbo’s camp has already declared that the five person panel formed by the AU is dead on arrival unless Burkinabe president, Compraore is dropped. The Daily Nation reports:

The president of Burkina Faso, named on a high-level African Union panel tasked with settling Cote d’Ivoire’s leadership crisis, is “not welcome” in this country, a top ally of strongman Laurent Gbagbo said here yesterday.

And in Kenya, the political football involving the setting up of a credibly clean local judicial system to try perpetrators of the 2007-8 post election violence diminished the prospects of a deferral from the UN Security Council. Kenya must guarantee that it will try the suspects for the ICC to consider a deferral. It does not help that the appointment of high members of its judiciary, including the chief justice, the attorney general and the director of public prosecutions has already been soiled by political grandstanding.

power-play in public appointments in kenya

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It emerges that Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga wanted President Kibaki to appoint a foreigner to head the judiciary. This can only mean one of two things: either (i) Mr. Odinga wants a super clean judiciary that will interpret the law in a disinterested manner or (ii) he thinks that the Kibaki-PNU faction is so strong that they will be able to buy off any local judge appointed to head the judiciary.

Because Mr. Odinga or his allies could potentially find themselves facing the judiciary in the future, I don’t think it is the former concern that is motivating the Premier. It must be the case that he realizes he has no way of locally dealing with the Kibaki-PNU faction, except through name-and-shame games and other sanctions involving foreigners. To compensate for the fact that he cannot contain the Kibaki-PNU coalition politically, Mr. Odinga is hoping he can do so via independent institutions.

What does this mean for Kenyan democracy? It means that it is not yet Uhuru. As long as there is a faction in the country that can do whatever it wants under a “wapende wasipende” mentality Kenya will remain a democracy in name only. True democracy will only come once all factions involved realize that the country belongs to all Kenyans and that they cannot get away with subordinating the interests of regular Kenyans to those of a few ethnic chiefs.

The man to blame for all of this is Kalonzo Musyoka. Mr. Musyoka is bad for Kenyan democracy because he is the all important median veto player, but lacks principles. Because his support gives either side the needed majority he remains the biggest stumbling block to any compromise arrangements that might ensure that regular Kenyans truly benefit from the new constitutional dispensation. Kibaki does not need to negotiate with Odinga as long as he has Kalonzo on his side. But given Mr. Odinga’s political clout, good and lasting institutions will only emerge if Kibaki and Odinga arrive at a self-enforcing arrangement.

Mr. Musyoka initially campaigned against the new constitution. Mr. Musyoka has been at the forefront of efforts to protect perpetrators of the 2007-8 post-elections violence that killed over 1300 Kenyans. Mr. Musyoka continues to stand on the wrong side of Kenya’s reform agenda. Given the recent comments from Francis Atwoli, the trade union leader, it is encouraging that Kenyans are cognizant of these facts.

Will Bashir pay for “losing the south”?

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Omar Bashir faces a tough few days ahead. More than 99% of Southern Sudanese voted for secession in the just concluded referendum, effectively guaranteeing the split of Africa’s biggest country in July of this year. Many in the North blame Bashir for losing the South. The waves of protests in the Middle East following the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia is adding fuel to the flames. The Independent reports:

Violent clashes broke out at two Khartoum universities yesterday as heavily armed police surrounded stone throwing students. Social media groups similar to those used elsewhere in the Arab world to mobilise protesters have started to mushroom in northern cities.

One of them calling itself “Youth for Change” has attracted 15,000 members to its Facebook page. “The people of Sudan will not remain silent anymore,” it says. “It is about time we demand our rights and take what’s ours in a peaceful demonstration that will not involve any acts of sabotage.”

Security forces arrested Hussein Khogali, the editor of al-Watan newspaper, whom they accuse of orchestrating the online protests.

And in other news, the African Union summit opened on Sunday with the Ivory Coast top of the agenda. The Continental club of autocrats body agreed to set up a five member panel to continue negotiations with Laurent Gbagbo, the Ivorian president who lost an election but refuses to step down. Also on the AU’s agenda is Kenya’s misguided attempts at battling the ICC through threats of en masse pullouts from the Rome treaty by African countries.

The failure to force Gbagbo out of power and the ill-fated fights with the ICC are additions to the litany of failures that make most on the Continent question the relevance of the AU. In my opinion regional bodies are only as strong as their dominant members. With South Africa continuing to be disinterested in regional matters and Nigeria being Nigeria the AU is guaranteed to remain rudderless into the foreseeable future.

sustaining african (imp)unity

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There is something to be said about the fact that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has mostly concentrated on atrocities committed on the African continent. Charges of a regional bias emerging from African State Houses definitely have some truth to them. For the court to appear serious about ending offenses that shock the human conscience like genocide and ethnic cleansing it must have a balanced, global reach.

That said, the current anti-ICC mood widespread across Africa is unfortunate. The African Union (AU) defended Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir against the ICC. Now it emerges that Kenya is lobbying other African states to garner support for an anti-ICC resolution in the upcoming AU summit later this month. Four prominent Kenyan politicians, a former police commissioner and a media personality have been named by the ICC as key suspects in the violence that rocked the East African nation in 2007-08.

In retrospect, the ICC might have shot itself in the foot by aggressively pursuing the Kenyan case. Mr. Ocampo’s actions betrayed the ill-informed view that Africa’s many diverse countries are all the same. Kenya is not Sierra Leone. The country receives less than 5% of GDP in overseas development assistance and has considerable regional influence. Many have been shell-shocked by Kenyan politician’s resolve to pull out of the ICC, even in the face of international pressure. Their threats are credible because they know they can without too high a cost.

The biggest losers from this anti-ICC drive within the AU will be citizens of poorer, less able African states. It is places like Chad, (North) Sudan, Central African Republic, Niger, Guinea, Zimbabwe, among others, where the collective interests of targeted communities are more or less not represented in the capital that most need the ICC. If Kenya succeeds the Deby’s and Mugabe’s of this world will get even more emboldened.

Impunity on the African continent is on the rise, again.

kenya’s silent revolution

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One of the hallmarks of (true) revolutions is that they consume their originators. The totality of revolutions is unmistakable. Maximilien Robespierre learned this the hard way 5 years after the French Revolution. Kenya’s political elite are beginning to learn this sooner. The new constitution is beginning to claim its political victims one by one. That almost all members of Kenya’s political class are neck high in corruption is not a secret. The only question is how many of them will be caught by the dragnet of the new dispensation.

William Ruto, Henry Kosgey and Moses Wetangula are the biggest casualties, yet, of the new constitution. Finance Minister Hon. Uhuru Kenyatta might soon become a victim if events at the Hague go according to Mr. Ocampo’s plan. Water Minister Hon. Charity Ngilu may be next.

This is clearly a transition moment. And transitions tend to be dangerously shaky. My only hope is that the flame of change ignited by the new constitution will not consume the pith even as it consumes the dead branches of the tree that is Kenya.

The last thing we want is a political system in which de facto power is in the hands of economically shallow political entrepreneurs. The present day winds of change should not completely disenfranchise those with economic power. Political power divorced from economic power lasts as long as dew in the Kalahari. To preserve the new system the present day ethnic chiefs and princes should not loose out completely.

Kenya is not coup proof yet in its history. Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey, among others, have experienced coups at comparatively more advanced levels of economic development.

kosgey resigns

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Tinderet MP and Minister of Industrialization Henry Kosgey has resigned. Mr. Kosgey is being charged with 12 counts of abuse of office and faces a maximum of 120 years in prison if convicted. In the latest case of fraud linked to the Minister, vehicles older than 8 years old were illegally imported into the country under his direction.

Only a few weeks ago Mr. Kosgey was among five prominent Kenyan politicians and a radio host named as suspects by the ICC prosecutor Luis Ocampo in relation to the post election violence in Kenya (2007-08) that killed 1300 and displaced 300,000.

Mr. Kosgey is Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s pointman in the Rift Valley and is the current chairman of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).

More on this here.

boys dominate 2010 kcpe results

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In the just released results (KCPE top performers) of the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exams boys have dominated, as usual. The gender disparity, however, appears to be a result of socio-economic conditions. In Nairobi, where most girls do not have to spend hours fetching water, gathering firewood or helping mom plant the fields, girls took 55 of the top 100 slots.

Although not released yet, I am sure that the detailed results will also indicate regional disparities in the provision and quality of education. It appears that no one at Mr. Sam Ongeri’s Ministry appreciates the importance of education as an effective long-run socio-economic equalizer.

Otherwise they would not sit on their hands (when they are not stealing free primary education money) even as the country’s education system continues to reproduce the existing class system.

More on the results here.

mps pull kenya from the icc treaty

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The Kenyan parliament passed a motion urging the country’s executive to pull out of the ICC treaty. It was left to Gichugu MP Martha Karua to be the sole defender of the ICC process with regard to Kenyan victims of the post-election violence that rocked the country in 2007-08.

The cases against the six named suspects will continue since the procedure to unsign from the treaty takes up to a year and even then signaling the intent to withdraw does not extricate a member country from its obligations while it is still a member. President Kibaki and Premier Odinga have yet to respond to the new developments.

My lukewarm support for the ICC process comes for the fore again: Recognizing the rights of sovereign states to solve their own problems (the Kenyans will not. No illusions about that. They will trade stability for injustice) and while registering my doubt of the ICC’s effectiveness at delivering justice (no apolitical body can do what it purports to do), I am still of the considered opinion that the Chads and CAR’s of this world need an international policeman to keep their tyrannical leaders in check.

suspected drug trafficking kenyan mps named in parliament

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John Harun Mwau, William Kabogo, Gideon “Sonko” Mbuvi and Suleiman Joho are the four MPs suspected of being drug traffickers. Prof. George Saitoti, Minister for Internal Security, made the announcement in parliament. Of the four Mr. Mwau’s mention shocked me the most. For some reason I thought his wealth was exclusively from his business skills and sleaze during the Moi era. Messrs Mbuvi and Kabogo have always had rumors of shadiness around them, with the former being a bona fide jailbird. Other suspected MPs include Eugene Wamalwa and Simon Mbugua.

Drug use is on the rise in Kenyan urban centres. It is a shame that it took the intervention of the US Ambassador for the Kenyan security agencies to expose those involved in the destruction of Kenyan lives.

This is yet another example of how the people entrusted with the future of Kenya are the same ones actively undermining it through sleaze, negligence and outright criminality.

More on this here.