Weeds in the Shamba

If all that the Limuru II Conference intended to achieve was the collection of two million signatures to petition the ICC to postpone the trial of the Deputy Prime Minister, Uhuru Kenyatta, rather than find replacements for the departed John Njoroge Michuki and Njenga Karume, then it was an unmitigated disaster, a failure of epic proportions. 

It becomes increasingly apparent that the leadership of the Mt Kenya region is so far off the reservation that it would not be amiss to consider them the wayward children of the legacy of the original GEMA. That they have been renounced by the likes of Gitobu Imanyara and Martha Karua is proof that they still have no clue what political unity means or what it is meant to achieve. It is also apparent that they do not speak for the peoples of the Mt Kenya region nor do they have their best interests at heart. It was sad to listen to the likes of Cecily Mbarire declaring that the interests of Uhuru Kenyatta supersede those of the thousands of victims of the violence that rocked the nation after the 2007 general elections.

The Constitution protects the cultures of the peoples of Kenya but it also implies that negative ethnicity is the bane of the nation. Striking a balance between the two will be an uphill task at the best of times, let alone during the middle of an election campaign and the process of trying four Kenyans for some of the most heinous crimes ever committed in Kenya against Kenyans by Kenyans. Old-timers recall the role that the original GEMA played in consolidating power in the hands of an elite few in Central Kenya; its most prominent members amassed great wealth and power and used it to enrich themselves while millions of Kenyans slept hungry. JM Kariuki's admonition of ten millionaires and ten million paupers still rings true when you look at the line up that purports to represent the GEMA peoples today. Njenga Karume and John Michuki epitomised the rot that accompanied the existence of organisations such as GEMA; but Moi's proscription of these organisations did nothing to redress the evils such institutions represented.

Kenya is at a critical crossroads. Not only are we in the process of implementing one of the most progressive constitutions on God's Earth, but we are suffering through one of the worst drought-boom-drought cycles for fifty years. Our children attend state-sponsored schools of the most unimaginable squalor and deprivation. In the Twenty-first Century it is heartbreaking to read of innocent children who sleep hungry simply because their government has failed them and their generation. 

This morning it was announced that oil has been discovered in Turkana, one of the most backward regions of the country, beset not only by drought and famine, but also unimaginable violence. It is too much to expect that if the oil deposits prove to be of commerciable quantities that the so-called trickle-down effect will benefit them more than it will benefit Tullow Oil, the foreign company licensed to prospect in Turkana. More likely, the hyenas in the National Government and their successors in the County Government will spend their every waking hour thinking up schemes to keep the profits to themselves and none to the peoples of Turkana. It is how things have been and it is likely how they will always be.

Our history as a nation has been a tortuous one and the likes of Kiraitu Murungi's GEMA are not the ones to take us to the next level. What we have been calling for, struggling for and campaigning for is a paradigm shift in the power relations of the nation. It is why the deep black of the night continues to cover our land. Not even the popular Raila Odinga has a solution to our myriad challenges; he is too wedded to the ways of the past to see past the ethnic and special-interest considerations that have so riven the peoples of Kenya. Until these men and women coveting positions of power and influence lead the peoples of Kenya we will always be held hostage to the inanities of the likes of GEMA and the hundreds of Councils of Elders that seem to spring up like weeds in the shamba.