So smart she was foolish.

I feel for Dr Monica Juma. But that does not mean that because of her excellent credentials she was the best candidate for the office of Secretary to the Cabinet. I am appalled at the crass reasoning of the Asman Kamama committee; shifty-eyed dodgy men with a long history in the cavernous blood-soaked perfidious trenches of the provincial administration unwilling to come to terms with the colonial-era reasoning of a woman and her place. 

That being so, Dr Juma committed an unpardonable sin with that October letter. She was well within her rights to write what she did; she demonstrated a lack of judgment in actually writing the letter. That would have presented difficult problems for her, the Cabinet and the President had she become the Secretary to the Cabinet.

Some traditions, of course, have to be jettisoned, but I don't think the tradition of the mjumbe going to see the waziri so that the waziri can intervene in a job or a transfer is necessarily a bad thing. This is not the west where public school ties or Ivy League college connections influence decision-making in the corridors of power. Despite a remarkable improvement in the calibre of elected representatives in Kenya, the vast majority of those with longevity are men with limited academic credentials, whose power or influence with the people and in the government is measured by the favours they are owed and the favours they owe. This is how they practice their politics and for better or worse, this is how they have always practiced their politics. Telling them the equivalent of "get stuffed!" is not the way to get things done in this government. That is effectively what Dr Juma did.

The risk of the old way of doing things, of course, is the possibility of a Deep State beyond the control of the President himself. That is what the Muthaura/Kimemia axis effectively became and, in no small part to the efforts of Dr Juma, that network has been dismantled. If Dr Juma had not written that October letter, the old boys would have been hard-pressed to find a reason to torpedo her nomination. But because she seems to believe that all old ways must go, she couldn't see that indeed, in the Government of Kenya, the road to National Assembly hell is paved with good intentions.

Second, by writing that letter, Dr Juma forgot that in the corridors of power, written documents, whether lawful, justified or otherwise, can be used as weapons against their authors. Everything she highlighted in that letter is justifiable and correct, but that means nothing if people don't like you. The Asman Kamama committee and its string-pullers behind the scenes don't like Dr Juma; everything she's ever authored is potentially a black mark against her. If sh has demonstrated such a lack of foresight  in her other correspondence, it is almost likely that she will never survive parliamentary vetting in the future. It shouldn't come as a surprise that seemingly smart people can sometimes be very foolish. She's not the first; she will not be the last.