Critics are not Fifth Columnists

According to Britam, David Ndii "has a doctorate and M.Sc degrees from the University of Oxford, an MA and BA degrees from the University of Nairobi, is a Rhodes Scholar and Eisenhower Fellow." I am vaguely familiar with the Rhodes Scholarship - Bill and Hilary were both Rhodes Scholars - and they are not awarded to the feeble-minded nor to intellectual pygmies. By all accounts Mr Ndii is an accomplished economist, respected in his field and consulted by many for his expertise. Last Saturday, Mr Ndii discussed "What [the] Magufuli presidency means for Uhuru’s reign" in the Saturday Nation.

In his lengthy article, Mr Ndii recalled:

In his [Jomo Kenyatta's] introduction to Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 Kenyatta declared the development debate closed.

This was a paper that justified favouring the development of high potential areas in the name of maximising economic growth, setting the country on the path of distributional grievances and criminalisation of dissent.

Mr Ndii argues that because of this, multiparty politics would not serve Kenya's economic intersts well and that the seeds of doom laid down in the Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 led to the violence of 1997 and 2007. He adds

Kenya’s economy was a third bigger than Tanzania’s in the early 90s. This obtained until Kenya’s economy crashed in the aftermath of the 1997 elections, just as Tanzania’s was taking off. By 2003, the gap had reduced to a fifth. Tanzania’s economy has grown by 6.1 per cent per year since 1997, Kenya’s by 3.7 per cent. If our economy had kept pace, it would be almost 50 per cent larger than Tanzania’s. Instead, the Kenya’s economy took another political hit in 2008, narrowing the gap to less than 10 per cent.

One reaction in Twitter was baffling. An argument was advanced that Mr Ndii based his comparison of the Kenya and Tanzania economies on factors other than the correct ones: political stability, effect of external shocks, and quality of weather. The argument is silent on political stability, but attempts to show a correlation between terrorism (external shocks) and drought (quality of weather) and the slower pace of economic growth Kenya. The argument further posits that because Tanzania has not suffered from similar external shocks or erratic weather as Kenya, it's economic growth numbers should not be compared to Kenya's.

Mr Ndii pointed out that where Tanzania truly differed from Kenya was in the "moral-ethical realm" and the difference is yet to be honestly acknowledged by members of President Kenyatta's circle. Mr Ndii declared that Tanzania's John Pombe Magufuli is "rekindling Nyerere’s leadership ethos — humility, modesty, integrity, the personal discipline and public service ethic" while "President Kenyatta is a reluctant graft buster, tethered as he still is to the Kanu kleptocracy that nurtured him, and surrounded by instant millionaires" Mr Ndii argued that President Kenyatta's "tolerance for corruption has to be significantly greater than zero."

This did not go down well in some quarters. In response to what Mr Ndii called "signalling" in relation to President Magufuli's anti-corruption crusade where he has personally ordered the dismissal of public officers, on reaction was that President Kenyatta "is not going [to] walk [into] hospitals, chase away [d]octors/nurses like a plantation supervisor [because] we've institutions to do that work" and that "[President Kenyatta] directs that corrupt individual steps (sic) out of Govt and be investigated, it's the work of relevant institutions to do that work." These quarters ignored the second part of Mr Ndii's argument where he states

Investors can come to Tanzania with the confidence that when they encounter the corruption and bureaucratic obstacles, the man at the helm can be relied on to deal with it.

In some respects, President Magufuli resembles Rwanda's Paul Kagame who has led my an ascetic example, eschewing the pomp and circumstance, the trappings of power, and a personal probity that engenders confidence in Rwandese and foreigners alike. No one is arguing that Kenya is short of foreign investors or foreigners interested in investing in Kenya; Tatu City, the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project, the Standard Gauge Railway, the Port of Mombasa Expansion, the Two Rivers and Turkana Oil Field are proof that foreign investment interest in Kenya is true. 

But, what separates Rwanda under Kagame and Tanzania under Magufuli is the impression that Kagame and Magufuli are truly committed to the fight against graft and waste while President Kenyatta is famous for Presidential Warnings and a fat-wallet senior public service. Only just yesterday the President's Chief of Staff was forced to issue a circular forbidding state corporations and parastatals from paying allowances to parliamentarians whose allowances should be properly paid by Parliament!

Mr Ndii is a harsh critic of the president and his criticism must be seen in the light of Kenya's penchant for co-opting independent voices. But unless one has a serious economic argument to make against Mr Ndii's analyses and predictions, arguments such as "Ndii should be made aware that countries transitioning out of planned economies (e.g. socialism) into more deregulated capitalism tend [to] register higher economic growth in initial years. As was the case with Estonia. (due [to] people being freed [to] invest as they wish)" should only be made when the maker of the argument can at least explain why Mr Ndii's numbers do not add up instead of declaring "Ndii's schema (sic) is not to inform, it's to denigrate GoK. Who is he working for?"