How very Christian of us

There is a fanaticism to the Jubilationists' apologia that is a bit terrifying. Despite all proof to the contrary about the Jubilation's big ticket boondoggles, there are those in the inner circle who are determined to fight tooth and nail for the boondoggles not to be seen as the white elephants they are but as the key to unlocking Kenya's economic potential in the same skein as Singapore's.

One of my favorites is a former diplomat at our permanent mission to the UN in New York who seems to operate as if he is still singing Kenya's praises in foreign lands to ignorant foreign peoples. He has a knack for finding the silver lining in the dark clouds hanging over the Jubilation's economic performance, the reports of IEA Kenya be damned. He will lash at out at any Kenyan demonstrating disloyal tendencies, as he did at one of #SwitchOffKPLC's leading voices on social media for her accurate description of the economic rapine taking place under the Jubilation.

It confounds how the jubilationistic inner circle is impervious to advice, criticism and unpalatable truths. It is as if the moment they put on the tricoloured, Maasai-beaded wristbands, they lost the ability to reason critically about things. They wear their total and absolute fealty o their liege on their sleeves, unabashedly, unapologetically, and crassly loudly. Theirs is not loyalty to the ideal that Kenya aspires to be. No. It is personal. They have trothed their loyalty to their liege and all he stands for. Regardless of the vacuousness of some of the things they have foisted on the peoples they are supposed to serve. It confounds deeply.

We are a nation in a hurry, and that is a good thing. But it is not alright that we have a political leadership incapable of introspection, reflection, moderation or deliberation. We are not the United States, held hostage to twenty-four-hour news cycles. We don't need a political leadership that cannot sit still for a moment, take the time to reflect on whether or not Kenyans actually need to be bullied into obtaining "smart" IDs. Or "smart" DLs. Or "affordable" houses. We need a political leadership that serves our best interests, even if it means Kenya will be behind the curve in the corralling, collating and consolidating of personal data.

But in the heavily guarded, heavily policed echo chamber of the Jubilationists' sanctum sanctorum, personal fealty and die hard loyalty matter more than anything else. And the personal, daily demonstration of fealty is what keeps the satraps in office, regardless of the consequences of their deaf-eared approach to public service. Look no further at the deleterious effects of their loyalty than the debt burden foisted on our children, their children, and their children's children. It's like the Christian god's curse to the third and fourth generations threatened in the book of Exodus. Apposite for a "Christian" nation, don't you think?

Sunny's new one stings

"When people oppose reasonable arguments vigorously, it behoves us to look carefully at where their reward comes from." - Sunny Bindra, Who Is Paid Not To Understand?

I live an exciting life. I play with fire every day I come to to the office. I review many, many schemes and offer my professional advice based on whether or not the proposals pass legal muster. I do not make policy. Nor do I execute policy. But my grubby fingerprints are all over some of the dodgiest schemes. And it sometimes shames me to the core to witness the aftermath of some of the schemes that came across my desk that I was powerless to quash. Sunny Bindra's words are a cruel echo that sometimes it isn't enough to dig into where an unreasonable person's rewards come from, but who among us enable such obduracy.

Bad ideas do not gain currency merely because they are defended by obdurate, but powerful, backers. Many bad ideas gain currency because they have been sieved and vetted by an entire ecosystem designed to bring them to the fore. In many cases, well-functioning systems act like kidneys and livers, filtering out impurities. When these kidneys and livers fail, bone marrow manufactures powerful antibodies to repel the more tenacious impurities. But every now and then, even well-functioning systems fail. That is the best case scenario. The worst is truly horrible to behold.

Bad systems are composed of different layers of, for lack of a better word, corrupted components. At each stage in the process of proposing, making and implementing bad ideas, the incentives at play are self-serving, not intended to benefit anyone other than that one dealing with the proposal at that time. The big picture is merely the sunny sky outside ones window and no more. Bad systems are made up of poor incentives at every stage of the way and they often have men and women determined to defend their roles in bringing forth bad ideas to the death - or, quite often, to a frothing mouth end.

Harebrained schemes are the usual outcome of bad systems and the loudest defenders of the harebrained schemes have perfected the art of manipulating the rewards' processes of the system. Not everyone is rewarded in treasure and not everyone seeks treasure as a reward. So a careful look for cash transfers or similar rewards will only reveal part of the problem areas. Look for people whose scores have been unfairly settled in their favour. Look for people whose career progression has received an unwarranted boost from higher authorities. Look for the emergence of sacred cows. When the, lets say, waziri is frothing at the mouth, spit-flecked lips flapping, defending the implementation of a harebrained scheme, look for the most enthusiastic clappers standing behind him, listen to the technocratic mandarin explaining why what you heard is not what you think it means but some wonderful solution to a problem you didn't even know you had. Rewards come in many forms and it pays to know which ones are relevant and which ones are not.

You own it all

As a child, everything, and I mean everything, is permitted because responsibility for your acts of omission and commission are borne by those responsible for you. It is rare for a child to be held responsible for horrible things. The child might get a spanking or a scolding, but ultimately, the responsibility for the child's deeds and misdeeds lies with someone else: parents, caregivers, teachers, the lot. The Christian bible says to put away childish things when one becomes a man. That includes putting away childish tantrums.

In the same spirit, Steve Jobs had a rule: the janitor could make excuses for why he did a bad job. The vice president of the company could not; the vice president owned all the mistake of his subordinates. The same is true of presidents of countries. A presidency that is defined by excuses, tantrums and blame-shifting is a failed presidency no matter how many paper achievements its boosters and propagandists can point to.

The rise of the Jubilation was propagated on the promise of the corporatisation of the executive branch of government, with technocrats setting the pace on getting things done. It has not worked out quite as promised. The majority of the technocrats have floundered. Their achievements have been stellar in only one area: the out of control looting of public funds. Many decisions have been serious head-scratchers, inexplicable to an extent that even their proponents have no idea what the decisions were intended to achieve in the first place. 10,000MW of electricity? Check. But why? 10,000km of new tarmac? Check? But why? 66 BRT buses for Nairobi? Check. But why?

Amidst all this, with the metronomic piling on of failure after failure after failure, one thing remains constant: Furious President... Every month, one thing or another will lead to a newspaper headline with the legend: President Furious. And the question is always: Why? The president doesn't get the luxury of saying that his hands are tied, that he is helpless, that he doesn't know what to do. Not in Kenya. Not with a mandate the size of his. What is so difficult about sending packing the laggards in the Cabinet? What is so difficult about saying no to bad ideas, like pink lane marking on highways? At that level, regardless of "he is surrounded by bad advisors" stories, no excuses matter. You own the mistakes of your subordinates. They mess up, you take the blame. If you want it to stop, become, in effect, the janitor, and let someone else shoulder the burden of being the boss of bosses.

Wacha watangetange

"Kenya is in permanent campaign mode!" is a common complaint these days. Barely days after a contested election is finished and every elected representative and his rivals are back on the trail to ensure the next election is in their favour. 'Twas so for the 2017 general election as it was for the 2013 one and the 2007 one and so on and so forth. The campaign for the 2022 general elections began even before the results of the 2017 one were announced, with this camp, that camp, the other camp already formed with an eye to political power - and all that comes with it - when Uhuru Kenyatta's government is replaced with another one. We haven't really considered whether or not permanent campaigning is good or bad - we instinctively believe that it is bad.

It seems strange to say - strange to me anyway - that permanent campaign mode is neither bad not good. It is what it is. It does, though, give us an opportunity to constantly review our relationship with our government; what it means to be Kenyan in the midst of dwindling, pilfered resources; whether or not the country is on the right path; and whether we all come out alive in the end.

The 2022 presidential election campaign started even before the 2017 presidential election campaign and it has not stopped even for a second. It is easy to see why: the presidency is the holy grail of Kenyan politics. With it not only comes great power, but great power to aggrandize oneself and family, cronies and - in rare moments of strategic thinking - rivals. And has become custom since 2002, where Raila Odinga stands determines where everyone else sits. Some are in the hot seat. Some are out in the cold. Some have fire ants in their pants. But none can deny that regardless of the hat one wears - Kitaeleweka, Tangatanga and the rest of it - like Apostle Ng'ang'a would put it in inimitable style, when Raila Odinga coughs, the rest wanaitika.

And so it pays to ask: have the presidential election campaigns of the past two years been beneficial? Or have they just drained public resources, enervated the voting public, deepened disillusionment in the political process, and robbed the people of any hope in the future? In my opinion, the campaigns have been immensely illuminating and, yes, beneficial. Many Kenyans would have remained in the dark about the competence or otherwise of senior members of their government if it weren't for the allegations and counter-allegations being traded by members of rival campaign teams. So too the secrets of the SGR, Lamu Coal Plant, and a host of other dodgy schemes by members of our Government, senior and not. And for the discerning, the campaigning also reveals a rarely-considered attribute for political leadership: character.

For the most part, politicians, whether in office or out, are not to be trusted as far as you can throw them. Their dissembling has risen to a level where they themselves aren't sure that the words coming out of their mouths have any meaning. But even in their world, their are those who have generally been forces for good more than they have been forces for ill. They haven't had to bribe their way into office - well, not to the extent that the first thing Kenyans thought off when demonetization commenced was "Sasa atatoa thao za kanisa wapi?" Their constituents generally think of them as "clean". But there is a hardcore cohort that is despised outside a very narrow constituency. They are seen as the epitomy of mendaciousness, theft, graft and dishonorable conduct. In my opinion, a prolonged presidential campaign, one which reveals the extent of their loathsomeness is a boon for the people. So I say, let them tangatanga. In the end, their story may not end the way they pictured.

What is wrong with you?

Christian countries produced freedom. Those who hate freedom tend to hate Christians. Put aside differences. Stop the new Dark Age. It’s coming fast. - Stefan Molyneux

East Africa, or British East Africa, as it was known when the freedom-loving Imperial British East Africa Company came calling, built the Lunatic Express and alienated hundreds of thousands of "idle land", was spectacularly un-free.  People didn't have security of person or property, were not allowed to think freely or freely express their opinions, and were constrained in what they could do or where the could go. The reason for this extreme state of un-freedom was that the entire region had not accepted the principles of Christianity that prized individual freedom above all else. The existence of the soon-to-be-bankrupt IBEACo was proof that the Christian God loves freedom, especially the freedom to trade that seems synonymous with Christian values these days.

Obviously - OBVIOUSLY - that whole paragraph is bullshit. Even a cursory examination of the historical record shows that there is nothing freedom-loving about colonialism, genocide, xenophobia, racism, racialism, misogyny and sexism - all the things that have been associated with "Judaeo-Christian values" as practiced by the "founding fathers" of "western civilisation" since the European Reformation. "Christian countries" as Mr Molyneux calls them certainly "produced freedom" but only for white men at the expense of everyone else, regardless of the cost, pain or suffering the white man's freedom entailed.

Recent history - indeed, contemporary history - puts the lie to the claim that "those who hate freedom tend to hate Christians". In 2001, an organisation that had been financed for decades by white Christian USA people, in search of a new "holy war", attacked the Great Satan with box-cutters and four passenger airliners, killing just a little under 3,000 people. In response, the USA's first truly "Christian" president launched two wars that, seventeen years later, have metastasized into the sort of martial quagmire that produce massive amounts of un-freedom. One of the US president's motivations in starting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was his Christian faith and a fervent belief that he and his nation were spreading freedom and democracy abroad - at the barrel of an M16 and the tip of a JDAM bomb. The reincarnation of IBEACo were the the likes of Halliburton and Blackwater - true-blue flag-waving promoters of "freedom".

Only a white man could possibly imagine the world was un-free until the Judaeo-Christian Anglo-Saxon man came along with his bible, cannon and musket. Only a white man could imagine that the territories of the world that were colonised and plundered, and whose native populations were massacred were un-free because of their "pagan" beliefs and rudimentary economies. Only a white man could ignore the entire human historical record that has demonstrated the remarkably bloody record of Christian crusading. Only a white man could have the arrogance to believe that he could possibly be right. Only a fool could even entertain for a minute that this white man has a leg to stand on when it comes to the concept and practice of freedom.

Why the haste?

I said a stupid thing the other day. I declared, "One of the truest expressions of governmental excess is the Penal Code and the plethora of offenses established by written laws. Only three classes of offenses should be prosecuted by the State: murder, all sexual offenses and theft." My friend Gitonga challenged me to set down my views in a post and so here we go.

In modern society, it is impossible to live without effective governmental regulation of both public and private affairs. In one form or the other, Government has an obligation to regulate our affairs in order to protect us from harm, even if the harm comes by our own hands. How Government goes about protecting us is of vital importance. It must be given power to take certain measures to protect us but it must not be given too much power that it becomes oppressive. It is in this context that I made the stupid declaration about laws and governmental excess.

In recent weeks, Government has sought to consolidate our personal information in a new database, the National Identity Information Management System, and to issue every Kenyan with a unique identifier, the Huduma Namba. In theory, the consolidation of personal information in the NIIMS, as the system has been named, and the issuance of the Huduma Namba, will allow for the seamless provision of public services by all governmental agencies. There is a fear though, that such a consolidation is ripe for abuse, especially in the absence of a law regarding the protection of such personal data as will be consolidated in the NIIMS. Mass surveillance has been listed as one of the downsides of consolidation as has been the sale of private data to non-governmental entities. (Many have experienced the unlawful use of their personal data because entities holding that data have shared it with political parties, business entities and unscrupulous persons seeking to swindle us.)

Some have argued that the information being consolidated is already in the possession of Government in its various databases: the Civil Registry, the Kenya Revenue Authority, the Land Registry, the Births and Deaths Registry, the National Transport and Safety Authority, the National Hospital Insurance Fund, the National Social Security Fund, and the Immigration Department, among others. They argue that there is nothing wrong with the consolidation in the manner that is being prosecuted by Government with NIIMS. What they haven't been able to explain is the secrecy surrounding the whole affair, especially with the existence of a statutory and administrative regime set out in the Kenya Citizens and Foreign Nationals Management Service Act.

The Kenya Citizens and Foreign Nationals Service, its Board and the Director of Immigration, under the Act, were the institutions charged with the type of consolidation of personal data contemplated in the NIIMS and yet no explanation has been given as to why, 8 years after the law was passed by Parliament and assented to by the President, the law has not been operationalised or why no steps have been taken to operationalise it at all. No reason has been given as to why a system that had already been endorsed by Government has been abandoned even before it got off the ground. The unseemly haste with the operationalisation of NIIMS and the coercive undertones of its implementation raise doubts that the proposals and rationalisations behind NIIMS are on the up and up. For this reason, skepticism is warranted, hyperbole aside.

An analysis of NIIMS and the system contemplated under the Kenya Citizens and Foreign Nationals Management Service Act are fundamentally the same. The key difference is the manner in which both came to be. The former was pushed through by an amendment to the Registration of People Act (which was done through the Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act, 2018, which was assented to on the 31st December 2018. No one, in the heat of Christmas and New Year celebrations, noticed the amendment and very few even commented on the proposals. The latter was an Act of Parliament that, even with the madness of the last two years of the Kibaki Government, underwent considerable public review and participation before it became the law of the land.

I don't have a problem with the proposals in NIIMS but I have a problem with the haste, the secrecy and the coercion behind its implementation. I have a problem that it is being done despite the fact that a similar system already exists, at least in law. I have problem with the implications of a lack of a data protection law in the face of the haste and coercion related with NIIMS. Finally, I am skeptical with the argument being advanced that NIIMS is merely the digitization of our personal data. During the second Kibaki Government and the first Uhuru Kenyatta Government, under James Orengo and Charity Ngilu, the Lands Registry was digitised twice over at great public expense. The National Transport and Safety Authority has digitised traffic and drivers' data since its establishment. KRA, with the iTax system, is fully digital. No reason has been advanced as to why the other elements of the NIIMS system are yet to be digitised.

Finally, the risks of consolidation of personal data in the current climate evokes fears of abuse and misuse. In 2001, in Godhra, India, Muslims in Gujarat were attacked and massacred by the thousands. One way that their attackers used to find them was the state's voters roll which identified Muslims by name and address down to the apartment. In Kenya, the 2013 and 2017 general elections were marred by allegations that the digital voter register and digital voter tallying system were manipulated to boost some candidates' number and reduce other candidates'. Secrecy and coercion are not a recipe for public trust. NIIMS is secretive and coercive. If that doesn't change, there is no reason why we should take the word of its boosters that it is for our safety.

Ghosts never sleep easy

We were talking - I mean I was talking and She was praying I would shut up in thirty seconds or less - about how we collectively remember or forget events, traumatic or not. We use the expression "national narrative" sometimes. We describe events in ways that require collective acquiescence that the recollected event can only be recollected one way. It is why it is easy to claim that "Kenyans have short memories".

My people are not pigeons. Just because they haven't strung so-and-so up by his shins and caned his buttocks until they ran red with blood doesn't mean that they have ten-second memories that are erased as soon as another "scandal" is, with Herculean effort as the scribes of the Fourth Estate would have you believe, heaved onto the public square to be stared at, talked about, poked and prodded, discarded and forgotten for the next fix.

We remember, always. The assassinated. The tortured. The disappeared. The "enemies of the state". We remember them all. We remember the ones that said that assassination, torture and disappearance were all part of the messy thing we call democracy in Kenya or words of similar effect. We remember the ones that denied assassination, torture and disappearance were never used against their fellowman. We remember the ones that "washed away the sins" of the assassins, torturers and disappearers. We remember it all and just because our memory is not expressed at the ballot or in a revolution does not mean that it isn't there, that it isn't consequential. Just because the heirs of Wangari Maathai and the Free the Detainees' activists haven't stripped naked and visited curses on the assassins, torturers and disappearers does not mean that we have forgotten. We remember. We remember the curses. And we know that despite all evidence to the contrary, we shall prevail.

But don't for a minute think that we shall prevail by Animal Farm-ing ourselves into a vicious cycle. No. No. When the edifice has been brought down. When the dust has covered them all. Choked them. Suffocated them. When their whitening desiccated bones have been picked clean by the buzzards of the Chalbi. When their heirs are ashamed to use the family name. When their heirs' shame leads to ostentation acts of expiation - libraries, wings of hospitals, chairs of university departments. We shall prevail Maybe not in our lifetimes. But then again, as we all know, ghosts never sleep easy when the blood of the innocent covers their dark souls.

Sometimes the light is a bright, sunshiny day

Early in my civil service career, my extremely kind boss wangled a six-week fellowship for me in Sydney. The excitement of travelling to the Land Down Under was tempered - again and again - by everything I had to do in order to board a flight to the land of kangaroos and superpredators the likes humanity has come to greatly fear. The visa process, thanks to my employer, was a breeze. Ticketing was handled by a sniffy fellow on the first floor dungeon-like warren of offices he shared with a mysteriously smelly cohort of supply chain specialists. Yellow fever jab? Even La Kidero couldn't screw that one up. City Hall took care of it no fuss, no muss. Travel authorisations? Sorted that shit out in an afternoon. I was, in the words of Nina Simone, Feeling Good! Then reality decided to take an almighty shit on me in the five hours between Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and O.R. Tambo International Airport. A minghty, mighty shit!

First, those yellow-sweater-clad meatheads at JKIA decided that I was in need of several "random" bag checks. It may have had something to do with my haggard look as I was battling flu viruses sent by Satan and all his minions at the time. Then the unfriendly immigration guy took his sweet-ass time to check, re-check, re-check and, I shit you not, re-check my passport, Yellow fever card, ticket (yes, he demanded to see it) and finger prints. I could feel the colossus behind me suck in his breath when the dude attempted to run another check. He must have sensed the swelling wave of righteous anger behind before he willed himself to stamp the damn passport and let me through.

JKIA is not designed for non-Turn Left passengers. If you, like me, are a Turn Right passenger, the facilities available to you - even int he vaunted T-1A - are designed to make your travelling experience as horrendous as possible. Flickering fluorescent lighting, smelly loos, invisible or, frequently, broken electric sockets, and the ever snoopy KCAA buzzards - the terminal is a badly designed externally beautiful building built for your humiliation.

Kenya Airways flew an old, decrepit, cockroach-ridden B737 that must have started life as a air-matatu somewhere in the lawless badlands of the Congo Basin. It had this mysterious smell to it that I couldn't quite place. It was ridiculously loud. It didn't even have functioning headphone sockets. Not that the headrest screens worked. Maybe Titus in his zeal for Project Mawingu had forgotten about in-flight entertainment. Who knows? That man was seriously off. But the worst thing - the absolute, unforgivable worst - even in the context of aviation travel, was the food. It was beyond bland. Not even four satchets - which had to beg for from the dead-behind-the-eyes cabin crew - of black pepper could salvage the the thing. It was liking eating rubbery carpet on which your two-year old had puked on last week and the househelp had forgotten to call the carpet cleaners from the car wash near the supermarket to deal with it. It was enough to make me want to curl up in a ball, flu flaring up, and weep into my bedazzled cardigan. I hated every single second of the five hours of that flight. Every. Single. Hour.

Oh boy, Mzansi makes the Italian racists of Watamu and Malindi seem like the paragons of Samaritan virtue. The layover was six - SIX! hours long. And boy did Mzansi make you feel every second of it. So far, I had been on the road, so to speak, for ten hours and I had doubts about the kindness of my boss. Maybe, I thought, this is how you drive an otherwise sane civil servant mad. No matter how bad shit gets in our neck of the woods, there is absolutely no force on this Earth that will make me voluntarily emigrate to South Africa. I would rather settle down in Charleston, South Carolina.

 

Things started looking up when we boarded our Qantas 747 for the thirteen-hour flight across the southern Indian Ocean. They stuck me right in front of the APU. I was resolved, the way children are when they endure learned helplessness, to losing the last vestiges of my good humour, my sanity and, quite possible, my life. What I did not know is that every now an then, cattle-class is sometimes not fully-occupied. I was the only one in my row. Which meant I could turn the rather generous seats into my own cozy cot. Which I did. I slept blissfully for the first time since the night before the night before. Interrupted every four hours by this kindly old flight attendant who made the most brilliant whisky toddies. I will never forget the many whisky-fueled kindnesses of Pam.

By the time Sydney hove into view in the bright sunniness of a late-winter Sunday morning, Pam had sorted out the hangover cure, a remarkable breakfast, apples (green, of course) and lots of fresh water. I was ready to face whatever came next. Including Australian tarantulas and wallaroos. The next six weeks were some of the most professionally enjoyable I'd ever had - or would have for almost a decade after. One day I will tell you about the two weeks I spent in Perth and why I almost applied for asylum.

It doesn't have to be this hard

2018 ended as I expected it to end with the airwaves rent by the cacophony of political magpies announcing their loyalties, disloyalties and betrayals without shame, the way a baboon moons the whole wide world with its pinkish buttocks. Christmas and the New Year were dedicated to the perverse exercise of deciding Uhuru Kenyatta's successor without actually acknowledging that that was what we were doing. And then the grenades were detonated, the car bombs exploded, the gunfire replaced the political tea-leaves reading and Kenyans were once again called upon to be stoic in the aftermath of death and destruction.

When the Westgate was attacked, Kenyan officialdom was used to cross-border terrorists recruiting Kenyans and launching home-grown attacks at bus stations, churches, outdoor tent-revival meetings, bars and markets, the places where the dusty-faced Kenyans congregate in large numbers, the places where the Kenyan wabenzi avoid. Kenyan officialdom had decreed that the high and mighty were safe because they had at their command guns, soldiers, CCTV cameras and very, very fat wallets. Westgate changed us like 1998 didn't or Kikambala or Gikomba or Mpeketoni.

Every attack till Westgate, save for 1998 because US citizens died, hadn't democratised pain and suffering, placing the President and the guy that washes his socks on the same plane of pain. After Westgate, you could tell, he securocracy's leaden-footed imbecility notwithstanding, that Something Was Going to be Done. But habits are hard to break, especially bad ones, and what we got were the most anti-people legislative proposals since the Pass Book Ordinances of the Colonial Government, the Security Laws (Amendments) Bill, 2014. This was the starkest reminder by officialdom of the proper place of victims in Kenya's hierarchies: the poor and the politically powerless do not matter as much as the movers and shakers.

DusitD2 is a harsh reminder that though things have changed, they haven't changed that much. Kenyans are more aware of what they must do in order to deal with the pain, suffering, and trauma of an attack. But officialdom, though more professional, remains mulishly unchanged. You can see it in the casual way untruths are passed on as facts. You can see it in the way the Official Story has been told and finished. You can see it in the way that even foreigners have no compunction about displaying the remains of our murdered loved ones for all to see - unapologetic, unashamed, ugly and mean-spirited.  And you can see it in the way officialdom has subtly celebrated "return to normalcy", highlighting buoyant news about the securities market, the lack of ofay "travel advisories", the non-disruption of ofay tourist activities.

You can set your watch by the next steps in officialdom's process, culminating in high-decibel succession rows by even Kenyans who should know better. Deceptively somber Kenyans will appear on news shows and lie through their teeth about the 2022 Question, distracting us from the 2019 five-fingered discounts they will award themselves while we, the ones without the benefit of metaphorical and literal safety nets and bulletproof vests, watch our savings turn into puffs of smoke as railway profiteers take us for a ride. At least, you might think, we are resilient. Yes we are but surely, it doesn't have to be this hard to be an ordinary Kenyan, does it?

The final ossuary

One, apparently, can hire police officers for private bodyguard work and such. This is apparently a legitimate part of their duties as uniformed officers of the law. It says so right there in section 104 of the National Police Service Act, 2011, with the caveat that it has to be for the protection of the public good or public interest. The public interest, as we have discovered in recent months, is quite a fungible thing, with what Okiya Omtata does being the most solid definition of it and everything that mawaziri do being the softest definition, if that be it, of the the thing.

What I didn't know until I was well into adulting was that there is a second, secret service that police officers offered: the hire of firearms issued to individual police officers or armories in police stations. Handcuffs too, it seems, are hired out for private use. But this isn't about police officers and wayward firearms. this is about the utterly asinine decision to issue private security companies with firearms licenses so that their personnel can bear firearms while on duty. 

I don't mean that it is not a good idea to arm watchmen with guns; it probably is, given the number of police guns being used against them whenever the premises they guard are robbed by armed robbers. What I mean is that given Kenya's political history, it is surprising that no one has raised the issue of militias now being converted into private security companies with the object of lawfully acquiring firearms. Since 1992 when even mawaziri were caught transporting everything from simis to bows and arrows to volatile political hotspots, we have known that powerful politicians, keen on retaining their political power, have armed youthful Kenyans with what wazungu derisively refer to as "crude weapons". These youthful Kenyans have often been mobilised in militias, which are activated during especially fraught elections, and deployed to intimidate political rivals if not outright engage in rapine, pillaging and murder. 2017 and 2018 have witnessed their fair share of political violence at the hands of these kinds of militia.

So, for a usually paranoid ministry such as Interior and Co-ordination of National Government, I am shocked that it has not put its foot down and declared that the likes of G4S are not getting guns. Period! The late Nkaissery said "no". The late Michuki said "no". The mercurial Murungaru said "no". Even the laissez faire Ole Lenku said "no". What has changed after a decade and a half that it is now OK to allow private security companies to acquire and keep firearms in large numbers? Has no one considered that it a small hop, step and jump before Kenya's ethnic-cleansing-minded politicians will clean up the image of their militias, apply for (and obtain) registration as private security companies and then apply (and obtain) gun permits? What were once tribal gangs will become legitimate mini-armies. It will not end well. The next round of political blood-letting will not just be bloodier; it will be deadlier. The seeds of civil war that were planted in 2007/2008 will definitely bloom with tragic consequences.

The only people who will come out ahead of this thing will do so because they are the only ones who have ever done well out of these sorts of things. The ordinary Kenyan, Wanjiku, in addition to everything else she has to worry over, will now be forced to contend with roving gangs of (mostly) young men who are armed to the teeth and whose moral compasses have been turned away from True North by the magnetic silky-smooth tongues of pied political pipers. If we are not careful, and we seem not be, the abyss we stared into in 2008 won't stare back, but it shall be the final ossuary of our nation's youths' remains.

How low have we sunk?

I have never killed anyone. I have never murdered anyone either. (Yes, there is a world of a difference between the two.) I have contemplated the murder of many, many people, dreaming of excruciating ways to prolong their suffering before the coup de grâce. But I have never seriously considered myself capable of murder. Even though my ego is healthy enough to pretend that I would kill in defence of loved ones or myself, I also don't ever wish to be placed in such a situation because I may very well wuss out. As a result of all this, I am not sure I would want to know and be friends with a killer or a murderer.

A few months ago, a young woman was murdered in cold blood. The cause of her murder remains unknown. This not-knowing has led to speculation about whom she knew, how she knew them and who among them was involved in her murder. A man was arrested on the suspicion that he had murdered this young woman. He had been seen with her on the material night. He was known to spend a lot of time with her. He was also famous (or infamous, depending on whom you ask) for the tall stories associated with him: that he was a former mercenary in Afghanistan; that he owned and used numerous firearms; and the like.

This man's account of the night the young woman was murdered implicated his fiancée and her neighbour in the murder of the young woman, on account of an alleged botched robbery (in which he was the victim) that left him nursing a gruesome gunshot wound ad raised more questions than answers. The man, his fiancée and her neighbour (the man was living with his fiancée at the time of the murder, him being unemployed and without any known fixed address) were all arrested, though the neighbour was released when he demonstrated that he had nothing to do with the affairs of the couple.

Both the man and his fiancée were arraigned before a murder court and charged with the murder of that young woman. Neither had shown much remorse during the investigation into the murder, a case that was covered extensively with Kenya's tabloids of record (as well as of the gutter variety). The bail hearings attracted every glory-whore of a defence lawyer worth his salt as well as recently-unemployed government officials with dubious antecedents. Even amid all the hoopla, the couple remained visibly (to my eye, anyway) remorseless. In the four months since the remains of the slain woman were discovered, the couple at the heart of the case have not even once expressed shame or remorse for the death. Not once.

Their friends have come to their rescue on numerous occasions. The woman's employer has gone on record to affirm their faith in her character, even after witnessing the inconsistencies in her story on the night that the murder took place. Despite his financially straitened circumstances, the man continues to enjoy the services of very expensive defence lawyers raising the interesting question as to whom the bill of costs will be sent.

In typical Kenyan fashion, we have forgotten about the murder and are now caught up in the drama surrounding the tabloidised lives of this couple. We are reminded of their humanity as they canoodle in front of cameras while appearing before murder judges. We are asked to empathise with them for the suffering they are undergoing - psychological and physical - as a result of the unfair way they are being treated because of their mere connection with the murder. In the Christmas spirit, a whisper campaign has been initiated to remind us that they are young and have long, bright futures, if only we could show a bit of Jesus-like mercy. Indeed, someone has already raised the bar to a typically high Kenyan standard: the woman has all it takes to make an excellent woman parliamentarian, county notwithstanding.

As this particular murder trial wends its way to a verdict, it is time we reflected on whether our humanity has finally been debased enough that alleged murderers have become the stuff of real life telenovela romances to which we shall pay undivided, lustful attention. We have sunk so very low. How low, I cannot tell. Can you?

Change or resign

The problem of underage pregnancies must not be viewed as a burden of the ministry of education alone.- Cabinet Secretary for Education, 19th November 2018

Why is this person in charge of the policy on education, the implementation of that policy, and the machinery of government responsible for the care and protection of children while in school? I listened with anger as the chairman of the Board of Directors of the Kenya national Examinations Council and the secretary to the Teachers Service Commission carry on from where their Cabinet Secretary had left off, laying the blame for child parents on their parents and on the children themselves. I ask once again: why are these people in charge?

Government and faith-based organisations, notably the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church of Kenya, joined hands in the 1990s to fundamentally alter how children would be educated about sex. This has had profound consequences in the twenty-first century Information Age. Coupled with senior Government officials zealous pursuing conservative USA religious agendas that deny young people relevant information about sex, two generations of Kenyans, well into their adulthood, do not understand what sex is and how to deal with all the difficult questions associated with sex. As a result, not only are we witnessing a surge in child parentage, we are also witnessing a resurgence of HIV/AIDS among young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, increasing cases of sexual harassment and assault, and rising cases of pregnancy and birth-related complications, including poorly performed terminations of pregnancies. In my opinion, we can trace a large portion of these problems to the ministry of education's capitulation to ideas, ideologies and political pressures that have handicapped young people in their education about sex.

The motto "education is power" is especially relevant to comprehensive sex education. The USA religious ideology of "abstinence-only" sex education has failed wherever it has been tried. It defines sex education with a view to its understanding in the 1980s or 1990s, and fails to account for the evolution of gender dynamics, cultures, social mores and other concepts such as affirmative and passive consent that have redefined how we situate sex in broader social issues. The Cabinet Secretary and her senior bureaucrats are clinging to ideologies that offer little help to our children in the twenty-first century.

The principal institutions that have the greatest impact on children are the family and the education system, primarily schools. Everyone acknowledges that parents are spending fewer and fewer quality hours with their children these days, leaving teachers, peers, young adults, mass media and social media to provide guidance on issues as old as time. Social media, and the internet in general, and mass media have, for the most part, distorted the sex into grotesque proportions, failing to provide information that, at the very least, empowers children and young adults to make healthy and safer choices. Schools, and teachers, have the best opportunity of helping children determine what is healthy and safe by sifting through the images portrayed on TV and Instagram and identifying unhealthy, unsafe and self-destructive tropes that often prove attractive to naive and ill-informed children.

Of course we realise that the blame does not lie with the ministry of education alone, but the fact that it has washed its hands of the debate, that it has refused or failed to push back against policies that have done more harm than good, places the bulk of the blame on the ministry. Ms Mohamed, Prof Magoha and Dr Macharia continue to do our children a great disservice by failing to address the dearth of relevant information required by our children when it comes to sex or adamantly refusing to consider policies that would ameliorate the life risks teenage parenting engender for child parents in the long term. For instance, there is no justifiable reason why supplementary national examinations cannot be organised for children who were out of school when the annual examinations are written by their colleagues. My preference would be for the abolition of national examinations altogether, but in the immediate term, it is manifestly unfair not only to place the burden of child pregnancy on the children and their parents alone, but also to deny them some sort of comfort that a supplementary examination would offer if it were administered in February or March of the following year.

We keep claiming that children are our future. The Children Act's entire ethos is built around the ethos of the "best interests of the child". Heck, Article 53 of the Constitution is exclusively about the child and the protection of the child. Ms Mohamed, Prof Magoha and Dr Macharia don't seem to realise this. They should either resign their offices or change their attitudes.

Signs

One of our one-percenters was flying into the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and she snapped a photo of all the land that lay undeveloped along the glide path of her plane. In typically Kenyan fashion, our one-percenter had this to say,

"Excellent landing & service @KenyaAirways as we returned from SA. I pondered as I captured the approach on the 'idle land' around the capital @UKenyatta @Sonko Lets build 'decanting sites' on unutilised land to deliver #AgendaHousingKe"

It's typically Kenyan to have an epiphany that almost always calls for A Simple Solution. Our one-percenter epitomises the tyranny under which Kenyans have suffered for decades. Nairobi has a housing shortage. Nairobi and its environs have "idle" land. Therefore, build on that idle land and the housing shortage will disappear. The nitty-gritty of public policy that underpins all successful public programmes isn't even hinted at. Instead, we are reminded again and again that world class cities like New York, London, Seoul, Tokyo, Mumbai and Buenos Aires have no idle land near any of their major civilian airports, as if Nairobi can measure up to these cities in terms of even the most basic of services for the vast majority of its residents who are overwhelmingly not one-percenters.

We have witnessed how harrowing lives can be made when policies are made, imposed and implemented without proper planning. Devolution of public health services(save for those services offered by national referral hospitals) comes to mind. A combination of factors have contributed mightily to the disaster unfolding in delivery of public health services. The resistance from ministry mandarins loath to give up their power to the chicanery of ministers, their loyal underlings and the satellite of buzzards they all seem to attract has led to one public health disaster to another culminating in the employment, at exorbitant public expense, foreign doctors to serve hard-struck Kenyans.

If the same cavalier attitude is brought to "affordable" housing, a "development" sector that is synonymous with grand corruption, "decanting sites" will become permanent "informal" settlements and whatever plan there might have been to ensure that as many Kenyans afford decent housing will go up in the same puff of smoke that "mobile clinics" went up in.

It is, of course, the responsibility of elected representatives to highlight public policy issues that appear to have been given short shrift by members of the executive. It is not the responsibility of elected representatives to become cheerleaders for every cockamamie scheme to finagle ever more billions from the national treasury at the people's expense. It has been more than a year since our one-percenter made it to the National Assembly. Her tenure is notable for her social media presence. It is, though, devoid of any tangible successes, programmes or policy proposals. She is not the only one. If the future mother-of-all-scams, #AgendaHousingKe", gets off the ground because she and her parliamentary colleagues were busy fantasising about "decanting sites" on "idle" land, you can't say that you didn't see the signs.

Enough!

Ministers of faith are some of the most bigoted, hateful, moralistic sadists in the universe. And that too knowing that the gods they tend to represent here on Earth are bigoted, hateful, moralistic sadists of note. Every now and then, ministers of faith remind us why the enormous non-statutory power they wield should be taken away once and for all.

This past weekend, a couple that wished to enter the institution of marriage with their eyes wide open had the wind taken out of their sails by an excrementally, monumentally cruel minister of faith. Now, some have argued that when the couple settled for that particular minister of faith, they should have known that when one licks honey from a rose bush, there will be good parts and there will be bad parts and they should have been prepared for all eventualities, as Kenyans are wont to say. However, by all accounts, the happy-till-then couple had complied with the long list of demands the minister of faith had made before officiating at their happy day. They had no way of knowing that caprice would cast a dark cloud over their union and that the minister of faith's pique would not only make their union memorable for all the wrong reasons, but also because of the enormous time and expense that were wasted to indulge his massive ego.

Of course, as is their wont, Kenyans on Twitter were quick to point out two significant statutory mistakes that the minister of faith made: first, he insisted that the couple must undertake an HIV/AIDS test before he could officiate at their wedding. Second, he insisted that he should be notified when they had complied with his demand. By making both demands, the minister of faith committed an offence as set out in section 13 of the HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control Act, 2006, which not only make it an offence to compel any person to undertake an HIV/AIDS test but also to use an HIV/AIDS test as a precondition for marriage. What I am 99.99% confident of is that the minister of faith will not be arraigned before any court of law any time soon. Moreover, he will also receive the raucously vocal support of fellow men and women of the cloth insisting that faith-based organisations of Kenya shall continue to play their role in preventing and controlling the spread of HIV and AIDS which, in their circles, have retained the moral-stained stigma against HIV and AIDS that made the disease so difficult to deal with in its early years.

 

We must come to terms with the enormous powers we have granted various social, cultural and statutory institutions because the more powers we grant these institutions, the less free we become, the more oppressed we are. In the dark days of colonial conquest, the colonialist's religion was an excellent tool for the pacification of the indigenous peoples, erasing their cultures and mores, demolishing their social, cultural and political institutions, and imposing the edifices of colonialism that have stood the test of time, with indigenous homeguards being more colonialist than the colonialist himself. None are more colonialist that the colonialist than ministers of faith, who have resisted time and tide as the world around them has evolved beyond their wildest fantasies.

 

This power must be broken before it succeeds in the never-ended colonial endeavour to break us as humans, as a people, as a community. The minister of faith, with his vindictive paternalism, is an example of the kind of power that we must break, break with and break away from. One of the ways we can do so is to prosecute him for his offences. The HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control Act, 2006 is one weapon we can wield against this execrable human as a warning to the rest of the bigots on his side that we shall no longer cower before a man who claims friendship with powerful imaginary friends and attempts to order our lives even to the most intimate and personal degree. It is time we said, "BASTA!"

Men, really, are trash

One day, we were walking up Muindi Mbingu Street past City Market. She preferred walking on the road, dodging motor vehicles. I though that it was mad to do so. I didn't understand that her risk threshold would be breached if she walked on the pavement. Because I am a man and men don't know jack shit about what it takes for any woman to walk in these here streets of Nairobi.

I have never been catcalled, insulted, groped, assaulted, commented upon or, generally, harassed for walking while male in Nairobi. She has. Dozens upon dozens of times. And given how much of the available pavement space has been commandeered by "hawkers" and beggars, and the ever-rising population of pedestrians, she has been on the receiving end of a stream of harassment that I will never, ever experience. So it makes sense for her to walk on the road, dodging matatus, private cars, the occasional parking boy and glue-sniffing, shit-slinging chokora. The risk of getting run down by a motorist is preferable to the harassment that has, in the past, escalated to outright violence.

We have called for a better design for non-motorised transport in Nairobi but because the decisions are made by men who will never experience what women experience on the daily, it is almost certain that change will not come any time soon. Public architecture and civil engineering in Nairobi is predominantly driven by how the world is seen by men and because of it, women pay a heavy price - including being unfairly judged as being reckless when traversing Nairobi's streets and dodging its unhinged population of motorists that seem hellbent in violating even the unread bits of the Traffic Act.

Well, no more! I will not stand in judgment when I see women take risks to avoid being harassed and assaulted on our crowded city pavements. I will, instead, do my bit to push those that make policy, design and build public spaces to take into account the needs of women. Between the aggressively wandering hands of men and the diesel-belching Rukagina Sacco behemoths of Ronald Ngala Street, I now have a slight inkling of why women prefer the latter. Men, really, are trash

Rigged against them all

The national examinations system is designed to bring out the worst instincts among Kenyans regardless of their age, academic status or station in life. The public education system is designed to encourage the basest instincts among Kenyans. The combination of the two - the education system and the examinations system - are a cocktail that brings tragedy to may families in predictable ways.

Last weeks, hundreds of thousands of teenagers sat for their Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examinations in the presence of armed and uniformed police officers, one more reason to remember that the Government of Kenya really does not understand anything to do with the rights of the child enshrined in the Constitution, the Children Act or the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It was also reported that dozens of children preparing to sit, or sitting, for the examinations did so immediately after they had given birth, further proof that not only doesn't the Government not understand anything to do with the rights of the child but that it does not actually care to protect the rights of the children of Kenya. I am almost certain that the same will be witnessed in the next three weeks as children undertake the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examinations.

If you intend to undertake a degree at any university in Kenya, you must attain a certain academic grade in your basic education. The most recognised entry examination to universities in Kenya is the KCSE, though international equivalents are offered such as the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE by many private learning institutions. The KCSE is only offered once a year; if you do not obtain the minimum grade, you must wait a whole year to sit for the exam afresh. There are no equivalency examinations offered by Government: the KCSE is the be all and end all of university-entry examinations.As such, it offers rent-seekers great opportunities to suborn and subvert it, and further the corruption of the soul of the nation.

From the moment a child is enrolled in Standard 1 in a public school, the road leads first to a "national" school and, from the successful few, to a "good" public university (state-owned and state-supported university), of which the premier ones are the University of Nairobi, the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agricultural Technology and the Kenyatta University, though their glory days have receded quite far into the past for anyone to seriously consider them the elite of the elite anymore. (In my opinion, why anyone would willingly subject themselves to the academic ministrations of Moi University or Pwani University defeats logic at a visceral level.) For the few with dollops of donor-dollars (or the local equivalent, tenderpreneurship-fuelled dollars), all roads lead to Strathmore University. But I digress.

If your talent lies in athletics, or the visual or performing arts, a reasonable KCSE grade will allow you to leave secondary school without being scorned and may relieve you, more often than not, of the burden of a university degree. The disciplined services will always hanker after the former while Kenya's budding art scene offers opportunities for the latter. But if your destiny is a white-collar job with a well-paying employer, a university degree is de rigueur and a post-graduate degree inestimably helpful. The numbers of those seeking white-collar success (and the respect it seemingly brings with it) have been increasing by multiples of factors for decades. So have the academic buccaneers hell-bent on turning the screws to the desperate and earning a fast shilling with the conscience of a sicario.

One of the ways I believe we can ameliorate the situation is for Government to offer the KCPE and the KCSE more than one once in a year - three times, in my opinion, would be extremely helpful. This would offer those wishing to re-sit the exams immediate opportunities to improve their last grade. It would also excuse new parents from having to juggle the emotional, psychological and physiological aftermath of childbirth with the emotionally-draining once-and-for-all national exam pressures that few teenagers are well-equipped to handle. Finally, it would finally force Governemnt to re-think its entire approach to the use of examinations to determine the overall level of learning of young persons and, I hope, instead, offer new ways of educating our children and offering them opportunities for their future that are not tied so tightly to a certificate that has been hijacked by a well-connected few.

In my estimation, the last three education ministers (including the incumbent) never understood what it takes to improve an education system. All they obsessed over were overall KCSE and KCPE grades and the the reduction of cheating in national examinations at all costs. The new curriculum being pioneered in the teeth of opposition from well-informed and qualified educators and the now-complete militarisation of national exams continue to remind us that men and women with a police mindset are always ill-suited to the task of the education of the young - they will always see total obedience and good grades as national goals to be pursued to the total exclusion of reason or the welfare of the children their policies affect.

I fear that incumbent education minister and her predecessors have laid the foundation for two generations of lost children who will be more easily pliable in the un-soft hands of a carceral state hell-bent on cheating the people out of their natural endowments. It will all end in the utter ruination of the people.

Eulogy for the rule of law

According to google, a "habit" means "a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up". We know that habits can be either good or bad. One of the worst habits we have as Kenyans is the casual manner in which we eschew rules, regulations and petty laws, like the Traffic Act and its regulations. Our bad habits on the road are a symptom of our wider disregard for the dozens upon dozens of statutory and non-statutory rules that order our lives, the aim being to cut corners and shorten deadlines in order to get ahead at the expense of everyone else.

On this Monday's commute, the sum total of our bad habits were in stark relief: long, impatient queues of commuters (where commuters tend to queue) awaiting scarce PSVs and, rather ironically given the scarce PSVs, incredible traffic jams into Nairobi's CBD. PSVs, epitomised by matatus (and the latest matatu iteration, nganyas) have for long faced the brunt of public opprobrium for all that is wrong with road behaviour. In the eyes of seemingly right thinking members of society, matatus are loud, noisy, reckless, extortionate, inconsiderate, dangerous and rude. In sum, matatu culture is the entirety of all the bad habits of matatu operators going back to the day matatus were, in effect, given a free hand to operate in Nairobi.

The antidote to our bad habits on the road, so the nascent fascists in our government (and their boosters in the private sector) would have you believe, were the Michuki Rules, named after the ex-colonial-era provincial administration martinet, the late John Michuki, a former minister of transport, who through sheer will and a ruthless streak, imposed a set of rules that, for a time anyway, made commuting less dangerous and less riddled with bad habits. The late Mr Michuki's rules weren't so much the inculcation of good habits among Nairobi's or Kenya's thousands of drivers and motorists, as they were the imposition of one man's vision of "discipline, in which disproportionate punishments would be imposed on anyone who defied any of the petty new rules made by the man.

An example will suffice. When the Kenya Bus Service was the preferred form of transport for Nairobi's commuters in the 1980s, the design of the buses was simple: two does, front and back, simple seats and enough capacity for standing commuters. KBS buses were not speedily driven and, therefore, did not need seatbelts for seated commuters. Because of the buses's timetables, the buses rarely carried commuters to excess outside of rush hour. Matatus, on the other hand, unconstrained by KBS's terms of its contract with the City Council of Nairobi, hell-bent on turning a fast shilling as quickly as possible, were smaller, were almost always overloaded, were almost always driven with a certain degree of reckless derring-do that appealed to rebellious youth, and almost always ended in tragedy. The "square" commuters who preferred KBS to matatus never had to worry about getting to work on time in relative safety. The "hip" users of matatus knew well enough to keep a watchful eye of the crew they were with and the state of the matatu they rode in. In 2018 the entire PSV sector is a matatu sector; KBS's spiritual successors are no more, not even KBS's actual successor, the KBS Management Services Company Limited.

More and more commuters and PSV operators eschewed the rules that kept everything on an even keel with the individualised desire to get ahead at all costs. The late Mr Michuki treated the symptoms of the disease, not its causes, which were legion. For twenty-four years, government officials had eroded the general respect of the law, enervating public institutions, encouraging petty acts of impunity, ignoring the tenets of decency and courtesy, and celebrating short cuts and quick fixes. In 2018, we are witness to a legacy of chicanery from the highest echelons of public life to the most private aspects of individual behaviour. The latest crackdown on traffic impunity will not last so long as we do not admit to ourselves that the  problem is not the written laws of the state but that our individual and institutional commitment to upholding the rule of law at all times is honoured more in the breach. If we are to succeed, the majority must develop good habits while the minority of scofflaws are shunned or, where they are incorrigible, punished. In other words, most of us must obey the common rules of courteous and decent behaviour, and eschew short cuts and quick fixes. The late Mr Michuki was not public transport's saviour. He was the bell tolling at the march of time marking our fall from grace. His rules were dirge at the funeral of what once was. His rules were the eulogy for the rule of law.

Looking for a legacy

When I was in Standard 3 at Rabai Road primary School, Peter Oloo Aringo was the Minister of Education (this is before we switched prepositions, so bear with me), and Kenya had entered the uncharted waters of Bretton-Woods-prescribed Structural Adjustment Programmes. The expression "cost-sharing", which I didn't understand and still don't, entered the national discourse and my father was told to part with money so that City Hall could build a workshop at Rabai Primary School. The workshop was duly built and when I was in Standard 7 and 8, I spent many, many happy hours in it sawing, planing, sanding and hammering various bits of wood into creations that gave great, great pleasure.

Baba Moi was getting into the swing of things at Harambee House, sprinkling the public service with his favoured political pets, many in high offices where policies were made, unmade and ignored. Few Kenyans appreciated the effect of Baba Moi's version of structural adjustment and few could foresee just how bad things would get by the time Mzee was being given the rudest send-off at the relatively peaceful end of his presidency. What I do remember, even in the midst of the rapid-fire changes, is that all waziris and their senior-most mandarins were driven about in Peugeot 504s, even the Vice-President, the flashiest French import we had at the time.

Not even Mzee saw the political virtues of zipping about in helicopters and a fleet of V8 VXs (though, to be fair to the modern-day waheshimiwa, he didn't need to when Voice of Kenya spent 25 of its allotted 30 minutes singing his praises in increasingly unsubtle ways at 1:00pm, 4:00pm, 6:00pm, 7:00pm and 9:00pm. Things were predictable. My workshop was built because Baba Moi decreed that it should be built.

Mzee didn't make promises often. Which comes as a bit of a surprise when I think about it. He almost always directed something to be done and the machinery of Government swung into action. He decreed free milk and soon enough, KCC lorries were delivering orange tetrapaks of Maziwa ya Nyayo. His successors have been mightily unlucky. They couldn't decree anything without appearing foolish. It is why the wonkish Kibaki delegated the arm-twisting and head-knocking to the likes of John Michuki, Chris Murungaru and Martha Karua or charm offensives to the like of the sharp-as-a-tack Mutula Kilonzo and scandal-prone Masaa-ni-ya-Mama Charity Ngilu. Baks's successor doesn't even have a Michuki in his corner; the hard-charging Matiang'i will one day prove to be the millstone that sinks his "legacy" for all eternity.

Mzee may have bankrupted the nation, morally, politically and fiscally, but when you see him lifting rocks above his head in some rural backwater as his Government fights to reverse mmonyoko wa udongo, you remember that the gabions kept your farmhouse from being washed away one more time by raging waters and mud. When you see him set his head back and laugh uproariously at the antics of the Vitimbi cast during some public holiday at the Nyayo National Stadium, you realise that he didn't crush everything underneath his heel. But try as you might, you can't summon the same sense of occasion when you remember Baks's "superhighway" or his successor's "SGR". Instead, it is relentless torrent of bad and worse news connected to the filching of many, many billions that boggle the mind.

Mzee suppressed and oppressed and, ironically, because of his heavy hand, Kenyans and Kenyan communities had a sense of pride when one of their children stood up to him. We feared him. And we suffered for it. But we never held him in contempt even when morally dubious stories about him were whispered in bars and funerals. No one feared Baks. No one fears his successor. Baks has the respect of economists because he managed a minor miracle with the economy, even if he cocked it up in the end. But his successor? Moi gave me a workshop. Baks gave me the opportunity to say mean things about the president without fearing that I would find my gonads in a vice. This one is looking for a "legacy". I fear that he will be unluckiest of them all.

Pufferies of the self-absorbed

"Sometimes though, I get the feeling that we are our own worst enemies. When everything seems to be going well for us, we scatter all to the four winds...The latest example is the call by Kenya Airways crew to go on strike, just as the country was jubilating that a journey of 10 years — for a direct flight to the United States — has come to an end." - nation.co.ke

Have you dreamed of travelling to the USA directly from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport? have you ever thought that, as a national priority, flying directly to the USA came before universal and comprehensive free basic education or an efficient, effective and affordable public healthcare system? When you think of Kenya, do you liken it to other brands like Coca-cola, Blue Band or pornhub.com?

There are many things that are going right with Kenya. Despite the best efforts of the ruling elite, more and more Kenyans are speaking out about the things that matter to the people. Though it may not seem like it, every single Okiya Omtata litigation victory is a good thing; it is among the many ways that Kenyans are building a rule-of-law judicial system.

Despite these, and many other, positive steps, we must also stare the truth in its face: Kenya has a long way to go to shrug off the corruption, tribalism and poverty that stalks the lives of millions of Kenyans. For Kenya Airways, perhaps, direct flights to the USA may prove the tonic needed for it to unwind its ruinous fiscal circumstances but a lifetime of lessons about the false promise of foreign markets tempers our expectations about the chances of a minnow like KQ in the vast, shark-filled ocean of global aviation in which it has floundered again and again and again.

For KQ's boosters to ignore that the company has been consistently and ruinously managed by its succession of politically-appointed managers, and the deleterious impacts of these managers' decisions on the rank-and-file of the company, is to live in an elite bubble of stupefying obscurity. Since the turn of the century, KQ has struggled to do right by its employees even though its managers (and directors) have almost always made off like bandits. The latest threat to strike is not the first and bar some Eastern European miracle, it shall not be last. Instead of captains of industry wringing their hands in despair at the selfishness of KQ's employees, perhaps it is time they started asking the serious questions about the roles of a few robber-barons in the c-suites of the national flag carrier.

Do not hide behind jingoism. I can guarantee, even without the benefit of an opinion poll, that the vast majority of Kenyans don't care all that much about KQ's direct flights to New York. But many of them will feel the righteousness of the demands by KQ employees because many of them are in the same straitened circumstances. The ranks of the poor, the unemployed and those living hand-to-mouth are increasing while the foreign bank accounts of the movers and the shakers continue to fatten. Kenyans will celebrate and jubilate only when they can hold their heads high with pride because they are no longer ashamed of looking their loved ones in the eye because they can't put three square ones on the table every day. International connections are well and good but unless they guarantee decent wages and personal well-being, they are merely the pufferies of the self-absorbed elitist windbags.

The kumira-kumira era is no improvement

Maybe it was intended to troll those Kenyans who had been uncharitable about her qualifications to manage one of Kenya's most important sectors. Maybe. When the Cabinet Secretary for Education declared that her ministry would not allow national exam candidates to be "disturbed" by "prayer days" or "visitors", which would also serve the goal of preventing examinations cheating, I thought that maybe she had forgotten what her role was supposed to be. But it became immediately clear that she was dead serious when the President (and commander-in-chief of the Kenya Defence Forces) declared with deadpan seriousness that if a national exam candidate was caught cheating, not only would Government throw the book at him, Government would also revoke the candidate's parents' examination certificates.

The Cabinet Secretary and the President, treading the same path as the immediate former Cabinet Secretary, who now happens to be in charge of the State policing and intelligence machinery, have come to the simple conclusion that the only way to measure educational attainment is by maximising the number of children who sit and pass national exams - and minimising, if not eliminating, the number of children who successfully get away with cheating. If it means jailing children, well, hey, now that we have converted Kenya's prisons into commercial enterprises, they will never want for semi-educated workers, will they?

The prosperity gospel favoured by Christian ministers of faith patronised by many of Kenya's political classes has become a national faith, if not religion. Every public institution is exhorted, with the silent acquiescence of public institutions of conscience, to "maximise revenues" in the light of increasing public debt ( and a ballooning public wage bill). While Government decreed "free" basic education in Government-funded schools on the one hand, it turned the Kenya Prisons service into a commercial enterprise intended to compete with the private sector in agriculture, furniture and handicrafts, and, of course, real estate development. Everything we now do, as a people and as a country, is measured down to the last cent. The results have been stark.

Back when we were a KANU dictatorship, before the Bretton-Woods assassins stuck stilettos in our collective rib-cage, we may have been poor and under the yoke of a fascist ethnic criminal enterprise (from which its victims are still recovering), but we not saddled with an unsustainable public debt that had largely been sequestered in Indian Ocean tax havens of ill repute without a hope of ever being recovered. The KANU mafia had stolen billions but not even them had had the balls to turn public debt into private profit on the scale it has been today. The creeping privatisation of the public service - prisons are just the latest step - is taking on a life of its own and consuming institutions that require the greatest care and protection such as public basic education and public primary healthcare services. The fate of the nation hangs in the balance yet the Cabinet Secretary is determined to provide a path to incarceration for as many young Kenyans as she can - unless they all toe the party line and do as they are told without question or challenge.

Much of what made Kenyans Kenyan is being steamrolled into conformity by the I-know-best attitude of the CS and her Cabinet colleagues and private sector enablers. When you think of the performing arts, benga and rumba, stage plays and poetry, public intellectualism and dissenting public opinion, the way was not lit by the shining lamps of the KANU-ya-jenga-nchi chants, but by the underground streams of protest that refused to be held back, official opprobrium notwithstanding. But with the rise of KANU and KANU-lite apparatchiks, using modern tools of suppression and for shaping public opinion, such as Ezekiel Caesar, the national finger-wagging this-is-un-Kenyan scold, old school performing arts are being suppressed, repressed and erased. And it is being replaced by milquetoast pap designed to pacify, stupefy and terrify while the national treasury is emptied of its last cent and the national silver is bartered to the highest bidder.  No one wants to return to the KANU-ni-baba-na-mama days but make no mistake, the only ones who think that the kumira-kumira era is an improvement are the ones with their twenty fat little fingers and toes in the national cookie jar.

Put the people first

An enduring image of Kenyan Government officials whenever they appear at a public event is grey-haired men and matronly women arrayed behind cloth-covered tables, dozens of bottles of water or fresh drinks within reach, under a tent or a covered dais - and the wananchi standing in front of them - or seated on the bare ground - in the open air, whether the weather is inclement or not - and hawkers offering them refreshments at a steep markup, especially for those not foresighted enough to bring their own bottled water or soft drink. The image is always of the watu wakubwa behind an impenetrable, protected barrier and the umma with their noses pressed hard in the window hoping for a glance of power and its trappings.

It is why the image of Gov Kivutha Kibwana on one knee at some ECD event is so shocking, especially remembering he was a Kibaki-Government Minister who at times let ministerial power overwhelm him leading to ridiculous actions. It is also why it is not surprising to see Gov John Lonyangapuo sitting, with his mawaziri, at another ECD event while the children on whose behalf the even was t be held, are either standing or sitting in the dirt. Mr Lonyangapuo is a died-in-the-wool serikali type. Mr Kibwana hopes to shatter the barrier between serikali and the people it serves.

It still shocks my visitors that when they knock and enter, I will stand up from my desk, come round and shake them by the hand - even when I have royally screwed them over regarding their needs. But I see no benefit in treating them as little people when their needs, if addressed, will make things better all around for their underlings, their friends, their families and the like. I can't offer them tea - I don't have a catering allowance - but I will take my time to listen and understand their needs, I will take written notes, and I will ask questions to clarify their points. I will not tell them what to do but offer them advise on how to best solve whatever problem brought them to my office. Most don't notice the effort and that is fine - I still have a salary for doing my job. But the ones who do are discombobulated because in the same building - hell, the same floor - the ukubwa syndrome will leave them with tonnes of anxiety and great feeling of disrespect.

The still-stalled prosecution of the deputy chief justice, the ongoing prosecution of Gov Sospeter Ojaamong and the impending murder trial of Gov Okoth Obado have revealed the deep roots of the ukubwa syndrome in Kenya. Government, in all its manifestations, still resists the centering of people in the manner that it conducts its affairs. The people are to be seen and not to be heard. Government will tell them what they need - and they will like it come hell or high water. When Government does something wrong - when governors steal or commit murder - the people must wait for Government to decide whether or not to investigate the offence, arrest the offenders, try them in courts of law, convict and sentence them, and jail them for their crimes. Th people's vies are not important; the "impact on Government operations" is the be all and end all of it.

Centering humans in public service is the first step to cracking this nut of impunity. Put people at the heart of the work of Government, the actions of Government, the behaviour of Government, and the crimes of Government. If people are the focus, then how the people are affected is vital to designing Government and Government processes. So what of Gov Anne Waiguru wishes for the EACC to "clear" her name over NYS Season 1? Will her cleared name benefit the people? If not, then her fulminations are unimportant - nay, irrelevant. So what that Gov Obado slept on the floor and ate sukuma wiki? Would an a'la carte menu from the Kempinski have benefitted the alleged victims of his crimes? If not, akule mboga na awache kisirani ndogo ndogo.

Gov Kibwana may yet end up as the the exception that proves the rule but so far, in his second incarnation as governor, and the culmination of a long public service career, he has taken humility to depths never seen before by any other public officer. Humility almost always presumes that other people's feelings, needs, experiences, and the like are more important than ones own. Gov Waiguru and the rest of her odious class simply don't think about the people as humans but as targets of political activity, sources of public revenue, victims of Government action and worshipful beneficiaries of Government largesse. They are wrong, of course, and soon enough, Gov Ojamoong and his perfidious colleagues will be out on their ears - for good - and the new Kibwanas will be in charge. That, anyway, is my hope.

Putting the genie back

When I was a child in primary school, I partook of Maziwa ya Nyayo - and loved every cold liquid ounce of it. After all, I was one of the watoto wa Nyayo. I even took part in the 10 Years of Nyayo Era celebrations in 1988 when thousands of children from across the country paraded in splendid colours at the Moi International Sports Stadium in Kasarani. There's photographic evidence of me in my colourful athletic attire somewhere in mum's house. We loved the whole of the experience, especially when we went away to camp at the Kenya Teachers Technical Training College in Gigiri.

Back then, when it was Voice of Kenya and not the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, everything was about Nyayo. He was a constant, reassuring presence. When he urged us to slow down mmonyoko wa udongo by building gabions, he turned up in person to throw in his share of rocks into the soil erosion preventing walls. When he asked us to be good Christians to one another, he did so by praying with us in our churches every Sunday without fail, bible in hand. Nyayo was Moi and Moi was Nyayo.

But even as a child, I knew well enough to be afraid of him and everything about him. You could see it by how even small children knew who in Buru Buru was the "Special Branch" guy among the three that roasted maize by the side of the road. You knew well enough not to say anything bad about Nyayo when in school. You were constantly conscious of the fear that pervaded everything your father did when he went to the office or drove us to shags over the holidays. Nyayo was benevolent most of the time and ruthless whenever it suited his needs. All the Maziwa ya Nyayo in the country couldn't erase the fact that even children knew enough to fear Baba wa Taifa.

I didn't really appreciate how schizophrenic Kenya was until I went to India. Vast, multi-cultural, multilingual and vibrantly, chaotically, loudly, exuberantly democratic, it was an amazing place to learn about dissent, discourse, democracy and politics. I stayed for a long time. I couldn't believe that actual communists won popular elections. Or that many minority communities enjoyed constitutional job quotas in government. It didn't come as a shock that some dissent in India was violent, in which decades of violence had led great misery and death, but that it had stopped intellectuals, artists, novelists and musicians from telling their side of the story. I found it astonishing that the Supreme Court of India had decreed that a state of emergency was unconstitutional, leading to the fall of a government and the jailing of the prime minister. More astonishingly, she had rebounded, and reclaimed her position in the party and in government.

Coming back home three years after Yote yawezekana bila MOI!, I was confronted by the spectre of the Nyayo Era where we would go out of our way to avoid embarassing Government and all its minions, factotums, nawabs and Brahmins. Even Mwai Kibaki's laid back, reticent style didn't hide the fear that still pervaded every facet of our lives. It is why the initial exuberance built on free speech was no longer there. There were many more new subjects which we could publicly explore - including the competence or otherwise of our president - but to suggest that we had to fundamentally reform how we were governed, policed, educated, treated, transported, or informed, were bridges too far. Today, more and more subjects are being effectively outlawed. Moi-ism is creeping back. You can see it in the intensity, and opacity, of the second Kenyatta succession. What we can and cannot say about it is now measured by how many people are afraid to even broach the subject in public, among strangers. The schizophrenia is back.

 

In India, it was clear what a democracy looked like and what a money-focused machine required. In India, even odious politicians needed to sell their politics in the market of political ideas. The most persuasive, not necessarily the best, won. Next door in China, the party is the state and the state is the party and what the state wants is total submission to its will, even among its highest ranking apparatchiks. It is why when one steps out of line, challenges the party's received wisdom, one is punished together with his family, friends and known or suspected associates. So it is no surprise that the Chinese way finds favour with those hell-bent on re-imposing the Nyayo philosophy. They are working overtime to put the post-Moi genie back in the bottle. I will not put it past them to succeed. I really wouldn't.