Treat me with contempt, please.

Why is Raila Odinga special? For that matter, why are Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, Kalonzo Musyoka or Johnston Muthama special? Of our public figures, and there are many, the special ones, whether they have achieved much or not, are known without their demanding it. In Kenya, you are special when the State says you are special and the State doesn't say it as loud as it does by whom it allows into or keeps out of the VIP Lounges at our border points. (The Artur Brothers, whom we miss dearly, were special too. Think on it.)

Every time some has-been CORD politician is denied access to a VIP Lounge, the whole country is held in thrall to the umbrage the "disrespect" being shown to a "man who has contributed so much to the country" as we are wont to be reminded. Those of us who know who the truly special Kenyans are simply roll our eyes. Many Kenyans, sadly, are not that level-headed and their unhinged minds are taken to the streets, sometimes with terrible consequences. Much bloodshed has been shed over whether or not Agwambo should or should not fly first class on the people's shilling.

In every political society there is that crass opportunist who will push every button to keep his name in the lights. In Kenya, those of recent notoriety have distinguished themselves with their obsessions with penises, foreskins and vaginas. There is a parliamentary caucus that has developed an unhealthy interest in anuses and to what use those anuses are put. These obsessives purport to speak for the people. They may be right; after all the peoples of Kenya have demonstrated an unhealthy obsession with foreskins, penises, vaginas and anuses. But in Kenya it is only the elected and formerly elected classes that obsess piteously over lost privileges.

They will do their very best to whip the emotions of Kenyans who should otherwise be obsessing over penises, foreskins, vaginas and anuses. They will do their best to make their case that a has-been and an also-ran should be treated with deference because of his previous service to the nation. Of course there are men and women for which the nation owes a great deal; that does not mean that our world will come to an end if the privileges we allowed them to enjoy for a few years are suddenly withdrawn. We cannot, after all, afford to keep them in truffles til the day they shuffle off this mortal coil, can we?

Let us be blunt. Raila Odinga has done a lot for the people of Kenya. But equally too, he has been petulant, petty, greedy and grasping. We were willing to tolerate his, and his acolytes', antics when he kept winning elective office. he is now a private citizen. He is not an elected representative. He can swan around as the "leader of CORD" if he wants; most of us don't give two shits about it. There is absolutely no reason why Uhuru Kenyatta's government, or the people of Kenya, should treat him as if he is a Greek god of mythology. There is absolutely no reason why public servants sweating in the VIP Lounges should be on hand to serve Mr Odinga and his bevy of ass-kissers whenever he is passing through any of our border points.

This colonial artifact must be destroyed in order to save the soul of this nation. There is no reason why we should elevate elected leaders and "senior public officers" to the status of Greek gods. They do not deserve it, especially if they take after the crass nature of their electors and appointing authorities. There is something amiss when a people fawn over and flutter around philanderers, pederasts, thieves, conmen, whores and suspected murderers. If the British wish to carry on as they have for millennia, that is their own affair. We have no reason to do so. Demolish the VIP lounges and the privileges associated with them. We are, as the Constitution grandiosely declares, equal. I will not genuflect to you so long as you treat me with the same degree of contempt that I do you.

The enemies of development.

I used to think hawkers were the pestilence that years of City Council-ing had inflicted on my quiet and serene Nairobbery life, that they were a punishment for, (a) not being old enough to vote for sensible councillors, and (b) for not being the sharpest genius in the room who'd get a scholarship to MIT or Harvard. (For some reason the idea of a Rhodes Scholarship did not seem terribly appealing.)

Then I went to Wakulima Market. Hawkers are not the problem; they are the proof that Uncle Kidero and his county executive are not just not better than the reviled City Council, they might actually be worse. That place is filthy. It is muddy, smelly and an absolute horror show of filth. How can so many Big Brains in the biggest city in East and Central Africa perform so dismally for so long without a revolt taking place? The answer lies somewhere on the Grey Scale, but for the purists among those who follow this blog, surely the answer is either in the broken politics of Kenya or in the incomprehensible lack of civic-mindedness of the people.

It had never occurred to me where a great deal of my veggies came from. Until I was exiled to the unforgiving and harsh world that was Machakos School, I believed that my veggies were shipped in straight from my beloved Makueni, God's Own County. Machakos School introduced me to economics, and i came to learn about demand and supply, supply chains and market forces. If you were in Nairobi, chances are your tomatoes, cabbages, sukuma wiki, spinach, dhania, brinjals, potatoes, carrots...the green stuff that are supposed to stave off cancer and death come from Wakulima Market. And it is absolutely filthy, almost a decade after the last Minister for Local Government oversaw the collection and disposal of sixty tonnes of rodent excrement.

The Wakulima Market is in the same troubled zone that has the Kenya Planter's Co-operative Union building, the Kenya Farmers' Association warehouse and Kahawa house. What all these buildings have in common are filthy lanes; I was shocked to discover that the lanes are tarmacked and not the murrum that I had come to associate with the area. The reason they look like goat tracks found only in those bits of Kiambu Jomo Kenyatta had a beef with is because the rules that are supposed to govern what can and cannot be done in our fair city have been given short shrift for decades now.

Nairobi is a pig sty. Uncle Kidero inherited a very filthy pig sty. But the men and women he appointed to help him sweep out the Augean Stables are almost certainly the reason why the problem is almost intractable; they are politicians first, and city administrators second and the former does not require a mind only an unlimited appetite for public funds without much accountability. If that were the problem, we could still hope for a turnaround.

But Uncle Kidero faces a hostile national government, and one that seems to have been captured by unsavory, self-entitled whingers of the most horrendous kind. And I do not mean the self-important, self-entitled servants of the people warming two-hundred thousand shilling chairs. I mean the flunkies, factotums and minions that flutter and swirl like butterflies around the self-important, self-entitled servants of the people. These are the sticks-in-the-mud who have done everything in their not inconsiderable power to stifle and stymie the efforts of the Government of Nairobi City County. They lie and cheat in the service of liars and cheats with the sole aim of ensuring that the Green City in the Sun remains an eyesore for the whole world to see. They are the true enemies of development for if Nairobi never develops, the rest of the country will be that much slower.

We don't care about elephant murders.

Who doesn't like pictures of cute baby elephants? (They are called calves, but it is cuter to call them baby elephants, right?) Who won't get outraged by excruciating tales of the "murder" or "genocide" of elephants and rhinos? That is the language of the wildlife conservation-cum-protection movement. It is winning supporters in the world capitals of nations that have wiped out their wildlife heritages. It will win few hearts and minds in Kenya, or Africa for that matter.

On 31 December 1981, Jerry Rawlings launched a military coup in Ghana. A short while later enemies of the people were rounded up, tried by military tribunals and executed in the National Stadium in Accra. The military junta ruled for a decade. When elections were held, Mr Rawlings was elected with a landslide and served two terms. He retired peacefully and is, every now and hen, called on by the African Union to lead peace missions around the continent. Ghanaians and Africans alike don't care that Mr Rawlings is a two-time coup plotter or that the "enemies of the people" executed under his command were not tried fairly or impartially.

On 13 July 1985, simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in the United Kingdom and John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, USA, western activists held the largest concert in the world to raise funds for the starving peoples of Ethiopia. Live Aid was in response to the catastrophic famine that had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and was set to decimate an entire generation. For the most part Africans did not care. South Africa was busily ensuring that apartheid would remain the ruling philosophy until hell froze over, Uganda was just getting into the swing of things with its rebellion against Milton Obote's government, Kenya was busily implementing IMF and Wold Bank-driven structural adjustment programmes that would cripple public services. Africans, then and now, did not give two shits about the starving masses of Ethiopia or any part of Africa for that matter.

On 7 August 1998, simultaneous bombings took place in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam against US embassies. Hundreds of Kenyans were killed in the attacks. Africans didn't give two shits about the bombings per se; they worried more that if Omar Hassan el Bashir continued hosting Usama bin Laden, they too could become targets of bin Laden's murderous attentions because of those countries' relations with the United States. Dead Kenyans did not feature high in the least of concerns; political instability did if al Qaeda waged war in Africa on a large scale.

Those campaigning for the "rights" of wildlife need to keep this in mind. Even their exhortations that wildlife resources are primary generators of employment and foreign exchange will not wash because for the most part, the profits from wildlife-driven tourism are almost entirely repatriated and the employment generated is not of the production variety and is prone to fluctuations that have nothing to do with wildlife. The great recession of 2007-2008 took a great toll on tourism globally. As did the Eyjafjallajökull disaster in 2010 and the string of al Shabaab kidnappings and bombings since November 2010.

The vast majority of Kenyans are not emotionally attached to wild animals. That we keep seeing them as "wild animals" is a partial explanation. The more germane one is that wildlife has always been the preserve of the wealthy, especially kaburus from the colonial era. Game Parks, National Reserves and conservancies are merely the newest devices for depriving poor Kenyans of land for their families and their livelihoods. We do not have a stake in the conservation of elephants or rhinos; the fewer of them near our farms, the greater the guarantee of good harvests. Even intellectually we do not care about the fate of wild animals. Because of the skewed ownership of the profits from wildlife, we are not even part-owners of the heritage. The few of us who have been "trained" to see things this way only see the cheque at the end of the month. We do not buy the argument that what happens to elephants will affect us in the long run. We are happy enough to see kaburus suffering slightly. Schadenfreude, the Germans call it.

Wildlife in Kenya has been a kaburu thing for as long as the subject has been alive. What the kaburus called the native population was to be policed as far away from the wildlife as possible. Since we have never been owners of the wildlife in Kenya, we don't care, one way or the other, if they are all wiped out. Since we have always associated wildlife with violence against us, both by the wild animals and the state, we do not care if they are being "murdered" or not. And since it is the high and mighty who seem to have a hand in the "slaughter" of elephants and rhinos, and many of us have sworn fealty to the selfsame high and mighty, all the kaburu-mzungu campaigns to conserve and protect wildlife will come to naught in the long, long run.

Next time pee on his dais.

Next time they should pee on the dais. Or introduce its occupants to the tried-and-tested flying toilet phenomenon. We are making a mountain out of the Migori presidential heckling molehill. Okoth Obado, the Migori Governor, and the Migori Pparliamentary group are right to apologise to President Kenyatta, but the National Police Service has lost all perspective if they indeed arrested hecklers" and "stone-throwers" and are determined to prosecute them to the maximum extent of the law.

Yes, next time the disgruntled should pee on the dais or emblazon it in jwala-ful quantities of excreta. This is politics; it was not an attempted assassination. President Kenyatta chose to "visit" a CORD - nay, ODM - stronghold in his "meet the people" tours of Nyanza and Western Kenya. He is the Head of State. He has an absolute right to meet his people. But we should not pretend that his people universally love him when it is quite clear, Migori presidential heckling aside, not everyone holds him quite in the same esteem that ardent acolytes like Moses Kuria do. The next time he chooses to visit a hostile constituency, I hope the hostilities really include pee and excrement.

It is time that we stopped looking at presidents like the demigods they and their people seem to believe they are. It is time we stood up and loudly challenged them. Baba Moi was very good at wagging his finger in our faces. We bore it stoically because even a wisp of dissatisfaction was sufficient to introduce one to the sadistically violent attentions of the Special Branch torturers at Nyayo House or Nyati House. Baba Jimmi chose a different tack: he ignored everyone, heckler or not. (Except to that fellow on that Jamhuri Day whose testicles will not soon forget that while Baba Jimmi was tolerant, his askaris had a very different attitude to in-your-face heckling.) Poor Uhuru Kenyatta; he is neither Baba Moi, in which case he would be feared, or Baba Jimmi, in which case he would take a laid back view of the whole thing.

This is probably sacrilegious to suggest but the President does not deserve respect simply because he is the President. If the presidency did respectful things, then the President would be respected occupant of the office. It doesn't and so he won't. Don't try and tell us that other nations respect their presidents; look at how South Africans make a mockery of that particular social edict. The Kenyan presidency has been accused of corruption and human rights abuses, marginalisation of communities and incompetence in problem-solving. The least the people could do is demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the presidency by heckling, stone-throwing and the new kid on the block, shoe-throwing. If their lives do not improve, and if this lack of improvement is because of the traditional dithering of the presidency, its ministries, departments and agencies, then the next time the President shows up, in addition to the heckling, they should introduce him to the exciting fragrances of flying toilets. Pee and excreta will be appropriate missiles.

Of presidents and shoes.

If I didn't know better, I'd weep buckets for the President and Commander-in-Chief for how he was George Bushed in Migori. Among the Arabs, so we are told by the wise heads of CNN and the BBC, throwing a shoe a person is the ultimate sign of disrespect. President Kenyatta not only had shoes flung at him in Migori, stones made their debut too. Why I will not weep for the leader of the Jubilee Alliance and the TNA head honcho lies in the post-Kibaki legacy of speaking our minds as freely as we can. In the heat and dust of the referendum political combat, President Kenyatta can expect even more vicious treatment in the political constituencies where Raila Odinga enjoys political primacy.

For more than three generations, it had been instilled in Kenyans that the President and the presidency must be respected, that these two institutions' integrity must not be sullied. If we are to achieve the laudable aims of Kenya Vision 2030 this officially-enforced instinct to genuflect and pay obeisance to the Head of State and Government must be erased from our minds. The President of Kenya is not God Almighty, nor is he Lord God's mouthpiece here on Earth. He is but a man, and a flawed politician at that. The institution of the presidency, as much as we would like to bend our knee to it in respect, enjoys about as much legitimacy as the National Police Service. Asking long-suffering Kenyans to bow and scrape in front of it is simply asking too much.

Kenya's first President laid the foundations for what came to pass in Migori this past Monday. Few Kenyans alive today will remember that the agitation for self-government in the 1950s was driven principally by the unfair land policies enforced by the colonial administration. The Mau Mau War was fought over land. Had Mzee Jomo Kenyatta's first administration honoured the spirit of the Mau Mau War, had he and his cronies avoided the beberu instinct of self-aggrandisement, and had he been honest enough about the challenges our fledgling nation faced, Uhuru Kenyatta would not be having shoes and stones hurled at him at a political rally in the opposition's strongholds. The edifice that Jomo Kenyatta built eventually became a Leviathan of corruption and misrule that was feared as much as it was distrusted. It was no longer a legitimate authority. There is no way it is going to recover its authority or legitimacy if all its occupants continue to obsess over their status rather than their responsibilities to the people.

For fifty years the presidency has been associated with many evils it was sworn to eradicate. For forty-seven of those years, Kenyans lived in fear of the midnight knock from the agents of the presidency. They witnessed billions upon billions of shillings squandered or stolen. They watched as hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land were parcelled out by the presidency to the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and marginalised. They watched in horror as hundreds, nay thousands, of Kenyans were arrested on flimsy grounds, detained without trial, tortured and murdered all in the name of keeping the presidency in power at all costs. And for three generations Kenyans have had to listen to the lies that the presidency told in order to justify its crimes.

The presidency does not enjoy widespread legitimacy in Kenya. It has not done much to change Kenyans' minds. In the recent past it has been variously accused of standing idly by as terrorists kill and maim with impunity, aiding and abetting grand corruption, doing nothing to stem the flow of blood on the nation's highways, and of enriching the rich and powerful at the expense of the weak and poor by imposing unfair taxes on the latter and granting tax breaks on the former. Whether these accusations are true is not the issue; until it can demonstrate in deed as much as in word that it is doing everything in its power to offer succour to the poor, the President can continue to expect hostile receptions in opposition bastions, whether the hecklers, shoe and stone-throwers are paid or not.

Buru, my mirror.

Those who are familiar with that bit of Eastlands, Nairobi, known as Buru Buru will be familiar with certain tropes that  define its inimitable culture, never mind Mike Mbuvi Sonko's concerted attempts to change the culture. Even the dimmest bulb in Nairobi, sooner or later, is introduced to Five-Eight, Buru Ka-jinga and Buru Mambao, in that order. Then there are those realities that we have concertedly turned a blind eye to. Five-Eight kanges are a prolific lot; so many of them have sired three children by the time they end up in the Industrial Area Remand and Reallocation Prison for the first time. Their baby mamas - and they do think of themselves as baby mamas - usually, though not always, end up at either Buru Mambao or Buru Ka-jinga, in that order of preference.

Before sheng' made the determined leap from the lexicon of Eastlands and crashlanded awkwardly among the faux French, English or American patois of Kitisuru, Lavington, and L.A. (no, not that one; the one on your way to the Animal Orphanage), Buru's trendiest parents were well-versed, though typically about four dialect generations behind, in the intricacies of sheng' as a vehicle of intergenerational comity.

But in their desire to fit into their wayward sprogs' lives, many parents in Buru Buru forgot certain core lessons that had to be instilled and so the ranks of the teen-mom brigades swelled like the bellies of their daughters and many of their sons became prominent members of the kanges' community plying the Five-Eight or Two-Three routes, the only sensible competitor for infamy to Five-Eight. Not that their sons did any better; there are many parents who now have an intimate understanding of the public healthcare infrastructure, especially in relation to what we delicately refer to as STIs. (No! Not Subaru Impreza STIs. The other STIs.)

There are those of us who were lucky, depending on which side the green grass grows, to escape the boa-constrictor-like hold the district holds. We came back. Eventually. But we are no longer in thrall to its varied and variegated charms. (There is something to be said for the indefatigability of Njoki Ndung'u's successors in the sexual offences NGO circuit otherwise the teen-swollen-belly movement might have kept on claiming new experimentally eager adherents.) Our escapes were not as dramatic as the Silver Screen would have you believe; many, in fact, were mere happenstance: parents snapping out of their Buru-induced stupor and exiling sprogs to parts unknown. (OK. Mostly shags.)

Our return was preceded by some of the worst civic decisions ever foisted on an unprepared populace. Some idiot in City Hall, whom we pray shall have his testicles slathered in pure honey and stuck in an ant-hill, approved like a drunken sailor, hundreds of "extensions" and "security barriers" and now our beloved Buru looks more like a slightly upmarket version of Fallujah. Or Beirut. Nowadays there are more vagrants in our fair district than is acceptable and they all seem to be selling dodgy-looking tomatoes and fried-cum-roasted "meats" of decidedly dubious provenance.

A mere decade-and-a-half ago, Buru Buru was an oasis in a desert of squalor, filth and cultural backwardness. Today, it is competing avidly in a race to the bottom with the likes of Doonholm (a slightly upmarket Kayole), Kariobangi South (the only difference with Jerusalem is the streetlights), Ngei (even DoD HQ no longer considers it fit for even an unmarried bachelor), Ngumo (the phrase "trying too hard" comes to mind) and Lavington ("ni mbeca!" is the sound that rings through). The decline of my beloved district is mirrored in the decline of my beloved city and the increasing crass obsession with penises, vaginas and Vera Sidika's bum.

It's the Information Age.

These people are gnawing on my last exposed nerve. The National Police Service's mucky-mucks must really think we are all complete idiots, morons of the highest order. The Kabete OCS was shot in the hip after attempting to prevent a robbery by five men along Waiyaki Way. Will someone set Mr Inspector-general Kimaiyo straight; we will accept the fact that a policeman was shot, but please spare us the Jack Bauer scenario where he stops his car in the middle of a busy highway and rushes five robbers in an attempt to uphold law and order. At night.

It must be the same Einsteins who have taken us through the carjack drama that ended up in Tororo, Uganda. A car that has on numerous occasions been photographed closely following the ceremonial presidential limo is taken from its policeman driver. Its tracking system is "disabled". It is driven to the Busia border crossing point and over into Uganda. The policeman driver clams that he was carjacked at gunpoint, driven around town in the company of the carjackers, stripped naked and dumped in Ruai. All he loses is a loose sixteh thao, a fancy phone and his dignity. But, please.

If you are in the presidential detail, even if you are the lowly cop that has to stand in the hot sun at a particular corner the President will pass through, you have certain skills. In the words of Bryan Mills from Taken, they are skills that have taken you a career to learn; skills that make you a nightmare for carjackers and sundry criminal elements. They should spare us the tall tales of four-man carjackings. The more likely story is that he originally had a loose hando thao and decided to hæng with his old crew in the Old Man's beemer. But his friends have been jealous of him for a minute. And the moment he starts throwing raos at that Migingo in the forgotten bits of Eastlando, they decide to "activate" their network and the poor cop is given mchele, stripped to his skivvies and left to his own devices.

For a very long time, just like Philip Ochieng admits in the Sunday Nation (07/09/2014), the serikali decided what story the people would be told. And in what tone of voice. The 8-4-4 system became a byword for spoonfeeding a generation. No one thought for themselves anymore. None more so than the men who were appointed to oversee our safety and security. Theirs is to do or die, not to question why. And they have come to believe that all Kenyans fit into that neat little mould. It is why they are confident that the stories they peddle through the dailies are stories we will not question or challenge. We will accept their word for it. And we will continue living in blissful ignorance.

Isn't it time that #TeamDigital stopped treating us the same way the Grand Coalition did which was just an evolution of the KANU Way? We may not have the same quality of libraries that my father's generation did, and many of us might not have access to Jamii Telecom's five-thao-a-month Faiba 5mbps, but the advent of the one-thousand-five-hundred-shillings Mulika Mwizi means that information is accessible at an increasingly affordable price. You have priced us out of the housing market, the transport sector, the high education ivory towers and the privatised healthcare system. But thanks to the enormous capitalistic appetite for billion-shillings profits by Safaricom, #TeamDigital can lie to some of us some of the time, but not to all of us all of the time. It's the Information Age, bitches! Act like it.

Institutionalisation of cults of personality, Kenya style.

President Uhuru Kenyatta has asked those governors elected on the Jubilee ticket to quit the party and seek a fresh mandate from the people if they support the Pesa Mashinani referendum plan. One of Mr Kenyatta's eloquent apologists is a lawyer called Jasper Mbiuki who elaborates that if these governors support the calls for a referendum, they are doing so expressly against the "policies"of the Jubilee alliance and that it is politically unconscionable for them to remain in office if they disagree with a core plank of the alliance's political plans.

Both Mr Kenyatta and Mr Mbiuki, and indeed many of their allies, have taken the wrong approach against the Pesa Mashinani campaign. In the 1980s and 1990s, Kenyan schoolchildren were compelled to recite the Loyalty Pledge. Very few of us understood what it meant, but we did it anyway because, after all, children are taught to obey their teachers without question. Those days are long gone. In the Information Age it is not enough to simply declare something to be true without offering an explanation or proof that it is. A blanket declaration will simply demand that to those it is diercted find out for themselves whether the claim is true or not.

Mr Kenyatta and Mr Mbiuki declare that it is "against the wishes of the alliance" to support any calls for a referendum. They use this as justification to threaten members of the alliance who support the calls with "dire consequences". What they have failed to do is prove that the alliance is indeed against the calls for a referendum. In 2012, the National Alliance and the United Republican Party made big shows of signing up members. When they submitted their applications to the Registrar of Political Parties, they were proud of the millions of Kenyans who had signed up to the parties.

Since those halcyon days, TNA and URP have done little to nurture their party memberships. Like all other political parties, TNA and URP, the principal members of the Jubilee Alliance, have become captives of the parliamentary party and the President and his deputy. The rank-and-file remain mere cogs in the parliamentary party-president-deputy president machinery designed to order the nation in a particular way. The rank-and-file, that is, remain political cannon fodder and are expected to toe the party leaderships' line whether they agree or not.

One of the utopian hopes of the Committee of Experts was that the management of political parties would be separated from the government of the country. Mr Kenyatta and Mr Mbiuki, both members of the national Executive, have put paid to that cozy idea. Mr Kenyatta retains the official-but-fuzzy title of Party Leader even while he is the President of Kenya. Mr Mbiuki retains his office as TNA's Legal Secretary even while he serves in the Office of the Deputy President. Both attempt to recreate the morbid arrangements of the one-party days when KANU was the government and the government was KANU. Ironically, this is an ideal that is also held by Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka and their fellow believers in the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy.

Mr Kenyatta's and Mr Mbiuki's declarations that any support for the referendum by a member of the alliance is against the wishes of the party is actually a declaration that any support by a member of the alliance is against the wishes of the President. Just as any support against the Okoa Kenya referendum is against the wishes of the people of Kenya is actually a declaration that is against the wishes of Raila Odinga. In in that lies the biggest threat against constitutionalism and the institutionalisation of the political process. 

This personalisation of political institutions, the creation of cults of personality if you will, is the principle reason why parliamentarians see nothing wrong with arrogantly arrogating to themselves ever larger sums out of the Consolidated Fund as if they have an absolute right to do so and to ignore the crushing burden of the economy on the backs of the people.

The incompetence of two men.

We have waited for the leadership to take steps to sort out the fiasco that was the recruitment of the magic figure of ten thousand police officers. "Leadership" would imply that the Commander-in-Chief, the Interior Cabinet Secretary, the Interior Principal Secretary, the Inspector-General, the Chairperson of the National Police Service Commission and the Chairperson of the Independent Policing Oversight Authority. It has been a month. All we have seen are various degrees of hemming and hawing as the leadership pussyfoots around the "sensitive" subject.

I love my fellowman. I love my fellowman when he is as devout a Christian as David Mole Kimaiyo. I love my fellowman when he goes out of his way to study the Word of God and spreads the message in all the corners of the world. But that won't stop me from saying that the mistakes that Mr Kimaiyo has made have resulted in the steepest decline in the peoples' confidence in a police boss ever witnessed. Mr Kimaiyo does not enjoy any form of credibility with the suffering peoples of Kenya. Mr Kimaiyo has become a byword for incompetence and ineffectiveness. His lapses might even border on the casually negligent.

The Commander-in-Chief declared that he wanted the people of Kenya to enjoy the same degree of security throughout the nation so that they could go about the business of prospering in this land of opportunity. He made this declaration in the chambers of the national assembly in front of the elected representatives of the people. He promised to take security seriously. Every day that he and his security apparatus have failed the people of Kenya is a painful reminder that the safety of the people has never been a priority, just the security of the fatcats capable of losing eight billion shillings down the back of the sofa.

While the Commander-in-Chief is busy playing musical chairs with his intelligence chiefs, the rest of his securocracy is busily finding new ways of demonstrating its incompetence. Take the scuttled MV Bushehr. Few intelligent Kenyans are willing to believe that the ship was "intercepted" when it was just about to berth. What we suspect is that the law enforcement officers and the heroin smugglers simply failed to agree on the size of the bribe. Or this mystery BMW that is "not part of the Presidential Fleet" that ended up in Uganda. Who among the intelligent isn't asking why the Commander-in-Chief's security seems so easy to infiltrate? What if the vehicle had merely been borrowed and then returned in the form of a Trojan Horse with a cache of explosives secreted in its bowels?

In these comedies of errors are the bespectacled, mumbling and flatfooted visages of the Inspector-General and the gap-toothed smile of the Interior Cabinet Secretary. There is regional balance and political horsetrading. Then there is tomfoolery of the highest order. Aren't there other qualified men or women from where the hapless Messrs Kimaiyo and Ole Lenku hail from? We have been patient, Amri-Jeshi Mkuu. We really have. Our patience is wearing thin. One more outrage and we might even start questioning the wisdom of the Commander-in-Chief swanning around in Field Marshall's fatigues while his people are put at ever greater risk because of the incompetence of two men.

Hostile to the poor; too expensive for the rich.

Quite uncharacteristically, and in this untypical rainy Nairobi morning, I took a leisurely stroll along the entire length of Landhies Road from the City Stadium to the Retail Market. Compared to a similarly daring excursion a year ago is remarkably similar inclement weather, the facilities for the walking masses of Kaloleni, Shauri Moyo and Muthurwa who choose to use Landhies Road are in good shape, especially now that they have all but guaranteed that the annoying boda boda riders will not use the footpaths. These facilities, too, expose the disdain and contempt with which the County Government of Nairobi City holds the poor.

Evans Kidero and his County Executive Committee think the poor are an afterthought, an irritant, an inconvenience. If they could all just go away. Far away. Back "upcountry". In the county government's estimation, Nairobi is designed for the middle class who drive and for those who don't drive but who take public transport. The walking public is a nuisance. They are the ones who attract hawkers and other "street vendors" into the Central Business District. They are the ones who litter the streets with the detritus of their lunches. They are the ones who frequent eating "joints" for whom the Public Health Act looms like the Swords of Damocles for all the cockroaches and rats that have run of those places.

Mr Kidero and his county executive should take a really close look at the world class cities they are trying to benchmark Nairobi City against. A visit to Bogotá or Buenos Aires should be an eye-opener. So too would a visit to Perth or Sydney. London and Berlin, Paris and Milan are out of our league and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. But Bogotá or Buenos Aires should educate Mr Kidero and his county executive about what it takes to make a world class city. A hint would be is that a world class city is not just designed for the motoring public.

Landhies Road exposes the surprising lack of imagination among the City Fathers. While pavements for pedestrians are in good shape, the drain and sewer systems are still a complete mess. As you pass Muthurwa and Retail Markets, the mikokoteni have commandeered the area as their preferred parking, inconveniencing the mass of pedestrians. And it is a mass. But one of the most egregious is the inadequacy of the space provided. It is as well-done as could be, but it is not designed for the hundreds of thousands who use it every single morning, inclement weather notwithstanding. At night, it is an obstacle course with pedestrians playing chicken with determined phone thieves, purse-snatchers and sundry petty criminals all because the place is so ill-lit and bushy that anyone can become a victim.

Of course Mr Kidero has come to the harsh realisation that Nairobi is the preserve of cartels. And being a serious manager, he has a painful understanding of the effects of cartelisation on consumer confidence, investment and the rule of law. Mr Kidero will be right to argue that without the support of the national government, Nairobi will never be the world class city we all wish it was. That is the tragedy of our fair city: Uhuru Kenyatta's Jubilee government would rather cut its nose (Nairobi) to spite its face (CORD). That degree of pride, exemplified in the penis-obsessed Member for Gatundu, is the reason that Nairobi will continue to rank as a hostile place for the poor and too expensive even for the rich.

The Kenyatta Legacy Takes Shape.

It has taken time for the President to acknowledge that the networks responsible for the decimation of pachyderms in the nation's game parks, national reserves and conservancies are the same networks that are smuggling narcotics, sugar, al Shabaab fighters and small arms into Kenya. Now that he has made that intellectual leap of faith, it is time he acts on it with ruthlessness and determination. Baba Jimmi will be remembered for the Thika Superhighway - and the Mungiki extra-legal executions. Uhuru Kenyatta should be remembered as the President who set his unforgiving hand against the poachers, the bombers, the robbers, the smugglers and the murderers of the peoples of Kenya and decreed their extermination as a matter of the highest national priority.

As with everything in this country to which "billions of shillings" has a more than a casual relationship, narco-trafficking has its tentacles in the highest political offices in the land. There are those who whisper of links between Kenyan corporations, politicians, senior government officials and foreign narco-barons. Even the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime agrees that while narcotics use in Kenya is growing, Kenya is still a "trans-shipment hub" of narcotics destined for European markets from South America and the war-torn Middle Eastern regions comprising Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.

President Kenyatta defied a magistrate's order and oversaw the destruction of the MV Bushehr and its cargo of heroin worth one billion shillings which was intercepted in July. He echoed a similar event by Baba Moi in 1989 when he set on fire ivory, rhino horns and other wildlife trophies and set himself the arduous task of combating poaching. Then, Baba Moi's Ministry of Environment and Natural Resource's Department of Wildlife Conservation was a haven of corruption, under-resourced and unmotivated to protect Kenya's wildlife heritage. Mr Moi appointed Richard Leakey and supported him in the establishment of the Kenya Wildlife Service which became the sharp end in the war against poaching, notching up successes for a decade or so. Before politics intervened. Mr Leakey was fired and KWS went into a steep decline. Not even the maverick directorship of Julius Kipng'etich could rescue it and Mr Kipng'etich called  it quits after eight years and moved on to Equity banking.

Uhuru Kenyatta is not the first President to face the challenge of dealing with narco-barons. Baba Jimmi did in 2005. It is safe to say he blew his chance. Uhuru Kenyatta has the chance to prevail. His enemy is multifaceted and operates on multiple fronts, but Mr Kenyatta has the support of a majority of most Kenyans. His biggest threats, however, are not to be found among the actual poachers, bombers, robbers, smugglers or murderers. No! His biggest threats are the men and women in uniform in the disciplined and police forces, the compromised intelligence officers, the bent customs and immigration officers and the members of his own party who are in the pay of the foreigners determined to turn Kenya into a bastardised version of Colombia.

Kenya is at war and by destroying the MV Bushehr President Kenyatta has declared that the battle has been joined. President Kenyatta has appointed a new Director of National Intelligence and a new Director Immigration. Every Kenyan hopes that he is soon to appoint a new Inspector-General of Police, a new Cabinet Secretary of the Interior and a new Principal Secretary in the Interior Ministry. He has nominated an ally as ambassador to Washington, DC; we hope Robinson Njeru Githae knows how to negotiate for better narcotics counter-trafficking intelligence.

This is not part of the #TeamDigital rubbish that so animates the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy. This is a fight for the soul of the nation. If his government is going to take on the poachers, bombers, robbers, smugglers and murderers, then he must lead the fight by doing what must be done. He must purge his administration of dead weight and corrupt malcontents. He must purge the ranks of the police, the intelligence community, the defence forces, the immigration service and the customs authorities. He must purge the ranks of the civil service and he must take a blowtorch to the one hiding in his party or in Parliament. 

If President Kenyatta is looking for a legacy, it will not be found in resolving the Land Question, or providing laptops for primary school children or even for the Huduma Bora initiatives. It will be when he destroys the agents of destruction decimating our wildlife and using our beautiful coastline as a way station for the narcotics that have destroyed millions of lives all over the globe.

Was it an intelligence operation?

The only nations that launch full-scale military invasions are nations that have a lot riding on a war. The United States has a lot to lose and not just from a global politics perspective. Its corporations are embedded in so many markets that sometimes war is the only solution to political or security problems that might reduce or even eliminate those corporations' profits. But as the Islamic State caliphate demonstrates, like Hamas before it and Hezbollah even earlier, it is not always necessary to launch a war of aggression to achieve the same political and economic goals.

The United States, the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China, India and Pakistan have well-respected, and rightfully feared, intelligence capabilities. Israel too has a fearsome reputation in the intelligence field. So do the British, the French, the Germans and the South Africans. But in the twenty-first century, where multinational corporations' market capitalisations are sometimes greater than the combined GDPs of "emerging" economies, nations have found ways of launching wars without fighting and they have relied on intelligence-led operations to sustain these proto-wars.

Kenya, under the forty-year rule of both Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Moi, had a fearsome reputation when it came to intelligence, especially internal-security related. It was well-respected for the quality of its intelligence on the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes Region. It was trusted in global capitals because of it. That reputation is now in tatters and the diminishing confidence of foreign powers is reflected in their panicky "travel advisories." The tourism sector is ashambles; hotels are threatening closure and layoffs at the Coast.

Not even the most optimistic of fools believes that al Shabaab was a credible threat to Kenya before the 2011 invasion of Somalia by the Kenya Defence Forces. They were largely effective along the long Kenya-Somalia border because of the inadequate border protection afforded on a shoe-string defence budget, but because of the remarkable degree of graft that pervaded key intelligence-related agencies. Because of the opacity of the National Intelligence Service operations as that of Military Intelligence, we will give them the benefit of the doubt and accept that they are not working hand in hand with our enemies to facilitate attacks on the homeland. We cannot say the same about the National Police Service, the erstwhile provincial administration, the Immigration Department, or the specialised police units set us for close protection like the General Service Unit or antiterrorism like the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit or violent crime interdiction like the Flying Squad.

It seems that al Shabaab took the lessons of the fall of the Islamic Courts Union to heart and adapted them to its purposes. It has become a major player in the intelligence business. This is a scenario that should keep the Interior Cabinet Secretary, the Defence Cabinet Secretary, the Director of Military Intelligence, the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of Criminal Investigations sleepless nights. And al Shabaab keeps evolving in what is an intelligence war and it keeps learning lessons. Some of the tutorials are of recent vintage too.

The President of Kenya travels in a security bubble that includes uniformed and plain-clothes security and intelligence officers. His vehicles are examined for listening devices or explosives. The route he drives through is secured hours or even days in advance with security and intelligence officers assessing traffic patterns, vulnerable points, potential choke points and elevated positions capable of being used as snipers' nests. The vehicles in his cavalcade are kept in secure surroundings and protected from infiltration.

But in a week of drama, a vehicle that was part of the "State House Fleet" but not part of the "Presidential Motorcade," whatever that means, was stolen, its police inspector driver kidnapped for several hours, and transported across the border with Uganda to Tororo. There are lessons to be learned if we are willing to hear them. Al Shabaab is surely paying attention.

Whatever the story peddled by the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit, it is clear that that State House security can be breached and a key vehicle taken at gunpoint. What must be determined is whether the police inspector was set up by someone, whether he was careless or whether it was an inside job. The border area through which the vehicle passed must be vetted; we must know whether border officials were involved and at what level and for what benefit.

 

The intelligence community must assess whether it was local car-jacking or whether it was an intelligence operation designed to test State House intelligence and security and whether it was state-sponsored, organised crime-sponsored or terrorism-related. Whether the Presidency publicises it or not, heads must roll and intelligence and security protocols must be upgraded. Next time we might not even know the vehicle is gone until it is re-infiltrated into the presidential motorcade as a car-bomb.

There'll be opposition.

It is not the worst thing in the world for someone to vomit all over your shoes. Indeed it is not the worst thing in the world for someone to vomit all over you, unless they have been infected by the Ebola virus. But when someone decides to take a massive dump on you, all bets are off. Even passing gas in the general vicinity of your person is an invitation to extreme violence. What the Eleventh Parliament and the First County Government have done over the past eighteen months amounts to taking the greatest shit on the people of Kenya for a decade.

Uhuru Kenyatta's Cabinet Secretaries and their beancounters continue to promise us that the rising tide of the economy will lift all boats. The Gross Domestic Product is showing a steady rise. Per capita income is also steadily increasing. Agricultural output has taken a beating due to the vagaries of the weather but the overall agricultural picture is optimistic over the long term. The successful listing of the government bond on the Irish Securities Exchange demonstrates that foreign investors have faith in Kenya's economy. This is the rosy picture that the Cabinet members have painted for one and all. It is full of shit.

Take housing, for instance. Wallace Kantai, writing in the Business Daily on Tuesday, 2 September 2014, sees a bubble in the housing market. There are few young middle class professionals who can afford the premiums being charged by mortgage companies and therefore, cannot afford but to rent in very downmarket areas. Interest rates remain stubbornly high even with the advent of credit referencing. Housing remains a privilege of the monied, well-heeled and, if you happen to be the Housing Cabinet secretary's boon friend, well connected.

So too when it comes to healthcare. Looking at the much ballyhooed insurance scheme for the National Police Service, you get the sense that the Government of Kenya has taken lessons in cosmetology. It is the only explanation for the "cover" rank and file police officers enjoy while the top brass enjoy what has been dubbed the Gold Plated Cover which includes everything but a second wife and a guaranteed entry ticket to heaven.

We have taken much of the shenanigans of our leaders without too much rancour, never mind the anti-MPigs brigade led by the likes of Boniface Mwangi. But our patience is wearing thin. The National Assembly, in a rare show of consensus across houses, and the Senate have hatched a brilliant plan to aggrandise themselves even more. In the name of "equality", men and women who work for twelve days in a month have decided to raise their "paltry" eight hundred and fifty one shillings salary to one million two hundred thousand shillings. Only. Because their allowances were skewed in favour of a few colleagues.

If they truly deserved the collective billions of shillings they squander on quangos and junkets, Kenyans would mutter unhappily under their breath but let it be. But these men and women have consistently failed to advance the interests of the people. When it comes to the management of the public funds, Kenyans long passed the point of diminishing returns and are now firmly in the land of loss-making. All of it can be laid at the feet of the elected classes and the state officers they have under their overmighty thumbs. They vomited on our shoes, and we let it go. They vomited on us, and we let it go. They passed wind at us, and we shrugged. But now that they have dropped their pants and are squatting on top of us ready to take an almighty shit, I think it is safe to say that there will be opposition.

Baba Moi Is 90.

When I was in Standard Four, a wee sprite of a child with a spectacular degree of agoraphobia, my father decreed that I would carry on the proud family tradition of athleticism. To get off to a flying start, he decreed further that I would join the Makadara Division's schoolchildren who would sing and dance for Baba Moi on the glorious occasion of Ten Years of Nyayo Era and the Silver Jubilee of Uhuru. I did not yet have the courage to point out to my father that athleticism was not a family tradition; it was more an aspiration that struck parents at certain points of their children's lives.

My generation did not understand just how bad things were under Baba Moi; he was, after all, the benevolent man who gave us "free" milk! Primary education, despite the World Bank-IMF SAPs, was still largely free; cost-sharing led to the construction of workshops and Standard Eight classrooms. City Council primary schools were still twenty five children per class, and each class had the required complement of teachers. P.E. was still a daily thing and a child could walk home for lunch without worrying about adults flying around the estate in loud Subaru Imprezas.

My generation remembers the Loyalty Pledge:

I pledge my loyalty to the president and the nation of Kenya.
My readiness and duty to defend the flag of our Republic.
My devotion to the words of our national anthem.
My life and strength in the task of our nation’s building.In the living spirit embodied in our national motto – Harambee!
And perpetuated in the Nyayo philosophy of peace, love and unity.

Our parents did a damn good job of insulating us from the harsh realities of the 1980s. For sure, Baba Moi held the nation together. His apologists will argue that as an autocrat, he was benevolent enough. That all he did was to ensure that the generation of democratically elected presidents would drive the nation to greater heights. But Baba Moi's apologists refuse to acknowledge the sclerosis that infected the State and its institutions when Baba Moi consolidated all political and administrative power in his hands.

Lee Njiru, Baba Moi's aide, will remind all and sundry that Baba Moi ruled for twenty four years, four months and eight days - 22 August 1978 – 30 December 2002, and that by the time he was "retiring", he held the record for the longest parliamentary career of any politician in Kenya. He still does. But he will elide that in the twenty four years, four months and eight days, because of Baba Moi's extreme paranoia, gentlemen like Joseph Kanyotu and Bernard Chunga came to personify Mr Moi's security policy. Others like Ezekiel Barng'etuny, Mulu Mutisya and Sharif Nassir, personified Mr Moi's view of his subjects' intelligence and intellect. Still others like Henry Kosgey (All Africa Games, Kenya National Assurance Company), Kamlesh Pattni (Goldenberg) and Joshua Kulei personified Mr Moi's "business acumen" and poverty alleviation strategies.

By the time Baba Moi called time at State House, Nairobi, by every measure of human development, Kenya was a basket case. The only thing we should thank providence for is that the aftershocks of Moi Era policies came to a head in 2007/2008, almost a decade after Baba Moi's departure though they had been heralded by the Land Clashes (1992) and the Ethnic Clashes (1997), still under Baba Moi's watch.

Baba Moi turns 90 years today. Congratulations to him. But let him not smile too broadly. Thousands of Kenyans were "disappeared" under his watch. Hundreds of billions of shillings of public funds were stolen under his watch. Hundreds of billions of shillings were wasted on white elephants under his watch. Corruption metastacised in the government under his watch. The gap between the filthy rich and the abjectly poor grew wider and wider under his watch. Crime flourished. Militia ballooned into criminal organisations. Our lexicon was enriched by the language of corruption and it defined our nation and our Government.We will get the full measure of the Moi Legacy, and by God I hope he is around to witness the spectacle of the peoples' unremitting hand of hostility directed at him and his own.

Selling condoms.

When strangers ask what I do for a living, I have to resist the urge to blurt out that I am a bartender in a titty bar on Accra Road. Sometimes it feels a bit too much to explain to folks that, (a) I am a public officer, (b) in a "sensitive" department, and (c) that I don't think Ole Lenku is doing a bang up job. But the desire to hide my current bailiwick from the sensitive noses of strangers grows ever stronger as each day brings a new outrage by the men, women and that odious specimen called the politician that serve, if service they give, in the government.

Did you know that Barack Obama is handed a bill each month to cater for his stay at the White House? I did not. No wonder the man looks so frazzled all the time. It is a very big house and it has very old things. The cost of utilities alone must drive Mrs Obama to distraction. Actually, we do not know the details of the bill Mr Obama gets, but it is humbling for the Most Powerful Leader in the Free World to pay for his house and upkeep, isn't it?

Our current occupier of State House, Nairobi, and the frequent user of State Houses and State Lodges around the country, I would bet my last silver dollar, does not receive a bill at the end of the month itemising the costs he has incurred while using the State Houses' and State Lodges' facilities. I bet neither does his deputy who lives in an egregiously, revoltingly expensive pile somewhere near where the settler wazungus still live in divine isolation from the natives. I suspect, without much to go on I admit, that both must receive a "housing allowance" as many of their fellow public servants do. Ponder the irony, dear reader, and wonder no more why I would rather be associated with the depravities of the shadiest strip joint than proudly declare to be a member of the president's public service.

We have been informed, rather grandiosely too, that our "biometric details" will be collected in the name of the Capacity Assessment and Rationalisation Programme Study. One of its sponsors, the chairman of the Transition Authority, was on TV Sunday night, denying through his flop sweat that the "study" had nothing to do with retrenchment, but everything to do with the efficiency and effectiveness of the public service. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, I'm getting a bazooka! We have seen this movie before and it always ends with mass layoffs. This "study" will end up with men and women facing the sack, never mind the overwrought explanations and denials from one and all in positions to know better.

It is a canon of political economic belief that there are certain things that only "government" can do, certain "developments" that are beyond the ken of the private sector simply because the private sector is solely driven by profit motives. So roads and ports and electricity grids and national referral hospitals and railways and national highways and prisons and airports and hydroelectricity dams and forensics laboratories can only be built by a government, preferably the national one. How do you explain, then, that apart from policemen and soldiers, whom we will leave out of this spat, why the national government seems to be employing beancounters and beancounting clerks, even in the Cabinet and not engineers, project managers, construction foremen and the rest of the gangs that actually build the roads and ports and such things?

It is strange for a government that says that only it can undertake the big projects and that it is borrowing money to outsource the construction of these projects mostly to foreigners, without even getting apprenticeships for Kenyans out of all the outsourcing. Kenyans, even in the eyes of their government, are not good enough except for menial tasks that do nothing but breed mediocrity. Mediocrity is evident in the face of the government: public buildings that look as if they were thrown together by a blind man with one arm tied behind his back; or national celebrations characterised by ersatz Stalinist military formations and regurgitated clichéd speeches. So nowadays I feel my resolve failing every time a stranger asks, "So, what do you do for a living?" One day I might lose it and say, "I sell condoms on Accra Road."

Politicise the hell out of things.

Why shouldn't we politicise the referendum? Why shouldn't we politicise the paying of salaries of doctors, nurses and other health workers? Indeed why shouldn't we politicise every single decision made by the National Executive or county executives? The fallacy being advanced by the naive is that politics is a bad thing and that it poisons everything to which it is connected. I beg to differ.

The people making decisions in Kenya that affect the greatest number of Kenyans are politicians - or they were appointed by politicians. Jacob Kaimenyi, the Education Cabinet Secretary, wants to change the school calendar so that it is harmonised with the government's financial year. Jacob Kaimenyi was appointed by Uhuru Kenyatta. Uhuru Kenyatta is a politician. Uhuru Kenyatta must have approved of this proposal; if it is successfully implemented it would burnish his administrative and political credentials among the voters. The decision is a political one first, and an administrative one next.

But because the decision to make the proposal was arrived at in the traditionally opaque manner the Government of Kenya makes decisions, it should not simply be allowed to be implemented unless the people get a chance to interrogate it fully. The people cannot collectively participate in this debate without it morphing into a Tower of babel. That is why they have elected representatives, members of the National Assembly, the Senate and the county assemblies to speak on their behalf. Specialised organised associations can also contribute meaningfully to the debate. That debate will be a political debate because if it goes to the one side and not the other, the side that prevails will gain political mileage.

This is a good thing. Politics is the proper vehicle for the mediation of disputes in a government. Politics can be used for good or for ill. A good politician knows how to raise temperatures without allowing the kettle to boil over. When things boil over, we get the sort of violence that engulfed Kenya after the 2007 general elections. Mr Odinga and Mr Kibaki, the main rivals at that election, were very poor politicians. Mr Odinga was so consumed by hubris that he did not bother to negotiate with Mr Kibaki when things looked to be going out of control. Mr Kibaki was so filled with the fear of irrelevance that he was determined not to lose face to Mr Odinga. Both used politics badly; we paid a heavy price for it.

Kenya's politicians, for the most part, are an indifferent lot. They do the bare minimum to remain relevant. Few of them understand their place in the grand scheme of political things. Even in the depths of their self-aggrandizing mission to wangle as much wallet-fattening lucre from the national piggy bank, they have failed to do what all politicians are supposed to do - mediate, negotiate, persuade. Instead, especially the haranguing, sermonising and moralising members of the Senate, they defend the indefensible and promote enmity when they do not need new ones. 

Quite frankly, Kenya's politicians are bad at their core jobs: politics. It is why we the people should politicise the issues of the day without relying on the politicians. Politics, after all, is the only way to mediate between apparently conflicting priorities.

Bring Back the Mass Choir, Mr Esipisu.

President Kenyatta will continue to suffer a bad press if his PSCU continues acting as if it is Amateur Nite at the Apollo! Take this rubbish with the moving-target story about the stolen BMW. The Digital Directors of the PSCU should have kept their thumbs off their iPhone touchscreens until they knew what they were going to say, and how they were going to say it. When a person in a "sensitive" position as a State House "driver" is carjacked by armed men, the reaction should not be to blithely declare that "he is not a member of the President's Fleet" as if that in itself is sufficient explanation.

Don't Mr Esipisu and his directors wonder what even halfway intelligent Kenyans will make of their statements? The message has been received and understood. al Shabaab can murder members of the President's family without being troubled by our Special Forces. Car-jackers not only seem to be targetting members of the President's extended family with impunity, they are now targetting "drivers" out of State House. No wonder Inspector-General Kimaiyo wants an "intelligence" unit of his own.

But the worst management of the news cycle is the one on the billion-shilling drugs haul set to be destroyed at the Coast. Mombasa and Malindi are the preferred gateways of narcotics into Kenya. The last time around it was a very large consignment of cocaine. By the time that saga was over and done with, and the drugs destroyed, GSU officers were dead, NIS officers were dead, policemen were in hiding, politicians were blacklisted from ever setting foot on US soil ever again, and Kenyans' faith in the forces of law and order took another giant knock. You would think that Manoah Esipisu and his team would have drawn lessons about how to handle information this time round. Lightning rarely strikes the same place twice; regarding this drugs business, it did and Mr Esipisu and his team are pissing the opportunity away.

Maybe I have too much faith in my peers in the civil service. Maybe I have too much faith in #TeamDigital. What they have achieved in the past eighteen months would make even the most sunniest of dispositions cloud over and brig forth buckets of tears at the wasted opportunities. When the MV Bushehr was intercepted in the Port of Mombasa, Mr Esipisu should have set up a special team to keep abreast of developments in the matter and advise the Inspector-General, the Director of Criminal Investigations and the Director of Public Prosecutions on the best way to tell the story. Where it proved difficult to get the proper information out of these offices, he should have enlisted the help of the Chief of Staff who would rope in the Interior Cabinet Secretary.

Then Mr Esipisu should have read up on the law, and not just the Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act, 1994. He should have taken time to familiarise himself with the Nairobi Convention also known as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas, the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, the National Environment Management Act, 1999, the National Police Service Act, 2011, and, of course, the bits of the Criminal Procedure Code, Penal Code and Constitution that dealt with due process, rule of law and presumption of innocence. In this, Abdikadir Mohammed, the President's Advisor on Legislative and Constitutional Affairs would have been an invaluable resource.

When the Magistrate took pleas from the crew of the MV Bushehr, Mr Esipisu should have known what happens next. When the Prosecutor applied for the destruction of the remainder of the consignment after taking samples for analyses, Mr Esipisu should have understood how the process worked. When the President demanded audience when the drugs were being destroyed, Mr Esipisu should have known which bits of the law applied and which ones did not. Mr Esipisu is not a legal eagle, nor is he a criminal or constitutional lawyer. But he is not a moron either. But so far he has demonstrated such a casual disregard for the finer points of messaging that we remain to wonder what the hell these people were thinking when it came to this drugs business.

Drugs gave Mwai Kibaki's governments a whiff of narco-corruption that simply refused to fade away. Artur Brothers and narco-tarfficking remain an indelible stain on Mwai Kibaki's government. Uhuru Kenyatta risks being similarly tarred if the geniuses in the PSCU do not get their shit together. They call themselves "strategic communicators;" what they are is a privileged cohort of civil servants who are doing the bare minimum when it comes to their duties, but lining their pockets as fast as possible. If this PSCU does not have the capacity to shape the presidential national narrative, if it ever did, then perhaps it is time we simply went back to the Presidential Press Unit days of mass choirs and obsequious fawning on KBC radio and TV. It'd be less embarassing than the schlock peddled today in the name of "strategic communications."

What war?

A billion shillings. Nice, round figure. A figure to warm the cockles of the hearts of a swashbuckling robber baron. A tidy sum. One that conjures images of fast-living and loose women. Or men; the Constitution guarantees freedom of opportunity these days. That is the number bandied about in relation with the three hundred and forty one kilogrammes of heroin seized by Kenyan security officials. And the dhow in which the heroin was smuggled into Kenya. The President will witness the "destruction" of the heroin and the sinking of the dhow. Bold moves, says the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit. We are a more sceptical species, Kenyans are, so we wonder why all we know about the billion-shilling drugs haul is that it will be destroyed and the dhow sunk?

Let's take it step by step, shall we? How did the police know where the dhow would be? The Indian Ocean is a big ass ocean and the Kenya police are not exactly known for the tech-savvy. Was it the much-maligned intelligence by the National Intelligence Service that was "timely, accurate, credible and actionable" in this case or was it an informer?

What is the provenance of the dhow on which the drugs were stowed? What is ts port of registration? Who are its registered owners and are they proxies for others? The crew of the dhow were arrested. Very little has been reported about whether they were charged in court. We do not know their names. We do not know their nationalities. We do not know from where they sailed and whether Kenya was their last port of call. We do not know if this was their first rodeo or they are seasoned smugglers. We do not know whether they have provided information that would identify the source of the heroin and its destination. We do not know how much they were paid to smuggle it into Kenya or whether they were paid up front or they were to be paid after the job was done.

Third, when the drugs were seized, who took custody of the haul? Was it the County police boss? Was it the County Commissioner? Was it the County CID boss? Was it the County GSU Commandant? How much of the drugs was taken as a sample for analysis? Where did the analysis take place? Was it done by a person capable of conducting the analysis? What were the results of the analysis? Is it heroin? Is its purity high or not?

There are rumours that the heroin was "stored" at the GSU base next to State House, Mombasa, and that the GSU were concerned about their safety the longer the drugs were kept on their base, hence the destruction. We can understand their trepidation. The last GSU officer to deal with drugs died under circumstances that have remained unexplained to date.

There are more questions than answers regarding this drugs consignment. Mr Manoah Esipisu has done little to provide answers. His PSCU has done precious little to do so either; the constant tom-tomming of a #WarOnDrugs on social media by the PSCU's directors is, quite frankly, getting on our nerves now. They spew words into the Twittersphere without saying anything of substance. And now with now missing, now not missing armoured Beemer, they are becoming the butt of cruel jokes. If there is a War on Drugs, this is not the first we are hearing of it. But a war has fighters, it has battles and and it has victories and losses. If the war was truly being fought, on how many fronts has Kenya engaged the enemy? How many of the enemy has Kenya destroyed? How much of the enemies' territories has Kenya seized? And is Kenya winning the war or losing it, one billion-shilling battle at a time?

We are docile, not idiots.

Tell me you don't really feel sorry for the forces of law and order in Kenya. Whether it is true or not, the spectre of journos gleefully reporting that an "amoured" vehicle that is "part of the Presidential Escort" was carjacked simply reinforces what we have come to consider to be a crisis. Three armed men allegedly carjacked the driver of an armoured BMW, stripped him naked, drove off with the vehicle, and they are yet to be apprehended. Were they bearing .50 calibre armour-piercing rounds when they took off with the President's Beemer? Did they deploy a Russian-built BTR 80 with a 50mm cannon? Were they packing Claymore mines?

The emphasis in Kenya has always been on "security". In security-based scenarios, emphases are on uniformed, armed men on the streets, armed with the largest assault rifles that they can comfortably bear; the application of extreme coercive force to threats to that security; the obsession with the safety of "sensitive" persons and installations; the whittling down of the privileges enjoyed by the people; the constant monitoring of the people for any whiff of "treason" or "sedition"; and the permanent official denial of facts that do not comport with the "we-are-secure" narrative that is the foundation of the system.

This is how it has always been. Special Branch was the most dreaded security organ of the Government of Kenya. It was the President's preferred weapon of retribution against his enemies, imagined and real. It developed a fearsome reputation of infiltrating families, welfare associations, churches, women's merry-go-rounds, co-operative societies and land-buying companies. It was responsible for deaths and disappearances; tactics, the Establishment believed, necessary to remind the people that mkono wa serikali ni mrefu. It was succeeded by what essentially became death squads; unofficial and unacknowledged, they have waged a war against "security threats" using tactics and methods so far from the Constitution and the laws of Kenya, even the United Nations has taken note. Yet security continues to elude the Establishment now that even presidential armoured limousines are being "carjacked."

A few days ago, somewhere in Kwale, in the dead of night, policemen shot and killed a fourteen year old girl. The Inspector-General ordered an investigation into the actions of his officers. he sent the report off to the Director of Public Prosecutions. His officers alleged that the girl attacked the eight policemen who raided her home with a machete. They fired in self-defence, they claim. Kwale is not known for a steady or reliable supply of electricity. Maweu village, where the girl was killed, is not connected to the electricity grid. The family home was unlit on that fateful night. While it is possible, no one believes that then girl was sleeping with a panga under her pillow, and it is patently foolish to insist that when the doors to their home were kicked in, and the police rushed in eight-strong shouting and flashing bright lights in the faces of the residents, that the girl had the presence of mind to reach for a panga and charge at eight armed policemen. We are docile; we are not fucking idiots.

Our emphasis has always been about security; it has never been about the safety of the people. It is why pedestrian walkways are an afterthought after the road tender has been awarded. It is why street lights do not function, or drains are kept in serviceable order. It is why policemen still carry military-style assault-rifles, and not sidearms. It is why the first instinct of armed police is, to paraphrase what the Inspector-general exhorted his policemen to do, use their weapons as they were meant to be used and only then worry about the aftermath. It is why fourteen-year old girls are likely to be shot dead and presidential armoured limousines are "carjacked". In maintaining security, the people are part of the problem. The British taught us that. They taught us well.

Leeches in Sheep's Clothing.

If you have a wife, and you hold down a decent job that calls for hard-chargin' till the wee hours of the morning, and you neglect that wife, surely as the sun rises and sets I will not put my hand in my pocket to give your wife a stipend because "she is lonely" because of the long hours you put in your work. If you are a member of the County Assembly of Embu, and you have reasonable facility with English grammatical syntax, and your degree of comprehension of simple English sentences is above room temperature, know this: I am not paying your wife "compensation" for loneliness! Not now, not ever!

Let me turn my bilious attention to wives of Governors. First, you are not "first ladies"; this is not the United States of America. Second, your husbands are not and shall never be the equals of the President of the Republic; the only "disciplined forces" they command are the rabble we know of as local authority inspectors that are notable for their incredibly reprehensible lack of discipline. Third, you are not the social equals of the First Lady of Kenya in any way, shape or form. She is, whether she wanted it or not, the Mother of the Nation. More importantly, she acts like it. She doesn't swan around the nation "demanding" things; we the people, through our sometimes intelligent elected representatives in Nairobi, consciously chose to give her a budget and a staff because she, too, is an ambassador of the nation. You, on the other hand, remind us of the jumped up wives of councillors, and by demanding the same perquisites as the First Lady of Kenya, you behave exactly like them.

Allow me to excoriate the tedious behaviour of all elected representatives when it comes to dipping their long, grimy fingers in the national cookie jar. The avaricious culture associated with members of our august parliament is yet to be reversed. There isn't a parliamentary session that does not include ever greater monetary demands from elected representatives. They receive "grants" that they never pay back. They get mortgages at rates that ordinary middle class Kenyans can only dream of. They get "allowances" that belie the functions they perform. They live it up like princes and princesses in children fairy tales, while we, the people, live like serfs did in feudal Europe. The immorality of their greed no longer troubles their consciences.

I believe that what unites the MCAs, their wives, governors' wives and MPs is the tacit agreement that the Government of Kenya is not an institution in service to the people, but a piggy bank for the privileged ones in elective positions to dip into whenever it strikes their fancy. They will pretend to perform their functions of representation, law-making and oversight of executive branches, but in reality they will be marking time, one year to the next, awaiting their favourite Bill: the Finance Bill. In this Bill lies their true interest. It is the one law that they will devote a significant amount of attention to. But lest you think that their attention is for the good of the people or of the nation, perish that thought.

The attentions of these men and women will be narrowly focussed on whether foreign junkets have been budgeted for or not, whether or not their "entertainment allowances" have been raised or not. The sizes of their wallets are all that consume them while they pretend to play at politics or at overseeing governors and Cabinet Ministers. They are leeches; they latched on to a healthy institution and they are determined to bleed it dry.