Tax and spend: rights holders and duty bearers

The Constitution of Kenya, under the Bill of Rights, gives citizens the right to the highest attainable standards of health and Universal health coverage (UHC) has been adopted as Target 3.8 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a clear goal of ensuring that individuals and communities receive the health services they need without suffering financial hardship. - Colonel Mustapha and the Case for Universal Healthcare by Mwende Ngao

First things first, the Constitution does not give anyone anything. It is important for any discourse on rights holders and duty bearers to understand that we gave ourselves a constitution that recognised the rights we inherently have (including, yes, economic and social rights) and the fundamental freedoms that must be protected, first by the state, and then by everyone else.

Economic and social rights come with inherent challenges in that they rely on other actions that are beyond the control of the rights holders and duty bearers. Economic and social rights depend on, in the first instance, taxes and, in the second instance, service charges imposed by duty bearers (the State) on rights holders (citizens and other users). There is a way of predicting how much in tax revenue the State shall collect and on that basis, how much of that tax revenue may be spent on economic and social rights.

Kenya is a study in wrongful and wasteful expenditure of tax revenues, and this is starkly apparent in the way taxes are spent in the provision of health care services by the State. Kenyans, in their wisdom, devolved the provision of health care services to county governments with the national government being left in charge of health policy and national referral hospitals. It was soon swiftly realised that the constitutional devolution of health care services needed further changes including on how health care workers are trained, deployed and paid. Further, the way in which health insurance is administered left many desperate Kenyans out in the cold and none more so than expecting mothers and patients with severe illnesses like cancer or in need of long-term medical support such as those with HIV/AIDS.

If we can learn anything from the plight of famous Kenyans who have fallen on hard times it is that constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms are hard to safeguard and protect if the foundations on which some of those rights depend are hollowed out. A prosperous nation is able to raise the necessary taxes, and pay for essential public services, without having to ask citizens to supplement public financing of essential services from their own pockets.

Kenya can barely raise the tax revenue needed for its ambitious "development" projects and pay salaries at the same time and the result is that essential services only get the bare minimum of public investment and support. And while Kenyans continue to wave the Bill of Rights in the faces of public officials, there is little Kenyans can do to ensure that those public officials do their duty and provide the "highest attainable standard of health acre" to Kenyans. We may have economic and social rights. But whether we ever fully enjoy those rights is something else entirely.

Rich, fat and stupid

What little I remember of the economics I learnt during the BA part of my university education is reduced to this: we have needs and we have wants. Quite often, the quality of the needs we get influences our ability to acquire the wants we desire. Nine times out of ten, we are responsible for solving our needs. While the State will provide us with institutions of learning, for instance, and the teachers who teach there, it is our personal initiative that will ensure whether the education we get stands us in good stead or not. I won't go into the quality of the institutions and teachers the State provides. Suffice to say, if you are provided with the best of both, and you sleep through all your lessons, your education is likely to be "half-baked" at best.

The same is true of health services. The state can build the health facilities and train the healthcare workers, but we are responsible for maintaining high standards hygiene at home so that we are not plagued by vector-borne diseases.

But when the state fails to do its duty, after collecting taxes through laws and menaces, and instead imposes the obligation of doing for ourselves what the state should have done for us, and at our own expense to boot, then the men and women who contributed to this state of affairs cannot possibly be trusted to offer us advice on how to live our lives or chastise us for how we leave our lives.

Anyone who has lived in Nairobi over the past thirty years will have noticed that even as the taxes imposed on them have gone up, the services that should have been provided by the state have reduced. It is true when it comes to access to affordable real assets. In the last decade of Daniel Moi's kleptocracy, public land was allocated to men and women connected to his thieving government at a rate that was staggering. So long as you and the Commissioner of Lands were on the same page, you would end up with a title deed in your name. Much of this land was acquired for purely speculative reasons; few of it was developed during the last decade of the Moi presidency. When Mwai Kibaki assumed office, still more public land, especially land held by state corporations, was transferred into private hands without so much as a by your leave.

We sowed the wind and now we reap the whirlwind. The acreage available for lease to small scale vendors at affordable rates is nonexistent in Nairobi. Much of that land is occupied by sixteen-story blocks of flats (or offices) that are, at best, half-occupied. The armies of Nairobi's itinerant traders have nowhere to go except to the last "open" space available: road reserves and pedestrian walkways. Nairobi is now neatly divided into two: land speculators and vibandanskis.

The same scarcity of affordable land hamstringing the middle class dream of owning an affordable house has also locked out millions of small-scale businessmen. The challenge is the same, whether you want an affordable three-bedroom-two-bath semi-detached maisonette in Buru Buru or you want to open a café to serve the on-a-budget crowd of office gremlins: land prices are unrealistically high. The solution is the same: seize all irregularly acquired land and give access to the millions who need them to build homes or businesses at an affordable price. The reality is predictable: the state will tax Kenyans to the bone first before it troubles the land thieves of the 1990s and 2000s.

So it is a bit rich to read the screeds by lawyers about how Nairobi is being turned into a slum of vibanda where dodgy food of doubtful safety is being served by shady vendors who don't even appear to have the necessary public health paperwork to be allowed to sell food to the public. These lawyers who only concentrated on "human rights" when it meant change-the-government, but were silent as their new boon friends carried on with the same corruption as the government they overthrew are hypocrites of a particularly nasty type. They pretend to be virtuous only until they get a chance to sup at the big table with the devil himself.

My take is simple: vibanda, in and of themselves, are not bad. The people who operate the vibanda are not bad. The people who take their custom to vibanda are not bad. They are making do, with meagre resources, in one of the most expensive cities in the world. It is not their fault. No matter how many SANYs are deployed to demolish the vibanda, they will never be erased so long as land prices continue to soar in Nairobi. But this is too much to expect of the senior members of my profession. They are too rich and too fat-headed to think in these terms anymore. Listen to them only if you wish to be as rich, fat and stupid as they.

Loyalty and affordable housing

Preamble

This will be a bit long so find something else to read if you don't have the patience for wonky, ill-written, badly-argued, semi-literate analyses.

I

I pledge my loyalty to the President and 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.

II

"mandatory patriotism"

III

"eradicating slums in Kenya"

IV

No one wants to live in sub-prime housing. No one wants a house in a neighbourhood plagued by blocked sewers and drainage, where garbage piles on for years in end, where the street lights have never been installed, where footpaths turn into muddy rivers in the rainy seasons, where access to water is only through the sufferance of water shylocks who charge extortionate prices and where, if you survive all this, the "house" is a four-walled metal shack that barely fits two and is vulnerable to the privations of violent criminals and equally violent police. Suffice to say what electricity is available in these places is neither official nor cheap.

V

The reasons for the deductions into the Housing Development Fund have varied. It is designed to offer the downpayment for an affordable house. It is a savings scheme for Kenyans. It is a source of financing for the private development of affordable housing. It will spur employment among the youth of Kenya. It is meant to supplement ones retirement benefits scheme funds.

I don't think there is a Kenyan who has any fundamental objection to a scheme that provides affordable housing for Kenyans, especially Kenyans living and working in cities and urban areas who don't have access to affordable housing. The mainstream news press has breathlessly repeated the statistics that say Kenya suffers from a severe housing shortage and ignores the explanations offered by economists and professional architects that the shortage is artificial due to, among other things, the high taxes imposed not he housing industry and the high prices charged for the thousands of vacant housing units in places like Nairobi City.

It would pay if we knew what we were being told, and whether what we were told squared with the facts on the ground.

VI

The [National Housing] Corporation may, from the National Housing Development Fund and from time to time, in the manner provided by this Act...make loans to any company, society or individual person for the purpose of enabling such company, society or individual person to acquire land and construct thereon approved dwellings or to carry out approved schemes...[and] construct dwellings, carry out approved schemes and lay out and provide services for approved schemes. - Housing Act, Cap. 1117 [s. 8(1)(b) and (c)]

VII

The functions and powers of the county are...County planning and development, including...housing. [Paragraph 8(d), Part Two, Constitution of Kenya]

VIII

When Mr. Raila Odinga, as Minister of Roads, Public Works and Housing in the first Mwai Kibaki Government, initiated the Slum Upgrading Programme in 2004, he set off a chain of events that ended in the complete subversion of the role of local government in the provision of social and affordable housing in Kenya. Of course, we can't ignore the fact that local government had become a hotbed of corruption - the failure of the City Council of Nairobi and the Nairobi City Commission are stark reminders of that corruption. However, instead of making the necessary corrective changes in governance and integrity, Mr. Odinga, with he support of the central government bureaucracy that had become wedded to contractors, took over a role it had never performed and undertook the project without further reference to the people ostensibly for whom the project was initiated.

Anyone who has followed up on the Slum Upgrading Programme will be able to confirm that while the "affordable" housing units were indeed constructed and delivered for occupation, the current occupants are not the original targets of the Programme; many of them, if not all, rent out the units to Nairobi's who can afford to pay the rent, and they have gone back to the slums from which they were supposed to be "rescued".

The 2018 Affordable Housing Scheme was challenged in the High Court and the Employment and Labour Relations Court. Among the arguments was that too was a usurpation of the role of county governments in the development of housing as prescribed by the Fourth Schedule to the Constitution. Both courts granted injunctions preventing the implementation of the Programme. The petitions were withdrawn, without the superior courts rendering a judgment, after the law was amended to repeal all references to the Programme. The re-introduction of the Programme, in the same way it was introduced in 2018, using nearly the same language, in the absence of a definitive ruling by the superior courts, risks the same kind of litigation that saw it being suspended for two years and then scrapped.

IX

I read once in the tabloid press that there are place sin Nairobi where the price of an acre of land has exceeded one billion shillings. There are many factors affecting the price of land, not least being the scarcity of serviced land at affordable rates for the construction of affordable housing. In more mature markets, such as South Africa, a flat of 100m² costs less than ten million shillings. In Nairobi, prices start at twelve million shillings. The continued existence of large swathes of the City being "single dwelling bungalows in quarter-acre" is a scandal of poor physical and land use planning.

The redevelopment of "leafy suburbs" like Lavington, Kilimani, Kileleshwa and Jamhuri was long overdue. The same re-zoning should be done for Parklands, Westlands, Spring Valley and Kitisuru to open up uneconomically utilised land for higher housing density instead of concentrating the densification of housing in Eastlands which, in any case, has long passed saturation point. In the long run, Muthaiga, Nyari and Runda should also cease to be low-density residential areas given their proximity to the Central Business District. Re-zoning these areas will unlock land at affordable rates and spur the private development of affordable housing, and thereby obviate the need for an additional tax on already highly-taxed Kenyans.

Coda

There is a large swathe of land in Nairobi between the Makadara Railway Station and the Central Railway Station that is ripe for redevelopment. Part, if not all, of it is owned by the Kenya Railways Corporation Staff Retirement Scheme. It will cost and arm and a leg to compulsorily acquire but not is the best alternative option to a mandatory tax on hard-taxedKenyans and it may stave off the day that Runda, Muthaiga and Nyari have to be converted into high-rise paradises. The National Social Security Fund, and the retirement benefits schemes for the employees of the former local authorities, have the money to acquire and redevelop the land. If they buy in, the dozen or so major private retirement benefits schemes will have the confidence to buy in as well. Private funds for the redevelopment of the land is available. There is no need to trouble salaried Kenyans unless they wish to buy into REITs.

Laws, godmen, the state and death

No law is ever clear and any person, especially a lawyer, who claims that the law is clear is a charlatan and should be shunned by right-thinking members of the society. If the law was clear, if any law was clear, we wouldn't need the courts of law to interpret what they said or how they could be applied. So anyone that comes to you, unctuous oiliness dialled up to ten, and tells you that the law relating to ministries of religion is clear, is trying to gaslight you. Don't let them get away with it.

I don't wish to dwell on the intricacies of the Societies Act or the Income Tax Act when it comes to the "regulation of churches" but only to say that the law on the regulation of church societies exists, it has been abused, and as a consequence, there are many unregistered church societies that cause serious and continuing harm to many Kenyans. But, and as we have discovered with that shady minister of religion in Mombasa, many church societies also strictly abide by the letter of the law.

The problem in Kenya is not the law. It is not even the interpretation of the law. It is that the legitimacy of the law has never been high to begin with. An apocryphal story relates to the development of social housing in Nairobi in the 1950s. The wazungu in charge fiddled so much with the books of account that anyone who can say with a serious face that they know how much it cost to build Ngara or Pangani estates is a liar. Kenyan civil servants were initiated and indoctrinated in procurement corruption by Her Majesty the Queen's subjects and it s a lesson we took to heart.

Many of the thieves in our government attend church with a regularity that sometimes is a bit disturbing. For sure, the church is where sins go to get washed, where the penitent seek God's forgiveness. But that is not the relationship ministers of government and ministers of religion enjoy. Some may truly believe that the blood of Jesus washes all sins. But the majority, the overwhelming majority, attend church because, in some way, the pastor and the civil servant need each other to steal from the rest of us. Not only do they steal our money through procurement graft and the redirection of tithes and Sunday offertory to fancy Range Rovers, they rob us of our spiritual dignity and find innovative ways to blame us for being so gullible.

We tolerated this grand heist when the leadership of the ministries of religion allowed one among them to depart from the thieving path and speak the truth about the things that were being done to us. But nowadays, there are no honest men of the cloth left. Even the ones we invite to our corrupt TV stations to be interviewed by the less salubrious lying TV personalities have one foot out the door. They are not real rebels. They are agents sent out tot he world to gaslight us that the church exists to serve our spiritual needs and blind us to the material and spiritual robberies taking place in our lives.

There is no way that a ministry of religion can hide the deaths of 179 Kenyans and the disappearance of over 600 others without the officials of government knowing. It simply doesn't make any sense. Yet that is what concerted efforts by diverse spokesmen of the church and the state wish us to believe. They know that if we believe these lies, there is nothing they will not get past us. Don't let them get away with, literally, murder.

The wages of constitutional illiteracy

Some time last week I witnessed the limits of education. On a panel discussing something that the Government had done, was doing, was going to do, whatever, a panelist suggested that Kenya would benefit if the "opposition formed a shadow government", the same as existed in the 10th Parliament before the promulgation of the 2010 Constitution. therefore, she saw many benefits in the establishment of the office of the Leader of the Official Opposition as proposed by both the last Jubilee administration and the current Kenya Kwanza one. She, and many like-minded pundits, have given up on the constitutional arrangements we have made for the government and they seemingly have no interest in holding any of their elected politicians to account.

The reliance on magical thinking is distressing, but not surprising. It informs much of the public discourse on public administration and politics. We are susceptible to this kind of magical thinking: if I make this change, that has nothing to do with the underlying issues, I will improve my lot in life. It almost never is true. It almost always leads to more destructive outcomes.

The constitutional structure of the government is not that difficult to discern. It is a presidential system, with parliamentary vestiges no one thought would become a problem thirteen years after we promulgated the constitution. The president, deputy president, cabinet secretaries and attorney-general no longer sit in parliament; parliamentarians no longer sit in the cabinet; and the president can only appoint the chief justice and judges of the Supreme Court with the approval of parliament. Parliament is divided into the majority party and minority party who, collectively, are supposed to oversee the national executive and judiciary (also known as checks and balances). While it is expected that the majority party in parliament will be the president's and deputy president's party, under the current arrangement it is possible to have a divided government where the majority party controls parliament and the minority party holds the presidency.

As a consequence, the Official Opposition is an anachronism from the Westminster system that Kenya did away with on the 27th August, 2010. An Official Opposition is a vital part of a parliamentary system where the members of the executive are elected parliamentarians as well (save for the attorney-general, who is an ex officio member of parliament without a right to vote). An Official Opposition would choose, from among members of its Parliamentary Group, shadow ministers who would lead the questioning of members of the cabinet during Parliamentary Question Time (in the UK, they call it Prime Minister's Question Time).

What President Uhuru Kenyatta and, now, President William Ruto, did was to extend the vestiges of the Westminster system far beyond its utility for the purposes of the transition from the former constitution to the current one. As a result, the general public, including commentators and pundits, are under the impression that the government is still divided into a ruling party and official opposition, rather than the majority party and minority party. Therefore, few see nothing constitutionally untoward in the suggestion that the office of the Leader of the Official Opposition should be revived "in order to hold the government to account" rather than the majority and minority parties holding the executive branch to account as the constitution contemplates.

I am all for inclusion as a way of mediating political conflict; but I don't think it is in the national interest to establish a constitutionally dubious office simply because the incumbent's regime is uncertain about its political legitimacy. From the Yash Pal Ghai commission to the Committee of Experts, the majority of voters were adamant that they did not want parliament and the executive to conspire to undermine the national interest. Most voters wanted a clear separation of the executive from parliament; the independence of the judiciary was taken as a given. President Kenyatta overworked to blur the lines between the three. President Ruto still has the opportunity to reverse course though he appears hell-bent on walking the same path as his immediate predecessor. An office of the Leader of the Official Opposition may solve the immediate political problems of the incumbent; it will do nothing to hold the national executive to account or improve constitutionalism. Only the ordinary Kenyan on the street will come off the worse.

The pride of prejudice

Dr. Ndemo says, "It would be great if there were no manipulative persons who would take advantage of the legal provisions and the vulnerability of poor people in our society." (Trouble with religious freedom, Business Daily)

He makes a fundamental assumption, one many of us have unconsciously made: poor people are more vulnerable to charismatic leaders of death cults. But, as one of my favourite interlocutors on Twitter asks, how many poor people do you know that can afford to keep four children in school in the Kenya of today? 

It is a prejudice we have of poor people and it colours the way we discuss matters where people we perceive as vulnerable are impacted b y the actions of others. The Kilifi death cult leader, and his counterpart in Mombasa, do not appear to have attracted only the poor. In fact, the way many of the stories of their victims are told, it would appear, after a bit of digging, that many had access to resources that were sufficient to support them as they relocated themselves and their children to Kilifi and Mombasa to participate in the fatal activities of the cults.

When I worked for my previous employer, I met and interacted with people in challenging circumstances. Many of them may not have know the law the way that I did, or may not have read Government policies the way I had read them, but they were not gullible, naive or stupid. For sure they were exploited, but only in the context that they were often left with choices that were difficult, if not impossible, to make. But they did not easily fall for sleek-tongued rogues come bearing gifts.

Many of the victims of the cults have been impoverished by the cult. They didn't start their death march living in penury. The cult leaders managed to persuade these frequently educated, well-travelled and informed men and women to abandon their families, communities, jobs and lives back home, give the cult leaders all their worldly possessions, and then kill themselves in a slow and painful process in the hopes that their souls would ascend to heaven.

What we have obscured in these sagas, focussing as we have on the poverty of the victims, is the numbers of our high and mighty who seem to be involved in the affairs of these killer preachers. We have seen them sup together, commune with each other, promote each others' work. Were we to probe these relationships, we would be able to identify many of the reasons why otherwise stable-minded men and women killed themselves and their children.

History, farce, tragedy

One of the failures of the Uhuru Kenyatta regime was a failure of imagination. While he and the members of his Cabinet and the senior officials he placed in critical ministries and state departments had excellent public relations skills, able to frame anything and everything in ways that painted them in a positive light, they were not Blue-Sky Thinkers. They were not thinkers at all.

Let's start with his biggest initiative: the securitisation of the state after the Westgate Attack. President Kenyatta stopped trying to persuade his political rivals (both inside and outside his Cabinet) about the legitimacy of his public spending plans. Instead, he turned to an institution that was required, on pain of treason, to obey him in all things. He appointed serving and former members of the military to sensitive dockets and gave them their marching orders.

As a result, he and his government had no reason tot think through any of their plans. This is how Huduma Namba came to be. What had originally been mooted as an evolution of the Integrated Population Registration System (IPRS), intended to integrated primary databases was bastardised into the private-sector-led Huduma Namba system that faced legal hurdles until it was quietly abandoned. Had he kept his head and ignored the demons whispering the virtues of the private sector in his ear, President Kenyatta would have succeeded in his digitisation project and the Nyayo-House-based national surveillance system would have acquired technical facilities that would have forestalled the massacres at Shakahola Forest in Kilifi.

President Kenyatta's successor faces the same exact challenges and because he has retained some of the same faces and voices from the Jubilee regime, he is at risk of walking the same unimaginative path that President Kenyatta walked. The only difference is that he doesn't seem enamoured of ex-soldiers to see through his plans. Instead, he is salting his regime with has-beens and kiss-asses with complicated legal challenges. These new men and women lack both wisdom and insight; what they bring to the table is unswerving loyalty rather than the ability to tell the emperor that he has no clothes.

Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga were not necessarily wrong about the re-incarnation of the office of assistant minister. President Ruto certainly is not wrong in offering fifty politicians the chance to serve as assistant minister redux. But whether it was the Uhuru list or the current list, both presidents repeated mistakes that went back to 1992/93: hiring ne'er-do-wells whose only value was that they offered temporary political stability. Consequently, the ability for Blue Sky Thinking was lost and it is lost again. The few thinkers in the group will be drowned out by the reckless loose-lipped members of their team. Instead of the IPRS we deserve, we shall get a kenya Kwanza edition of Huduma Namba, with the same legal infirmities as its much-loathed previous evolution.

President Kenyatta's post-presidency tells you all you need to know about how unimaginative his presidency really was. Had he had the foresight and imagination of Daniel Moi or Mwai Kibaki, President Kenyatta would have had no truck with the likes of a five-times-losing presidential candidate who can't seem to let electoral losses go. For sure, he wouldn't be haunting party headquarters like a spurned lover who simply can't let his ex go. If President Ruto isn't careful, the same fate awaits him. The sub rosa murmurings that he is "too young to retire"; the change the constitution efforts by semi-literate parliamentarians; the increasingly desperate search for a political "legacy" out of the ashes of reckless economic decisions; the post-presidency fiddling with his party; and so on and so forth. Uhuru Kenyatta is a cautionary tale if President Ruto chooses to heed the lesson. 

Pet or prey?

In a world of predators, would you rather be a pet or prey?

If you have been paying attention, you will surely have seen that in Nairobi, there is no shortage of the well-heeled, even as we are reminded everyday that the economy is in a bad way. The number of late-model Range Rovers, Land Cruiser LC300s, Mercedes-Benz Maybachs and Porsche Cayennes, not forgetting the eye-watering prices charged for well-appointed apartments in Lavington, puts the lie to the claim that the economy is in a bad way.

I think both things can be true at the same time.

There are fewer corporate organisations with the capacity to spend and spend big money like the Government of Kenya. Even in the middle of a wave of austerity, the Government still spends upwards of two trillion shillings each year on everything from Staedtler HB pencils to top-of-the-line Prados. That money is not spent in Ministry-to-Ministry transfers; that money is spent in dukas no one has ever heard of paying way over the odds for supplies that are delivered out of time, out of spec or not at all.

It's how Nairobi is almost always flooded with new motoring iron, austerity notwithstanding.

Of the ones that get a comfortable chunk of those trillions, there are predators, the John Ngumis of this world who eat what they kill. No one thinks of them as being put upon. They have the capacity to affect government and move financial markets in their favour. They are a minority. A sizeable number, no doubt, but a minority nonetheless. The remaining beneficiaries of the trillions are pets. They exist to service the Big Dogs and in return, enjoy perks that the rest of the country can only dream of.

They will do almost anything to remain pets, maybe one day graduate to the class of pampered pets.

You can see how many of these pets behave or are portrayed on social media. They will engage in some of the most excessive escapades, many of a sexual nature, without a care in the world. They will say things that will shock the conscience of millions. They will do things that, for normal human beings, are deeply shameful and dishonourable. They will do all this and worse because that is how they earn, every single day, their pet-hood.

Their rewards, if they cared to think on it, are equally shameful and dishonourable.

The money they enjoy is the least shameful of it all. The rest of it - the power and prestige public positions afford them, the access to corridors of power - those ones should prick their conscience not asking whether or not having their bellies rubbed in public and being told "good dog" by approving Big Dogs is an image they want their children to inherit. They can't, though. They have enough money to be blind to their ritualistic humiliation but not enough to allow them to take a step back and bite the hand that rubs their tummy tum-tums.

They will never bite that hand. Never.

It's Kenya Kwanza's ball game to lose

Measurement is necessary for decision-making. How many people do you need to feed? Measure that. How many cows does it take to produce a tonne of milk? Measure that. How many people pay income tax and how many should be paying income tax? Measure that. Measurements, to the best of my knowledge and understanding, are meant to help in decision-making. Measurements, even measurements of certain male appendages, are not an end in and of themselves, save for narcissists and cheats.

The Jubilation (2013 to 2022) was fond of measurements, the bulk of which served as camouflage for failure. Especially measurements in percentages were its favourites. This or that is so and so per cent complete. It was a constant refrain, especially when it became clear that its achievements on the ground were hard to identify and whose effect was quite often negative. You would witness senior cabinet officials attending at some inauguration or launch or commissioning of some partially-completed project and percentages would be bandied about as proof of "development". It was disrespectfully dishonest.

The roots of the "per cent complete" malady can be traced to Mwai Kibaki's Vision 2030. While the initial Medium-Term Plans were largely well-executed, the measurements were tied to some reasonable expectation of value for money for citizens. Thika Superhighway, super-expensive as it was, served a concrete need for the people who lived along the corridor. It is not Kibaki's fault that it remains a half-finished transportation corridor, lacking comprehensive non-motorised infrastructure or mass transit options for the tens of thousands of its users. But, by and large, it is a success story by Kenyan standards.

The Nairobi Expressway will struggle to meet the same level of value for money that Thika Superhighway did. The same is true of the Standard Gauge Railway. In the long term, maybe, the two boondoggles will make a decent return, but not even the rosiest projections by the most generous infrastructure planners think that return will be made before the 2060s. But in order to hide its flaws, the Jubilation hurled a flurry of numbers at us. The numbers did nothing to hide the enormous economic cost that the new structures cost Kenya and Kenyans. Only a few well-connected fat cats will keep smiling all the way to the bank.

It would be a mistake for Kenya Kwanza to adopt the bad habits of the Jubilation. The social media scorched earth war by some of its senior apparatchiks does not offer hope that Kenya Kwanza will try to do things a bit different. It is true that the economy Kenya Kwanza inherited was sabotaged sometime in 2015. It is also true that it inherited crippling debts and political uncertainty, especially given the indefatigable agitational pot-stirring by the defeated Azimio Tours, Safaris and Dynasts. But there was no excuse to saddle the National Executive with even greater uncertainty by hiring some of the least qualified senior policy-makers in twenty years.

Azimio will be pacified. That is inevitable. The administrative instability will prevail because some of the people given senior state appointments are not intelligent, qualified, capable or have the peoples' interests at heart. It is their administrative incompetence that will stymie efforts to right the economic ship of state, not the Azimio-sponsored cost-of-living protests. The logic of keeping these wastrels inside the tent pissing outside is straightforward but wrongheaded. When it becomes that they have been handed Range Rovers without the money to keep the juggernauts on the road, they will engage in reckless quick-money-minting schemes that will embroil them in multi-year corruption investigations. That is not a recipe for administrative predictability or economic success.

However, if they are kept on tight leashes and spanked whenever they get out of line, maybe, MAYBE, Kenya Kwanza can chart a path away from disaster. We may not escape short time growing pains, but maybe Kenya Kwanza can avert utter disaster. Only time will tell. Will Kenya Kwanza make the right choice or will it be distracted by the ineffectual Azimio shenanigans.

Who will light the fire?

There are a few members of our parliament who behave as if they are the first persons to come up with hate-filled legislation. They walk and talk with the certainty of men (they are almost always men) who have cracked the anti-people code. Of course, if you spoke to them, they would come across as reasonable. That what they are doing is for the public good. That they are addressing a lacuna (they love Latin expressions) in the law. That, because of the lack of moral and legislative support from their parliamentary colleagues, they are taking upon themselves the onerous and righteous task of dealing with an issue of great social necessity because if they don't, kenya will slide Ito anarchy and the children will be consigned to a life of despondency.

They are, for want of a better turn of phrase, dangerous narcissistic idiots.

Kenya's constitutional and legislative framework is remarkably broad. There isn't a subject that isn't addressed under the Laws of kenya. Even the emergent issues that are beloved of diverse constituencies, from cryptocurrency anarchists to electric car zealots, are covered by the existing legislative framework. It only takes an expansive interpretation of the existing law to see that there is very, very little outside its ambit.

The same is particularly true of the criminal law of Kenya. When it comes to sex, sexual activity, sexual offences and, yes, sexual identity, the law is broad, comprehensive, retrogressive and extremely punitive. The proposed Family Protection Bill is the dangerous, hate-filled, narcissistic legislative expression of the deepest and darkest desires of one man. It is a complete repudiation of the Penal Code, Children Act, Sexual offences Act, Criminal Procedure Code and the Bill of Rights. It purports to address a gap in the law that does not exist. It is a man's fantasy of what a legislative theocracy would look like.

That man will, if he has the support of his parliamentary colleagues, open the door for the total undermining of the constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights. The modern road to fascism begins with the demonisation of people who do not conform to heterosexual norms. The language of Victorian England, which prevails in Kenya's criminal laws, is used to identify and target these people and if that assault is not halted by legislatures or courts, it is expanded to target political (aka "seditionists") and economic (aka poor people) communities.

Since the promulgation of the "new" constitution in 2010, the State, through diverse agents such as parliamentarians, has attempted to water down or roll back the constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Bad laws have been enacted that have been struck down by the courts. Existing bad laws, the ones that preceded the promulgation (such as mandatory death sentences) have been struck down by the courts. This has led to a persistent onslaught against the independence of judges and magistrates in order to shape the character of the courts and influence, if not direct, the judgment that courts hand down. The Family protection Bill is part of a broader effort to render the Bill of Rights nugatory.

One mistake we made in 2003 was to assume that the end of the Moi presidency meant that the work of fighting for constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms was over. Mwai Kibaki initiated the process of co-opting the human rights civil society organisations that has culminated in erstwhile civil society human rights champions participating in the negation of human rights. When you take a step back and look at the big picture, you will admit that the view is terrifying. The rebels in the ministries of faith who said the things that we were afraid to say out loud are no longer there. The political rebels who fought, inside and outside jails, in Kenya or in exile, have become the lawmakers out to burn the constitution to ashes. The civil society organisations that derived their legitimacy from grassroots movements are now tools of foreign governments and agents. It will take a root and branch reform of the civil society movement to shake the political establishment from its single-minded onslaught on the constitution.

Sadly, because of the bread-and-butter issues young people face, the ongoing foreign-inspired boy-child versus girl-child discourse, the resilient poverty among Kenyans aged 25 to 35, and the non-existence of political institutions of whatever kind, there are no civil society champions to lead the fight against the likes of the promoters of the Family Protection Bill. Kenya's rebellion streak ended in 2010. Someone needs to light the tinder that will bring back the fire of the Saba Saba days.

We don't know what we don't know

Dialogue is always preferred to armed combat. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. But dialogue can only go so far if the parties to the dialogue come to the talks with nothing but bad faith. Where bad faith is assumed from the outset, dialogue is unlikely to lead to positive outcomes. In these circumstances, the need for a third party to lead confidence building measures is invaluable, otherwise the interlocutors will treat each other with suspicion or will renege on whatever deal they strike the moment the ink dries on the agreement.

There is a whole generation of Kenyans who have no idea what it took for the Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group to achieve the minor reforms it did in the run up to the 1997 general election. Those who remember the Koffi Annan mediated settlement in 2008 have either decided to keep mum or have developed severe cases of selective amnesia. In 1997, though heavy suspicion was in the air, keeping the package of reforms small and largely non-threatening kept the pot from boiling over. Don't get me wrong; there was still widespread violence before and during the elections, but it could have been much, much worse. In 2008, it took the Panel of Eminent African Personalities to ensure that passions did not remain high, that agreements would be honoured, and that violence would be tamped down on both sides. The 2008 National Accord will hold up in the annals of history.

2023 offers Kenya's perennial political combatants another chance to draw on its history to arrive at a political settlement that they can live with. Just as in 1997 and 2008, there are men and women who are heavily invested in stirring the pot and keeping things on a knife edge. They know, almost for certain, that if the talks proceed and are successful, their opportunities to use chaos for self-enrichment shall be yanked away. They need the president and the former prime minister to be at odds and ends for as long as possible so that they can reap where they didn't sow.

I have no idea what the president and former prime minister are thinking. Few people actually do. So maybe, looking at the success of the 2008 National Accord, and the negotiating framework that led to its signing and the success it enjoyed until the 2013 general election, which threw up new political challenges that have affected national politics since. Perhaps it is a negotiating tactic, on both sides, to enter the talks with hardline stances and they will soften their positions as things progress. If so, then maybe we need to give the protagonists time to set out their positions in full before we can judge the relative merits of each side's position.

Psychosis, command authority and constitutional standards

The National Police Service shall "comply with constitutional standards of human rights and fundamental freedoms" [Art. 244(c)] It is irrelevant whether or not the Cabinet Secretary responsible for police services or the Director of Public Prosecutions have, in exercise of the constitutional mandates, given directions to the Inspector-General of the National Police Service; the Service is constitutionally bound to comply with the aforementioned constitutional standards. Including facilitating the exercise of human rights or fundamental freedoms by other Kenyans. Such as the the right, peaceably and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket, and to present petitions to public authorities [Art. 37].

Though "assembly" is exercised collectively, it is not necessary for one man to demonstrate or picket or present a petition to a public authority. And therefore, the right in Article 37 can be exercised by an individual who is part of an assembled mass of people. And consequently, the police service has to treat each individual in the mass of people separately when they exercise their Article 37 rights. When an individual ceases to be peaceable and takes up arms, he ceases to exercise his Article 37 rights and instead, commits an offence (such as the offence of affray under section 92 of the Penal Code, Cap. 63).

It is accepted as a given within police circles that whenever an "opposition demonstration" takes place, the demonstrators will commit offences. Therefore, it follows, that whenever the "opposition" calls for a demonstration, the police presence "must be felt" and in order for this to be true, the police themselves, will assemble, armed to the teeth, and trail the demonstrators wherever they go. Whenever these two groups encounter each other, there almost always is a precipitating act, and violence soon follows. Kenya hasn't been able to crack the code of how political demonstrations can be held without the police service and demonstrators engaging in running battles.

One is witness, though, to a certain amount of psychological insecurity among the people purporting to make public safety policy. Unlike the late Gen. Nkaissery, Prof. Saitoti and Hon. Michuki, public safety policymakers of today lack the command presence that reassures the public that they know what they are doing and they have the respect of the men they command. These days, these people are prone to make rash decisions which, quite often, are intended to stamp their authority but, instead, come off as panicky overreactions to minor nuisances. Many of their underlings, meant to offer technical, tactical and strategic counsel, don't have the institutional intelligence to execute public safety policies effectively. So instead, they use the blanket term "national security" as an excuse to undertake public safety policies that undermine constitutional standards at every turn. These are the true authors of such horrors as the killings of Baby Pendo and Willie Kimani.

It is now thirteen years or so since Kenya promulgated a new constitution. In that time, while many State organs have taken steps to inculcate constitutional standards in their policies and operations, the public safety authorities, especially the police service and national security sector, has been reluctant to follow suit. In some cases, there has been active resistance to the constitutional realities of the day. As a result, the relationship between the people and the police authorities has been quite strained and, whenever the people have challenged the authority of the policy, peaceably or otherwise, the police have been given a free hand to crack down and crack down hard. Political freedoms have suffered as a result. If we could address the insecurities of the national security mandarins, perhaps we could prevent future knee-jerk reactions to political activities that rubs them, and their superiors, the wrong way.

Paper tigers and caporegimes

A bureaucracy is known by its ability to establish a specific culture, whether for good or ill, that seeks to achieve the objectives of the bureaucracy, including self-perpetuation and self-replication. A good bureaucracy adapts to changing circumstances. While it will almost always resist change, it will find ways to change while retaining its core identity. The Kenyan bureaucratic state is not known for adapting to change. Certainly not since the abortive coup of 1982.

I don't know if there is a person with the institutional memory and the political intelligence to write an authoritative history of the Kenyan administrative state. I hope there is. And I hope that person is able to tell the chaff from the rice.

But until that history is written, some of us have to do our bit. I have had the immense privilege of serving in little-known agencies and life-altering ones as well. My memories of the work that I did prior to my current station still do me a power of good whenever the spirit is low. My memories of my current station are a mixed bag. Some of that is my fault. I should have known better.

But when I take a step back and look at the bigger picture, I can see that the legacy of Nyayoism is alive and well. When Mr Odinga announced that he would carry forward his anti-government fulminations, I knew that his words would spook the regime of the day. It is advised by some of the least educated men and women Kenya has had the misfortune to be governed by. Mr Odinga might as well as have waved a red banner inferno of an enflamed bull because what he has done to an insecure, uncertain political institution is to remind it that it exists but only for the forbearance of the people it purports to govern (or rule, depending on your perspective).

Signs of the poor administrative chops of the advisors were evident on the day the president took the oath of office. In his speech, which must have been drafted by a small-minded man, he announced a major public policy shift that would have profound ramifications on the security state. The announcement, in and of itself, was not wrong or wrong-headed; what was wrong was the way it was going to be given effect. The president used the words "I shall" where he, ideally, should have used the more malleable "My government shall".

A presidential speech is a mixture of what the president wants combined with what his minders think they can get away with without the president finding out. In this case, uneducated minders put the president on a collision course with the law. The matter was, eventually, addressed but it was the first in a series of bad ideas that don't seem to be reducing.

I do not purport to know what goes on in Kitchen Cabinets but I have been around long enough to know that if your kitchen cabinet is full of chest-thumping my-way-or-the-highway windbags, it is unlikely to offer wise counsel or, in the event that the politics gets a bit heated, have the ability to form an effective war council.

When Michael Corleone chose to fight his war with the other Families in New York, he was wise enough to replace Tom Hagen with Albert Neri. Hagen, Micheal said, was not a wartime consiglieri; Neri was. And it is because of Al Neri that Michael trounced Barzini and his allies and punished Carlo Rizzo for his betrayal. There is a political war afoot; one side has an Al Neri in its ranks but the other side doesn't even have a Tom Hagen to offer counsel. Instead, different capos think of themselves as caporegimes when in fact, they are mere foot soldiers. They don't have the strategic intelligence to make the right moves in a political war.

Instead, you see them making statements that only they understand and appeal only to their own constituents. They paint the other side as, variously, under the sway of witchcraft, bloodlust and imbecility. They deny that the crowds that flock to the other side have agency. Instead, they paint them as unwitting dupes. This is not a message that will resonate with them. It will, instead, piss them the fuck off. Unintelligent and overconfident men tend to make these kinds of mistakes. More broadly, the administrative state has fallen more and more under the sway of these men. As a consequence, routine administrative functions have been undermined. Only the people will suffer, especially those who are vulnerable, weak and poor.

Media whores, slave-owners and land-grabbers

There are many things that require the attention of the news press. Children, for example, continue to suffer at the hands of their teachers, caregivers and parents. Recent months have borne witness to the cruelties inflicted on our young ones by those who have, or should have, a sworn duty to keep them safe from such cruelties. Also, for those who care to pay attention, young women have died at the hands of their intimate partners. Many have been murdered in their homes and the perpetrators of the crimes have been allowed to get away with murder. 

Rather than report comprehensively on the death and injuries visited on the vulnerable, the news press has paid overwhelming attention to the shenanigans of a five-times failed presidential candidate and his entourage. This is nothing new. Not even further proof that newsmen are now part and parcel of his entourage has come as a surprise. Editors and their predecessors see nothing shamefaced in admitting that they are on the payrolls of political belligerents, and have consigned news reporting to the ash heap of history.

It would make sense if Kenyans still bought newspapers or generated enough advertising revenue from watching Kenyan news programmes. But they don't. Instead, Kenyans, the vast majority of them being young or youthful, eschew reporting of any kind and instead rely on entertainment programmes (morning sex talk shows are particularly popular) for their news. Maina and King'ang'i in the morning and their ilk are the current stars of news journalism, shaping political ideologies amidst the salacious sexcapades they have to offer. You only need to listen to the likes of the Leaders of the Majority Party to get a sense of what they consider newsworthy political decision-making.

When a "seasoned" former news editor, long after he ceased to shape opinion in his newspaper's Op-Ed pages, is still offered a byline to write reckless screeds where he equates Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first and only president-for-life, to the slave-owning George Washington, and casting the land-grabbing of the former and the slave-owning of the latter as neither here nor there, you know that the news press has stopped thinking of itself as the conscience of the nation and has, instead, become the whore house of dead ideas. It doesn't matter whether it is the legacy press or the upstart new media organisations that are plying their trade, the journalism on offer is no longer intended to inform, educate and entertain, in that order, but to is meant to camouflage the deep structural infirmities in the body politic that continue to be hollowed out by a corrupt political class with the connivance of a corrupt news media corporatocracy.

What gets shoved to the sidelines, ignored or buried, are the petty indignities and life-shattering abuses Kenyans have to endure at the hands of the political classes and the state institutions at their command. Children, who must be protected, nurtured and encouraged, have become regular targets of the state (young Baby Pendo is one of thousands of victims) either through actual state-sanctioned violence,  or official neglect (Junior Secondary School fiascos are just the latest iteration of state apathy). It is the soul of this nation that is endangered because news editors think being cute about slave-owning and land-grabbing is the height of original thinking.

Chase them from the temple

I could have told you, to a moral certainty, that what happened was going to pass. A particularly voluble member of the National Assembly, and his counterpart in the national Executive, had primed the pump with alleged midnight meetings and not-so-subtle public fulminations against their bitter rivals. What has become boringly predictable is the way that the ministers of religion, majority of whom preach a particularly virulent strain of Christian evangelism, roused themselves and decided to share their two bits of wisdom on how to address the political crisis.

I have had it told that they are no longer ministers of religion; they wear the accoutrements of religious piety while in actual fact they are like lice and ticks, sucking the blood of innocents and infecting them with debilitating diseases. When the new regime took office, the minsters of religion tripped over themselves, abasing themselves in front of the new potentate, in the hopes that their earthly desires Ould be satiated: land, money and political power. No less a personage than the provost of the All Saints Cathedral has laid bare the threadbareness of their piety, accusing them of abandoning their flocks and endangering the congregants' immortal souls.

No one seriously thinks that the Christian church in Kenya has any sort of moral authority anymore. It doesn't matter whether it is the Church of Rome, Church of England or the various strains of evangelism, all are now tarred with the same brush. Ministers of religion have abandoned the teachings of the gospel, only suing the gospel as a cudgel to browbeat Kenyans into toeing some imaginary line that may or may not have anything to do wit faith and salvation.

Instead, the Christian church has become a home where sinners don't go to have their sins washed away, but celebrated and valorised for massive backhander. You average minister of religion nowadays swans around in a Range Rover or Mercedes-Benz, lives in a palatial mansion, opens "branches" in the USA and UK, and sponsors his children to holidays in Paris and Milan, all out of the Sunday offertory and annual tithe he extorts from his flock. And with that wealth, the minister of religion now seeks political power, not to perform the Lord's work, but to expand his empire of vice and avarice.

Jesus once took a whip and chased the moneylenders out of the temple. It may now take a rebellion from among the faithful to strip the wolf of his sheep's clothing and install a true man of God to lead them in worship. If the minsters of religion had truly cared about the fate and welfare of their flock, they would not have allowed them to be used and abused by the political classes. Instead, they would have cursed the ministers of politics and cast their demonic souls out of the church. As it is, the ministers of religion and the politicians they have abased themselves before are the devils our mothers warned us about when we were children.

Bullshit reasons and constitutional rights

It's fascinating to watch the libertarians and bill of rights zealots twisting themselves in knots as they argue that political contestation must be tied to some reasonable and rational objective. In their world, the bill of rights does not just serve the purpose of recognising, affirming, protecting and enjoying rights and fundamental freedoms, but in order for the bill of rights to make sense, the exercise of those rights or fundamental freedoms can only make sense if there's a rationale and logical objective. In short, for example, one cannot just pick "demonstration" as the bit of Article 37 of the Constitution of Kenya as the right to exercise, but the exercise of that right must be, and only be, to present a petition to a public authority and that the petition must serve some rational and logical purpose. You can't have a bullshit reason to hold a political demonstration.

Obviously I think that position is, well, bullshit.

You cannot have a liberal constitutional democracy if the limitations on the bill of rights are limitations tied to neo-liberal and capitalist philosophies of utility, profit and economic advancement. The constitution, as someone rightfully argued, serves the people; it is not the people who serve the constitution.

What Raila Odinga attempted on the 20th March was to exercise, as fully as possible, his rights under Article 37. Sure, he "declared" the 20th March to be a public holiday. Only a moron thinks that his declaration was [a] the unauthorised exercise of State authority or [b] an unlawful attempt to establish a government otherwise than in compliance with the Constitution of Kenya. Sensible Kenyans understood that what he was doing was pressing his demands in the language that resonated with the tens of thousands of Kenyans who agree with him. Also, no one can ignore the fact that he ignored the risks associated with his maandamano; whenever he calls people out onto the streets, some of them engage in violence unprovoked. Be that as it may, Mr Odinga and the politicians who joined in his calls for maandamano had every right to exercise his rights under Article 37 even if his demands are utter bullshit and serve no reasonable or logical purpose.

We are repeatedly reminded by a highly-motivated segment of the political and economic classes that "Kenya is a capitalist society" and that political demonstrations, such as those of the 20th March, pose a risk to livelihoods and economic activity and, therefore, they must be tempered. One lawyer had the temerity to suggest that political demonstrations should last, at most, one hour and then the demonstrators should go do something meaningful, like go to work. This is the kind of bullshit that prevents Kenya from doing the work needed to build a constitutional culture.

Obviously I am not a fan of that kind of bullshit.

I don't know if Mr Odinga is on the right side of history and I don't care. I care that flimsy neo-liberal rubbish forms such a firm foundation for the watering down of the letter and spirit of the bill of rights. I care that as a consequence of such subversive reasoning, State officers see nothing wrong in actively preventing law-abiding Kenyans from exercising their constitutional rights, refuse to actively take steps to protect Kenyans' fundamental freedoms, and, instead, provoke violence as part of their strategy for winning (and losing) political arguments.

In my opinion, Mr Odinga, since at least The Handshake, continues to demonstrate why he should bow out of the political limelight. Not because his current political campaign lies on a foundation of bullshit. It does, but I don't care. Not because his hardcore supporters are blind to all reason. They are, but I don't care. Not because his core constituency is a pale shadow of what it was in 2002/2003. It is, but I don't care. It is because he is a man out of time, both with the people he would wish to rule and the ideas he should have to rule effectively. MS-DOS in a world of AI, a rotary telephone in a world of VoIP.

But no matter how over-the-hill I believe him to be, so long as he does not call for the violent overthrow of the Constitution, the State or the government, I don't care that he wants to bring his supporters to KICC every Monday and Thursday so that they can take a traffic-snarling stroll to State House. He can do that every single day for the week to his heart's content. Article 37, which a majority of adult Kenyans adopted at a referendum, affords him that right. The only, and best, way to beat Mr Odinga at his game, is to marshal the political arguments that renders his nugatory. Only good ideas can beat bad ones. Not police batons, teargas and lethal 7.62mm rifle bullets.

Bottom-up listening

I used to work for a public complaints agency in the mid-2000s. We received complaints from around the country, investigated them, attempted to resolve them using alternative dispute resolution process such as mediation and conciliation, and made recommendations to public agencies on lasting solutions. My bosses were drawn from different backgrounds, and they cared passionately about the issues we dealt with. I learnt a great deal from them on how to approach the vulnerable and forgotten peoples of Kenya, how to draw them out to state sometimes painful truths to agents of the government, and how to listen to their issues with empathy and compassion.

By the time I was leaving the agency, I think, I had formed a philosophy of what lawyering is supposed to be: solve the problems of the client before you without substituting yourself for your client. Sometimes, in order to solve the client's problem, you have to prevail in a trial before a judge, magistrate or tribunal. Sometimes, it means finding an alternative way to litigation, such as the aforementioned alternative dispute resolution processes. And sometimes the problem cannot be solved and this needs to be communicated with compassion and empathy to your client. But in all cases, it is not my ego that needs to be assuaged, but my client's problem that needs to be solved.

The past four years have seen Kenya suffer a mega-drought not experienced since the 2007/2008 El Niño/La Niña effect. As early as the 2014/2015 seasons, we knew that the situation was going to get dire and going by our history, famine was all but assured. Famine response is, to my mind, a factor of time, logistics and speed. Time to plan, the logistical capacity to acquire, position and pre-position famine relief supplies, and speed in decision-making. Secondary measures include environmental rehabilitation programmes to build resilience in at-risk communities, especially communities that rely almost exclusively on rainfall such as pastoralists.

Drought, and famine, do not just affect pastoralists in Kenya; the whole of the Horn of Africa has been affected. Somalia, South Sudan, southern Ethiopia and northern Uganda are facing the same dire situation that Kenya is. Consequently, there is a fierce competition for scarce grazing fields. What makes the situation truly dangerous is the flow of small arms into Kenya from the battlefields in Somalia, South Sudan, southern Ethiopia and northern Uganda. In my opinion, no matter how effectively small arms are mopped up from the communities in Turkana, West Pocket, Baringo, Samburu and Laikipia, so long as the disarmament does not affect Somalia, South Sudan, southern Ethiopia and northern Uganda, fresh supplies of small arms will still make their way into Kenya, and they will still contribute to the instability experienced in the areas where pasture land is to be found.

The solution, to my mind, is not to wage war against peoples who are fighting for their survival. It is not to find new, questionably legal, way to exclude them from pasture lands belonging to "other communities". The solution lies in building resilience in those communities. Resilience can only be built by rebuilding public institutions and public utilities that serve the needs of pastoral communities. One of them is a logistics network that can move large herds of livestock long distances in a short period and with minimal losses; a banking and finance system that accommodates capital created by livestock; and a livestock and livestock products marketing system that can act as an emergency off-taker for communities willing to translate their livestock herds into cash.

But in order for these kinds of lasting solutions to work, Government must learn how to talk to these communities without patronising, infantilising or threatening their members. Government officials need to leave their suits, and the air of superiority the suits go with, in Nairobi. This is the whole essence of bottom-up decision-making. You listen to the communities at risk; you listen with compassion and empathy; you listen with the aim of solving their problems, not to win a war. Any other solution will be short-lived, much-reviled, and only lead to even greater resistance in the future. I fear that the mistakes of the past are being repeated.

Mr. Odinga and the Presidents

Fifteen years ago, Raila Odinga was cheated of electoral victory. The electoral theft led to widespread violence that was ruthlessly suppressed. Many Kenyans were killed. Hundreds of thousands were displaced from their homes. If it was not for the intervention of the global community, Kenya might not have been able to put itself together again. After tense negotiations, Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga agreed to form a government of national unity.

Twenty years ago, or thereabouts, Raila Odinga led his party and a bunch of other into a merger with Kanu. He was appointed the Secretary-General of the merged political party. When President Moi cheated Mr. Odinga out of a fair and transparent political party nomination process to be the presidential flag bearer, he decamped again, and led his bunch of rebels into a merger with Mwai Kibaki's Democratic Party and Charity Ngilu's Social Democratic Party, among others, and formed the National Rainbow Coalition, that went on to win the 2002 general election.

Five years ago, after months of political instability that arose after the hotly-contested 2017 presidential election, Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta shook hands and decided to bury the hatchet. Initially, William Ruth, the then Deputy President, supported The Handshake but when it became clear that Uhuru Kenyatta was deterred to renege on the agreement that he would put his weight behind Mr. Ruto for the presidency, Mr. Ruto became a bitter opponent of the arrangement. When Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga initiated the BBI process to amend the constitution, Mr. Ruto secretly financed law suits to defeat the proposals in the courts. He was successful in his efforts.

Now it is barely six months since President Ruto was sworn in as Kenya's fifth president and Mr. Odinga is sniping at his heels with his programme of political rallies aimed at weakening the President's grip on his government. Trial balloons have been floated suggesting that maybe it is time for the President and Mr. Odinga to ink their own version of a political agreement along the same lines as the agreements Mr. Odinga has had with Daniel Moi, Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta. It is, the whispers strongly insist, the only way that the new president can turn his attention to governing and dealing with the myriads of challenges facing his government, including the precarious economic situation, the dangerous effects of the prolonged drought, the violence engulfing pastoralist areas in the North Rift, and Kenya's military engagements in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The proposals for a new handshake are not as asinine as they appear; they would fall neatly into the same category as all previous Raila Odinga handshakes with Kenyan presidents. Despite his advancing age, and unkind insinuations that he is over the hill, Mr. Odinga remains the most consequential political leader in Kenya for at least three generations. Mwai Kibaki, president and all, only has two things by which we remember him: the 2007-2008 crisis and Kenya Vision 2030. Uhuru Kenyatta will be remembered for the scandals surrounding the National Youth Service, the Standard Gauge Railway and the Nairobi Expressway Project. Mr. Odinga, on the other hand, has had a hand in the 1982 attempted coup (for which he was detained for almost a decade), putting the final nail in Kanu's coffin, the rallying call in the 2002 general elections (Kibaki Tosha!) and, in one way or the other, the final push for a new constitution.

President Ruto and his acolytes would be best served by not dismissing the handshake idea out of hand. So long as Mr. Odinga can marshal tens of thousands of Kenyans, rich and poor alike, from all ethnic backgrounds, to the streets, the president cannot afford to dismiss Mr. Odinga as an old political has-been. Whether or not  it will dawn on the president that it is better for Mr. Odinga to be inside the tent pissing out depends almost entirely on whether or not he has honest advisors telling him the truth, as opposed to courtiers hell-bent on making a fast shilling. If for no reason, the president must bear in mind that three different presidents saw the wisdom of having Mr. Odinga in their governments.

New asshole same as old asshole

We are all guilty of seeing ourselves as smarter, better, more intelligent, cleverer, more decisive...than the guy we think is an idiot. We are twice as guilty when the foundation of our hubris are academic credentials that contain the words "first class", "distinction", "summa cum laude" and the like. But our heads swell to gargantuan proportions when we compare ourselves to the equally egoistic members of the political classes. It is human nature.

However the judgment of the masses, sometimes, where the instinct for self-promotion has been ruthlessly suppressed, is quite often informative. In the Kenya of the here and now, the masses are witness to the most witless Cabinet Secretary since the chef shuffled off to do local politics in his county. Our hapless maker of roadside declarations was touted by some of his most ardent boosters as a genius. He had a reckless tongue, for sure, but were relentlessly assured that once is hind parts sat on the seat of real power, he would reveal his true genius.

The truth, unsurprisingly, is that he has not covered himself in glory. He doesn't know anything about his ministry. He doesn't care to know anything about his ministry. What is worse is that he is incapable of the self-reflection necessary to know that he doesn't know anything. And so, in his customary brash manner, he has made a raft of policy pronouncements without caring whether or not he has the power, the intellect and technical skill needed to make the pronouncements.

He has opined on the status of various dockets out of his purview with the certainty of a religious zealot flying by the seat of his pants. It doesn't appear that he has consulted anyone. Not his technical staff (whom he says he has too many of that he doesn't need). Not his Cabinet colleagues. Not the government's chief legal advisor. Not even his former parliamentary colleagues. He is flying solo because, in his mind, he is the smartest man in the room because he told us he is the smartest man in the room.

His arrogance would have him believe that he is the first one to do what he is doing. He forgets that the last cabinet had a man with a similarly gargantuan ego who made a hash of his docket that it will take the better part of a decade to put right. Like our current tornado of shit, the previous guy would not listen to wise counsel. Would not consult technical experts. Would interfere in the mandates of others. And felt that it was his duty, at least once a week, to remind his colleagues and underlings that they were imbeciles. He is not facing the prospects of ten years of political inertia. Nether his previous colleagues nor the current powers-that-be are interested in giving him the time of day.

What distinguishes us from the people we loath, quite often, is our capacity for self-reflection and humility, the ability to admit when we are wrong, and the intellectual honesty to ask for help whenever we need it. We don't always do these things, but we do them often enough not to be reviled by our families, friends and co-workers. Our enfant terrible has spent a decade being told that he is the best of the best, being valorised for some of the most asinine political decisions he has ever made. Now that he has tasted real power, he is unlikely to have the humility to take a step back and ask, "Do I know what I'm supposed to do?"

Scapegoats and camouflage

If you were to go by the recent news stories, you would think that the greatest threat Kenya faces today is from the Alphabet Mafia. The Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transexuals and Queers, better know as the LGBTQ, are at the heart of a conversation that has roused ministers of religion and ministers of government, and all manner of characters in-between, to fulminate and froth at the mouth. The anti-LGBTQ tinder was lit by a spark set by the Supreme Court when it said that the freedom of association protected in Article 36 of the Constitution permitted the registration of a non-governmental body that seeks to address the discrimination that the members of the LGBTQ community face. That the Supreme Court very carefully added that it was not repealing section 162, 163 and 165 of the Penal Code seems to have passed the fulminators and mouth-frothers by.

The effect of the news-media attention on the "implications of the Supreme Court judgment" very neatly deflected from a much more present and on-going scourge: the sexual exploitation of women, girls and children at the hands of labour recruiters working in Kenya's tea farms. I don't know if you noticed how swiftly the BBC expose of the sexual exploitation of women, girls and children in tea farms fell off the front pages of the news tabloids and how the socialites masquerading as TV journalists stopped telling the story or asking the hard questions.

These things are not even a well-kept secret. If you have worked in or worked with or worked for a tea company in Kenya, then you know that exploitation is at the core of its operations and no exploitation is as devastating as sexual exploitation of the vulnerable. The managers knew. The brokers knew. The "international" buyers knew. We knew. But everyone, other than the victims, chose to pretend that unless it was said out loud, then it didn't exist, it hadn't happened, no one had suffered. But what added to the shards of glass piercing my wounded heart is the knowledge that every single minister of religion that had ever plied his or her trade in or around the tea farms knew this to be true and did nothing except to participate in the anti-LGBTQ pantomime being enacted as camouflage for that abominable scourge. God, my friend, hates the LGBTQ far more than he hates rapists.

Two things can be true at the same time: the Supreme Court did not legalise carnal acts against the order of nature, and women, girls and children are being systematically raped by powerful men in tea farms. But it is the latter that is, or should be, consequential. It is the latter that should arouse our outrage, rage, and violent anger.

Not even the ministers of religion have bothered to sit with the awful, terrible, terrifying reality of the devastation that sexual exploitation brings to an individual, a family, a community. The utter humiliation. The utter shame. The physical and psychological subjugation. The violence against bodies, spirits and psyches. None of this has pricked the conscience of God's messengers. But paint a rainbow anywhere in Kenya today and watch as a mob, hopped up on religious fervour, descends upon you with the intent of killing you, physically and stochastically, because you have dared to ignore God's abhorrence of the Alphabet Mafia.

The men, and it almost certainly all men, who perpetrated and oversaw the perpetration of gross violence will get away with their terrible crimes. They will retire to opulent wealth. They will harden their hearts and deafen their ears because they know that even God's messengers don't think they did anything wrong. God's messengers only care for one thing today: how much lucre is given by the devout to the ministry. Gold is God. Suffering is no longer of concern to God.