Looking for a legacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pufferies of the self-absorbed

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

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

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

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

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

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

The kumira-kumira era is no improvement

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

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

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

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

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

Put the people first

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

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

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

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

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

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

Putting the genie back

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

We are human

Most Kenyan adults are not infant-like. They are sensible women and a few men. They hold down, tenuously sometimes, gainful employment. They pay, if their incomes warrant it, their taxes. They found families. They are respected members of the community, for the most part. Few of them still have the child-like curious wonder that leads them to foolhardy stunts like attempting to pet lions or hand-feed buffaloes in the wild. They are, in other words, sensible people who keep a healthy distance from wildlife and don't allow child-like exuberance to lead them to ruination.

The Cabinet Secretary for Tourism and Wildlife is not one of those sensible Kenyans. He allows fits of pique to guide his tongue. And when his tongue is lubricated by high dudgeon, he lets slip the mask that Kenyan nawabs wear to hide their incivility, their hubris, their boys'-club mta-do-ness. The CS, every now and and then, is a manifestation of the contempt with which he and his colleagues hold other Kenyans. You can almost hear them doing everything in their power to suppress their innate desires to use terms such as "serf" to describe their fellowman.

It must chomp his butt that Kenya, officially anyway, is a democratic republic in which citizens' rights are protected by the Constitution including the freedom to demand that senior civil servants, like CSs, should be held to account for their acts of omission, commission and stupidity. For decades now, it has been impossible to get a word in edgewise whenever questions of public policy have been raised or when the aftermath of the implementation of those policies has led to tragedy. Bwana CS came of age when the citizen-serf was to be seen, some of the time, but never to be heard at all. Any citizen-serf that piped up invited the mkono wa serikali to straighten him out post haste. He still can't appreciate that those days, though not completely gone, are being erased with the rough sandpaper of a citizen-driven political and constitutional awakening that, in the fullness of time, will see him and his colleagues accounting for their acts of omission, commission and stupidity in very public and very humiliating ways. It is only a matter of time.

But we must ask: how come Kenya has been cursed by so many petulant political leaders, incapable of keeping their rage on short leashes, allowing it to guide their tongues into the most revelatory explosions? Mr Go-To-Hell is not the first senior civil servant to explode with contempt at the people seeking to hold him to account. He is merely the latest, and saddest. (Sad because he has been forced to swallow his words in public even though he hedged, hemmed and hawed about how he is only human" as if the rest of us are stoic rocks against whom the frustrations of life merely chip and shatter.)

 

If we were to take out our frustrations on the people who have engineered those frustrations, Mr Nobody-Has-Appointed-Me and his colleagues, and the minions that do their bidding, would we be justified in saying that we are but humans when their palaces lie in ruins? Will they accept our excuses as their Prados are smoking husks in the car parks of their golf clubs? Will they hell!

Change the design

Every now and then, Nairobi's notorious public transport suffers a seizure that makes everything decidedly and determinedly worse. Yesterday was such a day. It rained, briefly, in the afternoon. Public transport was screwed up for the rest of the day and well into the evening. My commute back home always begins at the Ambassadeur Hotel stage, but the serpentine queues were to dispiriting to join. So I decided to walk the three and half kilometres to City Stadium stage to catch the Nº36 matatu. And everything that is dysfunctional with our public transport system was revealed.

My walk took me past Tusker stage on Ronald Ngala Stree, through the Central Bus Station, down Uyoma Street to Race Course Road, then left onto River Road past the OTC stage and onto Landhies Road next to Muthurwa Market and past the Kamukunji jua kali market and finally the City Stadium stage on Jogoo Road. The number of pedestrians is massive, but it is not a problem. Cities are the people and if you don't love people then cities are not for you. The "hawkers", in their hustle, with their wares spread out on the pavement and their small children swirling in and out of pedestrians' legs, weren't a problem either. You can't knock a human who has found a way to earn a living that requires patience, resilience, people skills, a thick skin and, surprisingly on many occasions, a sunny disposition. Hawkers are Nairobi and Nairobi is hawkers.

What really was wrong is the absolute lack of space and the incredible noise that public transport generates. It is astonishing, quite frankly. Successive City Fathers have prioritised motorised transport and real estate development at the expense of small-scale and itinerant traders, and pedestrians. Witness the incumbent tom-tomming his road-building and road-repairing initiatives in competition (or is it partnership?) with the national road-building agencies and Ministry of Roads. Whenever they talk about "hawkers", they do so with disdain and anger, promising to "relocate" them to "ultra-modern" and purpose-built markets, "out of the CBD". They don't see hawkers as a valuable component of our city, humans who contribute to its vibrancy, colour and inimitable sense of hope.

It is the same attitude they bring, that they have always brought, when dealing with matatus, the second most common form of transport (after walking) in Nairobi. Most matatu operators are honest and diligent, shifting millions of Nairobians daily from home to work and back. Most matatu operators are made criminals by a system that prioritises money over people.

The three kilometres between Ambassadeur and City Stadium is a study at missed opportunities and an obsession with construction at all costs. Pavements are small, poorly designed and frequently commandeered by motorists, motorcyclists, bicyclists, mkokotenis and matatus, in addition to the pedestrians and hawkers who serve them all. Drains and sewers are broken or blocked. And when it rains, even paved pavements turn to muddy paths, forcing many onto the roads and oncoming traffic. It is no wonder that pedestrians (and hawkers) make up the vast majority of fatalities and injuries in road traffic accidents. Half the reason why pedestrians receive the short end of the stick is not just because the City isn't designing public spaces with pedestrians in mind, it is also because building owners have decided to maximise the space they occupy by building on all of it, and building walls on pavements to keep out the riffraff. As a result, more and more people are walking on lesser and lesser space and, consequently, a hierarchy of blame ensues: motorists blame boda bodas who in turn blame mkokotenis who in turn blame pedestrians and who in turn blame hawkers and who are frequently the violent target of the City itself.

We should design the city with the people in mind, re-engineer it to make lives more livable. If we persist in designing the city for private motorists and BRTs that we will rarely use, this sense of violence will never end. For sure, unless dukas spring up where pedestrians and hawkers do business, they will never truly go away. Our problem is not an infrastructure one. It is a design one. Our design problems all emanate from a refusal to see humans, in all their colourful variety, as the reason the city exists. Change the design.

Jicho pevu, blinded

On the evening of 27 April 1993, a DHC-5 Buffalo transport aircraft of the Zambian Air Force crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after taking off from Libreville, Gabon. The flight was  carrying most of the Zambian national football team to a FIFA World Cup Qualifier against Senegal in Dakar. Kenya's energy cabinet secretary, seemingly reeling in shock at the arrest and arraignment of senior officers of the Kenya Power company, compared the arrests to one of the most devastating air disasters in Zambian history. The waziri, oblivious to the incredible insensitivity of his words or sentiments, epitomises the ukubwa syndrome that afflicts senior public officers like nothing else ever will.

Every single day, indignities are visited on Kenyans by the Big People in Government, business, academia, religious ministries, and civil society. To be in command of vast sums of money and to employs large numbers of Kenyans s to give you power and to have power in Kenya is often to blind oneself to everything else except the retention and expansion of that power, even if it means forgetting a cardinal truth: even a cat may stare at a king.

It has been an incredible month of insensitivity, especially from our political masters. A governor surrendered himself to the anticorruption commission, was taken into custody, detained and had his bail application determined while he was in custody. The governors' association was unhappy with this and demanded the same executive immunity enjoyed by the president while in office. Meanwhile, a group of twenty parliamentarians were sponsored by Parliament to attend the World Cup finals in Russia. All their expenses were catered for by Parliament. When challenged on their seemingly valueless junket, Parliament's officials first attempted to justify it by saying that these parliamentarian were "benchmarking" so that Kenya could see how to host major tourneys like the World Cup in the future. But soon enough the parliamentarians set aside all pretense and one of them declared shamelessly that he was not about to spend his money to attend the World Cup when Government was there to do so for him.

We are used to Government functionaries being treated like royalty, with access to every kind of luxury an privilege while millions of Kenyans suffer poverty on a scale that has to be seen to be believed. We have never strongly questioned the iniquity and inequity of taxes being spent for the comfort of a political class that has consistently failed to ameliorate the suffering of the masses. And every time we are shocked that a hitherto champion of the downtrodden will enter the citadel and, while promising to bring it all crumbling down, joins in the acquisitive avarice of the rest of the class. What was once billed as the "grim eye", it turns out, was nothing more than the green-eyed monster rearing its ugly head. It is a story that repeats itself over and over. And so whenever they find themselves on the wrong side of things, having gotten used to privilege in all things, they will demand further privileges to ameliorate their suffering. And their colleagues and friends will rend their clothes in the streets, pour ash over their hair and wear sackcloth until the unfairness ends. It is why Charles Keter does not see the offensive irony of equating the arrest of Ben Chumo and his colleagues to the death of twenty-five Zambians.

Sooner or later, we keep telling ourselves, the music will stop and we will build a more equitable society. I fear that our famed optimism blinds us to a harsh reality: so long as the society we dream off is to be erected on the foundation of the society we have today, with the structures of power that keep it in place, we will never succeed in that ambition. The power structure we have now is designed to exploit the majority. It is not built for national ambitions. It is the manifestation of elitist greed. In the end, it will consume us all.

Why do they hate children?

The Chairman of the Kenya Tourism Federation wrote an open letter to the students of Kenya's boarding schools entitled "An open letter to students turned arsonists". He did not mince words nor hold back his views. The main thrust of his missive seems to be that regardless of the circumstances prevailing in boarding schools, schoolchildren should only react by "being able to express themselves without resorting to idiotic violent means". It seems that his argument is that schoolchildren should never, ever resort to violence, and if they do, they should face the full force of the law, including imprisonment where they will meet others like them who will teach them a lesson.

The Chairman of the Kenya Examinations Council was not to be left behind. He warned all children who were learning in schools whose facilities had been set aside that regardless of how many schools the students burned down, the examinations body would administer the exams, even if it meant doing so under trees. He warned the children that his council would not be intimidated by the ongoing unrest in schools. He and his council would not be moved by the demands of the children.

The Cabinet Secretary for Education, however, takes the cake. In a stemwinder of a press conference, she covered familiar ground regarding the reasons for the student unrest. National examinations, and the desire by children to cheat in them, featured prominently in her assessment of the basis of the recent unrest. She had similarly hard truths to impart on the children: not only would she encourage the prosecution of any child accused of participating in school unrest, she encouraged the Directorate of Criminal Investigations to refuse to grant them certificates of good conduct in future. In addition, she would make sure that their school leaving papers indicated that they were troublemakers and should be denied a university education and, with it, any opportunity to make something of themselves. She did not just want them to be punished; she wanted their lives to be destroyed.

Government in all its manifestations, and the men who agree with Government's current policies, seems to be in the throes of an anti-child programme of astonishing width and depth. It started with the ham-fisted manner in which the Free Maternity programme was implemented, and then sabotaged, by Ministry of Health officials and their boosters. Then came the multi-billion shilling disaster that was the School Laptops Programme and the fascist way in which the new competence-based curriculum is being rammed down our throats. And this is just the official Government position on things that fundamentally affect the lives of Kenyan children.

But with the recent tirade by the Cabinet Secretary regarding student unrest it is now patently clear that no one in that Ministry gives two shits about the welfare of children. I initially thought that the manner in which the twin disasters at Moi Girls Nairobi had been dealt with had something to do with the powerful parents in that school who intervened in force. But by declaring her support for setting policemen on children for violent protests without addressing the root causes of the violence, I know for damn sure that she does not care at all. What she, and the Government she serves, want is to be obeyed without question and we should be grateful for any small accommodation Government makes.

Children should not set dormitories and other school property on fire. However, when they are brutalised by their teachers, when they are housed like badly treated pets, when their nourishment is of a quality that will make a billy goat puke, when they are denied every single avenue to decompress in the name of high passmarks, and when they are isolated from their parents and other social structures so that the truth about their straitened circumstances remains a secret, the only avenue is violence and I cannot in good conscience hold it against them. That Government, in the haughty demeanour of the Cabinet Secretary and the hostile arrogance of the KNEC supremo, cannot imagine the legitimacy and urgency of the children's demands should be a stark warning about the future and a reminder of the past: disobey us and we will end you. What should scare the bejeesus out of you is that there are influential members of the business community who think that this attitude is the right one.

It is astonishing that a country can be held hostage to the fascist designs of a few men and women. It is astonishing that the debate about the turn of things is confined to social media. But it is utterly crazy that we seem on a rail track headed for Armageddon and it seems that there is nothing we can do about it. What I don't understand is why they hate children with such violent viscera? Do you know?

Whither art thou, LSK?

We are concerned that Mr Omtatah is getting a lot of leeway in the courts. He relies on information provided by disgruntled elements in a corporation or in government using confidential and privilege information - LSK President Allen Gichuhi as quoted in the Daily Nation on the 2nd July, 2017 (Lawyers accuse Okiya Omtatah of 'taking their jobs')

Why is the Law Society of Kenya concerned with the leeway that the eponymous Okiya Omtatah enjoys in the hallowed halls of justice? What is it about Mr Omtatah's public interest litigation that drives its members up the wall? Could it be that the members of the Society resent being shown up for the empty suits that they are when it comes to the question of the protection of the rights and fundamental freedoms of Kenyans in a badly fractured country reeling from successive botched elections that have left dozens dead, thousands maimed and billions in public and private property looted or destroyed?

When you remember the Society's previous chairmen (before some idiot decided "president" was the title to have), the ones that stand out are the ones that refused to sup with the devil that is the carceral Kenyan State. Paul Muite, Gibson Kamau Kuria and Willy Mutunga stand out because they took one the Kanu Government when the "business community" had completely capitulated to the ruling party's dictates. They led the members of the Society in challenging the State whenever it exceeded its authority and many of its members paid a heavy price for standing up to the State and its agents. But since the heavy wattage campaign of Ahmednasir Abdullahi, the Society has slowly abandoned the central role it had played in the Second Liberation and, instead, it has taken up roles that have slowly compromised its principles. In fact, Kenneth Akide was the last LSK chairman who dared to challenge Government and only because it would have been unseemly of him not to in on election year.

But as a matter of course, today, the Society's interests almost always align with those of Government and very little with those of the people whose rights or fundamental freedoms are under siege today more than ever. And when its members run afoul of Government, or they end up dead at the hands of Government agents, lip service is all they will merit. Willy Kimani, an advocate who still espoused the principles that made the Society great, was murdered by policemen for simply doing his job, yet more than a year later, the Society's presidents are renown for mouthing the right words of grief without actually doing anything. Futile it might have been, but you can bet your last shilling that Paul Muite, Kamau Kuria and Willy Mutunga would have actively participated in the lawsuits that would have been brought against Government for the murder. In Miguna Miguna's words, "the Law Society of Kenya is a toothless dog".

Mr Gichuhi shouldn't be concerned that Mr Omtatah seems to enjoy great leeway in court or that he benefits from confidential information filched from the bowels of Government. No, he should be more concerned that he is the latest in a growing line of LSK chairmen and presidents who wish to form "string partnerships" with Government at a pivotal time in the history of Kenya. The LSK was not meant to be Government's partner beyond the place of its members as officers of the court. The LSK was meant to use the tools of the law available to it to hold the Government to account when every other public institution, including Parliament, had failed to do so. 

 

Mr Gichuhi's problem is that he thinks the LSK is an adjunct arm of the State and he hates Mr Omtatah for reminding him that it is not and never has been. Mr Omtatah has not "taken the mandate of the LSK" nor do Kenyans trust him more than the LSK because "he has made a name for himself". Mr Omtatah has filled the public interest vacuum that the LSK has created by its fecklessness and it is this fecklessness that has made more and more Kenyans to distrust it and repose their trust, instead, in Mr Omtatah. Soon enough, if Mr Gichuhi and his successors are not careful, the Society will not just be a pale shadow of its former self but it will be seen as having betrayed the confidence of the people and to be treated with the same contempt and suspicion that Kenyans treat much of their government. Attacking Mr Omtatah's work is not the solution to what ails the Society. It's time someone reminded the Socity's members of what made them respected and, in some cases, revered.

Succession politics are here to stay

politics n. the activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power.

It seems that Kenya's tabloid editors have conflated "politics" with the second Kenyatta succession. They pooh-pooh the "early 2022 campaigns" as if, in and of themselves, the campaigns are inherently bad. They also seem to have adopted the president's disapprobation of these campaigns, regardless of the merits of the disapprobation. No one seems to have asked the question though: why shouldn't politicians interested in the second Kenyatta succession not campaign for their preferred putative 2022 presidential candidate in 2018?

Kenya's politics are not unique in their obsessions with individuals, tribes or alliances. Kenya's politics are not unique in their failure to address public policies, the effects of poor governance or the outcomes of entrenched corruption. Kenya's politics has not been about policy, governance or anti-corruption for at least three decades and anyone that says otherwise simply has their head buried in the sand.

There are many things that are wrong in Kenya today. Daniel Moi, Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta either exacerbated them or studiously refused to do anything to ameliorate the suffering these things caused. What Kenya's presidents have done since Kenya became a republic is to cultivate cults of personality with a view to cementing their authority and clinging on to power at all costs. "Development" in all its iterations has not been a presidential priority if it did not assure presidents of absolute power at all costs.

Whether we like or not, and because of Kenya's poor recent history of presidential succession, the second Kenyatta succession is a ripe topic of political speculation and those intending to be on the winning side are going to exploit the inherent infirmities in the Jubilation to keep the subject alive regardless of presidential wishes. In pursuit of their agendas, they will use whatever political tools at their disposal, including exposing the corruption credentials of key members and the failures of the current regime to improve the economic prospects of many Kenyans. They will highlight the reasons why one person should not succeed the president and why another should. Regardless of how much it shifts focus from public policies and anti-corruption campaigns, the second Kenyatta succession will not fade into the background. It will be the organising principle of Kenya's politics till the matter is settled, one way or the other.

The fallout of the obsession with the second Kenyatta succession is not had to foresee. Elected politicians and senior members of the civil service will be compelled to pick sides, and with their choices, specific public policies will be pursued at the expense of others, which will in turn will affect the manner in which public funds are appropriated and spent. Economic development, such as it is, will not be the primary focus of Government, despite the lip service that will be paid to job-creation, a stable taxation policy, low inflation rates and rising consumer confidence. Who comes after President Kenyatta is the only subject that our political classes are capable of thinking through with some measure of clarity. They are not about to commit themselves to the hard task of doing what politics demands of them: governing.

Has he lost the war?:

Donald J. Trump, the forty-fifth president of the United States of America, is a showman of incomparable repute. He has undone two hundred and fifty years of received wisdom regarding the most powerful office in the world. In a span of a year and a half, he has demonstrated that the Shiny City on the Hill, in Caliph Ronald Reagan's immortal words, is no different from Kinshasa, Harare, Lagos, Kampala or Nairobi. The United States Capitol, and the White House down the street, have bared their faces, revealing graft and nepotism on a scale previously unknown. And with its unmasking, the USA is leading the rest of the western democracies to unmask themselves to reveal their base and corrupted systems.

However, despite the revelation that Western Democracy is but a euphemism for camouflage, more and more African men and women wish to emigrate to the West, because, even if they are hated and persecuted because of the colours of their skins, their chances of living decently appear greater over there than over here. It is why, on balance, if Uhuru Kenyatta and his African Union peers fail to improve the lives of their peoples, the rickety boats killing Africans in droves in the Mediterranean will keep on sailing.

Uhuru Kenyatta has decided to be the public face of the latest battle in the War on Corruption, an endeavour that has seen an ex-police sharpshooter (known as "Boss"), an ex-judge (brilliant jurist; terrible at everything else), an ex-law lecturer (a pompous windbag whose tenure was mercifully short), an ex-accountant (who tried to pretend that he did not understand what "conflict of interest" means and was shoved aside for his trouble) and now, an ex-church leader (a doddery old man with the naivete of a teenager), lead the combined armies of anti-corruption soldiers to humiliating defeats. In this war, battles have been fought and lost on numerous battlefields whose names have sounded the death knell of trust in the integrity of the State itself: Goldenberg, Triton, Kazi kwa Vijana, Anglo-Leasing, NYS...the list is long and its devastation almost total. Uhuru Kenyatta is waging the war with florid rhetoric and performative anger. But he appears not to have a war-fighting strategy. If this is true, all it will take is for one humiliating battle defeat for him to withdraw from the field and pursue less legacy-building disasters.

We have long known, even without the benefit of Donald Trump's revealing behaviour, that graft can only be fought on multiple fronts. The law is not the only weapon in the arsenal. Yet we have done precious little to bring the other weapons to bear. As a result, those weapons have been co-opted by the forces of corruption, wearing down their utility in this war, and eroding the public trust in political, cultural, academic, social and economic institutions. If the fiasco that is Bad Sugar is anything to go by, the heart of the State, the Cabinet, can't be trusted to shoot straight in this war, and this undermines almost completely the president's stated ambitions.

The president is waging a losing war if he cannot even acknowledge that his Cabinet can't be trusted, his police chiefs can't be trusted, his army commanders can't be trusted, and the public prosecutor and judges have axes to grind that have nothing to do with his war. All it will take for his rhetoric to be ineffective is another multibillion shilling NYS heist, not counting all the other multibillion shilling heists that have already taken place on his watch. Perhaps, he lost the war long ago. Only that he doesn't realise it.

The solution is not simply mass killings

Wishful thinking is now gaining adherents in Kenya if the rhetoric surrounding the War Against Corruption: Uhuru Edition is anything to go by. The most popular wish among the people seems to be a China-style death penalty for all public officials accused of graft. It isn't just a wish among the noisiest windbags sitting in the national legislature, but it pervades the firmament of the editorial classes of Kenya's tabloid media, including the nation's most popular tabloid. I was also a little shocked to see that senior leaders of Kenya's faith-based communities were of one mind when it came to graft in high places: death! (I shouldn't have been though; religious zealots tend to be particularly blood-thirsty.)

I have never understood the bloodlust that accompanies public discourse regarding knotty public policy problems and failures. It is as if death is a magic wand that you can wave and solve the nation's problem. The logic is dangerously simple: some people are bad; bad people should not live; any person who does something wrong is a bad person; all bad persons must be killed to save the country. There is little to no discourse about what allows "bad" people to thrive in the first place, though, every now and then an Op-Ed will slip through the net and demonstrate that sometimes the system encourages "bad" behaviour.

In recent months a familiar swindle has taken place and the public has been ribbed of billions in broad daylight. Also, despite reams of reports regarding the gaps in the public health surveillance system, contaminated food items have been smuggled into the country and dumped in the market. The death-penalty jihadists have insisted that every crook connected to NYS II and contaminated sugar must be executed to preserve the nation. Almost none has seen to fit to ask why, after everything that happened with NYS I, the loopholes associated with the tendering process at the National Youth Service were not closed. Or why the perennially dysfunctional sugar industry has not attracted the pro-reform zealots in the privatisation department.

Corruption, and its negative outcomes, is not just about corrupt people. It is also about systems that can be manipulated to corrupt ends. Of course I know that there are no perfect systems; but refusing to acknowledge that our plethora of anti-corruption laws, rules and regulations, institutions and strategic plans have failed in this war is to acknowledge that we are more enamoured of the rhetoric of anti-corruption as opposed to any actual anti-corruption campaign. The substance of the thing is sometimes more important than its form.

The solution is not simply mass killings.

Who stole from Shujaa Pride?

One of the funniest things I read today was about how mad the President's Chief of Staff and the headboy of the Kenya Rugby Union were because the members of Kenya's Sevens' team covered over the sponsor's name on their team jerseys when they absolutely flattened Fiji in France last night. Apparently, team Kenya covered the words "Make it Kenya", for which they were paid by Brand Kenya to wear, because their allowances from the sponsorship monies hadn't been paid by KRU. What was amusing is that it is the men who sweated it out on the pitch that were wrong - not the men who collected money on their behalf and refused to pay our athletes what they were rightfully owed.

In Kenya it is of vital importance that Government and its various sclerotic appendages are not embarassed, no matter how badly their officers act or how crooked their dealings are. It is the patriotic duty of every Kenya to ensure that Government always saves face - or at least it seems as if it is expected to be our patriotic duty. If the emperor has no clothes on then Godammit, it's you patriotic duty to pretend that he is wearing the finest three-piece suit from a Saville Row tailor.

It is why our rugby heroes will face the sharp end of the stick when they jet back into the country. How dare they show up the feckless penny-ante thievery of the men appointed to look after their welfare? How dare they show such disrespect to Brand Kenya and, by extension, Government by showing it up for failing or refusing to pay them their allowances? How dare they tell the whole rugby world that Government doesn't pay its dues? How dare they?!

If there is one thing that has allowed the war on corruption to seem like a lost cause, it is this instinct to protect public officers and the institutions they manage. It is why cover-ups are so easy in Kenya: don't embarass the boss has been elevated to a cardinal truth. It takes years and a brave whistleblower before the truth is ever known, by which time billions have been pilfered, frittered, and, all in all, remain unaccounted for. If the brave Sevens' team hadn't highlighted the fact that public funds, expended ostensibly on their behalf, had gone missing, would Kenyans have ever found out? I doubt it. Instead of Messrs Waita and Omwela losing their rags over the minor rebellion by the athletes, they must ask themselves what were the circumstances that prevented our hard-working and quite talented athletes from receiving their dues.  In short, who stole from Shujaa Pride?

The functional illiteracy of the nawabs

The most corrupt people are the ones who vote for us. When you go to the village they ask you, “Sasa utatuacha aje?”

The Woman Representative of Murang'a County in the National Assembly is an interesting person. When she accuses her electors of being the most corrupt merely because they ask for cash handouts from elected officials or candidates seeking political office, she betrays a staggering contempt for her constituents and a glaring self-delusion about her own culpability in the machinery of political corruption. She, and her fellow elected colleagues, have consistently been incapable of  articulating political messages that inspire and have always relied on campaign war-chests to buy votes from desperately poor voters.

The Woman Representative and her colleagues have reduced political activity to attending funerals and other social events that offer them an opportunity to "offer something small" at which they spend very little time speaking to how their constituents can play more constructive roles in the development of their constituencies but, instead, engaging in the worst forms of Kenyan politicking including sledging their rivals, defending the indefensible, and making false promises with an ease that sociopaths would appreciate.

She has engaged in most, if not all, the activities politicians in Kenya engage in when seeking votes or fighting to retain their seats and it is amazing that she would not only accuse her constituents of encouraging the graft that many of her colleagues routinely but that, somehow, this is sufficient grounds for insinuating that the people have endorsed political graft of all forms. It is a simple thought experiment: the next time she is asked for handouts while performing her political act, she should say no and let the chips fall where they may. If she is half the politician she thinks that she is, then she should persuade her constituents that despite her tight-fisted ways, she truly has their interests in mind and that they should re-elect her (and not elect her rivals).

The Murang'a politician is member of an assembly that has singularly failed to protect the welfare of the people by allowing the national executive to load up the public service with such a heavy debt burden that, regardless of the mellifluous songs about the "Big Four Agenda", it is almost certain that the personal circumstances of her constituents will not improve for a considerable period to come. When her personal circumstances have been affected, she has not hesitated to personally intervene with high government officials to seek redress. She doesn't seem to have translated that zeal for problem-solving to assist the constituents of Murang'a to ameliorate their straitened circumstances. Instead she chooses to insultingly accuse them of great corruption.

In any decent republic, the people make demands of their representatives. It is what representative government is all about. The Murang'a politician seems incapable of making the connection between her incredible capacity for not doing her job to the demands for cash handouts from her constituents. If she and her colleagues did their jobs properly, the number of beggars in Murang'a (as in the rest of the republic) would dwindle to only the most needy because the Government in which she serves would see to it that public policies encouraged wealth creation for all, thereby doing away with the need for the political classes to grace funerals with baskets of cash for the bereaved. She is an example of the functional illiterates we have sitting in the national legislature who continually refuse to acknowledge the depths of their ignorance and, thereby, fall to making wildly unreasoned accusations.

Discipline and disaster risk management

The "discipline" in disciplined forces has several implications. Members of police and military forces undergo training in a programmatic way so that when they are engaged in active combat, each member of the force reacts according to their  training, to perform their specific task without panicking, and therefore achieve a common objective. The sequence of events is programmed - drilled - into them such that from the moment the first shot is fired to the moment the operation is halted, each member of the force will follow the same sequence he or she was trained to follow, at the same speed that was drilled into them, without skipping a step, and thereby minimise errors and promote greater chances of victory or success.

This is the essence of disaster preparedness training, which it is increasingly becoming clear that many residential schools do not undertake. Disaster preparedness acknowledges the resources available, the environmental constraints, and the level of discipline of relevant stakeholders, and guides those in leadership to design a plan that will promote greater safety. An effective plan can save lives and minimise injuries. So too can a poor plan. But in the absence of any plan, more lives are at risk, more people are likely to be injured. An effective plan demonstrates that an organisation has the safety of its people as a priority.

Everything we now about residential schools these days points to one or two overriding priorities: high KCSE grades and a "good reputation". Very few residential schools seem to care that their students are safe. very few schools seem to have prioritised the safety of their students beyond the supply of fire extinguishers, the removal of window grills and the installation of outward-opening dormitory doors. Few, if any, residential schools drill their students on how to react to fires, stranger-invasions, medical emergencies, or any of a half dozen common disasters.

You don't need a law to prepare for disaster. Senator Mutula Kilonzo Jr's and Senator Johnson Sakaja's Bill is all well and good but it will be meaningless if the outcome is merely to create new bureaucracies that will do everything in their power to expand their procurement capabilities as opposed to establishing a pro-safety disaster-preparedness framework, especially for our institutions of learning where hundreds of thousands of children spend the vast majority of their time. If school principals and headmasters are waiting for a disaster risk management law, then the battle is already lost.

It is vital that school heads undertake to design plans and systems that account for the youthfulness of their charges and their propensity to panic as well as the capabilities of teaching and non-teaching staff. These plans and systems must foster trust between the school staff and the students so that early warning mechanisms can be employed without victimising or shaming the students. But at the heart of any plan or system is training and drilling: everyone must train to do their part as regularly as possible so that panicked reactions are minimised as much as possible.

For this to work, how schools are resourced and managed must change. The old model of relying on prefects and captains to provide the bulk of leadership of students must cease. Even in a school with a low number of teaching and non-teaching staff, primary leadership must be provided by the adults in charge. They have greater life experiences and are more mature when it comes to evaluating potential risks than the child-cum-student leaders. 

 

In the two recent disasters at Moi Girls Secondary School, Nairobi, it is apparent that neither the school's administration nor its teaching and non-teaching staff were prepared for any disaster and that their lack of leadership condemned 1,200 children to face disasters on their own. Part of the reason why the disasters occurred is because the teaching staff have a terrible relationship with the children, especially the principal, who have been described as high-handed, aloof and dictatorial, and unwilling to consider any of the suggestions made by their most vulnerable stakeholders. The captains and prefects, hell-bent on preserving the privileges they enjoy in the school, are an extension of the dysfunction in the leadership of the school and too immature to consider the implications of their sometimes harsh actions. If the school doesn't prepare a disaster risk management policy, a disaster preparedness plan and a disaster response plan, then it is just a matter of time before disaster strikes again.

Children are not part of the disciplined forces; however, our understanding of "discipline" has to evolve beyond using "discipline" as a catchall term for behaviour correction or modification of incorrigible children. We must start teaching children how to take action to protect themselves and others when they are faced with risks such as fire or stranger attacks. This must start by changing the violence-based teacher-student relationships that seem to prevail in our schools today.

Do you care about the girls?

How does a public sector manager keep her job after children die while under her charge? How does she even justify her continuing to hold office when children under her charge are attacked in the dead of night, assaulted and raped? Why are her subordinates so keen to protect the "good reputation" of the school, going to the [admittedly alleged] extent of directing children not to "talk about it" or offering the victim "scholarships" for her silence? Why would the policeman investigating the latest outrage go out of his way to speculate that the victims made things up so that "they didn't have to sit for exams"?

There are many things that are wrong with the way residential schools are managed these days, and all of them are epitomised by the callous, cold-hearted manner in which Moi Girls Secondary School, Nairobi is managed. Ten students died in September because the dormitory in which they were asleep wasn't designed with their safety in mind. Their principal had done nothing to improve the conditions in which these girls slept. Instead, her efforts have been channelled to the construction of a chapel!

The fire exposed the lies about the school's safety. The latest outrage only confirms that the principal hasn't learnt any lessons from tragedy. It is alleged that the school has a night complement of three guards: two men and a woman. They are buttressed by a matron, CCTV cameras and a perimeter fence. This is the reported sum total of all the features responsible for the safety of one thousand and two hundred girls. And on the night of the latest outrage, the matron sleep through it ll despite the screams of the victims. Did she sleep through the fire as well?

It is tempting to blame parents for not insisting that things had to change after the fire, but things are never that cut and dried, are they? In Kenya, where you go to secondary school is almost as important as what grade you get after your final exams. Quabbz has a solid reputation and many of its alumni have gone on to glittering careers. many parents are determined to secure bright futures for their daughters and if it means that their daughters will sleep six to a cubicle for them to have half a chance in life, then so be it. Parents will put up with mercurial principals if it means that their daughters will score As and Bs and they will endure irrational rules if these rules are a sign of the commitment of the principal to guide their children to academic success.

It is time to rethink things. Jael Muriithi has presided over two disasters. It is unconscionable that she still has a job. The board of management has supervised Ms Muriithi's disastrous leadership over the past year. It is unconscionable that its members are still in office. The least that Amina Mohammed can do is to relieve these people of their duties and send them packing. The most she could do is to make sure that they are never placed in charge of any institution of learning ever again and co-operate as fully as possible with the relevant authorities to see that they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for their acts of negligence. If she won't, then the parents must. It is the least they can do to ensure that if they send their daughters back to Quabbz in a week that their children will not be under the charge of the women and men who have let them down so terribly in the past.

It is alleged that one of the assailants is a teacher at the school. This is not the first teacher that has taken advantage of his position and authority over the girls to such sadistic ends when Ms Muriithi has been in charge. That alone disqualifies Ms Muriithi from being in charge of any school in future. How hands-off is her leadership style that she was unable to identify a sexual predator under her supervision? How mercurial is her leadership that vulnerable children are afraid to report to her that they are being preyed on by their teacher? Whatever else happens, she can't go back to Quabbz. If she does, if she is allowed to go back, then you will know that this world doesn't care a whit for its girls.

Forty years and a Governor, Mr Bindra

If leaders are your problem, where do they come from? Are they invaders imposed on you? Do they inherit their powers? Don’t you people go to the polls, and don’t you have the power to bring in people who know what they’re doing, who care about the public, who will play it right and not steal from the public purse? Don’t those people offer themselves for election, and what do you voters do when they appear? - Sunny Bindra, Water everywhere but none to drink! Where do Kenyans go wrong?

My introversion kept me from doing many things as a child, so much so that I was labelled "shy" by everyone. What it afforded me, though, was an opportunity to hone one of life's important skills: observation. Many introverts spend great amounts of time observing their world and those who occupy it, because it helps us navigate the noise and emotion that make up human affairs. I dedicated great time observing the most popular boys and girls and the ones among them that became rulers and those that became leaders. I applied these observations to politicians and there were minor differences here and there but, all in all, pretty much the same.

I also observed the children who followed the rulers and leaders. There were many factors that prevented them from becoming rulers or leaders, and left them, for the most part, content to be ruled or led. But the most important, I think, was the long term effect of losing battles, one after the other, especially to the rulers, while adults refused to intervene to forestall the creation of juvenile monsters, aka, bullies. There were two possible outcomes: apathy or resentment, neither of which tended to end well.

The same is the case with our political rulers. Almost all of them have bullied their way to the top, using monies they may have acquired, erm, creatively, to buy the loyalty of those whose loyalty is up for purchase, and using that loyalty as a blunt instrument in their ascent to the upper echelons of the political classes. In the early 'nineties, just as the gap between the national poverty and national ambition widened explosively, budding neo-Hitlers bought and paid for militias that became the principle weapons in winning political power. And the more innocent Kenyans became innocent victims of the violence, the more they withdrew from the political process, retreated to ethnic or familial cocoons, and allowed monsters to occupy all the ground that was available.

As Kenyans withdrew from political engagement, everything they took for granted fell apart: roads, schools, dispensaries, playgrounds, places of worship, cinemas, discotheques, football stadiums, social halls, markets, bus companies, universities, polytechnics, police stations, the railways, the national airline, the East African Industries, and so on and so forth. Nothing was spared. As more Kenyans withdrew and retreated, more bullies emerged until we find ourselves ruled by more bullies than leaders.

Nairobi City County is the harbinger of what awaits the rest of the country if all people of goodwill leave the ground open for the thieves, liars, murderers, pederasts and henchmen that have occupied the ground in Nairobi: dry taps, potholed roads, vanishing playgrounds, sewerage-soaked primary schools and a governor whose refrain is, "It was my predecessor's fault."

Mr Bindra, "these people" didn't emerge overnight, and we didn't willingly cede ground to them. For twenty-eight years, violence has been visited on the good and innocent among us. We have been abandoned by every official power. We have been fed a steady stream of lies: that family is everything; that the tribe is our protector; that when "our own" is up there, then we will be safe; that the other tribe is always out to get us; that the State will never help so long as it is not in "our" hands; that one can get away with anything so long as he has a big enough "army" standing with him. It used to be that when it came to the public purse, you knew who the crooks were. But after waiting for forty years for the crooks to be jailed and nothing happening...well, the effects are everywhere to see, aren't they.