Trying on My Prophetic Robes Again
Onyango Oloo Speculates from Montreal.
1.0. OK! I Cave In! Here is the Summary You Always Bug and Nag Me To Unleash!
Happy Now?
Read on...
Mwaka juzi, Kibaki alitosha.
Mwaka huu Kibaki ametuchosha na sasa anatuchekesha.
Kibaki ameisha.
Kwa sababu Kibaki hana maisha-kisiasa amefilisika kabisa.
Rough Translation:
"The year before last, Kibaki was the guy. This year we are fed up with him and he is laughable. Kibaki is finished. Because he has no more life-politically he is completely bankrupt."
I hope I am being very clear.
I do not want to divert attention by repeating my infamous observation that Kibaki's goose was cooked a long time ago and that his non-renewable lease on this life is about to expire.
I will do that on November 3, 2004, exactly one year after I first penned that controversial prediction. I have not yet revised my timetable by the way...
Today I want to give my take on the reason why people like Danson Mungatana and Beth Mugo are suffering from political dysentry.
I also want to reveal the class basis behind the shocking spinelessness of the Ufangamano Initiative and their desperate opportunistic proposals.
In addition I want to demonstrate why Raila Odinga, more than any other mainstream Kenyan politician seemed to have most accurately read the mood of the wananchi across the country more than any of his political rivals.
Lastly, I want to map out a possible scenario of how Kenyan progressive and democratic forces can emerge victorious- irrespective of whoever becomes President.
2.0. The Pettiness of the Kenyan Petit-Bourgeoisie Redux: The Ananchronism Known as the Ufungamano Posse
The other day the Ufungamano Initiative crew remounted their onslaught against the Bomas constitutional process by proposing their own that is not imprisoned by that old tyrant, Father Time. If they have their way, Kenya will have a constitution by the year 2006- exactly THREE years after NARC's much vaunted promises.
My friend Adongo has analysed the proposals from Ufungamano elsewhere on this blog and I do not need to rehash his arguments.
I just want to point out the class aspects of the Ufungumano Initiative. To my mind the latest proposals from Ufungamano represents the desperate last grasps and gasps of a certain section of the Kenyan petit-bourgeoisie which has seen itself progressively marginalized by other Kenyan social contingents.
For a long time the superstars of Ufungamano occupied centre stage-at one point some of them were seriously considered to be bona fide compromise Presidential candidates. Many of them made huge personal sacrifices that helped to bring down the Moi-KANU regime.
For their own class(and to a certain extent, ethnic, religious and regional) reasons, they hitched their wagon firmly to the DP dominated, Kibaki led NAK faction of the ruling bloc in the country that they quite mistakenly identified to be the "reformist" wing of NARC. On the contrary, NAK has proved to be nothing less than blood curdling and blood thirsty social leeches and vicious tarantulas not above resorting to shameless duplicity and state repression to entrench themselves in power. Within the space of a mere year and a half, the NAK back room boys have managed to alienate almost ALL of their allies-from their LDP coalition partners to many of their most ardent civil society defenders from yesteryear.
The Ufungamano posse completely misread the motives of the charlatans gathered around the andu aitu inner circle variously referred to as the 6 Ms or the so called Mount Kenya Mafia.
Unfortunately, since many of the leading lights of the Ufungamano Initiative share similar ethnic backgrounds as quite a few of the NAK top dogs, it has not been that easy to shake off the perception that at least a section of the Ufungamano bunch are inspired by parochial TRIBAL interests when they jump to the defence of Kibaki and the demonization of Raila for example.
It has also not helped that these Ufungamano guys and gals have been sucked into the American Christian Fundamentalist crusade against Islam- as evidenced by their rabid campaign against the Kadhi's courts and their alacrity in signing up for the so called war on terrorism(which is a code word for targeting Muslims more often than not).
At one level, the reconstruction of the Ufungamano Katiba cul de sac is a recognition that the often maligned and derided Bomas delegates who, despite all their presumed cacophonious rural and diverse ethnic glory and lack of cosmopolitan finesse have become a closer representative of the teeming masses and their aspirations compared to the prim and dandified members of the predominantly urban-based middle class civil society actors.
The fact that some of gurus of Ufungamano have been openly contemptuous of delegates they consider to be agents of the KANU old guard has clouded their judgment and prevented them from feeling the seething rage of hundreds of thousands of wananchi feeling gravely abused, short-changed and betrayed by an indifferent government they catapulted into power barely a year and a half ago.
One of the things that the Kenyan petit-bourgeoisie coalesced around Ufungamano should realize is that the ranks of the mass democratic forces were widened to include ordinary wananchi many of whom have never seen the inside of an NGO office. Unfortunately for our Ufungamano friends(some of whom were well poised, had they so chose, to capture this popular ferment in their role as clergy serving the congregations from all sections of Kenyan society) the wananchi have not looked to the civil society actors with their mantras of good governance, accountability and transparency. Instead their raging fires were lit by the POPULIST politicians who had the gift of the gab, the common touch, the ready anecdote, the humourous proverb; the man or woman who could mix it up on the mugithi joints, eat nyoyo with them at Chiro Mbero or order a kube of achwaka in Ndere, Kiboswa or Kipkelion. Now some of these politicians are not necessarily left wing or particularly progressive; but they know about the plight of the Turkana pastoralists and know why the Maasai moran is nungunikaring; they can comfort a mother in Kibwezi whose son died of AIDS and reassure the sugar cane farmer in Mumias that their cultivation has not all been in vain; they can go, like a certain Maragoli MP I saw, to Bomas and demonstrate how the eucalyptus tree "is drinking all the water"; they can attend an Anglican church fundraiser in Werugha in the hilly Wundanyi country and make teenagers whistle as their uncles dance a jig because the local mbunge has donated three footballs for the local soccer league; they are close to that women's group in Wajir that has started a goat rearing collective and can relate to the displaced people of Molo because they were once among the displaced; they know exactly what to do about increasing the productivity of bananas in Nyamira district and have devised a strategy how the eco-tourism can be jump started in Kwale...
These leaders are found in NAK, they are found in LDP, they are found in FORD Kenya;they are found in KANU; they are found in FORD People and they are also found in fourth generation civil society groups such as the Kimathi Movement, People Against Torture and other organizations that you never see in the newspapers because they are based in Isiolo, Kajiado and Buret.
To the wananchi, an MP, even if he or she was in KANU two years ago who speaks out against retrenchments and structural adjustment programs is more credible than an NGO that pledges to work closely with the World Bank on their Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. To the wananchi, a councillor or an imam who rails against draconian legislation criminalizing every other Muslim youth as a potential terrorist is more of a hero than someone who is elected international jurist of the year or the recipient of a best practices award from an American based philanthropic foundation.
One of the lessons that is bypassing our good friends at Ufungamano that they are in a sense being victimized by their own very successful assaults against autocracy, kleptocracy and apathy- they unleashed a democratic flood that is unmercifully sweeping them away; seasoned consultants know that you have done your work when it gets to the point where your former clients no longer need your services....
Instead of riding on the crest of the popular waves unleashed by the Unbwogable Spirit of 2002, the heroes and sheroes of '92, '94, '96, '98, '00, '01 and '02 want to pretend that the 130,000 people who came out to welcome Kibaki home disappeared in thin air; they forgot who filled those stadia and who coined those reverberating chants and anthems that galvanized Kenyans from Lamu to Malaba to turf out the Moi ancien regime.
Look at them: they prefer to huddle with the parvenu upstarts who were anonymous pharmacists and obscure ambulance chasers; they prefer to hobnob with arrogant deputy ministers who follow Marie Antoniette in urging the starving populace to clobber rodents into fatal submission if they are looking for their next source of protein; they feel more accountable to the palmtop wielding paper pushers from Bretton Woods; in their arrogance they call for the summary sackings of those they have baptized as being strangers to the Kenyan Reformist Church....
They laugh when they see simple Maasai villagers demanding a return of their ancestral lands and dismiss the rumblings of distant thunder coming from the sisal plantations of Mwatate. There is a gathering storm, but they feel safe, clutching their gaggle of imported umbrellas... The boat passed them a long, long time ago but they do not even know that they missed it.
Instead of being enraged by the Don Quixotes of Ufungamano, I am filled with pity, with sadness and bewilderment at how they can be so blind not to see how they are burying themselves in their own irrelevance.
What these Ufungamano folks remind me of most vividly is the South Korean middle class after 1987. This social stratum in that divided nation could not comprehend the upsurge of the workers and the students-especially the former- when these other democratic forces coalesced into the autonomous Chunminryun movement( National Democratic Alliance of Korea) formed after the Kwangju Uprising in 1980; after the Great Workers' Struggle of June 1987; after Roh Tae Woo was forced to concede to direct presidential elections- at the very instance when the south Korean middle class forces thought they would at last seize centre stage and impose their own wishy washy liberal leadership, the worker-led alliance of democratic forces said, NO! wait a minute! We have our own leaders-and they do not work in NGO offices. From the early 1990s up to now, there has been a steady growth and expansion of the democratic forces. The current President who was briefly impeached earlier this year is a man of the Left, not the right- a very remarkable achievement when one considers how many decades South Korea has been a neo-colonial puppet of Uncle Sam.
For more information on the struggles in South Korea click here and
here
Last year I examined the Korean national democratic movement in detail in this essay and once again referred to the same country in this other digital
3.0. Rewinding the Mental Video Tape of Kenya's History
Get this:
I picked up a very important history book on Kenya for one half of one dollar at a garage sale here in the good old city of Montreal earlier this summer.
I am staring at the book cover as I type this- featuring a clean shaven, Afro donning African man clutching a spear with his mouth firmly shut. The title of the book:
The Myth of 'Mau Mau': Nationalism in Kenya by Carl G. Rosberg and John Nottingham. This paper back version was published by Meridian Books ( New York and Cleveland) in 1970, even though the original Praeger hard cover came out in 1966. The book is 426 pages long and it is dedicated to Elizabeth and Muthoni( no, not that Muthoni, her MOM was a little chokora when the authors were going to press).
I just wanted to quote some excerpts:
Specimen One
... the period immediately before the British arrival in Kenya was marked by a significant decline in the power of the Maasai, a rise in Nandi influence, and an increased assertiveness on the part of the Kikuyu. In the north the Somali, pushing the Gala before them, were thrusting ever deeper toward Meru, the Laikipia Maasai, and the people of Mt. Kenya. Clusters of agricultural groups were surrounded by vast areas under the control of pastoralists, some of whom were becoming agriculturalists. As these groups collided in the competition for limited resources, the history of the region acquired a restless quality. It was into this environment that European interests first extended themselves....
Specimen Two:
...The resistance by many African peoples to the intrusion of British power at the end of the nineteenth century was the earliest expression, in history and myth, of nationalism in Kenya. The resistance intensified as British agents, first of the Imperial British East Africa Company( IBEAC) and later of the Foreign Office, sought to consolidate their influence beyond the immediate neighbourhood of a handful of forts spread across the country. These first attempts by African societies to preserve their integrity, and the nature of the European penetration, had significant consequences for the later development of nationalism in Kenya. African opposition to colonization was widespread; there were few sections of the country that did not experience some violent confrontation with European-led expeditions against them. Moreover, since many of the most severe encounters took place in the early years of this(20th) century, they fell within the memory of some participants in the later era of militant nationalism. Whether exploited in myth or simply recalled in conversation, these events had a powerful effect; they marked a distinct turning point in the lives of individuals and in the history of tribes throughout Kenya.....
Specimen Three:
....other pastoral and nomadic tribes strongly opposed British rule. In the north there was vigorous resistance by the Somali for several years and in the northeast the Turkana proved to be formidable fighters. Military patrols were conducted during the First World War and military administration continued until 1926. To control the frontier with Ethiopia, forts or posts were established and were maintained by the King's African Rifles until 1942, when the Kenya Police assumed the responsibility during the War. ....
Specimen Four:
The Kalenjin group proved among the most difficult for the British to deal with. The Nandi in particular were incensed at the new railway that thrust through their traditional grazing grounds in the Nyando Valley. In spite of their small numbers, their military reputation was such that the original caravan route...had been greatly lengthened to avoid contact with them. Between 1895 and 1905 five military expeditions were sent to deal with them. Their resistance lasted until 1905, when the Nandi Field Force, the largest "punitive expedition" ever assembled in Kenya, was mounted against them. At a meeting arranged for negotiations their politico-religious leader(orkoiyot) Koitalel (arap Samoei) was shot by an Army officer [Colonel R. Meinertzhagen]....Koitalel's death was always regarded as a dishonorable breach of a truce. In 1907 the (Colonial) Government still found it necessary to deport some of Koitalel's closest associates...In 1902 and 1905 expeditions were also sent against the Kipsigis. In 1911 another was dispatched against the Elgeyo and Marakwet, following a series of clashes over cattle and land with the Boer settlers in the Uasin Gishu plateau, which had culminated in the murder of one settler. As late as 1919 another expedition was sent against the Elgeyo, while in 1923 there were reports of grave unrest among the Nandi, led by Parserion, Koitalel's successor as senior orkoiyot.
Specimen Five:
The more settled and much larger agricultural groups also refused to submit passively to the alien authority, although they found mobilization more difficult than the pastoralists. For twenty years in the east of the country sporadic and uncoordinated opposition was shown by sections of the Kamba, who had once controlled the main trade routes from the coast the Highlands...
Specimen Six:
In the far west of the country Mumia, a master of clan politics, was expanding Wanga hegemony in association with armed Swahili slavers, such as Abdullah bin Hamid of Mombasa and "fat" Sudi from Pangani also making effective use of the Uasin Gishu Maasai as mercenaries. His stronghold( known as Mumia's), opposite a strategic ford on the Nzoia River, was located on the vital caravan route between Baringo and Buganda and the threshold of a major ivory producing area. By the 1890s it had become an important base for the British. Mumia himself found many advantages in a loose alliance with them as he advanced his influence and power over wider areas. Mumia's remained the headquarters of the British presence in western Kenya until with the coming of the railway, this was transferred to Kisumu in July 1899. Mumia's authority was to be signficant for the next two decades.
Specimen Seven:
Early contact with the Luo was indirect and sporadic; it increased only when the completion of the railway had confirmed British intentions and largely removed the need for alliances. in 1896 a punitive expedition was mounted in support of Mumia in Ugenya against the Kager clan led by Gero and 200 were quickly killed by a Maxim gun. In 1899 C. W. Hobley led an expedition against Sakwa, Seme and Uyoma Locations in which 2,500 cattle and some 10,000 sheep and goats were captured. By 1900 Odera was providing 1,500 porters for an expedition against the Nandi....
Specimen Eight:
...But others in Nyanza became restive as the Europeans with their Wanga agents slowly extended their administrative control. Large military expeditions, reinforced by auxillaries from Mumia and other client chiefs, were sent out against the Vugusu(Kitosh) on the slopes of Mt. Elgon in 1895, 1907 and 1908, while there were also five campaigns against various other Luhya people in Nyanza between 1895 and 1907. Two battles were fought at Lumboga and Chetambe in 1895 in which C.W. Hobley initially subdued the Vugusu have played a significant role in the traditions of Vugusu nationalism and the Dini ya Msambwa.
Specimen Nine:
In the southwestern highlands of Kenya there were sizable expeditions against the Gusii in 1904-5 and 1908. In 1905, according to a British police officer who was there, several hundred Gusii warriors were killed by machine guns in a "massacre". In 1908 a King's African Rifles column entered Kisii, burning huts, destroying standing crops, and capturing all livestock within their reach. Over 100 Gusii were killed, and 5,636 cattle and 3,281 sheep and goats were seized.
Specimen Ten:
On and near the coast there was a similar pattern of violent resistance. In 1890 in Taita there was a fierce action between a punitive expedition under a Captain Nelson and the local inhabitants in which Mwangeka, Chief of Mwanda and many of his followers were killed, and in 1898 there was further resistance in the Mgange and Irisi areas of the district owing to the "constant and exigent" demand for porters for the Uganda road.
Specimen Eleven:
In 1914 on the coast the Giriama, a small group occupying a land of desolate scrub behind the hills between Mombasa and the Sabaki River, plunged into full scale revolt. The (Colonial) Government had made little effort to penetrate the area until 1912, when it first tried to collect tax there in the hope that in order to pay, the Giriama would have to enter the labour market. In late 1913 administrators, intending to open up 100, 000 acres of land for European plantations, tried forcibly to remove all the Giriama from the north banks of the Sabaki River, whey had cultivated extensive shambas. The Giriam "bound themselves by oath to live or die there." An armed patrol was sent to the area, a £100 fine levied, and two of the leaders, Me Katilili, a woman and Wanje Madori, an old man, were deported to Kisii. But the effect was only temporary. A year later the (Colonial) Government tried to conscript 1,000 porters for military purposes. On August 17, 1914, the Giriama attacked the Assistant District Commissioner and his party, killing a policeman. Within a few days resistance was widespread throughout the District, both the northern and southern groups combining in a "concerted act of the whole tribe" whose popular doctrine was clearly Giriama for the Wa Giriama. An administrator noted that " a state of passive resistance is likely to continue indefinitely." This situation was complicated by the outbreak of war with Germany and attempts by agents of the exiled Mazrui family to involve the dissident Giriama in a grander anti-British design( a short lived rebellion led by Mbarak bin Rashid- the Mzrui leder- in 1895 had ended in the spring of 1896 after the arrival of an Indian infantry regiment, a navela brigade and Zanzibar soldiers. The Mazrui family and their followers fled to German East Africa..). Strong measures were called for and carried out. In September 1914 an expedition ruthlessly crushed the revolt, and the District was placed under martial law. In the ensuing operation, some 400 Giriama were killed, hundreds of homesteads burnt, and thousands of goats captured. The (Colonial) Government's peace terms demanded the handing over of the Giriama leaders, the complete evacuation of the area north of the Sabaki River, the provision of 1,000 recruits for the Government's Carrier Corps(origin of the word Kariakor-Oloo) and a fine of some £7,500. This fine was recovered in full within a year by seizing goats, crops and ivory....
Specimen Twelve:
...In 1890 Captain Frederick Lugard(later Lord) of IBEAC established a fortified depot at Dagoretti...but before the buildings were complete he had to leave for Uganda. He left behind a civilian, George Wilson, with a weakened garrison. For reasons that even then were not wholly clear, the Kikuyu turned against Wilson and began a virtual siege of his post. Wilson soon abandoned the site and fought his way through the forest to Machakos. The following year Captain Eric Smith established a new post at Fort Smith, a few miles away. Thus began a process that was to alter fundamentally Kikuyu history. Although there had been a brief period of neighborliness, the agents of the undercapitalized Company...had for some time been under pressure to make the new depot self-sufficient. This had disastrous effects on the cooperative relationship developed by Lugard with the southern Kikuyu in the early years of contact. Within a few months the local leader, Waiyaki, who have might have consolidated an alliance as mutually advantageous as that of Mumia...was deported to the coast. On the morning after the return of a major punitive expedition against the " Waguruguru" section of the Kikuyu, Waiyaki had visited Fort Smith, possibly to remonstrate against the action. While there, he allegedly tried to assassinate a Company official, one Purkiss in his room. Waiyaki died, it is said by his own hand, at Kibwezi, on the way to exile....Following Waiyaki's death, Purkiss was besieged for 6 days. After the Protectorate was established and the IBEAC had handed over its responsibilities to the Foreign Office, in June 1895, further "punitive" expeditions, made up of regular troops of the King's African Rifles and Masai levies, we sent out with the administrators as they penetrated the areas which became the districts of Kiambu, Fort Hall, Nyeri(first called South Nyeri) Embu and Meru. Francis Hall, one of these administrators, has vividly described part of this "pacification" of Kikuyu country. In one expedition in 1894 four men from his column( which included 100 Swahilis with Snider rifles, 120 Masai, and 65 friendly Kikuyu) had died of cold on the approach march to the disaffected area. Despite this setback, Hall decided to carry out the original plan to punish the area."We soon set to work, lit up a kraal and got the men warm again...we made a mess of all their villages and, as the other column was working along about two miles off, the natives had a warm time, but they wouldn't stand, so I had no chance of trying my war- rockets. The Major(Smith) with his one arm carried a shot gun and bagged a brace in the first kraal but I had no fun for a long time... We brought in 1,100 goats and loads of grain... but we didn't manage to do much execution as the brutes wouldn't stand." These years saw a series of more or less serious clashes occur in Hall's area, with casualties reaching 90 dead in one encounter and with heavy confiscations of goat and cattle. Though the Kikuyu at no time suffered more than local defeats, some of these were shattering. Hall's account of a later "pacification" episode in southern Fort Hall District in January and February 1899 will illustrate this. His column this time had 150 rifles and 500 "friendly natives". They approached the selected area through the bamboo forest: " As usual the natives had deserted their villages and bolted with all their livestock. However we scoured the forest and collected a good deal and proceeded to march quietly through the country, sending columns out to burn the villages and collect goats etc. We rarely saw any of the people; and when we did, they were at very long ranges, so we did not have much fun, but we destroyed a tremendous number of villages and, after fourteen days, emerged on the plains to the eastward, having gone straight from one end to the other of the disaffected districts. We captured altogether some 10,000 goats and a few cattle, and this on top of the previous expedition, must have been a pretty severe blow to them." The number of villages destroyed, in reality individual homesteads, was in the hundreds. Five years later, further north, Col. R. Meinertzhagen( the same fascist who shot Koitalel-Oloo) notes that in ten days in February and March 1904 his column, one of three in the Iriaini (Nyeri-Embu border country) expedition, killed 796 Kikuyu and captured 782 cattle and 2,150 sheep and goats. There was another expedition to quell a revolt of the Embu in 1906...
4.0. Fast Forward to Some Contemporary Headlines:
Remember
this picture and this story about the Maasai You may have missed this one that I found tucked away in a South African website
How about this one about the Kipsigis on land struggles and Brooke Bond, Unilever and James Finlay? this next oneor this other one along the same lines?
Interesting things are happening in Kwale as we speak even as we empathize with our fellow wananchi in Kilifi who risk food poisoning by rummaging for maize in rubbish dumps and we nod our heads vigorously as we hear Patrick Ochieng of the Ujamaa Centre utter sentences we concur with completely. I shared a beer with Jonathan Manyindo, the Nation's youthful correspondent in Taita Taveta somewhere in Wundanyi town last fall and I was pleased to see this story he filed for Coastweek of w recently. More background can be seen in this earlier piece that appeared in the Standard in August Meanwhile a well known Christian relief charity continues to hover like a vulture over the starving torsos of Turkana villagers in northern Kenya even as I wonder how many people know what the workers at the Del Monte farm in Thika are going through in spite of this mushy PR makeover attempt done by the Nation in 2002 which in turn, did NOT stop me from unearthing something closer to the truth published by same paper in 2000.
If you want to find out WHERE I got the following paragraph:
"According to a Kenyan legislator who knows the Kenyatta family well, the land on which Kenyatta and Jomo Kenyatta Universities are built initially belonged to Basil Criticos. The government bought the land from him under the above scheme, but transferred it to Kenyatta on the same day Criticos transferred it to the government in 1972. It was through such fraudulent processes that Kenyatta family and close associates acquired much of the prime land in the country. The land owned by the Kenyatta family includes Taita Taveta farm (74, 000 acres), Kahawa Sukari farm (29, 000 acres), Gatundu farm, Thika farm, Brookside farm, Muthaita farm, Green Lee Estate, Njagu farm in Juja, Kasarani farm (9, 000 acres), Nakuru farm in Rongai near Moi’s home, a quarry in Dandora, Naivasha Ranch and several farms in Nairobi. Government sources say that KPLC is currently under pressure to buy the family’s Karen farm at Ksh. 350 million to add to Uhuru’s campaign kitty. The combined acreage of all the land owned by the Kenyatta family is equal to Nyanza province, sources at the Lands Ministry say. Close associates of Kenyatta such as Mbiyu Koinange, Kihika Kimani, Isaiah Mathenge, Eliud Mahihu, Jackson Angaine, Paul Ngei, Daniel Arap Moi, Njoroge Mungai, Charles Njonjo, Mwai Kibaki, Njenga Karume among other power brokers of the time, were encouraged to acquire, and did acquire, as much land.The Moi government has more or less followed similar policies. The political clique around Moi, for example, is known to own huge chunks of land round the country, much of which is lying fallow while the production that it is meant for has ceased. In the North Eastern Province, for example, the current crop of politicians in government owns chunks of land that, according to official sources, they do not even know the location. The land is used for collateral mortgage for bank loans."
You have a very simple task. Just take any of the sentences, put them in quotation marks feed them in the dialogue box of a search engine and voila!, you should get the original web context.
So what is Oloo trying to say?
Utajijazia Mwenyewe!
5.0. Who Will Rule Kenya After Kibaki?
Notice I did NOT ask, who will be the President of Kenya after Kibaki or even who will be the Prime Minister after Kibaki. That is so obvious that I am going to spend only THREE SENTENCES on it. Whoever the LDP runs as their Presidential candidate will romp home to victory, if present trends obtain and that party maintains its popularity across the country. If we have the Bomas constitution by then, Raila Odinga will be Prime Minister. I am not making this "discovery" today. In fact I boldly predicted this OVER TWO YEARS AGO in this essay that appeared on August 9, 2002 on the Mashada discussion forum.
Check out some of the findings from the Steadman polling fun from June 2004
I am more interested in who will rule Kenya. Hopefully it is NOT the President or the Prime Minister.
Huh?
Yes you can huh again and again.
Or simply bear with me.
I am writing as a Kenyan socialist. I think we have a vested interest in ruling Kenya too.
Panic. Trembles. Shock. Horror. Oloo is calling for a Marxist Revolution in Kenya- ati.
In your dreams jackass.
Did not say that.
Go back to my sentence.
Kenyan socialists have a vested interest in ruling Kenya too.
How do we do that?
By NOT running for President or Prime Minister.
What?!
You can what me again.
It is at this point that I should do my miracle act and revive Antonio Gramsci.
Is Oloo crazy?
Oloo himself thinks HE is demented, so there is no debate there- we are on CONSENSUS on that one.
Antonio Gramsci was a rather famous Italian Marxist( insert bogus liberal yaaawwwwwnnnns here) who bequeathed to revolutionaries the idea of winning power through the patient build up of ideological hegemony. My task this morning is NOT to dissect Gramcian ideological musings, but rather share with you PRACTICAL examples where these ideas have been applied.
Guess who is the new Premier of South Africa's North West Province? And why is the South African Communist Party praising the provincial government of Mpumalanga?
Check out this statement on Cooperatives and the Financial Sector from Blade Nzimande, the General Secretary of the South African Communists and this document about setting up a party school in Kwa Zulu Natal. Drink in some more red analytical wine from Madiba country please before you chew in the deeper significance of the ANC/ SACP/COSATU 2004 electoral victory at both NATIONAL and PROVINCIAL levels
Do you know WHERE Kerala state is?
Well I will show you. Look below:
Yes it is in India.
This is its government Kerala has the DISTINCTION of providing the world with what many consider to be its FIRST DEMOCRATICALLY elected Communist government and even today, Kerala is considered India's most LEFT WING STATE and it is not for NOTHING that socialists and communists have been elected and reelected in this progressive Indian state as you can see from this article on how Kerala's development record compares to the rest of India. Here is more information about Indian Communists that you can use comfortably in Isiolo, Nanyuki or Runyenjes. Did you know that Communists have ruled
ANOTHER Indian state,
West Bengal, WITHOUT INTERRUPTION from 1977? In fact some people argue that it is NOT Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh or Castro who is the MOST SUCCESSFUL Communist leader in history, but
this person
I could cite examples of how Communists have controlled municipal governments in various Italian cities, or point out that the mayor of
London is not exactly a conservative but I think you have grasped the point I am trying to put across.
6.0. How To Rule Kenya Without Becoming President or Prime Minister
I am not into the kabilastanization of Kenya as I pointed in an essay I penned OVER FOUR YEARS AGO. Still I am very excited about political devolution, especially when I think of two countries- South Africa and India.
So how do get to rule Kenya without being President or Prime Minister?
Ai! Yawa! Omera wiyi rach? You think I am going to ansha that kweson after writing the year AD pato opuk?
That, obviously is a SEPARATE DIGITAL ESSAY, ama?
Onyango Oloo
Montreal
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