Is The Kenyan Military Plotting to Overthrow President Kibaki?

An Open Letter from

ONYANGO OLOO

To All Kenyan Soldiers, Police and Intelligence Personnel Together With The Country’s Entire Security Forces






1.0. This is a BILINGUAL MESSAGE in Kiswahili and English

We begin with our NATIONAL language, Kiswahili.

Here is my recorded audio message in Kiswahili on the possibility of a military coup in Kenya.

2.0. Now follows the English part-Introduction:

Someone whispered to me the other day that some people are plotting to stage a military coup de tat to get rid of the NARC (or more properly the NAK) regime led by President Emilio Mwai Kibaki.

Of course, since President Kibaki is still comfortably in power as we speak, let us assume that this could be nothing else but a WILD SPECULATIVE RUMOUR being mongered by that notorious alarmist, Onyango Oloo.

Perhaps.

Interestingly enough, I am not the only person who is talking about the possibility of a looming coup...

Over there at the Mambogani discussion forum, I came across this posting by someone going by the handle of “Kip”:

It's weird folks-KANU and LDP are campaigning for an election 3 years ahead of time. This is I hear from some friends in Kericho, can be inferred from the sudden resignation of Ainapmoi MP. The rise in insecurity observed in the country can be traced to a group of college and University graduates calling themselves revolutionary Turks ,who have publicly volunteered to be trained for a guerilla war after they realized that they will remain hopeless despite of all the education, in addition to this some tribes among my KAMATUSA group are in an advanced levels preparing to push for majimboism as a group instead of launching a Kalenjin party and with some support from some of the past KANU looters, They are ready to fund a climate of chaos, especially if the corruption charges will be brought against them -they have successfully convinced their people that the anticorruption drive is focused on their communities and ignores the fat cats from Kiambu. Within the military there is growing disillusionment with some officers, especially as a result of people from some tribes being weeded out at a astounding rate, the same sources tell me that senior defence officers are warning Kibaki of an impending crisis from the military; especially from those demoted or laid of. A Luhya captain class mate of mine tells me that despite of some of the demoted officers having the heavy laughable accent from around Baringo or Nandi, these guys never showed matharau and pride shown by the newly promoted amigos who cannot endure hardening tests in the field. Kibaki knew of this, when he took Noah arap Too as an assistant minister and has been increasingly warned by Boinet, but some new guys including a guy who claims to be Harvard educated and CIA trained intelligence officer seem to be sidelining Boinet and NSIS and his credible intelligence information...by the way it is Boinet and NSIS who told Moi not to pick Uhuru in past election, Mudavadi was recommended and Raila was never in the equation. Too resignation implicitly has far-reaching significance in wobbling state of the current government. That’s why you suddenly saw Mudavadi rising from the ashes suddenly and again with this event there is a spirited fight to reorganize the parties in preparation for war or snap election. Let’s wait and see, Kibaki if he chooses to use his brilliant mind-he may pull the last rabbit of fortune from hat and Kenya will survive. I hope and pray like many that will prevail, I see an end to the old guard ruling Kenya.

SOURCE

and this is how Kamale (and he gets testy when I teasingly tag him as a "security intelligence mole" lurking online to spy on the Adongos, Osewes and Oloos of this world) reacted when I posed a single line asking the same question I am trying to answer in this essay.

Talk about coup plots is of course, standard fare in all of Kenya’s bars and nyama choma joints. Most of time these plots are the products of six warm Tuskers and a plate of goat ribs.

However, this time around,a sixth sense sort of tells me intuitively to take what I heard recently slightly more seriously.

3.0. Onyango Oloo Is Opposed to Coups

Let me be clear about the general thrust of my message to members of the Kenyan Armed and Security Forces:

A Kenyan military takeover would be a PROFOUND DISASTER to the country and would lead to NO DISCERNIBLE benefits for the vast majority of Kenyan soldiers, naval officers, air force service men and women, the police, prison warders and other specialized forces.

Members of the Kenyan military SHOULD NOT ALLOW themselves to be hoodwinked by devious rich men, odious politrickians who have acted as ruthless ethnic war lords in the past to introduce heightened insecurity into the country by staging an ill-advised military take over.

4.0. What Is Causing The Discontent?

Having said all that, let me go on the record to state what I understand to be part of the reasons for sense of discontent within the Kenyan armed forces.

Apart from institutional and professional career oriented issues that have to do with promotions and demotions and other sweeping structural changes, one could not discount the fact that Kenyan security and military personnel are first and foremost KENYANS who live in the same country that has witnessed the OBSCENE DESCENT into chaos that Mwai Kibaki and NARC has presided over since January 2003.

There is first and foremost the growing economic pressures the country is facing and its associated social crises that it has caused among Kenyan farmers, workers, students, women, youth, ethnic, regional and religious minorities- not to speak of the escalating crime wave the worsening nature of infrastructure that makes it easier for horrible road tragedies to become a sickening norm.

Currently, the most potent manifestation of the acute socio-economic crisis in the Kenya is the looming crisis over land that threatens to explode all over the country sooner or later. And the culpability of the ruling elite in this crisis can be gleaned in the continued newspaper leakages from the Ndung’u Report. The October 8th edition of the Standard fingers several high ranking ministers in the Kibaki regime who acquired land using very questionable means.

In my opinion, the reluctance of the Kibaki regime to unleash the Ndung’u Report revolves around two factors:

One, many of NARC's most prominent members beginning with the President himself are named and the explosive Land report that does not spare the big wigs of either the LDP or NAK.

Two, and perhaps more relevant to the theme of this essay, is that the Ndungu report fingers many of the big guns of the Moi-KANU ancien regime and the pattern of looting and land grabbing that was the hallmark of that kleptocracy.

Already we see a near reprise of the infamous and always politically motivated clashes flaring up in pockets of the Rift Valley.

The Kalenjins are now the New Kikuyus- they are the ones who now fear that the elite in power wants to “finish them”; at the elite level, the Mois, the Kuleis, the Biwotts, the Koneses, the Rutos and other heavy hitters from the so called Rift Valley Mafia fear that somebody may put their testicles on a chopping block and hack them them with a freshly sharpened cleaver- they are not looking forward to the prospect of losing all their ill gotten swag- even as the Murungaru Come Latelys build their fabulous palaces on prime real estate property in the posh enclaves of the Kenyan capital.

To my mind, the current stand off at the top leadership levels of KANU not only has to do with the politics of personality-as in Biwott versus Uhuru, and regionalism as in Rift Valley versus other KANU strongholds- but more to do with what kind of accommodation the Rift Valley comprador bourgeois elite have to arrive at with their long running business associates who are now in the NARC government. I suspect that seasoned horse traders like Nicholas Biwott would rather cut deals with Kibaki via their intermediaries in the cabinet that ensures the temporary survival of the NAK faction at the expense of their LDP rivals who may still provoke lingering resentment from the KANU old guard for the number Raila Odinga did on them in 2002. Uhuru Kenyatta whatever his faults appears to be a genuine liberal democrat who may want, like De Klerk to wipe away the stains of KANU’s calumny by injecting it with new blood. But Uhuru is equally f*cked because when it comes to land grabbing he is right there in the top ten along with his cousin Beth Mugo.

Quite apart from these jitters keeping the Wabenzi and Mababi sleepless in Kabarak, Gatundu, Kieni and other lairs there is the whole twisted legacy of Moi’s ethnic cleansing and political patronage system that rewarded loyalists with gifts of land often grabbed from others. Having played off the Kalenjins against the Kikuyus in the 1990s, Moi can watch from the shadows as Kibaki attempts to grapple with the competing interests and pressures on the same land from small farmers and former squatters who look to this or that head of state(yesteryear and today) to bolster their claims that they are the true owners of this or that parcel of land.

But dwarfing all that is the coming confrontation in the tea growing areas as entire communities(the Nandi, the Kipsigis) evoke Koitalel arap Samoeis’ epic duels against British colonialism to invalidate the long resented stranglehold of the Brooke Bonds other transnational agribusiness behemoths.

Many of these claims were ably and volubly articulated by community leaders during the lengthy and involved Bomas process where most delegates hoped would end up setting the stage for the devolution of powers and reverting some of these contentious land areas to community control.

Whichever way you look at it, something is GOING TO EXPLODE IN THE RIFT VALLEY- whether it is in Laikipia, Kajiado, Narok, Kericho, Nakuru or elsewhere.

It is a testimony to the extreme incompetence of the faction in power that they underestimated the gravity of the land issue in the Rift Valley, fraught as it is with historical, political, cultural, economic and infrastructural overtones and ramifications.

Eighteen months after dithering over constitutional and agrarian reforms, NARC must now welcome all the chickens that are arriving at its doorstop looking for a place to roost.

Almost two years after Kibaki publicly urged Kenyans to ignore the findings of the Akiwumi Report, war lords all over the country are preparing to reactive all their secret militias with their gory baggage.

I was astounded when Kibaki made such a colossal blunder as to veto the appointment of Dr.Rotich when this was not even necessary. From the mouth of the person who had cynically demanded “concrete evidence” before he could sack Mwiraria and Murungaru for their role in the Anglo Leasing scandal, it reeked of the country’s CEO playing favourites and demonizing others on what is widely believed to be a shameless campaign of ethnic slander, vilification and witch hunting. Kenyatta and Moi both played the ethnic card to the hilt, but unlike the more educated Kibaki, THEY WERE WAY SMARTER in the way they went about it. For a very long time Moi ensured that a Mgikuyu was always part of his inner sanctum; we know how Mzee let the Man from Sacho understudy him for twelve years.

Thanks to these accumulated sense of community resentment, there is widespread feeling in the Rift Valley that the GEMA coterie around Kibaki have decided it is pay back time for the ethnic clashes of the 1990s.

This could be the single most dangerous threat to Kenyan national stability since the 1982 coup attempt.

In sharp contrast to Nyanza, Western and Coast provinces, the inhabitants of the Rift Valley who perceive, rightly or wrongly, that the so called Mount Kenya Mafia is out to get them have something that Kisiis, Luos, Luhyias, Dawidas, Digos, Giriamas, Waswahili and Wakamba do not have-they have two important weapons in their arsenal-the very deep pockets of the top dogs of KANU starting with Daniel arap Moi’s family and Nicholas Biwott and extending to about dozen or so very wealthy and powerful Kalenjin figures who have made a point of keeping a very low profile; secondly, because of colonial and neo-colonial reasons, the Kalenjin, Maasai, Samburu and other KAMATUSA clusters are preponderant within the armed forces at the top level, in the middle officer contingents and among the rank and file.

All they need is a manipulative political demagogue to exploit any of myriad issues brought up by Goldenberg, Ouko, Akiwumi, Ndungu, the Makau Task Forces and Commissions of Inquiry to convince their ready followers that Kales are being finished by the Kikuyus and you have the makings of a potentially long running low intensity conflict or an abrupt coup de tat carried out by Kalenjin officers- not necessarily to restore the KANU old guard but to get rid of what is seen as the arrogant power maniacs around Kibaki(Kibaki, may in fact even survive his own overthrow in the sense that he could be kept on as President while his lieutenants are stripped of power).

5.0. Is a Coup Possible in Kenya Today?

Could this happen anytime soon?

A couple of stories coming out of Kenya have been plain weird

and bizarre

I am not ruling anything out.

I am deeply convinced that the vast majority of the senior officers in the Kenyan Armed Forces have a deep disdain for politics and will only move against the Kibaki regime if they perceive it rightly or wrongly as trying to thwart their personal, regional and long term interests.

It is my fervent hope that a military coup DOES NOT TAKE PLACE IN KENYA because the Kenyan Armed Forces since colonial times have been deliberately kept in the dark about progressive politics and if we are to judge these forces by their history of atrocities in the North Eastern Province during periodic military exercises and sweeps or more familiarly for some us, the crackdown of the 1982 coup attempt, then they are more akin to repression than promoting freedom of expression.

If a coup happened in Kenya today, it would be the final insult emanating from the stubborn refusal of Mwai Kibaki and his NAK faction to accede to the popular wish of the Kenyan wananchi for a democratic constitution because of a silly pre-occupation with the so called ambitions of one Raila Amolo Odinga. Just imagine this scenario: in an attempt to thwart the LDP head honcho from becoming Prime Minister, the Murungarus, Muthauras and Murungis would risk the rise of a Kenyan version of Idi Amin Dada!

In passing, let us note that people close to former President Moi work closely with outfits like Executive Outcomes and so on.

In my opinion, there need not be a military coup in Kenya.

The Kenyan military thankfully, unlike their Nigerian, Sudanese, Ghanaian or Burkinabe counterparts shows close to MINUS ZERO INTEREST in politics. And that is why, for example, in spite of a temptation to do so, NONE OF THE KALENJIN SENIOR OFFICERS tried to BLOCK Kibaki from becoming President through a post- election fascist putsch.

The ball is actually in Kibaki’s court.

He has to decide what he is going to do about the following issues:

1. The passage of a democratic constitution that reflects the aspirations of the Kenyan people rather than his cloistered associates;
2.The implementation of wide ranging agrarian reforms in Kenya that have already been catered for in certain respects in sections of the Zero Draft passed by Bomas on March 15, 2004;
3.Resolute action regarding the Goldenberg, Anglo Fleecing and other corruption scandals;
4.A transparent resolution of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the colonial, Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki regimes;
5.A clear economic blueprint that addresses the needs of the working people of Kenya as opposed to the IMF and the World Bank
6.A definite campaign of national reconciliation in which no one section of Kenya- the Rift Valley, the North Eastern, Coast, Nyanza etc, feels excluded and/or targeted for retribution;
7.Commitment to regional peace processes in Somalia, Sudan and the Congo.

In my opinion, if Kibaki makes the wrong move on some, or in some cases, any of the above, he may find himself the prisoner of a new military regime within the next eight months.

As a Kenyan socialist and a democrat, I would like to reiterate my call to the Kenyan military to shun any adventurists and demagogues trying to incite them.

I do not believe in that Wacha Siasa BULLSHIT, so I would urge Kenyan soldiers, policemen and women, prison warders, to get SENSITIZED POLITICALLY.

Wanajeshi wa Kenya:

Instead of spending your evenings drinking cheap AFCO Tusker, White Cap and Pilsner, why don’t you form POLITICAL DISCUSSION GROUPS that looks at things like Katiba, Ukoloni, Mashamba, Elimu, Demokrasia, Nafasi ya Vijana, Usawa Kati ya Wanawake na Wanaume n.k?

It certainly beats the weekend ritual of picking up prostitutes from Githurai, Rainbow, Bottoms Up, Florida 2000 and Karumaindo and copulating without condoms.

Members of the Kenyan military listen to me:

DO NOT SHUN SIASA because if you do you will wake up one asubuhi find a STUPID MWANASIASA who wants to protect his stolen wealth abusing and manipulating you to climb to power in Kenya.

6.0. Kenyan Coup Plots in Historical Perspective

I was startled last week to read in the Standard that there had been another attempt to overthrow the Moi regime in 1995. That paper (which seems to have had quite a few scoops under its hat profiled this guy called


Charles Mboko in a piece that you can read here and later on follow up with this one

When I first floated this subject on several Kenyan forums on Thursday afternoon, I provoked some mindless panic from people who assumed they knew what I was going to write about-including jumping to the stupid conclusion that I was gleefully calling for a military take over. One certified nutbar, posting anonymously to shield his mental health records from public scrutiny even wanted me to declare in advance that I condemned coups. This twisted lukuru mentality I thought had died in 1991. But no, it is still alive among some Kenyan villagers working in American campuses.

No one owes me a LECTURE on military coups, OK?

My arrest and imprisonment in 1982 happened against the backdrop of that year’s August 1 abortive attempt to topple the government of President Moi.

By mid 1982, the Kenyan economy was in a very sorry state.

The rate of foreign exploitation had been increasingly steadily throughout the seventies. Between 1971 and 1978 profits repatriated from Kenya increased six times from 9 million sterling pounds to 55 million while foreign investment increased only four times. Kenya’s trade deficit increased four times in the same period from 91 million pounds sterling to 357 million.

To finance the outflow of profits and the foreign trade deficit, the KANU government kept on borrowing. Between 1970 and 1977 the figure was 350 million sterling pounds. In the single year between 1978 and 1979 the figure had climbed to 455.5 million pounds. In 1981 the foreign debt figure was 70% more than that of 1980.
Having been trapped by the loan sharks at the IMF, the KANU government found itself paying an increasing amount of Kenya’s hard earned export earnings just to keep up with the interest payments(forget the principal for a moment!) on these loans which were primarily serving the interests of the multinationals. In the early 1970s Kenya spent 3% of its export earnings to pay interest. By 1982 we had to use 18 to 19% of our export earnings to do the same thing.

The Kenyan shilling was devalued twice in 1981 falling in value by almost 20%. Inflation was 13% in 1981 and 20% in 1982.

It was within context of grave socio-economic and political crisis that we must see the abortive attempt by junior air force service men to topple the Moi regime on the 1st of August 1982.

The coup leaders were young democratic minded patriots who were disgusted by the corruption and the repression of the KANU dictatorship. Their announcement on the Voice of Kenya radio was greeted with ululations and celebrations around the country. University students literally danced in the streets of Nairobi shouting “Pambana! Pambana!” to the soldiers chant,”Power! Power!”.

The revelry unfortunately, proved to be very short lived. The coup had been hastily and poorly organized and it did not take much resistance for loyalist Army units to regain control and capture most of the “rebels and mutineers”. The Kenya Airforce was promptly disbanded. The university of Nairobi was closed down for the 18th time since 1970.

It later emerged that there was a very strong element of ethnic grievances around the coup plot. Most of the planners were from the Luo community and they resented the fact that there were very few Luos promoted to become senior officers. They also saw the wider political crisis largely in tribal terms. The main conflict to them was due to the marginalization of Luos from the centre of political power, first by the Gikuyus and then by the Kalenjins under Moi.

This narrow tribal analysis was itself a by product of the dangerous divide and rule ethnic politics of the state itself.

It certainly contributed to the failure of the coup.

The failure of the coup itself also underscored the importance of popular mobilization for genuine radical change and exposed the limitations of petty bourgeois short cuts to power like the abortive military putsch against the KANU regime.

Forward, a progressive Ugandan publication observed at the time:

...The real significance of August 1 was the direct entry of working people, particularly those in the capital, into national politics. August 1 was the first time since Mau Mau that working people stormed the political arena. Though it lasted no more than 3 hours, the events of that day clearly outlined the strength and weakness of popular political action at this stage of Kenya’s history. Its strength flowed from sheer numbers; its weakness from an absence of direction, both ideological and organizational. Thus the resort to looting, and the anti-Asian dimension of that spree. It showed clearly that the Kenyan masses, though they had broken free politically, were still spurred on by ideas impressed upon them by their comprador rulers. Without an organization of their own to give them clarity of vision and strength of unity, working people would not see beyond the existing neo colonial system. They wreaked vengeance on it, but had no alternative to offer. Theirs was simply a veto, an unmistakable no. So one sided was the nature of popular entry into the national political arena that while their destructive capacity was amply demonstrated, their creative potential remained hidden. Not only to the upper classes but also to themselves, the people appeared personified as the bayaye (lumpen),not as workers. Even this limited fact has sent a chill down the comprador spine of Kenya’s rulers. However strong their differences, all comprador factions are united that the three hours of August 1 should never again be repeated. And the far sighted ones even realise that August 1 was not the last but the first expression of the crisis looming on Kenya’s political horizon.

The August 1982 Coup Attempt smashed to smithereens the illusion of Kenya as an island of stability and prosperity in an otherwise turbulent sea of East African chaos.

Moi used the post coup tension to launch one of the most brutal crackdowns in Kenya’s history. For the six months following August 1, Kenya was effectively under rule of the Kenya Army.

Thousands of civilians were rounded up and charged with everything from “celebrating the coup” and looting to sedition and misprision of treason. Kamiti Maximum Security Prison was transformed into a giant concentration camp where university students, soldiers and other “treason suspects” were tortured and interrogated.

More academics and professionals were picked up as Moi tried to link his left wing critics with the military coup plot.

Show trials with “sedition” and “mutiny” being the crime of choice were announced. The first group of students arrested after August 1-the late Titus Adungosi, Rateng’ Oginga Ogego(now Kenya’s High Commissioner to Canada), Francis Kinyua (sisemi kitu), Onyango Oloo, Thomas Mutuse (businessman who has run for parliament twice), Johnston Simiyu(happily married to a teacher from Alliance Girls), Jeff Mwangi Kwirikia (married with several kids in Oslo, Norway), Ongele Opala (teaching in Mombasa), Muga K’Olale (lecturer and UASU official) and Wahinya Boore(active with Release Political Prisoners following his release) were tried and convicted of sedition. They got long prison terms ranging from five to ten years behind bars.

In September 1982 the court martials against the air force service men began. Sentences meted out were extremely heavy: death by hanging, life without parole, ten years, eighteen years, twenty five years.

Omondi K’abir was in his early twenties when we first crossed paths at Kamiti Prison in early 1983. He had been jailed for 9 years after being found “guilty” of mutiny as one of those hundreds of Air Force service men corralled into those kangaroo courts. On January 7, 2003, barely a week after Kibaki had been sworn into office, I called him at his home in Oslo, Norway and we had the following conversation which touches on his life as a member of the Kenyan military and how he later on evolved into a socialist revolutionary.

In March 2004 I did an extensive historical piece on that coup plot which you can access by clicking right here and so I will say nothing further about it.

When I was in Kamiti between 1982 and 1987 we got indications of what looked like other attempts to challenge the status quo but we were not sure whether these were full fledged coup plots or just localized mutinies that went awry.

But there had been further serious attempts by soldiers to seize political power.

In 1970 and 1971 Kenya was rocked by two abortive coup plots. They both turned out to be tribally based. One was a “Kamba Coup” implicating Major General Ndolo the Army Commander and Kitili Mwendwa the Chief Justice (Nyiva’s husband) as well as Gideon(?) Mutiso, who later became an MP and the other was a” Luo Coup” involving middle ranking military officers and some intellectuals like the future Moi era minister, Prof. Ouma Muga. They both shared one thing: all the planners were members of the petty bourgeoisie. It was to be expected that members of this class/social stratum with their typical disdain for the masses would see Kenyatta’s despotism not in class terms but as a series of personal vendettas and intrigues among different sections of the elite. The regime easily weathered the storm generated by these two plots emerging with even more justification to be more fascist.

Looking at all four coup plots (and not commenting on further on the OTHER 1982 coup plot by Charles Njonjo or the 1964 mutinies in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika) we see clearly that in Kenya, the military have tried to seize power for a variety of personal, localized, ethnic, professional and political grievances. There is a HISTORY of military personnel in this country mulling the take over of the government as a temporary or a permanent solution to their problems.

The one thing in common with all coup plots in Kenya is that they are INVARIABLY UNDEMOCRATIC schemes by a bunch of petit-bourgeois Kenyan men to ascend to power and defend their narrow interests that are seen in personal, professional, ethnic and otherwise very parochial terms. Even when, like in 1982 people like Okumu and Ochuka articulated broad democratic goals and objectives, the fact of the matter is that they saw themselves first and foremost as Luos finally doing something to put an end to decades of marginalization at the hands of “Kikuyus and Kalenjins”. These ethnic aspirations were seen in the early seventies coup plots and the mid 1990s Charles Mboko affair would of course have a mixture of localized socio-economic cahiers blamed on what was seen to be a Kalenjin dominated administration,

That is why I think that if there is any coup plot cooking in any military kitchens by now, it is ALMOST BY DEFINITION TRIBAL IN NATURE with a core of people from a specific ethnic group seeing their “enemies” in largely tribalized terms.

Now this tribalization of political differences is of course one of the calling cards of the Kenyan petit and comprador bourgeoisie.

Objectively ALL OF THESE COUP PLOTS irrespective of their “good intentions” are REACTIONARY and BACKWARD and are more likely to usher in an Idi Amin or a Siad Barre rather than a Thomas Sankara.









Yes, the late Captain Thomas Sankara came to power through a military take over in Burkina Faso on August 3, 1983. But he was very different from your average coup plotter as you can see here , over here and finally, here

So what do I have to say to the Kenyan men and women who are reading this blog right now?

Very simple:

If you staged a coup in Kenya today, I would be your first OPPONENT. At this time in Kenya’s history, when it is the NARC regime that is thwarting our people’s democratic aspirations, we need MORE DEMOCRACY, not LESS. And we all know that the army, the navy, the air force and the affiliated police and prisons services ARE NOT DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS. These organs are part of the coercive state machinery and on their own cannot be conduits for democratic reform and deepening of freedom.

It is possible for a Kenyan military person to become a very democratic and progressive political leader of Kenya. But the way to do that is to follow the foot steps of Sankara. If they really want political power to be in the hands of the Kenyan wananchi, they must SHUN COMPLETELY those shadowy military conspiracies and instead, either JOIN or FORM a democratic unit wherever they are.

Now if there is one plot that I am willing to put some energy in it will be the creation of CLANDESTINE REVOLUTIONARY CELLS in all the Kenyan barracks.

Yes, organize democratic discussion groups in every Kenyan barracks and garrison and unite your work with similar groups in the trade unions, universities, NGOS, Kenyan communities abroad and then one day WHAM! BAM!!!

We are on the streets of Nairobi marching joyously after seizing POPULAR DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL POWER after years of PATIENT, DILIGENT MASS MOBILIZATION.

Now how about that folks?

Onyango Oloo
Montreal