Let Us Cut Uhuru Some Slack

A Plea from a Passionate Skeptic Called Onyango Oloo (*the ORIGINAL)

On the face of it, it would appear that President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta has started on the right foot.

From his soaring and inspiring inaugural speech to his riveting address to the National Assembly and the Senate, capped with his down to earth presence at  

David Okuta’s semi-state funeral in Nyando, the fourth president has captured the national imagination with his can do-let’s work together attitude.

Even those of us who still have serious qualms about his legitimacy at the State House are prepared to cut him considerable slack, give him the benefit of doubt and provide him with the opportunity of proving nay sayers like Onyango Oloo wrong.

After all, we are confronted with a stark fait accompli:

Uhuru Kenyatta is the President of the Republic of Kenya.

His Jubilee Coalition is the government at the national level but with a powerful presence in the county governments as well.

Raila Odinga, the man who contested Uhuru's claim to the Presidency right up to the Supreme Court has accepted that Uhuru Kenyatta is the head of state; doing so with admirable grace, good natured humour and maturity.

It is past due time to halt the 2013 Presidential election campaign.

I have spoken to several friends-some are in CORD, SDP, and a few from the Jubilee Coalition itself.

All of them attest to a few uncontested reflections on the new Kenyan President. 

They say Uhuru Kenyatta is a down to earth, one of the guys, kind of guy. They say Uhuru Kenyatta at a personal level, does not have the contagion of being a tribal chauvinist. One of the most startling and revealing insights came from a very senior TNA official, who I will NOT name for obvious reasons, who told me, in the company of some well known civil society and Fourth Estate friends that Uhuru Kenyatta was, until the very last minute, a very RELUCTANT presidential candidate. At one point, Uhuru was prepared to walk away from it all. This was during that period when Musalia Mudavadi was being touted as the Jubilee flag bearer. Of course the push for Musalia came from sources close to Mwai Kibaki, Nick Wanjohi, Michael Gichangi and the NSIS and some State House mandarins who were driven by Machiavellian real politik cynical machinations to push Raila’s former deputy to protect the interests of the Central Kenya ethno-class comprador elite to front Mudavadi as a way of countering what they thought was a CORDED revival of a 41 Against 1 election strategy.  But our high ranking TNA source revealed that Uhuru himself had got to the point where he was convinced that he did not NEED to be the President of Kenya. At one point he even blurted out that Kenya did not really need another Gikuyu President, Uhuru did. According to our informant it was only the  overbearing pressure from within the TNA party (and our source who is NOT from the GEMA communities was right on the frontlines of that push) that forced Uhuru to buckle and rescind his signed agreement to let Musalia Mudavadi  to become the Jubilee Presidential candidate.

It is simply a biological and historical accident that Uhuru is Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s son.

For that reason, at the very beginning of his reign, at least, let us refer to the Fourth President by his first two names rather than by his formal surname. 

In that way, we give Uhuru Muigai a clean slate to jump start his presidency with-one that is not stained by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s kleptomaniacal, ethno-centric, land grabbing and repressive neo-colonial tendencies.

Of course we know that Kenyatta is a political brand.

Around 1998/99/2000, when I was still a resident of the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada, I used to frequent a store which was exclusively devoted to audio-books and DVDs focused on self improvement located at the corner of Bay and Queen (I believe the address was 330 Bay Street if I am not mistaken) in downtown Hog Town (T.O.’s unflattering nickname). I loved audio books because you could go through three or four full length works in the course of a weekend just by listening. So I was able to consume Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, Clarisa Pinkola Estes’s Women Who Run With Wolves and several of Les Brown’s uplifting homilies in very quick order. Since I am a voracious and omnivorous reader (or shall we say listener in this  case) I devoured everything in my literary path, including books on Buddhism , Taoism, Transcendental Meditation, Zen and the  Art of Motor Bike Maintenance, Interior Décor, The 22 Laws on Marketing, Nano Technology and Female Intuition for Business. I once made a futile attempt to boost my memory by borrowing FOUR audiobooks on the subject. But guess what? I forgot to return the books on time, so when I did, the gentle, bespectacled, thirty something co-owner of the place just smiled at me, commenting wryly in his quintessential Canuck way:

“That little pile was not of much use to you eh?”

But that is the tale to be told in another digital essay.

Before I forget the obscure point I was trying to drive home in the third last paragraph above… 

I once listened to an audiobook explaining to me how to build a brand. The author who had studied Pizza Hut, Toyota, Mercedes Benz, Sony, PlayStation, Chicago Bulls, Time Warner and other corporate titans concluded that successful brands had some unique features. To build a successful brand he exhorted, you need to create a category consisting of ONLY ONE ITEM: YOURSELF, or if it was a commodity, only that commodity. He said that corporations like Pepsi Cola started losing their brand identity through too much diversification. To paraphrase him, if you were Volkswagen, for instance, and you started selling chapatis, lip stick, hot dogs and baby diapers on the side, there was a danger that people could easily forget that your core business was selling automobiles.

What does all this have to do with Uhuru Kenyatta?

Bear with me, dear reader. 

By now, you should be used to my meanderings and tangential side shows. 

More seriously, my anecdote has to do with BRANDING.

And I am talking of the Kenyatta Brand.

If my audio teacher is to be believed, the best brands have only member in the self-created category.

So the Kenyatta Brand is going to be a problem for Uhuru Muigai.

The Kenyatta Brand is associated with only one name:

Mzee Jomo Kenyatta.

With all its attendant historical, political and ethnic connotations and conundrums-positive and negative.

So President Kenyatta II has to make up his mind:

Will he continue living off the dividends of the venerated Kenyatta Brand which is dominated by his father’s legacy or will he be bold enough to reject the Kenyatta Brand and create a brand new Uhuru Muigai brand?

Choices have consequences, to quote a recently retired American career diplocrat.

To the wealthy board room schemers, State House wheeler and dealers and Mount Kenya Mafia barons  behind the scenes, Uhuru Kenyatta is just a reincarnation of the elderly First President who is forever interred next to the Hotel Inter Continental; to them Uhuru Kamwana is the newly installed Muthamaki, the freshly minted Mutongoria who has kicked most of Kenyans in the teeth reminding them, in a  brusque fashion, that the House of Mumbi has a “divine right” to rule Kenya roughshod, violating the nation without a condom. To these tribal conspirators, Uhuru Kenyatta is a continuation of the Kenyatta Brand.

But is that what President Uhuru Muigai wants?

To be associated with those Seventies nightmares where Gikuyu was the official language in every government office? 

To be a rueful reminder to the Kalenjins of those dark days when Assistant Commissioners of Police called Mungai could publicly humiliate then Vice President Daniel arap Moi?

To rekindle the anger of the Mijikenda communities of Kilifi and Kwale Counties recalling how the Mahihus and Mathenges of yore would collude to grab land at the Coast and give it to the Kamaus, Njoroges and Gichurus?

To revive the grievances of the Luos recalling the infamous 1969 Kisumu Massacre?

Like I said, the choice of Uhuru Muigai retaining the Kenyatta Brand name has political, cultural, social, economic and ideological consequences across ethnic, regional even religious cleavages in Kenya.

I suspect that President Uhuru is a lot smarter than many people give him credit for.

He has already signaled that he started thinking along similar lines a few years before he even became the head of state.

His first move was to jettison KANU, the political machine that his fathers-his biological parent Jomo and his political god father Moi-used to buttress their iron fisted rule. 

His second major political move was to cut himself loose from his political uncle Kibaki by moving away from the PNU stable, leaving a lot of orphans, especially in Central Kenya.

Will he brave enough to live up to the Kiswahili meaning of his first name by Declaring Independence from Kenyatta?

Since he is very much Jomo’s son in so many ways-mannerisms included- that may be too much to chew.

But let’s wait and see.

President Uhuru embarks on his tenure (which may or may not include a second term) when there is a CONSENSUS across Kenya sanctioning his ascendancy.

This consensus is NOT, let be quick to point out, it is NOT the 6-0 Unanimous Verdict by the Supreme Court.

It is something else.

This consensus is the National Democratic Consensus.

How is this manifested?

In the landslide victory of the YES side in the August 4, 2010 Referendum on the Constitution.

That ratified document is now the supreme law in the land.

And it framed and informed the 2013 National and County Elections.

It was that Constitution that created the County governments; set up the Supreme Court; abolished the Grand Coalition and has set up the template defining the roles, powers and responsibilities of the Jubilee Government.

I took the time last night, to re-read the Harmonized Jubilee Manifesto- all 72 pages of it, at least according to the PDF version I have stored on my hard drive.

The Jubilee Manifesto is anchored on the 2010 Constitution and each of the three pillars that Uhuru and Ruto have been declaiming about-Umoja, Uchumi and Uwazi are based on the principles outlined in the Constitution.

Let me quote a key plank from the Jubilee Manifesto:

The Coalition will fast track the implementation of the new Constitution to secure the rights of Kenyans. We will guarantee the devolution of Government to the people, reduce the number of Government ministries and continue to reform the Judiciary.

Jubilee says it work for the realization of the Devolution dream by:

• Reducing the number of Government ministries from 44 to 22 in line with the new Constitution and streamlining their functions to achieve greater efficiency and service delivery;

• Drawing the line between national and county executive functions, with the intention of devolving the functions constitutionally assigned to county Governments as soon as possible;

• Shoring up the Government revenue base at national level by closing tax loopholes and creating an even more efficient tax collection system.

• Using the “Rapid Results Approach” (RRA) to enhance administrative capability in all county executive departments, starting with the least endowed, to prepare them to assume the functions designated for county Governments under the Constitution;

• Developing new training and certification programs in collaboration with the Transition to Devolved Government Authority, the Kenya School of Government and our universities;

• Assisting all counties to build a strong local revenue base to gradually minimize their dependence upon the national tax revenue that will be distributed to them;

• Expanding revenue streams for county Governments through property taxes, entertainment taxes, proposed loans for approval by the National Treasury and royalties from the exploitation of natural resources where applicable;

• Increasing the national budget allocated to the counties from the current 15 % to 40% within the next five years;

• Ensuring that the Equalization Fund is immediately channeled in the form of conditional grants to county Governments to kick start the development of marginalized and underdeveloped regions. We believe that the county Governments are best suited to identifying the critical needs of marginalized areas within their jurisdiction;

•  Establishing a Loans and Grants Council to ensure that national loans and grants designated for development are shared equitably;

• Ensuring through deliberate capacity building mechanisms and resource allocations, that within a year all county Governments have taken over their constitutional responsibilities;

• Transferring the function of the development of education infrastructure for primary and secondary schools to county Governments, while the national Government retains responsibility for all regulatory and employment matters;

• Facilitating the establishment of national institutions within counties to enhance national integration;

•  Creating structures to facilitate direct scrutiny and audit of county and national Government programs, investment and projects;

• Creating a benefit-sharing framework that ensures local communities benefit from national resources in their locality;

• Ensuring the equitable distribution of revenue is raised nationally among national and county Governments;

• Ensuring expenditure that will promote the equitable development of the country, including by making special provision for marginalized groups and areas;

• Ensuring that affirmative action continues to be applied in respect of disadvantaged areas and groups;

• Creating youth employment opportunities through affirmative action schemes to ensure fair access to jobs in county Governments;

•  Expanding the mandate of the Kenya Revenue Authority by elevating it to an autonomous institution to ensure greater accountability in revenue collection to both national and county Governments;

•  Transforming the Regional Development Authorities (currently operating under the Ministry of Regional Development) into Inter-County Corporations to be used as vehicles for joint county development projects;

• Transforming the Youth Enterprise Development Fund into a National Enterprise Agency, Biashara Kenya, to drive economic assistance, innovation and wealth creation;

• Transforming the counties into actual centres for development and growth by devolving responsibility for the Economic Stimulus Programs (ESP) to county level with Biashara agencies reporting directly to the new County Governors;

• Ensuring the transparent management of devolved funds and resources;

• Allowing counties greater financial independence by giving them access to local and international loans and grants;

• Establishing County Infrastructure Funds (CIF) in each county to fund the development and upkeep of roads and houses;

• Ensuring that all residential and commercial developments in each county contribute to the County Infrastructure Fund through a Local Planning Gain Obligation;

Those are pretty detailed, concrete and specific proposals which in all likelihood, meet the SMART challenge (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic Targets).

The Jubilee proposals are inspired by the principles and objects of devolution in Kenya which are which listed on pages 107 and 108 in Chapter Eleven of the Constitution.

The Jubilee Coalition’s 7 key pledges to all Kenyans are a ready grid to immediately start measuring the achievements (or lack of) that Uhuru, Ruto and his team will demonstrate in the coming days, weeks, months and  few years to come:

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP: We will ensure the public service provides quality services and is accountable to the people.

A SAFE KENYA: We will expand, Equip and modernise our security agencies to ensure every Kenyan is guaranteed of their safety and that of their loved ones and their property.

EMPOWERING OUR YOUTH: We will equip our youth with the necessary skills, capital and opportunities to create wealth for themselves through securing local and foreign investment in new factories and giving tax-breaks, grants and loans to set up

A FOOD SECURE KENYA: We will ensure that our Agricultural sector can produce food in excess of the needs of our country by encouraging mechanization, irrigation, reviving cooperatives and farmer unions and subsidy for inputs. In addition, we will encourage value addition in the production chain and develop suitable marketing support mechanisms for our farmers.

SOCIAL JUSTICE: We will ensure that the rights of all Kenyans are preserved through good governance, democracy, and respect for the rule of law and social protection and welfare for the disadvantaged.

A HEALTHY KENYA: We will ensure that all Kenyans have access to well equipped health facilities and well trained and motivated health care workers, in addition to developing systems to support health care and sanitation.

WATER AND ELECTRICITY FOR ALL: We will ensure that every Kenyan has access to clean water and sustainable supply of electricity by developing necessary policies to encourage investment in infrastructure for water and electricity provision.

If Uhuru Muigai and his Jubilee Team can remain true to what they have outlined in their manifesto, key note speeches and recent overtures, then Kenya could be on a trajectory for intermediate take off to sustainable development, we could be on the cusp of a democratic nirvana, on the threshold of a social justice dawn.

But if we are to judge Jubilee using URP’s credo, Kusema na Kutenda! then we may hold our breath a little longer.

 A few days ago, a pal of mine here in Nairobi asked me over the phone to stroll over from the Nairobi Java Coffee House on Mama Ngina Street where I was waiting for him to the Giggles Pub and Restaurant, located across the street from the Nation Centre and around the block from  Jamia Mosque and the MacMillan library. Because of my penchant for adorning African garb with the requisite accessories of beads, chains, wrist bangles, ankhs and other assorted Afrocentric paraphernalia, a lot of Kenyans do not think I am in fact a Kenyan! I look too much like an African to them. Recently when my wife and I were quietly enjoying a sip of cappuccino while nibbling on some almond croissants over at the café adjacent to Nakumatt Lifestyle we were both greatly amused when the befuddled waiter swore repeatedly that I was a Nigerian-that is, if I was not from Ghana, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Zambia! Real Kenyans apparently wear suits from England, that is when they are not rocking the finest second hand Mitumba from Bangladesh, Mexico, and Thailand or for that matter the Salvation Army stock from Calgary, Alberta!

Anwayz.

When I got over to Giggles, I found my friend in animated conversation with a young journalist who is employed by one of the dailies-NOT the Nation. The young fellow is a very bright Central Kenyan and an ardent TNA supporter. Since, he too, did not think I was a Kenyan like him-imagining perhaps that I was Togolese, Beninois, Angolan or Mozambican- he rattled off what he thought was TNA’s TRUE AGENDA over the next five years:

“There is already a 2017 Uhuru Re-Election Task Force in place. We must start early. We may relent and allow Ruto to be President in 2022-if he agrees that his running mate will be one of us. We want to completely smash Kalonzo Musyoka as a credible national politician. He is toast, gone, kaput, finished. We are worried about Raila. The man is crafty. He is clever. Imagine he had the cheek to decline that appointment that Uhuru offered him. An envoy based outside the country. He is too dangerous inside. And mark you, whoever Agwambo endorses- and he won’t be a Luo, is the fifth President. Uhuru must work overtime to appease the CORD people. He is limited in terms of appointments because of the new constitution, but he must do something. I am happy that he is going to park in Luo Nyanza for four days next week.”

Now like I said, that was only a young journalist speaking. 

But he seemed to know a lot about the NSIS roots of Nancy Gitau, the General running Team Uhuru who is expected to replace Kimemia to be appointed the Secretary to the Cabinet under the new dispensation. He also predicted that Michael Wakienda, the youthful confidant of Uhuru  will bag a cabinet secretary post; that my namesake Onyango Oloo will replace Muthui Kariuki as the Government Spokesman and  Njee Muturi (the advocate who has been Uhuru’s long term PA and whose own father was State House Comptroller when his Uhuru’s dad was resident in Ikulu) will be appointed State House Comptroller surprising those who have been betting on Uhuru’s nephew Jomo being tapped for that powerful position. The Presidential nephew may become the official Private Secretary of the head of state according to this source.

For me the litmus test of where  the Uhuru/Ruto/Jubilee regime is headed will be, NOT  devolution; certainly not the individuals  who are announced as cabinet nominees after some frantic tribal arithmetic or even whether or not William Ruto shows up for his upcoming ICC rendezvous.

No.

It will be something more basic.

It will be the extent to which the Jubilee regime expresses fidelity to Chapter Four of the Constitutuion, which covers the Bill of Rights.

Already there are several worrying signs about the creeping encroachment of those rights by a cabal of securocrats, spooks and unelected mandarins.

Consider for example, this April 19, 2013 dispatch from the Committee to Protect Journalists:

Two investigative journalists threatened in Kenya

Nairobi, April 19, 2013--Two investigative journalists have reported receiving death threats in Kenya shortly after airing a story suggesting foul play in a government official's death, according to news reports and local journalists.

Mohammed Ali and John-Allan Namu, investigative journalists from the private KTN television network received threats from anonymous callers and via social networking sites on Wednesday, according to Namu and Willis Angira, associate producer for KTN. "We received threats two days ago, and it was made clear that we were being watched, and there was a plan to eliminate Mohammed and myself," Namu told CPJ.

David Ohito, news editor of The Standard, which is also affiliated with KTN, told CPJ that the threats were linked to an investigative story aired on KTN two weeks ago, called "Inside Story: Death in Ten Minutes" that suggested foul play in a helicopter crash that killed former Interior Minister George Saitoti.

On June 10, 2012, a police helicopter crashed in the southern town of Ngong, which was carrying Saitoti and his deputy, Orwa Ojode, along with two pilots and two bodyguards. According to the KTN story, the commission set up to investigate the crash failed to pursue leads that emerged during the investigation, among them that Saitoti and Ojode may have been poisoned to death.

The Standard said its journalists believe the threats originated from Kenya's internal security department. Ohito told CPJ that The Standard had contacted authorities to express their concern about the threats and saying that they planned to provide the journalists with extra security if more threats occurred.

CPJ's calls to and messages left with police were not immediately answered.

Police were also implicated in the January 2009 murder of Weekly Citizen journalist Francis Nyaruri, shortly after he investigated corruption within the police department.

"We hold Kenyan authorities responsible for the safety and well-being of Mohammed Ali and John-Allan Namu," said CPJ East Africa Consultant Tom Rhodes. "These threats are clearly motivated by the journalists' report, which raised the possibility of official involvement in the crash."

As I recently observed in one of my digital essays:

The resurgence of state intimidation, police harassment, arbitrary arrests, lobbing of tear gas, firing of live bullets, rounding up of activists and even extra judicial killings is CHILLING.

 It reminds me of the dark days of the long night of Moi KANU one party fascist dictatorship.

Many of the teenagers and  early twentysomething Facebookers and twentysomething twittering twits babbling, yammering and jabbering gibberish endorsing these draconian, illegal and unconstitutional state terror tactics had NOT EVEN BEEN CONCEIVED back in the day when it was considered OK for the cops to storm a private residence and arrest four family members discussing the news headlines when having their ugali na sukuma for supper because they were allegedly having a "night meeting" because they did not bother to secure a police license.

I am particularly offended by the clamour to reintroduce repression in Kenya at this point in time.

For two reasons.

One, Kenyans are living under a new constitutional dispensation. That new order signifies a transition from the terrible National Security State to the more alluring National Democratic State, in other words, a move from FASCISM to DEMOCRATIC RENEWAL.

Why would, for instance public officers like Mr. Kimemia and Mr. Kimaiyo who have SWORN to DEFEND the Constitution flagrantly violate the Bill of Rights?

Two, and this is rather PERSONAL as far as I am concerned.

On August 4, 1982, while I was still a first year University of Nairobi student, I was abducted by the police at the Voi Railway Station and returned forcibly under gun point, to be charged with three counts of "sedition" liable up to 27 years imprisonment, BASED SOLELY on the basis of a hand written DRAFT of an essay where I was calling upon Kenyan youth and students to stand up for democracy, justice and freedom. On the basis of those trumped up charges, a hastily convened KANGAROO court sentenced me to several years behind bars at the notorious Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. I was tortured, beaten, humiliated and alienated. My youth was stolen from me. My education was interrupted. I became blacklisted when I left prison. I was shunned. I was forced to flee from my homeland Kenya and exiled to a very frigid continent tens of thousands of miles away where I vegetated for close twenty years!

And for what?

For drafting a student essay touching on issues of fundamental rights like freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom of assembly, academic freedom and other civil and political liberties.

Onyango Oloo and hundreds of Kenyan patriots like, to name just a few, Dr. Willy Mutunga, Raila Odinga, Alamin Mazrui, Timothy Njoya, Davinder Lamba, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Micere Mugo, Wangui wa Goro, Wangari Muriuki, Chitechi Osundwa, Adongo Ogony, Oduor Ongwen, Zarina Patel, Yusuf Hassan, Abdilatif Abdalla, Njeri Kabeberi, Paddy Onyango Sumba, Mwandawiro Mghanga, Oyange Mbajah, Silvanus Oduor, Omondi Kabir and many, many, more, paid with our health, our families, our minds, our limbs, our careers, yes, some with their very lives to topple the fascist dictatorship and contribute to the emerging democratic space which is best exemplified by the promulgation of the Kenyan Constitution on August 27, 2010.

 Where we the Kimemias and Kimaiyos back then?

 Undergoing a DO course at the Kenya Institute of Administration or going through the recruit's training drills at the Police College in Kiganjo?

My name is Onyango Oloo.

But since I am NOT

the Onyango Oloo who has President Uhuru's ear, I guess I will just send a tweet linking this  digital essay to @UKenyatta, hoping that my fellow bloggers Dennis Itumbi and Moses Kuria will pass it on to El Presidente.

Onyango Oloo

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Nairobi, Kenya

1:25 PM East African Time