Running On Empty

“Even a dog would have been elected” lamented the late KANU stalwart, J.J. Kamotho, in 1992 following the rout in the former Central and Nairobi provinces of the then ruling party in the first multiparty elections. In both municipal and Parliamentary elections, pretty much anyone who stood on a Ford-Asili ticket won. Such was the revulsion with which KANU was held that it seemingly did not matter whether alternative candidates had credible visions of their own.

In the near-quarter century since, and as control of the capital has veered between the opposition and the ruling party, the fortunes of the city’s long-suffering residents have continued to dwindle. In the four elections that have been held since 1992, politicians have rarely been elected on the basis of their plans. Quite the contrary. Most have been content to run against the perpetually dismal record of the incumbent rather than on what they intend to do for the city.

Now this is not to say that there have not been grandiose promises. Of course there have. The 2013 gubernatorial debates were replete with promises of fixed sewers, new infrastructure, more schools, cleaner streets. However, little was offered in the way of plans.

In his inaugural address, Governor Evans Kidero declared that his first 100 days in office would be dedicated to clearing up the garbage; fixing traffic problems; decongesting the city and the Central Business District; sorting out crime, security and city planning; improving trade with other counties; creating jobs and business opportunities; and improving the county’s revenues. However, he did not say how he would go about any of this and, perhaps predictably, 1250 days later little of this has been accomplished.

I remember asking on Twitter -prior to his inauguration- what Kidero planned to do about the violence and abuse suffered daily by the city’s women and girls and getting quickly shut down by his online fan club. Six months later, our TV screens were showing that he was not exactly averse to engaging in a little violence against women himself.

As we approach the 2017 election, Nairobians are once again inundated with promises, declarations, visions and manifestos from a plethora of candidates hoping to unseat the hapless incumbent. Most can eloquently articulate the problems afflicting the city. In vague and flowery language, they talk of their vision of a better Nairobi. However, like Kidero three years ago, they are a little vague on the details.

Take the bombastic former chief advisor to the Prime Minister, Miguna Miguna, for example. On his second run for the governorship, Miguna has published a lengthy vision and manifesto. In them, he rightly identifies integrity and accountability as the cornerstone of any competent administration. “Integrity is the software of leadership without which a leader is nothing but a primitive dangerous beast with power,” he writes, while declaring his own “unimpeachable background and an unyielding commitment to the fundamental transformation”. Much of what follows is a condemnation of the “looting” of the city under Kidero. So what does he propose to do about it? Aside from ensuring only individuals of proven integrity are part of his administration, he also promises playgrounds, markets, infrastructure and at least 100,000 “well-paying jobs for the youth and engineers per year starting 2018”.

This is all well and good. However, how exactly he plans to deliver this remains a bit of a mystery. He does not say how much it might cost, where he will get the money for it or even whether he has identified any particular projects. When asked about this, he and his online crew are wont to brand their questioners as apologists for Kidero and the cartels robbing the city.

Miguna is not alone in this reluctance, even refusal, to be specific. Esther Passaris, another who has thrown her hat into the ring and described the county administration as “a total mess”, also makes promises of 24hr service, parking, markets etc. Not much detail on how any of this is to be achieved.

Like KANU had by the 90s, Kidero’s tenure has been characterized by incompetence and thievery. He makes for an easy target. However, for the sake of Nairobians, it should not be enough to just be a “dog” running against him.

It's Not Too Late For Kenya To Look Back

Grand corruption is back in the headlines. Newspapers and broadcasts today are full of unsavoury details about accusations of bribery bedevilling the committees of Parliament, questions on the Nairobi Governor’s past as CEO of the troubled Mumias Sugar Company and the infighting at the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Authority over the alleged tampering with files relating to the Anglo-Leasing scam. However, my question is: Why did the issue ever leave the front pages?

The fact is, graft, the single issue which has been the scourge of regimes since independence, never went away. We simply stopped paying attention. Sure there have been indicators of its ubiquitous presence all along but we have been encouraged to see these as isolated signs. President Uhuru Kenyatta has urged us to focus on “development” and declared the existence of the mythical “War on Corruption.” And most have seemed content to take him at his word.

No longer.  It is increasingly clear that the vice has infected almost every aspect of public life. Even the institutions meant to fight it have themselves not been immune. This is proof positive that the problem is not one of a few bad apples but is systemic. Corruption is not just deeply ingrained in our modes of governance. The misappropriation and theft of public resources for private gain is part of the entire ethos underlying the system we inherited from the British. 

That failure to fundamentally reform that system is at the heart of our current woes. However, we have steadfastly refused to consider our past as a nation, the choices that were made and the consequences they have borne. We keep demanding investigations and prosecutions but are constantly at a loss to explain why these, even in the rare occasions they actually happen, never lead to satisfactory outcomes. Or why they only seem to serve as smokescreens behind which records are sanitized. 

The Bible tells the tale of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the salvation of the righteous. As they flee from the destruction being wreaked on the wicked, they are warned not to look back. One, however, is unable to resist one last glance at the burning hell that she once called home and is instantly turned into a pillar of salt.

Kenya, too, is in flight. We are running from our past and from the iniquity of the last half century. And just like the Lots, the tribal gods who have afforded us escape have warned us not to look back. And so, most are focused on getting as far away as possible, not wishing to disobey, to look back lest the flames consume them. Few harken to the voice described in Anna Akhmatova’s poem, Lot’s Wife, still rings in their ears: "It's not too late, you can still look back.” 

The fate of the unnamed spouse has come down in history as a cautionary tale. She has been dismissed as a vain and materialistic woman who, because of her character, deserved her punishment. Similarly today, those insisting on an examination of the past are branded as self-indulgent narcissists who insist on dragging us back into the mire. 

Despite all the justifications offered for the righteousness of her demise, it is not inconceivable that Lot’s wife was punished for expressing her outrage at the injustice occurring behind her, for daring to question the judgment of Heaven. “And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human,” said the late American novelist, satirist and graphic artist, Kurt Vonnegut.

Many of those looking back in modern day Kenya are also doing so out of outrage. For me, it is inconceivable the system we so like to defend is anything but flawed, that our terror of the past is anything other than indicator of the superficiality of our nationhood, of the hollowness of our democracy. I am outraged that despite the talk of reconciliation, we were still frightened of truth and that the systems we today employ to ensure the transparency and accountability in our governance arrangements do little to enhance either. I am outraged when the report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, which represents country’s best hope for beginning to confront the reasons for that fear, is systematically perverted to protect the interests of a powerful elite and to cover up their crimes. But most of all, I am outraged at the lack of outrage, that we can so easily give up, that we are so quick to forget, to “accept and move on,” so afraid to demand an accounting.

For those who do turn back, there is a swift rooting to the ground, an inability, even unwillingness, to look away, to ignore what has been seen, to keep silent. Yet most of Kenya ignores their voices and keeps running. But what we are running from –and where we are running to- we cannot say. We can only mouth some vague ideas about “development”. Is it a better place? How can we know? Are we “moving on” to a place of incestuous tribal worship, where we bear new generations only for them to be again attacked further displaced by the very monsters we refused to confront? 

There is a need for us to discard the narratives that keep us from recognizing and dealing with the truth. Our inability and refusal to deal with roots of the economic and human rights violations of the past half century and beyond is the context within which the current orgy of looting and corruption must be seen and addressed.

The Religion of Development

A version of this article was published in The Star

A month ago, despite having failed to qualify for the biggest party on earth, members of Kenya's hapless national soccer team had a reason to smile. They were, after all, joining the other 32 national squads in Brazil 2014 courtesy of the (hopefully personal) generosity of President Uhuru Kenyatta. The Stars had to settle for a seat in the stands but what the heck! It was still the closest they have ever been to joining the spectacle.

Last weekend, however, that little joyride didn't seem to have done them much good as lowly-ranked Lesotho bundled them out of the 2015 African Nations Cup. Still, painful as it may be, the spectre of Harambee Stars coming from watching the World Cup only to suffer humiliation at home is a useful metaphor for Kenya’s obsession with symbolisms and the terrible realities these symbolisms are employed to mask.

Take “development” for example. What really is it? What do we mean when we speak it? Is it having tall buildings, roads with multiple lanes and standard-gauge railways? For many, this is what it signifies. Mwai Kibaki, till recently, was regularly feted for having presided over the construction of the Thika “SuperHighway” and Kenyatta is busy promising railways, ports and laptops. But is this really, what development is? One would assume that it is about solving problems, about bettering lives. But, in a nation that primarily walks to work, or indeed to anywhere else, one must wonder about the obsession with roads but not walkways in the city. Who are they for?

Now, this is certainly not to say that we do not need roads or railways. But it is meant to question the rationale for them. Throughout much of our history as a nation, we have been treated to herds of white elephants, each one trumpeted under the banner of development and few delivering any tangible benefits to the populace. There is little public discussion about the benefits and costs of “development” and for whose benefit it is carried out. 

So when Governor Alfred Mutua rolls out 70 ambulances, we don’t bother to ask what’s in them or where they’ll be ferrying the patients to. Or why they carried under 4,000 people to hospital in 7 months - which works out, on average, to just one trip per ambulance every 4 days. What are they doing the rest of the time? Is it believable that in a county of over a million people and 264,500 households, only 520 people per month needed ambulance services? And if so, why buy 70?

Similarly, few questions are raised when the government takes a massive loan and employs 5000 foreign workers (in addition to 30,000 locals) to build a railway that the World Bank says we don’t need. Or pledges laptops to kids who have to row across crocodile and hippo-infested rivers or have to risk death on makeshift bridges to get to schools that neither have electricity, nor classrooms, nor basic furniture and where teachers are absent almost half the time.

“Development” has become some sort of religion whose creed we mindlessly regurgitate without ever seriously contemplating its meaning. It is a faith whose promises are never seriously questioned, whose dogmas are sacrosanct and which tolerates no heresy. And like most other blind faiths, it has led us unfailingly down the path of ignorance, poverty and misery.

At independence, like many newly liberated African “nations”, we rushed to acquire the symbols of nationhood and development, assuming the substance would follow. “Fake it till we make it” seemed to be the national ethos. So we got ourselves a flag and an anthem and our President got a limousine and outriders and entourage. We built monuments to the great leaders while the people starved and worshipped the growth of something called the economy and Gross Domestic Product even as that produce was stolen and its producers impoverished. 

And so we have carried on to this day. It is why our politicians fight for the right to be called “Your Excellency” or to sport a flag on their car. Why the governor of the poorest county in the republic thinks it a good idea to spend Kshs 115 million on his mansion and another Kshs 50million on “entertainment” while his subjects starve. Why the government spends Kshs 437 million on traffic lights and cameras that don’t appear to work. It is all about the symbols and not the substance.

Another example of how the superficial has pervaded our thinking is the reluctance to even question the sources of the fabulous wealth our political and business elites love to flaunt. When the media last week reported on the sale of a house for over half a billion (yes, billion with a “b”), there was little mention of the reasons for the skyrocketing property prices in the capital which have made the idea of owning a home a distant dream for most.

Few journalists bother to discuss the fact that our country is quietly turning itself into a major money laundering centre, that over the last decade, according to Global Financial Integrity, a US-based financial watchdog, “the amount of illicit money entering Kenya from faulty trade invoicing, crime, corruption and shady business activities has increased more than five-fold in a decade to equal roughly 8 percent of Kenya’s economy”. We prefer to hush up the fact that many of the people either holding the levers of power, or competing for the privilege, as well as their friends and relatives, have been implicated in the illegal activities like wildlife poaching, charcoal trading and narcotics which are not only flooding the country with dirty money, but also filling up the coffers of the Al Shabaab terror group which is responsible for the murders of hundreds of Kenyans.

We demonstrate our shallowness when an interview of the President is not taken as an opportunity to seriously challenge him on the specifics of his counter-terrorism strategy, or his mandarins interfering with the land chapter of the report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, or his administration’s subversion of Article 143(4) of the constitution that expressly provides for his prosecution. In fact, much of the media nowadays behave like the elite’s Poo-Pourri, allowing them to take a dump on us and still leave the place smelling of roses.

Like the Harambee Stars, we are discovering that pretending to eat at the cool kids’ table will only get us so far. When we refuse to do the real work of thinking through and questioning what our governments tell us, when we allow our rulers to replace policy with politics and our journalists to pretend public interest is the same thing as what the public is interested in, then we are, inevitably, setting ourselves up for tragedy.

However, last week did also bring a small ray of hope. Julius Yego, who taught himself to throw the javelin by watching YouTube videos, became the first Kenyan athlete to win a Commonwealth title in a non-track event. Yego’s win demonstrated what is possible when we put in the work. When we stop faking it and actually get down to the business of making it.

Meanwhile, recently at the High Court...

The Sin Of Being Female

In the last few days, our airwaves and social media accounts are inundated with opinions on what the verbal and physical abuse perpetrated against a female journalist and a female MP mean. I came across an online discussion where some were suggesting that the public humiliation of Kiss FM presenter Caroline Mutoko and Nairobi Women's Representative Rachel Shebesh at the hands of Nairobi Senator Gideon “Sonko” Mbuvi and Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero, was a ploy to distract attention from the President and his deputy's problems with the ICC.

I personally find it disturbing that some evidently regarded discussing the violence, humiliation, sexism and exploitation that our women suffer daily as a distraction from more important issues.

How we treat our women is a measure of how we regard ourselves as a society. After all, Wanjiku has become a synonym for ordinary folk, both male and female. We speak of the motherland and ascribe a feminine gender to our national collective. Kenya is a “she” and has “her” interests, we say. The disdain we have for women mirrors the contempt our rulers have for us. When Kidero slaps Shebesh and Sonko insults Mutoko, they are not just putting powerful women in their place. They are expressing their contempt and fear of an empowered society, of a populace that dares to question the actions of their betters.

In my view, the problem isn't that people are talking about Sonko and Kidero. It is that they are ONLY talking about Sonko and Kidero. Not about how they are representative of a societal disdain of women. Not that this attitude is responsible for the silence on the rape epidemic in our towns, the horrors beading and FGM and domestic violence, the lack of investment in maternal health which leads women to be beaten by hospital staff after being forced to give birth on the floor.

It is why when we discuss abortion, we are blind to the dangers that pregnancy poses to women. We have one of the highest rates of maternal deaths in the world. Many lose their jobs or have to forgo their schooling for having the temerity to conceive unwanted kids. Many are ostracized by their families and abandoned by their men. Many have no incomes, no education, no support , to take care of the kids we insist they bear.

We refuse to invest in girls education, to protect them, to empower them, to provide sex education and contraception preferring instead to blame them, to call them fornicators and adulterers and murderers, to turn a self-righteous blind eye as they die in their thousands or get maimed for life at the hands of backstreet quacks.

It is never about the men. It is never about the abuse of power.

Accept and move on, we tell women. Suck it up. It's your lot as a woman. You must have done something to deserve it. It is just punishment for your immorality, for the sin of being female.

The parallels between how we speak of the abuse meted out against women and how we speak about the violence meted out against us are hard to ignore. It is always our fault. We drive too fast. We are too tribal or stupid or lazy or ignorant. It is never the fault of those who steal elections or organize and perpetrate the violence. It is never about the brutality, negligence and corruption of officials and officers. It is all our fault for making stupid decisions at the ballot box and we must pay taxes to fund our potentates’ lifestyles as just punishment for our guilt. The poor must forgo drinking milk because the government must have the revenues to build roads for the rich. We do not demand accountability or better because we do not think we deserve such.

Thus the talk on the ICC trials almost completely ignores and excludes the victims. We are only concerned about the safety of the powerful, about what their prosecution means and about whether they are being treated fairly. That 1600 Kenyans died five years ago barely registers. Who cares about them or their stories or their families? Just like the treatment of Mutoko and Shebesh is seen as a distraction, the demand for justice is portrayed as a distraction from the more important pursuit of economic development. Just as Shebesh's husband apparently feels it is he, not his wife, who deserves an apology from Kidero, the powerful see our lives and livelihoods as mere fodder for their ambitions and can stipulate that accords between political leaders can be a substitute for justice.

No. This is not a frivolous issue or a distraction. It is a conversation we should be having but one we are determined to ignore precisely because it is about women. And because it is really about us.