Innocent Victim? Not Exactly

The last few weeks have been rather trying for Kenyan media. The government’s criminal overreaction to the mock swearing in of Raila Odinga did not end with the shut down of the three leading television stations for over a week. Even after they were allowed back on air, the Uhuru Kenyatta administration has continued to throw a tantrum, with the President chasing journalists out of one of his official engagements and the state singling out three from the Nation Media Group, Linus Kaikai, Larry Madowo and Ken Mijungu, for special attention, forcing them to seek protection from the courts.

Faced with this onslaught, the media has been quick to don the costume of public interest and proceeded to play the part of innocent victim. In a piece published on the CNN website, Madowo condemns the “shutting down [of] networks that have such a massive following [and] public trust … by a rogue government.”

“Our job as reporters is to record history, whether the government of the day approves of it or not,” he continues, declaring Kenya “one of Africa's beacons for vibrant media [which] should not be dimmed out by an administration intent on censorship of independent voices, reducing the country to just another African dictatorship where critical journalism is outlawed and reporters constantly fear for their lives.”

Madowo deserves an Oscar for that performance. For while the government’s actions have been completely illegal and anti-democratic, outrageous in the extreme and deserving of full condemnation, Kenyan media has not behaved much better. The fact that he was forced to hawk his piece to CNN is telling. “This week, the @dailynation refused to print my column for the first time in nearly 4 years,” he had tweeted in explanation. In fact, a few days later, his column was to be cancelled entirely. And he wasn’t the only one targeted by the supposedly “vibrant media” which now seemed eager to do the government’s dirty work.

                     

On the eve of Odinga’s “inauguration”, a leaked internal memo from Nation Media Group (NMG) Editor-in-Chief, Tom Mshindi, suggested that he and Kaikai, NTV’s General Manager, were “aligned” on not providing live coverage for the event. That was before Kaikai that evening, in his capacity as Chairman of Kenya Editors Guild, blew the lid off a secret meeting at State House between of “a section of media managers and select editors from the main media houses” and President Kenyatta, his deputy, William Ruto, the Attorney-General as well as Cabinet Secretaries for Interior and ICT. It was at this meeting that the media was ordered not to cover the Odinga event live.

Ultimately, NTV did cover the event precipitating its being illegally switched off by the Communications Authority along with KTN and Citizen all of whom continued to stream their coverage on the internet. Kaikai would pay the price for his defiance as a quick reorganization at NTV has reportedly seen him sidelined on decisions regarding what content is broadcast and now even seems set to leave the group along with Madowo. At the moment, the two along with Ken Mijungu, the very people police were seeking to arrest, have been effectively banned from going on air and Madowo’s political talk show, Sidebar, appears to have been cancelled.

All this is part of a trend. Kenyan media houses have become adept at sacrificing top journalists to appease the government. Just as. in the current crisis, media owners and top management have been happy to throw journalists under the bus, so in 2014, The Standard fired 3 of its journalists after top editors were similarly summoned to State House over a story the government disputed.

In 2015, NMG fired world-famous cartoonist, Godfrey GADO Mwampembwa, after his cartoons drew the wrath of the Kenyan and Tanzanian governments. In 2016, Denis Galava was fired from his post as the Daily Nation’s Managing Editor for Special Projects, after he penned a New Year’s Day editorial that was, according to The Star, “deemed critical of President Uhuru Kenyatta's administration”.

Madowo’s notion that Kenya’s “vibrant” media conducts “critical journalism” is also quite misleading. We are talking here of establishments that are content to unquestioningly run press releases from State House as news, a habit which left the media badly exposed a few weeks ago after a claim by the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit that Kenyatta had been appointed a UNICEF global champion for youth empowerment turned out to be false. Further, many will not have forgotten that this same media houses were happy to pocket millions of public shillings for running illegal government advertisements during the campaign period. Or the role it played in allowing, and even encouraging, the delegitimization of civil society.

All this explains why many Kenyans have been ambivalent about supporting the media during the present onslaught. Poetic justice, some have called it, wondering why they should stand up for a media that does not stand up for them. There is a lesson for the media in all this. Protection does not come from courting the government, but rather from courting the people. In the end, as the Daily Nation’s own public editor wrote, it is the public that is “the best protector of press freedom”.

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Betrayal in the Kenyan Media

In Francis Imbuga’s 1976 play, Betrayal in the City, the Kenyan playwright and literature scholar describes life in the fictitious, dystopian, post-colonial state of Kafira. One of the characters, a university don jailed for speaking his mind: "We have killed our past and are busy killing our future".

As I write this, Kenya is busy killing its future. Once again, a disputed presidential election has put the country on edge. After a week of building tension and deserted streets and people stocking up on food, and water, protests have erupted in parts of Nairobi, sparked by the declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as winner. Gunshots and police choppers are being heard in Kibera, one of the capital’s largest slums and a bastion of support for his bitter rival, Raila Odinga, who claims he election has been stolen.

Many had already fled their homes in expectation of violence and in the capital city, Nairobi, many have not gone back to work since voting on Tuesday, leaving its normally bustling and noisy Central Business District feeling like a ghost town.

Small protests had been breaking out in several parts of the capital and in other urban centres, throughout the week, which had led to clashes with police and, regrettably, at least 5 deaths so far. Given the ongoing unrest, that figure is set to rise even further.

However, you wouldn’t know this watching most of Kenyan media -considered by some as one of the most vibrant on the continent. TV screens are full of pictures of celebrating Kenyatta supporters and political pundits analyzing the election outcome. Kenyans are having to turn to international media and to friends and family to get a sense of what is happening.

Throughout the week, while dutifully covering the complaints of election hacking and rigging raised by Odinga, as well as the responses from the Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the media was in the main determined to avoid any mention of trouble. Instead, it has opted to regale the country with colorful stories of the Githeri Man, Kenya's new internet sensation.

On social media, the usually irrepressible collective that calls itself Kenyans On Twitter (#KOT) is similarly subdued. As they have been doing the whole week, gangs of twitterbots are trolling the online streets looking for any reports of protests, branding them either “fake news” or evidence of a nefarious plot by foreign correspondents to incite violence for the sake of boosting their career prospects or securing book deals. There have even been reports of police preventing journalists from covering the demonstrations, confiscating equipment and deleting footage and even threatening to shoot them.

Much of this is reminiscent of what happened in the 2013 election. Four years ago, as the country again hang on tenterhooks as politicians bickered over another presidential election, I wrote of a compact that had developed between the media and the public: “Kenya would have a credible election, no matter what.” Back then, it was thought that the way to avoid the sort of violence that had nearly torn the country apart in 2007, on the back of yet another disputed presidential election (hope you are noticing a trend here), was to not ask uncomfortable questions about it.

Today, the reasons for silence are considerably more sinister. In the run up to the election, there was great public resistance to “preaching peace” as a means of pre-empting violent protests in the event the election was disputed. So out went “peace journalism”. But in place of a compact with the people based on the mutual fear of anarchy, the media appears to have made a deal with the government based on a mutual interest in plundering the public.

By law, the government is forbidden from advertising its achievements in any media during the election period. However, this did not stop the Kenyan media houses pocketing millions in the weeks before the election for broadcasting blatantly illegal advertisements from the President’s Delivery Unit, some of which even bore the tagline “Jubilee Delivers” and “Uhuru 2017” (Jubilee is the political party of incumbent president Uhuru Kenyatta, who is seeking re-election).

In return, it seems the media has sold its soul. The first sign came very soon after the closing of the polls when one TV channel, KTN NEWS, gave the results of what it called an exit poll. The curious thing about that poll was it does not seem to have asked the voters how they voted, which one would assume is the point of an exit poll.

But worse was to come. Going to bed with government seems to have led to a wholesale abandonment of their journalistic duty to independently verify the results of the election announced by the IEBC. A Court of Appeal decision in June had made it clear that results of the presidential election declared at polling stations and constituency tallying centres were final and could not be altered by IEBC mandarins at the national tallying center in Nairobi. That opened the door for the media to run independent tallies and, despite largely empty government threats of having their licenses cancelled, even call the election. And indeed, many already had this capacity. In January, Samuel Macharia, the owner of Kenya’s largest TV and radio network, Royal Media Services, told the Senate that his network had independently tracked records at every presidential election since 1992.

Yet, it appears that this did not happen. Today, all the press is crowded at the national tallying centre at the Bomas of Kenya in Nairobi, hanging on every word that issues from the IEBC. They have been content to run its unofficial tallies rather than get the official counts and tallies from the lower levels. And worst of all, as the politicians and IEBC officials haggle in Nairobi over which numbers are correct, the media is happy to play along rather than spare us the drama by simply heading down to the 40,000 polling stations where, even now, the official and final results are posted outside for all to see.

Rather than preaching peace, the Kenyan media has been earning its 30 pieces of silver by ignoring and editing out citizen frustrations in order to maintain a façade of normality. But there’s nothing normal about this silencing, the delegitimization of those, however many or few they may be, who feel the need to express their discontent through peaceful marches, or by ignoring of those who have died at the hands of the police.

Imbuga’s play has an ignominious character who uses his closeness to the supreme leader to secure corrupt advantages and to sell out his countrymates. At the end of the play, Mulili’s duplicity is laid bare and he is executed, signifying the passing of the oppressive order and the birth of new hope. Similarly, Kenya’s media needs to get out of Kenyans’ way so they can get down to the business of saving their future.

This piece was first published in the Washington Post.

Covering or Covering Up ? How Kenyan Media Betrays Kenya

On the eve of Madarka Day, CNN’s Robyn Kriel dropped bombshell. Her investigations had revealed that the Kenya government was engaged in covering up the truth surrounding the deaths of at least 141 Kenyan troops in El Adde, Somalia. The story made headlines around the world. However, here, where it should have mattered most, it was mostly ignored by the local press.

Why? In January when the slaughter happened, it was on the front page of every newspaper. But soon thereafter, it became clear that the media was being careful not to raise too many uncomfortable questions. Over the course of the last 6 months, even as further revelations, including Al Shabaab’s release of footage of the attack, showed gaping holes in the official version of events, the press has demonstrated little inclination to pursue the story. Though long whispered in newsrooms, that it took a foreign journalist to provide the first serious look at potential casualty numbers is most telling.

As I wrote this, news broke of yet another Al Shabaab attack, this time on an Ethiopian-manned base in Somalia. This time, the Kenyan media had few qualms about speculating on casualties or handing the terrorists a propaganda coup, the very excuses it has offered for not pursuing the El Adde story. That the coverage of the attack on the Ethiopians was carefully scrubbed of any mention of El Adde despite the obvious similarities, betrays their real concern: sparing KDF and government blushes.

Meantime, official statements about other events in Somalia continue to rampage across the headlines unchallenged. Kenya Defence Forces’ claims about battlefield successes against the Al Shabaab are reported as gospel truth, even when the facts are in dispute. It is a most curious and intriguing stance taken by a media fraternity that is widely acclaimed as one of the most vibrant on the continent. In truth, the accolades have routinely tended to overstate our media’s autonomy and gusto while underplaying its short memory and its marked tendency to kowtow to politicians and officialdom.

The coverage of the current impasse over electoral reforms and over the fate of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission also highlights some of these shortcomings. Since the 2013 general election, it has been obvious to anyone who cared to look into it, that the electoral system is in dire straits. Its performance (as well as that of the Supreme Court) in that poll left plenty to be desired and a sharply divided country. Yet in the last 3 years, the media has not prioritized the telling of this story. This despite the fact that a clear public interest exists: violence has accompanied all but one election in the multiparty era and the bungled 2007 contest almost tipped us into the abyss of anarchy and civil war.

Indeed, it was not until politicians exploited the situation to create a crisis that the media collectively took note. And even then, the reporting has been little more than an uncritical regurgitation of the opposing sides’ statements. Little energy is expended in articulating the issues of disagreement and whether these reflect simple party political and individual interests or are driven by a serious desire and plan to protect the national interest. Is the dispute about acquiring or preserving jobs for politicians or about fixing the broken system?

The media’s preoccupation has been with the political battles, with picking the winner and losers, rather than with the substance of the fight. A consequent failure to distinguish smoke from fire has allowed the politicians to shape the public discourse in self-serving ways that obscure what’s really at stake. This is how we have ended up with a national debate about the rather absurd proposition that the constitution somehow forbids dialogue or the equally preposterous idea that IEBC commissioners can be fired by physically ejecting them from their offices in Anniversary Towers.

Just as with the tragic El Adde debacle, Kenyan media has mostly been a forum for obfuscation and misdirection rather than a source of light and understanding. It has betrayed the Kenyans who, at great cost in lives, took on autocrats to defend the freedom it profits from and sadly abuses. When it abdicates its agenda-setting role and conspires in the silencing of voices critical of government; when it would rather cover up than expose official misdeeds; when it becomes a megaphone for Orwellian doublespeak; then a free media becomes an instrument of oppression and tyranny rather than a necessary bulwark against it.

Why The Media Is Losing The Digital Migration Debate

For nearly a week now, three of Kenya’s major privately-owned TV stations have been off air due to a row with the industry regulator over migration to a digital platform. The stations, NTV, Citizen TV and KTN, which together account for the vast majority of TV viewership in the country (they claim up to 90 percent), have had a long running and convoluted battle with the Communications Authority essentially demanding a license to broadcast their own content as opposed to handing it over to the two carriers the government has licensed.

It is said that truth is often the first casualty of war. This has been no exception. As both sides have sought to sway public opinion to their cause, honesty and objectivity have been tossed out the window. On the one hand, the government has tried to paint it as a fight to tame intransigent, monopolistic-minded media companies scared of the level field that comes with digital migration. On the other, the companies have portrayed it as a struggle against a deaf, authoritarian-minded regime intent on auctioning off national resources to the Chinese (one of the licensed carriers is Chinese).

While there has been more than enough mud to go round, and though the incompetence of the regulator is hard to ignore, it is clear that the TV companies seem to be coming off worst. The are probably two reasons for this. Most Kenyans don't watch TV and those that do have a hard time trusting the media.

Let's start with the latter. The merits of it's case aside,  government’s propaganda has tapped into a rich vein of distrust and contempt for the media, one that, ironically, has grown out of the fraternity’s uncritical embrace of the Uhuru Kenyatta administration.

The Kenyan press is struggling with the legacy of its anodyne reporting during the flawed 2013 election and subsequent reluctance to challenge the official narrative and government conduct on most issues and events. These include during the President’s trial at the International Criminal Court, the responses to terrorist attacks, including the attack on the Westgate Mall and the targeting of the Somali and Muslim communities, as well as the continuing demonization of civil society. Further, the TV stations' fascination with Mexican soaps and Nigerian movies, when most television consumers are mainly interested in the news, cannot do their reputation much good.

The media"s one-sided reporting of the digital migration impasse has not helped matters. Journalists have seemed either unable or unwilling to separate the interests of media conglomerates from those of the public. On the contrary, they have simply tried to sell the company line as the national cause. This is not new. Research carried out in 2012 found that “the line between media owners and editors has increasingly been blurred as the latter are co-opted into the formers’ domain, meaning the editors no longer exclusively pursue professionalism.”

If poll numbers are to be believed, public trust in the media is very brittle. Over three years ago when one survey found 77 percent of respondents saying they trusted the media. Just four months after the 2013 election, this had dropped to 46 percent before rising to 68 percent in November and collapsing again to 43 percent in March last year. The lesson here? Public trust is a commodity the Kenyan media takes for granted at its peril. As Peter Oborne recently wrote in his resignation statement as chief political commentator of the UK’s Telegraph: “There is a purpose to journalism, and it is not just to entertain. It is not to pander to political power, big corporations and rich men. [The media has a] duty to tell … the truth.”

The other reason the TV companies are losing this is that most of the country doesn't watch TV. “Starve the city dwellers and they riot; starve the peasants and they die. If you were a politician, which would you choose?" asked an aid-worker in Lloyd Timberlake’s 1988 book, Africa in Crisis. The current “crisis” has proven that not all audiences are created equal. Some matter more than others.

A relatively small, TV-owning minority punches above its weight in political terms. Two-thirds of Kenyan households do not actually own a television set, but politicians are scrambling to cater to the needs of the one-third that do, even altering their calendars to accommodate them. The launch of the OKOA Kenya campaign, for example, has been postponed until the standoff is resolved, with opposition leader, Raila Odinga, declaring “There can be no amendment of the constitution without the people and their can be no people without the media."

The fact is, despite radio being far and away the main source of news for the vast majority of Kenyans, the fact is TV is king in urban areas. The medium has overthrown the newspaper as the mediator of elite political discourse in the country. 

For the rest of the country, the promise of impressive clarity and variety is largely empty. Debates about cost and availability of set-top boxes are largely irrelevant for the 70 percent of the population who cannot even afford TV sets and the 80 percent who have no electricity to run them on. As Eng Francis Wangusi, the Director-General of the Communications Authority said recently, “If somebody can buy and maintain a TV in their house, that person is not poor.” He could have added that most Kenyans are poor.

Beyond what the media have got wrong, perhaps we as a country should consider expanding the scope of the discussion beyond just digital TV migration. According to one survey, by 2011, 93 percent of Kenyan households owned a mobile phone. Maybe the phone could do for TV what it has done for money transfer and banking. Mobile TV could allow the poor to access the digital TV services that are now slated to be the preserve of a lucky few. So instead of only talking about STBs, digital transmitters and distribution licenses, perhaps our tech and policy wonks could also spend some of the time debating the merits of providing affordable mobile TV to all.

When Media Become Lapdogs Rather Than Watchdogs

A little over a week has passed since police stormed the Musa Mosque in Mombasa, and killed up to 9 people whom they accused of participating in a "jihadist convention." Nearly 130 others, including children were arrested -58 have since been released- and the rest charged with offences under Kenya’s terrorism act. The police claim to have recovered terror training materials and information indicating plans to attack an "unspecified target."

I think there is a lot that is disconcerting about how this story is being told and the assumptions that have been made. There is little questioning of the government narrative. The media appears to have already made up its mind about what happened and has entirely ignored alternative versions of what happened.

Some things just don't seem to gel with the “official truth”. To begin with, this was no secret meeting. The media has reported that the convention was openly advertised on posters pasted across town and on social media postings and that the authorities were well aware of it. There is also considerable confusion over who called the meeting and what exactly was to be discussed.  The Standard reported there were lectures “on various topics justifying jihad, claiming conspiracies against Muslims and exhorting the faithful to prepare for ishtishhaad (life of sacrifice)”. However, Sheikh Abdallah Kheir, an imam and lecturer of sociology at Kenyatta University, told the press the meeting had been advertised merely as a religious lecture. Some of those who claimed to have been there also seemed unaware they were attending a "jihadist convention."

Further, it is unclear whether the meeting had been prohibited (which would raise fundamental issues surrounding the legality of any such a ban, and the impact on constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms of assembly and speech -issues that the press has not bothered to address.) The press reported that "authorities in Mombasa" had said they "would not allow it to take place." But these "authorities" do not appear to have made any effort to inform the organizers that their meeting had been disallowed. Though in the aftermath of the raid, the Mombasa County Police Commander was quoted as saying: "'we' had issued a warning that we will not allow such a meeting because it was illegal," other reports indicated that the Mombasa County Security Committee made no attempt to stop it "anticipating that known hardcore jihadists would attend it." In fact, "attending an illegal meeting" does not appear to be one of the charges levelled in court in relation with the incident.

As I write this, the government has reportedly arrested three persons  in the capital, Nairobi, after police broke up a citizens' protest they had themselves cleared. The demonstration, led by the activist Boniface Mwangi and the widely respected Rev Timothy Njoya, was supposedly outlawed by the shadowy National Security Advisory Council which accused the US Agency for International Development of plotting to topple the government by financing demonstrations. Again, as the press has dutifully parroted the government's ridiculous allegations and ignored the constitutional issues, no one asks why it appears that the authorities once again appear to have made no effort to inform organizers that their event was “banned” or which law gave them the power to do so.

Going back to Mombasa, I am also greatly concerned at the terms employed in the coverage, much of which mirrors the distorted and lazy international reporting on seemingly all matters Muslim. The press has branded the meeting an "outlawed jihadist convention" and taken to calling those arrested (and, it would seem, pretty much any collection of young men at the coast) "militants" or "radicalized youth". We hear of "jihadist" flags and banners (apparently any black cloth with Arabic-looking script) and everyday household items, including scissors, a pair of pliers and a screwdriver, described as "weapons".  There's a disturbing vagueness about what is meant by radicalization. Who gets to decide who is a "radical preacher", which youngsters have been "radicalized", and what a nice "moderate" Muslim looks and sound like?

A few days after the Masjid Musa raid, a mob in Kisumu defaced and forced the removal of a monument put up to commemorate a century of Sikh presence in Kenya's third-largest city. In the days leading up to the destruction of the statue, Christian preachers were openly inciting their followers claiming the structure was "satanic" and attributing weather phenomena to its erection. Despite this, no one called for regulation of sermons in Kisumu, the shutting down of “radical preachers” in favor of “moderate Christians” or characterized the violent youths as “militant” or “radicalized”.

It is clear that the government has for a long time been uncomfortable with rising political consciousness at the coast and elsewhere. Its standard response however has been one of demonization while continuing to ignore the underlying grievances. Its dealings with civil society critiques or the Mombasa Republican Council, for example, demonstrate this clearly enough.

While there may be areas of legitimate security concerns, such as recruitment into terror outfits like Al Shabaab and possible terror plots, this does not give authorities carte blanche to ignore constitutional limits and to deny fundamental freedoms. The constitution exists primarily to constrain the power of government, not the rights of citizens. Thus we really should be worried when government sets itself up as the public censor, purports to ban speech and speakers it does not like and uses "national security" as an excuse to close down the space for political expression and protests.

Unfortunately, our press, more lapdog than watchdog, has largely failed to question the motives and (mis)deeds of the people in power. As we have seen before, it is ever happier cozying up to them and helping to delegitimize their opponents. Like the mob in Kisumu, it is quick to desecrate and deface, and slow to think and question.

Why Does African Media Get Africa Wrong?

Nanjala Nyabola, Kenyan writer and graduate student at Harvard Law School, recently caused a bit of a stir with her Aljazeera article asking “Why Do Western Media Get Africa Wrong?” Reading through the piece, which was both interesting and informative, I couldn’t help but wonder: Just who does get Africa right? Is there even such a thing as getting Africa right?

From the outset, let me state that I agree with many of Nanjala’s criticisms of media coverage of events on the continent. As she says, much of it is devoid of nuance and context and seems oblivious to what Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes as the “danger of a single story” – the reductio ad absurdum of the tale of a continent of over a billion people and 54 countries, their existence, history and stories compressed into one simple, superficial, easily regurgitated cliché. “The hopeless continent.” “Africa rising.” “Magical Africa.”

However, it is not just Western media (itself a rather obtuse concept) that is guilty of reporting in this manner. African media commits many of the same sins though, given the fact that most only broadcast to discrete home audiences, it is easy for them to escape censure. While Africans in almost every country on the continent have opportunity to be regularly appalled by their portrayal on CNN, Aljazeera and BBC, it is rare that Kenyans will flip the channel to check what Nigerian journalists are reporting about them.

Few African media houses are actually trying to cover the continent for the continent. Many have their hands full reporting (or not reporting) news at home and do not think of Africa so much as a story that needs to be covered, but as part of the rest of the world and take their cue on reporting it from the Western outlets. As South African photojournalist and film maker Greg Marinovich notes, “most African media stories on Africa are from international wires.” Few have bureaus or send reporters outside their home countries, choosing to rely on the same Western reporters they delight in bashing.

Look at the coverage of South Sudan, CAR, DRC or Somalia, for instance. Most media on the continent remains supremely oblivious to happenings there. Even in neighbouring nations such as Kenya, which has paid a huge price for Somalia’s instability, media only seems able to regurgitate the Western tropes about fighting terror and Islamic extremists. Few journalists bother to understand the genesis of the two-decade long anarchy or to explain the reasons and wisdom of Kenya’s intervention. In October 2011, many were too busy beating the patriotic drum of war and most have since lost interest in what Kenyan troops are doing across the border.

Nanjala also points out that most Western reporting of Africa, “the Rest is necessarily set up in opposition to The West” resulting in coverage where “issues or situations are rarely, if ever, analysed for their intrinsic impact or worth. Events or situations are analysed as what the West is not.” But that too cuts both ways. Sometimes, African media will mirror this and set up the Rest in opposition to the perceptions of the Western press.

Another example from Kenya. As the elections last year approached, the country was inundated by Western journalists, many undoubtedly there in anticipation of a repeat of the 2007/8 post-election bloodshed. Most Kenyan media-folk were appalled, having themselves determined to practice something called peace journalism. In any case, their resultant, overly uncritical reporting of the election seemed at least partly motivated by the desire to prove to their Western counterparts that Kenya was not another African basket case.

To be fair, when assessing their performance, one has also to consider the environment that African media operates in. Many operate under severe government restrictions, with limited resources. Shrinking budgets are, however, a worldwide phenomena. Much has been made about the phenomenon of journalists parachuting (not literally) to crisis spots for a few days and filing reports with neither context nor understanding. However, as Suzanne Franks noted nearly a decade ago, “an important gap in the way that Africa is reported is not just the disappearance of regular correspondents, but also of longer more considered television documentaries.”

“As current affairs coverage has declined, the only television outlet left for factual programming about Africa is on the news. So the kind of explanations and background context that would once have been contained in a thirty or forty minute programme, if they happen at all, now have to be compressed into a two or three minute package. It also means that the nature of what is covered will be dictated by news priorities. TV news, which is how most people find out about the world, is an event driven operation. Contemporary news reporting in Africa is invariably of the ‘fire fighting’ tendency. In the absence of resident correspondents, a highly professional reporter - well attuned to the needs and expectations of the various outlets- is flown in when disaster occurs and expected to deliver something within days if not hours.”

Remember that African news outlets are dependent on Western-based international wires to tell Africa’s story. Also recall that they take their cue on what their audiences need to hear from Western news outlets. That means they are in no position to pick up the slack. In fact they are part of the problem, perpetuating and disseminating as they do Western perspectives, biases and stereotypes. (Let me hasten to add that by no means are all Western journalists or all journalists working for Western-based outlets guilty of this.)

Perhaps the answer lies in an approach that does away with the idea of covering Africa. Since, like Chimamanda, most people on the continent do not primarily identify themselves as Africans except in opposition to those that aren’t. As the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere once observed, “Africans all over the continent, without a word being spoken either from one individual to another, or from one country to another, looked at the European, looked at one another, and knew that in relation to the European they were one.”

To cover Africa is necessarily to step outside of it, to see it in relation to “the European.” Such a perspective is hardly going to reflect how Africans see themselves. It is not an invalid perspective though. Just, again to borrow from Chimamanda, an incomplete one.

Maybe media, whether Western or African should just cover stories in Africa, as opposed to seeking African stories.

Who Will Bell The Cat?

Less than three years after we promulgated a new constitution, meant to herald a new era of democratic governance, our polity is facing a severe crisis of legitimacy. Today few Kenyans believe their MP represents them. Half the country thinks the presidential election was stolen and the revelations of IEBC incompetence threaten the credibility of the entire March General election. Untrammelled rent-seeking by the new county authorities and petty arguments over the appropriate manner of addressing housing and transporting governors and their wives are making a mockery of devolution. We are now the fourth most corrupt nation in the world.

The system is broken. So why aren't we fixing it? Why aren't we even talking of fixing it?

I think we may be seeing the consequence of a deficit in accountability. We are already well past the point at which our shamocracy pushed honesty and prudence out of public office. Now that the thugs and tribalists have taken over, they are systematically deconstructing our national identity and replacing it with ethnicities. This fracturing of identity makes it much harder for the people to mount collective action to punish thieving elites.

One of the primary ways (by no means the only one) the masses can enforce accontability is through elections. But we live in terror of elections. And with good reason. Elections work, when governments are evaluated on their performance, and when citizens watch whether governments keep their promises, and oust those that don’t measure up. Such accountability improves the provision of public goods, boosting incomes and welfare and reinforcing the sense of national belonging.

However, in poor and diverse societies such as ours, electoral competition undisciplined by accountability and enforced rules curtailing scope for cheating as well as constraints on the exercise of power, can be very dangerous indeed. Politicians are evaluated on their propensity for patronage, further polarizing the fractured identities and leading to higher risks of violence.

We don't have to look far for examples of what happens when we stay on the road we are on. Cote D'Ivoire and Somalia have been through this. The former was once Africa's economic miracle and is now a basket case. The latter is one of it's most ethnically homogenous societies, which has been tearing itself apart for more than two decades. We ourselves had a taste of it in 2007.

The lack of accountability and fracturing of the national identity is the road to hell. It is why we are deathly afraid of elections. When accountability for the deaths of 1500 Kenyans is swept under the carpet in the name of a fake reconciliation, when we elect thugs to public office and turn a blind eye to electoral malfeasance in the name of peace, we are just storing up further troubles down the road.

It is also proof positive of the hollowness of our democracy. A free people should have no reason fear electoral contests. And to the extent that we do, we are neither free nor a people.

So what is to be done? The politicians will not fix it. Their unrestrained greed for power and prestige is a big part of the problem. Also, the president and his henchmen do not want to broach the issue for fear of having to acknowledge that their victory is stained. None other than the Deputy President has openly declared that the IEBC, despite its manifold failures, did a "fabulous job." Presumably he meant in installing the ruling clique's preferred candidate. In Parliament, a similar reluctance to highlight the problems springs from similar motivations: impugning the integrity of the system impugns the legitimacy of all incumbents. It was telling that when calling for reforms, the opposition CORD alliance threatened to boycott the next General Election. But that's in five years time! The system needs to be fixed today.

No. We have to look elsewhere. And we have a ready example from our recent past. It was a coalition of civil society, churches, media and disaffected politicians which mobilized the Kenyan people and the international community to stand up to the Moi dictatorship in the 1990s and to demand accountability. This coalition can be re-formed. But for that to happen, we need to shake off the fear and ignorance that seems to infect its parts.

Civil Society must come out from hiding and find the courage to speak out. The media must rediscover its core function of informing the public. The lobotomising of the news must stop and journalists should go back to being newsmen and not performing monkeys. The church (and the mosque) must rediscover their moral centres. And politicians must reacquaint with principle. Most importantly, the silence must stop. If this is done, then the people and the international community will regain their voice, just as they did twenty years ago and force reform on the elite.

But all this takes courage. It takes leadership. So the question is: In a nation where we have turned men into mice, who will bell the cat?

Kenya: Is The Dream Over? Wake Up And Smell The Fear.

Lately, questions have started to be asked about the conduct and outcome of the election. And the more information leaks out, the more the questions keep coming. For me, the first significant crack in the official facade came at the end of May. Buried deep in an otherwise unremarkable story about the IEBC's proposal to change the way public funding for political parties would be calculated, is a startling admission by an unnamed Commissioner: "We are having sleepless nights reconciling the presidential results and those of the other positions. Over a million votes must be reconciled with the others."

If the Commission is indeed burning the midnight oil to "reconcile" the fact that one million voters seemed to have discarded 5 of the 6 ballots they were given without anyone noticing, and then only cast a vote for the presidential election, then that would raise more serious doubts over the integrity of Uhuru Kenyatta's victory. More than three months after the election, the IEBC is yet to release the full election results and every day, this delay further erodes the already shaky public confidence in the electoral process. A recent opinion poll by Infotrak found that nearly half of all of Kenyans had their doubts which pretty much reflects the divided nation. Even Western governments that were eager to ignore concerns over the veracity of the results and in a rush to  embrace the new administration, seem to be backing off a little. "Uncertainty following Kenya’s elections" was last week given as one of the two reasons US President Barrack Obama's is ducking Kenya (the other is obvious).

You would think that all this would be enough to shake the Kenyan media and society out of its post-election slumber. You might expect outraged protests, ala Brazil and Turkey. Of course you'd be wrong. As a society, we seem resolutely determined, in what has become the prevailing mantra, to "accept and move on." Although a vocal and increasingly strident and shrill minority continues to man the online barricades and trade insults, much of the society has indeed moved on. But what is it that we have moved on to and what have we accepted?

Every time I hear the phrase, it seems to mark the end of a dream. Today the election seems like a world away. Instead of a celebration of nationhood, it has become something else to forget, another nail in Kenya's coffin. As the simmering resentment of those on the losing side is swept under the carpet of indifference and resignation and the winners attempt to drown their doubts in a histrionic cacophony of  shallow optimism and empty chest-thumping, one can't help feeling that questioning the poll is flogging a dead horse. 

Time to wake up and smell the fear, I suppose. There is a real reluctance to go back and explore what happened. A real terror of peering behind the curtain of official truth, of what that might reveal, of what it might provoke. In this atmosphere, thick with our terror of each other and of our common past, "accept and move on" is a comfort blanket that smothers the spark of outrage while soothing the afflicted conscience. In its embrace, we are suffocating the idea of Kenya, of a nation of rights, responsibility and opportunity for all; where life, hope and choices are not defined by one's surname.

Even when we rail against the brazen greed of MPigs or the alleged racism of ArtCafe, the anger sometimes seems contrived. We wish we could feel as genuinely Boniface Mwangi seems to, and in the throes of an imagined outrage, we may even swear to attend the next Occupy Parliament demo. Deep inside, I think, we recognize that something has changed. Something fundamental. A sense that Kenya and Kenyans cannot long endure in this fearful place where we have exchanged the truth for the lie, where we hide things in plain sight.

That realization is, I think, Kenya gasping for breath, for life. Yet we want to move on and forget. Every morning it is a little easier to ignore the cries of a dying nation, to accept that the pursuit of justice is an inherently dangerous thing. As every day inflicts upon us new outrages, pretty soon, what should be outrageous becomes normal. And we learn to ignore or silently endure the humiliations. The national spirit shrivels even further.

Where we once looked to freedom and rights, understood ourselves to be exceptional in our part of the globe, were proud of our fractious and loud media and civil society, today we celebrate silence and lies and tyranny and manipulation. Where we once we saw ourselves as a beacon for the region, we have become a place to hide, where questions are not answered but themselves queried. No longer an island of peace, we are today content to swim in a sea of chaos, corruption and injustice.

The other day I got to thinking that perhaps we've given up on doing better because we believe we've already tried it and it didn't turn out so well. In 2002, we elected the activists. We tried the good guys. We gave them their shot and they gave us tyranny and assassinations, and corruption and Anglo-Leasing and the Arturs. Perhaps this is why we now do not care for civil society. And why we've turned the country over to the bad guys, the corrupt, the wicked, the indictees and the drug dealers. They surely could do no worse!

But the election has given us an important insights into our own part in abetting this poverty of values among the governing elite. The brutal, kleptocratic leadership can afford to ignore us because they are aware that deep down we are afraid that we are just like them. That we are just as murderous. It is this awareness that we fear but it is also, paradoxically, the truth that will set us free. For only by accepting responsibility for the past, can we own our future. By learning to believe in our own agency and to stop hiding behind the tribe or leader.

I don't want to accept and move on, to forget what the election revealed. I don't want to turn from it or paper it over or minimize it. I want to face it. Remembering and acting upon that remembrance is the only salvation for Kenya.

Devolving Media And Civil Society

Nakuru is impressive. Visiting for the first time in many years, I was struck by the changes in city's skyline. It has the feel of a boom town and, I was told, real estate prices have shot through the roof. Two years ago, the UN rated it as Africa's fastest growing town and the fourth fastest in the world. No mean achievement.

While there, I was privileged to met an elderly lady who was introduced to me, in that quaint rural tradition which names parents after their children, only as Mama George. She's a seasoned political activist who despite her advanced years, is still full of passion ("Government makes my blood boil," she told me). Her wrinkled eyes danced as she related tales of the fight for multiparty democracy, walking from Nakuru to Nairobi to participate in the Saba Saba protests and how every January, a group of these veterans still gather in Nairobi to water a tree they planted in honor of the struggle. It is a travesty, I remember thinking, that we do not ourselves exalt these heroes; ordinary Kenyans who did extraordinary things; who refused to be cowed by the violence of a dictator; whose courage and determination laid the ground for the freedoms we take for granted today.

I didn't ask what she made of today's society but I suspect I know what she would think of the fear we displayed during the election; of the refusal to face up to our history; of a nation that forsakes justice for a temporary peace and values economic growth over its citizens' rights and freedoms.

But Nakuru has other lessons to teach. Driving just outside the town centre, one encounters huge heaps of garbage. The towns landfill is overflowing and everyday truckloads of rubbish are being deposited by the roadside. It's not just a stinking eyesore, but a potential public health hazard. KTN covered this a few days ago but it is clearly not an issue the national media is in any danger of running away with. It is reminiscent of the garbage crisis in Mombasa which may get a sporadic mention in between the mouthfuls of soap operas. It led to conversations with locals about the need to restructure our press and civil society to keep up with devolution.

As Kenya moves to devolve governance, one wonders how county residents will keep county governments honest. The experience with devolved funds, such as the Constituency Development Fund, over the last decade should be a wake up call. The opacity and lack of accountability that  characterized the operation of these instruments must not be repeated with county governments. Similarly, the traditional neglect of local government (except for the fights that accompanied mayoral elections) must not be transferred to county governments. We must not allow county issues to continue to be crowded out by the national conversation.

However, our media and civil society organizations are currently not suited to deliver this. They remain  resolutely centralized, Nairobi-based and focused on national issues. We need to start thinking about how to encourage the growth of county based CSOs which can articulate local issues and put pressure on the devolved governments. Ditto for the media. Local reporters covering local issues for local publications or broadcasters would be critical to keeping the county governments on their toes. Following up on their handling of issues such as the garbage crisis in burgeoning Nakuru is not the sort of thing national media do well but would be the bread and butter of county media. Strong local media would not only improve governance, but also a shot in the arm for county economies, creating jobs and providing a means for county level businesses to reach local consumers.

Devolving media and civil society along with government is essential if citizens are to hold county authorities to account for the services they are owed. It will ensure that county governments will be focused, not on posturing for a national audience, but on local issues, which will ultimately have the most impact on the lives of the people. If we as a society did this, we may just stand a chance of winning back the favour of Mama George.

Media Culpa

It is a strange world our media seems to inhabit nowadays. At the end of last week, the Star's weekly pullout, Expression Today, contained what comes perilously close to a collective mea culpa for the coverage of the election.

"We over-trusted the IEBC," NTV Managing Editor declares. The overriding concern of journalists, one of the articles concludes, was "peace," not using election reporting "as an opportunity for national political education" in the words of Ipsos Synovate research Analyst, Tom Wolfe. Capital FM News Editor, Michael Mumo, says he was puzzled by the media downplaying or ignoring events that did not fit into the "peace" narrative (given his job title, one wonders why he should be puzzled at all and who in fact was making the news decisions!) Even the usual apologists seem to accept the media was too busy preventing a repeat of the 2007/2008 violence to actually do its job, though they obviously think that was a good thing.

The pullout criticizes the lack of analysis and discussion of the Supreme Court decision as well as the "sloppy" coverage of the decision of the ICC Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to drop charges against Francis Muthaura and its implications (and that of the other crumbling cases) for the search for justice in Kenya.

Sounds like a good start, eh? But as I read it, I found myself having to constantly refer to the date on the masthead to ensure I was actually reading the most recent edition. For all the navel-gazing, the media is still transfixed by the election period.

If the media truly wants to regain the trust of its audience, it needs to do more than a little self-flagellation. Actual changes must flow from a deeper understanding of, not just failures during the election, but the disturbing trends we have witnessed since.

Like the poor coverage of stories such as the Garissa "anti-terror" operation, the lack on interest in the delays and shenanigans leading to the release of the TJRC report, the blind fascination with the new administration and mindless parroting of government propaganda, the triumph of form over substance, showmanship over journalism, entertainment over information.

Perhaps the media could start to tackle the undisguised misogyny that has become a staple of our news. Like the humiliation of seven young women whom the media publicly accused of bestiality without offering a shred of proof. Like the Nation publishing a suggestion from one of our prominent psychiatrists that victims of sexual abuse may themselves be mentally ill for wishing to report their abusers. Like TV anchors seeing the funny side of a woman being stripped in public for supposedly dressing indecently. Like the recent article that observed that though still "wonderful, colourful creatures," women still need men to help them run companies and to presumably cheer the inevitable cat-fights.

How about they query articles such as Jacob Ng'etich's who, writing in the Standard, has produce a glowing rendition of Deputy President William Ruto's rise to power absent any mention of the shadowy moments of that career: the allegations of corruption, the charges of crimes against humanity for allegedly funding and organising murderous militia during the 2007/8 post election violence.

The truth is our press has much to seek forgiveness for. But before they get that, a full and honest audit of their performance to date, as well as a commitment to doing things better, is the least we should demand.

Personal Challenge: Cartooning Post-Election Kenya

Dear Cartoonist,

As you know, Kenya in March underwent its first elections since the disastrous aftermath of the 2007 polls. These were conducted under a new constitution and on the ballot were two politicians indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in relation to their alleged role in the conflagration that followed the previous polls. Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto joined together to form the Jubilee Coalition and have now been elected President and Deputy President of Kenya respectively. The elections, while generally peaceful, were not without controversy with the outcome having to be decided by the country's fledgling Supreme Court. 

Ever since the election, the Kenyan Government has been on a so far unsuccessful crusade to get the ICC charges against its two top leaders, which Uhuru Kenyatta had famously called a "Personal Challenge" during the campaign, dropped. In this effort, it has been rebuffed by the UN Security Council and embraced by the African Union. Despite pre-election threats of isolation, the indicted President has visited with UK premier David Cameron (though away from No. 10 and without the customary photo-op). Coupled with the aggressive campaign by his government, the Kenyan situation is now seen as the greatest threat to the legitimacy -and even existence- of the ICC.

Other casualties of the March elections include Kenyan civil society organisations whom the winning Jubilee coalition sought to paint as stooges of the imperialist West both during and after the election, and the Kenyan media which has been accused of forsaking its traditional vocal watchdog stance and turning a blind eye to malfeasance in the name of preserving the peace.

To further complicate the picture, the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission has recently released its report which covers government massacres, rapes and other atrocities against its citizens, illegal land grabs, corruption and larceny. It names over 400 individuals, including Messrs Uhuru and Ruto, and many of their allies and rivals.

The Association of East African Cartoonists is organising an international cartoon exhibition on these and other aspects of the aftermath of the Kenyan Elections. The theme is  "Personal Challenge: Cartooning Post-Election Kenya". The exhibition is open to both professional and amateur cartoonists.

To participate, please send your entries to:

katuni@gmail.com

All entries should be in JPEG format with a resolution of at least 300DPI and should be received by 21 June 2013.

Thanks and I look forward to receiving your works.

Back To The Future

Every once in a while, just when you think you've figured them out, Kenyans can surprise you and give you an almighty kick up the backside. Yesterday was one of those days. And it was an almighty welcome kick.

Those who've been following this blog over the last few months will have been treated to fulminations on the fear and apathy of our nation in the face of monumental iniquity by those in government. I have held forth and pontificated on the myopia, incompetence and laziness of our journalists and the demise of our civil society. I believe much of that still to be true. However, on the streets of Nairobi, I think we may have witnessed the stirrings of a nation starting to awaken from a deep slumber.

For over ten years now, our famously greedy parliamentarians have been used to hiking their pay at will, and ignoring the loud protests made in press conferences held in five-star hotels. No more. Today the fight was moved away from sanitized conference rooms and back into the streets where we had taught the KANU government a thing or two about people power 2 decades ago. And that fact is more significant than a straightforward struggle over MP salaries.

Yesterday was all about going back to the future. It was exciting to see the campaigners old mixing it up with the new upstarts. Having lived through the mass action of the 90s, to see Rev. Timothy Njoya, Maina Kiai, Davinder Lamba and Yash Pal Ghai once more marching through the streets of Nairobi  in support of a new generation of activists led by the likes of Boniface Mwangi and Okiya Omtata brought a lump to my throat. After Boniface shamed us on Labour Day, here was the old guard stepping in to teach the new dog some old tricks of the trade. But the young puppy showed that he too had some aces up his sleeve.

There were also glimpses of the old alliances that had been so effective in pushing the reform agenda. Churchmen, activists and, belatedly, media. Even the police seemed determined to recreate the nineties atmosphere, charging at the unarmed and peaceful protesters with their rungus and tear gas and water cannon.

There are, however, crucial differences. This was not a mass protest against the government. It was, in fact, just a few hundred demonstrators advocating the government line against an intransigent Parliament. Secondly, one of the main pillars of that old alliance was missing -the opportunistic opposition politicians. It is they in the 90s who mobilized the people. Many, however, have since either been co-opted into the lootocracy or are still licking their wounds following defeat at the polls. Further, we were not fighting to get a new constitution, but to defend the new one we have from gerrymandering MPigs.

Still, the moment was significant. For the first time since the election, a group of people publicly and loudly refused to "accept and move on." For once, they refused the logic that it was better to keep the peace even when they were being screwed. They drew a line in the tarmac and stood by it. The moment was also significant because for once, the government let its mask of civility slip. The reaction we saw on TV was far removed from the polished and rehearsed State House presentations. It was the raw brutality that lies behind that facade. This was a government unleashed from the strictures imposed by media consultants intent on winning elections.

With a core of determined, bloodied but now blooded, activists and a government that may have overplayed its hand, the scene my be set for a rather quick end to the Uhuru's administration's honeymoon. Of course, there is still some ways to go. The people still need to be won over. Those who voted for President Uhuru will need to be convinced that they can hold the government to account without betraying their communities or being humiliated. Those who didn't, and particularly those who weren't entirely convinced that he won fairly, will also need to be convinced that continuing to participate in the process is still worth it.

The activists will need to make allies out of progressive politicians both within and without the legislature. To do so the activists must begin to articulate an agenda, one that might conceivably form a platform for a future electoral run. Finally, they will need to partner with the media. Here, they will be faced with persons just like themselves, newbies with limited experience of the 90s struggle and whose careers have been made in a relatively open era for the press. Most journalists today seem inclined, strange as it may seem, to give officialdom the benefit of the doubt, to be wowed by its propaganda. They will need to be shown the bigger picture, pointed in certain directions, brought up to speed on the issues and pressed into digging deeper.

All that will take time. In the meantime, if yesterday's protest proves to inaugurate a season of more intense questioning of official conduct and policy, then the protesters will have achieved a much greater victory than simply expressing public displeasure at the thieving ways of legislators. They will have given the nation the beginnings of a real voice and a real boot. If I were Uhuru, I'd be watching my backside.

Are We Trying To Fake It Till We Make It?

There is an interesting scene in one of those dreary, black and white independence era TV documentaries that the media trots out every national holiday. A colonial settler expresses his shock and outrage at the brutality of the Mau Mau uprising. He seems genuinely outraged that a man to whom you have been kind enough to offer employment, whose kids play with yours and who you have even allowed to live on and farm a small corner of your land, could steal into your house in the dead of night and massacre your entire family.

Of course, what makes the statement so unbelievably cretinous is the idea that the Africans should have been grateful for getting back a tiny fraction of what had been stolen from them. It seems that the colonials had come to believe their own hype, that the country's bounty was theirs as of right. Today, I can't help feeling that we , inheritors of the artificial country and systems they created, have been similarly lying to ourselves, and have become victims of our own hubris.

The problem with fake societies is their people do not feel anything more than a superficial duty to them.

Consider the recent elections. We invested a great deal of money in technology meant to safeguard its credibility and disregarded all concerns about its efficacy. When it all failed, we were unwilling to even consider that the results might be fraudulent. Despite all our earnest protestations, we were not really interested in democracy or the will of the people or justice. We were, on the contrary, quite content to fake a free and fair poll. Like the settler, we were careful not to give it too much thought lest we discover what lay under our seemingly honest exterior.

Similarly we celebrate our new and improved constitution even when it seems to do nothing to regulate the behaviour of our famously avaricious politicians. We speak reverently of a reformed judiciary though it still seems incapable of delivering justice. We have a penchant to compare the young(ish) duo in Statehouse with US President Barrack Obama,  all the while pretending that it is normal to have an ICC-indicted president who has to be whisked through the cargo terminals of international airports, hidden from the press and whose hosts are camera-shy when he's around.

Today the carpet of economic growth covers many ills. On the back of GDP figures and the number of kilometres of tarmac and fibre optic cable, we are taught to believe that things are improving, the country is moving forward, that we should just sit back and enjoy the ride. As a result, buoyed by narratives of a rising Africa and blinded by the gleaming towers of our cities, we forget that we live in one of the most unequal countries on earth, where wealth is concentrated in the top ten percent. On a per capita basis, the biggest economy in East Africa, as we like to refer to ourselves, ranks only a mediocre 24th out of 48 sub-Saharan economies. One survey of the income distribution of workers in the formal sector found that the top 10 percent lived off monthly wages that were more than 6 times those of the bottom 90 percent. In fact, another study found that the top 10 percent of households control nearly half of total income while the bottom 10 percent take home nearly nothing.

We have little inkling of the country that lies beyond those numbers which is still very much a Hobbesian one. Where men live without security and in constant fear of a violent death; where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." It is a place where people are set alight while crowds cheer and where young girls can be pulled kicking and screaming from crowded commuter buses to be gang-raped without anybody intervening.

We prefer the compartmentalized view, the trees to the wood. Thus we periodically rotate the thieves in government without tackling the systemic attitudes that incentivize bad behaviour. Like turning a blind eye to the rip-off that is the presidential retirement package while at the same time berating Mps for trying to get in on the enrichment act. We reach for legal bans as a quick fix to social problems even when we know that the laws are rarely enforced and even when they are, provide avenues for graft, can be ineffective and can even create worse problems. We thus celebrate traffic rules that fill the government coffers without doing anything about the anarchy on our roads and abortion bans whose only effect is to kill and maim our women and girls.

One would think it would be the job of the media to disabuse us of such inaccurate notions. But the fact is, the Kenyan media long ago shirked its duty to expose truth and to challenge our assumptions. In fact, it is itself a mirror of the society it serves. Famed across the globe as one of the most vibrant on the continent, it has produced award winning journalists by the dozen, many of whom have been snapped up by international networks. Yet back home,  they are not given to critical scrutiny and revel in sensational tales of superstition and sex. For our comfort and pleasure, they provide us with a smattering of sanitized news bulletins conservatively sprinkled atop a diet of entertainment and advertising.

Though loudly proclaiming their independence and objectivity, they nonetheless seem almost as ignorant as those they are supposed to inform. As I was writing this, the news anchor on TV was saying something about the Mandera clashes. She declared, with little apparent embarrassment, that the fighting had been going on "unreported" for 3 months. It was unclear whose job she thought it was to do the reporting.

It seems that we are a nation that is determined to fake its way through the world. That we believe we can continue to pretend to be virtuous or successful and all will be well. However, at the end of that road lies an inevitable and painful collision with reality. Like the colonial settlers, we will eventually discover that we cannot paper over the truth indefinitely.

On the Bench

Broken News

Every newsman worthy of the name desires a scoop. A chance to break the news or catch public officials with their hands in the till. It is why they swarm at the sniff of scandal. It is a chance to make one's name and fortune while providing a public service. So why is Kenyan media not swarming to Garissa?

To be sure, there is more than a hint of scandal there. Following a spate of terror attacks, the government sent in a a high level fact finding mission led by Internal Security permanent secretary Mutea Iringo. What it uncovered was scandalous in itself: a powerful network of business and government officials facilitating an illegal trade in imported and tax-evading goods from Somalia, a trade which was funnelling money to the coffers of the al Shabaab terror group, allowing it to sustain fighters as well as purchase arms and explosives, some of which are used in attacks in Kenya. According to the Daily Nation, while initially the attacks in Garissa were in reaction to Kenya Defence Forces entry into Somalia, the most attacks, including the one at Kwa Chege food parlour which killed 10 people, have been masterminded by local businessmen with the aim of pushing out their competitors. According to one unnamed official, "Almost the entire government team is rotten."

All this is should undoubtedly have investigative journalists smacking their lips and editors dreaming up headlines. And it doesn't stop there. The Iringo mission then proposes an 11-point action plan directed at the police chiefs in the area which included carrying out a massive security operation. This operation is to be run by the same "rotten" government team (the police chief, for example, was not replaced until a week into it and, as the unnamed official quoted above went on to say, Garissa area would be left without an administration in place if radical action was to be taken at a go).

Nonetheless, our ever-vigilant media quickly dubs the operation "an anti-terror crackdown." No questions are asked when not a single individual of the nearly 600 people arrested  is charged with any links to the attacks. When the Daily Nation reports on the arrest of six men described as “high value” suspects, one of them said to be a coordinator of Al-Shabaab activities in the town and the rest his key link-men, but none of them are arraigned in court. When it turns out that the real suspects are actually those running the operation and their friends in the business community. When it is clear that the operation seems to indiscriminately target ethnic Somalis and that none of the businessmen and government officials actually suspected of links to the terror acts are arrested.

Following the failure to catch anyone of note, the media is not even remotely curious when the government then declares that the criminals it seeks have fled to other areas necessitating widening the scope of the operation.

David Kimaiyo, the Inspector General of Police, has said all officers involved would be dismissed and charged in court once investigations are completed. “I’ve sent senior investigators and they are already in Garissa. Once they are through they will provide a list and make recommendations on who should go home but of course with evidence." None of our journalists asks why he would need evidence to arrest police officers but none to arrest citizens.

So how does one explain the silence in the press about all this? Why has it not been on the front pages of every newspaper? The media obviously know what is happening. Are they deliberately downplaying the abuse of citizen's rights and citizens' intelligence because it involves people they do not consider to be real or, in the words of Louis Otieno, "indigenous Kenyans"? Or are they so in thrall of our "awesome" President, as Larry Madowo described him, that they are unable to see the wood for trees?

Or is it, perhaps, that our media, and especially our electronic media, no longer employs newsmen, just entertainers? Perhaps we are the ones who should ask questions when Citizen TV advertises for a news anchor and insists on a photograph of the applicant. When TV news becomes a space where beauty trumps brains and where we are fed on a diet of advertising and entertainment rather than real news. How will we be  able to keep the government in check if we do not know what it is doing? Or has somebody decided that there is no need for the government to be kept in check?

Coming Home To Roost

Earlier this week, I was invited to participate in a discussion on the media coverage of the recent election. It was quite an interesting and informative engagement with opinion seemingly split broadly into two groups: those like me who think the press was induced into a "peace coma," and ignored fundamental and widespread problems witnessed during the poll; and others who, though admitting that the reporting may not have scaled the heights of journalistic achievement, believed that the call for peace and cautious stance contributed to a remarkably peaceful and violence-free election.

Whilst we were debating all this, the Uhuru government launched its security operation in Garissa. In less than a week, two people were dead, hundreds had been arrested and many more had fled the town in terror of an operation the Daily Nation calls "an anti-terror crackdown". Those nabbed included at least 7 recently elected county representatives. 80 people were arraigned in court but none for any links to the recent spate of attacks in the city, the justification for the operation. In fact 75 of those were in court for the apparently horrendous crime of not applying for an ID. Meaning they were Kenyan citizens. Meaning the police knew that they were Kenyan citizens.

The more one looks into it, the more it seems that the operation is targeting ordinary citizens, specifically ethnic Somalis, and inspiring the very terror it is meant to quash. It looks like collective punishment. So why isn't the media replete with howls of indignation and outrage? Why, despite being offered multiple opportunities to question the President this week, not a single journalist raise the issue?

Heard about the rape epidemic in the poorer areas of Nairobi? The violence visited daily on the poor? No one asked President Kenyatta about that either.

And, to be fair, it is not only the media. Where is our civil society? Where are the voices of our eloquent defenders of human rights and constitutional limits on the arbitrary exercise of power? They are also conspicuous by their absence.

I think we are seeing the consequences of trends that we encouraged or ignored during the last election cycle. When we kept quiet about the denigration and delegitimizing of civil society by their traditional enemies, the political class. When we ignored the lobotomising of the news and encouraged our journalists to be performers and entertainers rather than newsmen. When we allowed them to privilege the voices of the rich and powerful, and their narratives of economic development, and refused to hear those of the poor and displaced. When we turned a blind eye to malfeasance in the name of peace and accepted the wisdom that the only alternative to a poorly run election is chaos, not a better run one. When we shouted from the rooftops about a new constitution and devolved government but only whispered about the Bill of Rights. When we pooh-poohed justice and celebrated mediocrity.

Today, it is citizens in places like Garissa and the slums of Nairobi who are paying the price. There's perhaps a false comfort in the idea that it doesn't really matter because we had already, through years of abuse and neglect, relegated them to second class citizens existing on the margins of society. This, we think, could not happen to us, in our stone houses with three square meals, an internet connection and a car outside.

Well, what's to stop it? Remember it was a coalition of media and civil society (including churches) that forced reform on the government. Today, all these are facing a crisis of confidence and legitimacy.

Institutions do not only exist in government. And, in fact, it is those institutions outside the government -primarily the the press and organised civil society- that are the most important check on government excess. When we allow them to be hollowed out and undermined, we all ultimately suffer the consequences.

We must beware when what passes for news is a regurgitation of government propaganda. We should be afraid when we let the government dictate the agenda and when our journalists are more interested in the President's wardrobe than they are in his closet. That, my friends, is not the path to peace.