UGANDA MEDIA LIONISE RAILA

[JAHAATWACH]

The Monitor (Kampala)
OPINION
18 January 2008
Posted to the web 18 January 2008

Raila Odinga's Orange Revolution


He speaks softly; his sentences tend to taper off toward the end, like somebody short of breath.He bears a fleeting resemblance with the late Ugandan poet, Okot p'Bitek.If there were people who did not know this man, we now all know who he is, thanks to queues for fuel that came at short notice and were felt right up to Burundi.

This is shaping up to be the year of the Luo-speaking Nilotic people and they are energised. One of them, Barak Hussein Obama, is a major contender in the United States presidential election campaign. He hopes to become, in the literal sense of the word, the first African-American president of the world's most powerful country.


The other, Raila Amolo Oginga Odinga for the past three weeks has held Kenya's destiny and economic and security prospects --- and that of much of the region --- in his hands.

In Odinga was the kingmaker who helped President Mwai Kibaki come to power in 2002, he has become not only the king un-maker; but has power enough to overturn the status quo in the East African region in the same way that Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni had in the early to mid 1990s, when his militant foreign policy led to changes of governments in the Great Lakes region.

How things can change. Only 15 years ago, talk was rife throughout the western part of East Africa and the eastern part of Central Africa of Museveni trying (or rumoured to be trying) to establish a mighty Hima-Tutsi empire stretching from Uganda to Rwanda, Burundi, Congo and beyond, in a re-enactment of the old Bacwezi empire of the 14th century.

Now, a Luo speaker holds the destiny of East Africa in his hands. In January 1964, a Luo carpenter from Lira in Uganda, "Field Marshall" John Okello, staged a lightening coup in Zanzibar and overthrew the Sultans government.

There has always been a tension between the Bantu and Luo that is hard to understand. It was in evidence in Uganda for the first 24 years of independence starting 1962 when many Bantu-speaking Ugandans felt that they had suffered at the hands of "these northerners."

The Luo and Nilo-Hamitic northerners certainly have felt pushed to the margin and made to live in sub-prime internally displaced people's camps for the better part of 22 years.

In Kenya, no matter how much we try to cast the current crisis as a political contest, it still takes on the feel of a Luo-Jaluo versus Bantu-Kikuyu struggle for resources, representation, power, and pride.

Kisumu has been proposed as the headquarters city of a future East African Federation. Combining their population in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Sudan, they are one of the largest ethnic groupings in East and Central Africa.

The Kiswahili language Islamic weekly newspaper, An-Nuur of Tanzania, in a January 4, 2008 commentary cried out: "Raila Odinga has taught a big [or major] lesson to opposition parties in the country [Tanzania] which claim to fight for people's rights and against injustice. It has been said that if these parties do not heed this lesson, they will lose the people's backing, remain weak and thereby lose the right to speak for the citizens.

Giving their opinions at different times, citizens who spoke to [An-Nuur] said that if leaders such as Prof [Ibrahim] Lipumba, Maalim Seif [Sharif Hamad, both leaders of the opposition Civic United Front] and Freeman Mbowe [of the Party for Democracy and Development, Chadema] stand by the truth, then they might be able to fell CCM [ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi] and even oust it from power."

That statement alone from this Tanzanian newspaper should be a warning to us that the deep resentment with the current political order is not restricted to Kenya and Uganda. Even in the apparently peaceful Tanzania, there are angry forces that are drawing lessons from the Kenyan opposition.

There are reports of Acholi quietly slipping out of Uganda following the recent Kenyan election, to go to Kisumu and join hands with the Luo there in support of Odinga.

The idea of creating a broad band of brotherhood that encompasses East Africa and part of the Horn is starting to gain ground.

That is the direction the political winds in the region are going to take. Ethnic pride and political life viewed through the lenses of one's tribe will become the new point around which to rally.

The largest tribe in Kenya, the Kikuyu, now know this all too well. Assuming Kibaki prevails and manages to serve out his five-year term, what shall he be pre-occupied with? Nothing else short of desperately trying to consolidate Kikuyu wealth, placing his tribesmen in key positions before this tidal wave of angry Luo power comes crashing into Nairobi in 2012.

Tribalism in its most raw and violent form has arrived at Kenya's doorstep, and it is Unbwogable.


allafrica.com/stories/printable/200801180916.html

[JAHAATWACH]

Could this explain why Museveni went to discuss Kenya's election with Bush? Why he recognises Kibaki's discredited re-election and why his soldiers are reportedly on bloody errands only in Nyanza?


article.wn.com/view/2007/10/16/Kenya_polls_to_feature_at_Bush_talks/

www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/news/Govt_was_warned_of_looming_Kenya_crisis.shtml

[pippyza]

It is not all about Luos. Atleast the way i understand it, This is simply an Injustice that must be fought back. If not well handled, it will easily degenerate into a civil war

[alexander]

have a look
courtesy of odeglenyanginv.blogspot.com

radiokatwe.com/kibakialimuonam7080115.htm
Radio Katwe has done its cross checking and can now confirm to its readers that President Mwai Kibaki the Kenyan head of state (a title in hot dispute) paid a surprise visit to Uganda last Thursday.

We earlier wrote about a truck full of new pangas that was taken from Uganda to Rwanda just before the terrible genocide there.
Foul play is being suspected between Museveni and Kibaki.

radiokatwe.com/jeshilaugandakwakenya7080115.htm

We are able to confirm to you after checking the facts on the ground in Kisumu that Museveni and President Kibaki were in cahoots in the chaos that engulfed our neighbours after the rigged Kenyan election. We cannot yet tell when or from which source in Kenya the initiative originated, but somehow Museveni summoned General David Tinyefuza his intelligence supremo and gave him the task of planning the mission.

Tinyefuza assembled some spies of the ESO and ISO and they moved in. Military Police were also involved and when they reached the border crossing at Busia, they removed their red toupees and donned the uniform of Kenya's GSU security force.

The Kenya High Commission in Nakasero a suburb of Kampala, coordinated the part of giving diplomatic cover to the Ugandan hooligans.

[wakwitu]

Pippyza right on. Granted Raila is Luo - this is larger than even he might have thought . I am still befuddled by how violently RV communities [Kalenjin and Maasai] have reacted, even compared to Raila's own Luo community. This is about Kenyans getting peeved!!

[mzee]

Most people are still stuck in the LUO vs KIKUYU thing. The fact is that this is not about the two tribes otherwise coast , NEP, RVP people would not be more mad than the luos. ITS ABOUT PEACE AND JUSTICE.

[nereah]

museveni is coming to town " to give the way foward."

seems to me that he deliberately set his visit to coincide with koffi anan's arrival- maybe to steal the thunder from annan?

could someone check if museveni was the only foreign head of state who attended moi's swearing in ceremony after the disputed 1997 elections? and what did he tell kibaki and raila?

my relativist view is that this man museveni is a double-edged sword whose sheepish diplomatic foray this coming week should be closely watched.

if he stick to his old habit,he would be coming to take the ODM on a guilt trip and also to muddy the political waters for kibaki by isolating the discredited ruler even further.

orange hse ought to keep off this man unless he withdraws kampala's recognition for kibaki before stepping on kenyan soil.

[nereah]

here is the link
www.sundayvision.co.ug/index.php?mainNewsCategoryId=120&newsCategoryId=123

[mzee]

These days as in the Moi days, you have to read foreign newspapers in order to get accurate non edited information on Kenya. I’m now read Ugandan and Tanzanian newspapers than Kenyan. Journalists on the other side write without fear of intimidation. Our journalists have coiled back into their shells and just pretend to report. Even our TV stations which used to be bold have been cowed and forced to heavily edit in favour of the government. Have a look at this: www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/20/607824

The flawed election in Kenya was a catalyst


PERSPECTIVE OF A UGANDAN IN CANADA

The explosive situation that plunged Kenya into a blood-bath early this month took many by surprise.

Kenya was the stable democracy, the one everyone pointed to when they wanted to show what African countries mired in civil crisis were capable of becoming when they reach political maturity. There was absolutely no indication that there was an underbelly to the calm, a dark side capable of exploding at any time like a volcano. So, what went wrong, they asked themselves, why such deadly expressive fury with no apparent parallel in the immediate history of democratic process in Africa.

But those who will take the time to analyse in great detail the events in Kenya in the early part of 2008 will notice that there was certain logic to the illogical violence that followed the election.

No violence could ever be condoned, and the killing of scores of innocent Kenyans must be condemned in the strongest terms, and the perpetrators, if known, should face the full weight of Kenyan law. Nonetheless, we must try to understand the thinking that came into play when the killings began.

The flawed political process was only a catalyst for the fury that swept through the once peaceful country. But was everything really okay until this moment of insanity? Not at all. The combination of factors includes extreme poverty, media, education, and a system operating out of time with the rest of the world.

Kenya is not a very poor country by all standards, but there is a growing populace that feels poverty in its own skin. The biting unemployment is partly due to many moving from the countryside into poor slums, hoping to find jobs that are not there.

Meanwhile, the economy is not responsive enough to give hope to those who are marginalized, who feel hopeless and, at times, even helpless. Yet against this is an education system that continues to churn hopeful graduates from primary, secondary and university, promising them a piece of the pie if only they work hard enough at school. Put aside all the petty urges you feel now for a bigger reward at a later date, it says.

Adult literacy is now kicking close to 75 percent, clearly one of the highest on the continent. Yet, despite what many have been conditioned to believe is the gateway to prosperity and the good life, education cannot deliver. Here’s where the media comes into play. I am not talking about political talking heads that are ever so eager to pounce on everything that anyone says to fan the flame of discord. I am talking about media in general as avenues of knowing more about the larger world out there, how other people live.

The expansion of print, radio, television and other form of information technology has only sharpened the appetite of the literate Kenyan (read that as African) to think beyond his or her immediate border or town. Think about it—here is someone who has been taught to read and who has access to multiple sources of information, including the venerated mobile phone, and can instantly find out what is happening in one area of the country or the world within a minute—how is such a person supposed to live the life of extreme poverty with little hope for tomorrow?

Many of those graduates who have bought education’s pie-in-the-sky dream have had a rude awakening, pounding the streets hunting for jobs that do not exist. Frustrated, many begin to erroneously believe that to get ahead you need to know someone or that you need to belong to the right ethnic group to get that choice job.

While there will always be instances of nepotism and ethnic-based favouritism in deciding who gets what and when, this does not explain the scores of unemployed young people of all ethnicities pounding the streets of Nairobi and other urban centres in the country. There is no way all of Kenya’s whopping 40 percent unemployed people can come from just one ethnic group. Yet within these oppressive conditions for the educated poor, the political elite has continued to operate out of time as if it were back in the 1940s when the African was a porter for the colonial master and only knew how to say “Yes Sir!”, “Right away Sir”.

When blatant lies and propaganda are peddled, the thinking is that the masses will swallow it hook, line and sinker. The problem is that the masses are already aware, and politically savvy enough to distinguish what Americans refer to as “bull****”.

These cocktail of realities (and I am sure smarter people than me will find more) collided with deadly effect for Kenya. The election was not just flawed; it was stolen by the ruling elite, sending those already marginalized by biting poverty into frenzy. Now, they knew why they were poor, sick and stuck on the unemployment line. They would be damned to stand by idly while the very thing they had hoped would change their lives was taken away from right under their noses. Never mind that unemployment would have likely remained just as high if the ODM had assumed power on January 1, 2008. But that’s neither here nor there—for many, the Kibaki government had acted with such pure malice akin to jabbing them with spears.

They will show them—the problem is that “them” became innocent Kenyans who had nothing to do with the chaos. And so, without stopping to think that the very people with whom they were suffering, and with whom they would continue to suffer, friends began targeting friends. Those guilty by association, in this case, by ethnicity became the enemy. When the only crime they had committed was really to be poor and Kikuyu (if they were rich, they would not be anywhere near the epicentre of the bloody chaos).

The lesson for the rest of Africa aspiring for democracy is very simple. Education without the improvement of standard of living for the populace is an empty promise. Secondly, old political machination will not work very well anymore in Kenya or elsewhere on the continent. The African has arrived at least on one point—that of being sufficiently educated to read between the lines to know when he is being taken to the cleaners. He will not suffer fools for anybody.

Now, if they have not figured it out yet, Kenyans will find out that ethnic politics does not explain why they are poor and hungry and disillusioned. A corrupt, cynical and negligent political system does.

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