Likoni, Katiba and Disengagement....

[Onyango Oloo]

Reflections from Nairobi by Oloo on a Saturday Afternoon

Part One:

For the second time in almost as many weeks, the Kenyan police opened fire on Kenyan civilians killing two and injuring scores of others after a blatant provocation punctuated by a senior police officer sauntering to an Orange rally in Likoni and grabbing the microphone from a cabinet minister.

One would have expected the front pages of the Nairobi dailies to be full of wrath and indignation at this latest edition of state terror and police thuggery. Alas, all the leading human rights activists- the ones who had spontaneous and instantaneous press release ready for faxing to the world’s media are once again, missing in action.

It would appear that the only consistent witnesses and tribunes of the truth are women and men who make up Kenya’s print and electronic journalist corps.

So let me say thanks to writers Mazera Ndurya and Patrick Mayoyo of the Saturday Nation and Ernest Ndunda of the Standard- I am not forgetting the Kenya Times and People Daily crew, I simply have not had a chance to get my hands on their respective editions; thanks to photographer Omondi Onyango of the Standard and his unforgettable shot of

senior police officer William Mbithi stopping Heritage minister Najib Balala from addressing the Orange rally in Likoni and for his nation counterpart Jack Owuor with an equally dramatic shot of the same strident police chief eerily evoking a NAZI SS officer.

I am left unimpressed however by the decision of the editorial heavyweights of the two papers to select images of police officers shielding themselves from protestors and burning tires and rampaging youth to make the subliminal point that the cops were there to maintain law and order.

The fact that this rally was brutally suppressed because the Yes side was afraid that Mwai Kibaki’s presence would have been upstaged is a testimony to the utter and total disregard for human life that is being repeatedly demonstrated by the NAK faction headed by the partisan Kenyan head of state. When a government declares war on its own people, nay, its own voters and supporters, one knows that we are lurching to a national catastrophe.

In view of the latest spate of police killings, it is ruefully ironic to read Maina Kiai’s column in today’s Saturday Nation.

His piece dubbed, Let Us think Beyond November 21, Please can be easily summarized through its opening paragraph:

There is no doubt now. This referendum is not about the Constitution at all. It is about power and ethnic politics. It is about unfinished political squabbles, reinvention of politicians with skeletons in their closets and the support for the politicians engaged in the new corruption. It is about the Banana side maintaining power and the Orange side wresting it. And we, the majority non-politician Kenyans are the cannon fodder, the pawns in this zero-sum contest for power between a very small clique of political players with a knack for manipulation for power, self-interest and illegally generated wealth.

CONTINUED...

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Two:

With all due respect to Maina Kiai, I would like to suggest to my fellow Mzalendo Mkenya that he should speak for himself and not assume that his views represent those “majority non-politician Kenyans”. He certainly does NOT speak for Onyango Oloo on this issue.

Quite frankly, I am SICK and TIRED of reading from well-meaning, but quite arrogant middle-class pundits like Maina Kiai, Makau Mutua and others infantilizing millions of Kenyans with functioning brains and independent political minds.

For instance, Onyango Oloo totally opposes the Wako Mongrel. Which politician “manipulated” Oloo? Whose cannon fodder am I? There are literally tens of thousands of other Onyango Oloos out there who will vote NO and some of them have NOT attended a single Orange team rally nor are they members of the LDP or KANU.

It is really insulting for Maina Kiai to vilify and trivialize the aspirations of millions of Kenyans who see their opposition to the Wako Draft as emanating from the same democratic sentiments that made them vote KANU out of power.

Why was it OK in 2002 for the same wanasiasa to be lauded for supporting the Kibaki presidential bid and completely haram for the same politicians to point out the Kibaki faction has sold out the wananchi?

It is the height of intellectual dishonesty for Maina Kiai to decry the struggle for political power in 2005 when he knows that without a transfer of political power from KANU to NARC in 2002, the very entity that Maina Kiai heads would be in very different hands. Would former NCEC boss Kivutha Kibwana be an assistant minister today if NAK/NARC had not captured political power?

ALL DEMOCRATIC STRUGGLES are ultimately struggles about grabbing political power, so let us not kid ourselves.

As a Marxist, I know that the uprisings in Central and Eastern Europe- so beloved by many of our country’s liberal leading lights in the civil society movement- very significantly tilted the struggles for democracy in those former Warsaw Pact countries- without ejecting the Honeckers and Kadar, the Havels and the Walesas would not have had an opportunity of trying their new democratic social, economic and political experiments.

Struggling to win political power is NOT illegal and certainly does NOT negate patriotic and progressive principles.

It is also important to put the referendum campaign into perspective. Let us remember that people who are now coalesced into the NO camp VEHEMENTLY OPPOSED the very idea of a referendum and were among the first to go to court to try and stop it. Prior to that, parliamentarians opposed to the Kilifi and subsequently the Wako Drafts pleaded with their Yes counterparts in the Bunge up to midnight for the government to SPARE KENYANS the spectre of a very divisive campaign. Outside that National Assembly, thousands of other democratic and patriotic Kenyans staged three days of mass action with the same purpose.

That is why it is important for Maina Kiai to be TRUTHFUL about WHO unleashed this UNECESSARY chaos on the Kenyan people. It was Mwai Kibaki, it was Kiraitu Murungi, it was Amos Wako- it was the NAK faction which was NOT above bribing MPs to support this odious and blood soaked draft.

Again, who in actual fact, is playing ethnic politics?

Musikari Kombo, Mukhisa Kituyi and Moody Awori have OPENLY called on the Abaluhya community to vote as one ethnic bloc allegedly because this cluster is a heart beat away from the Presidency.

Simeon Nyachae has openly unleashed tribal slurs slamming the entire Luo community.

John Michuki has assured the Agikuyu community to sleep soundly because he and other Gikuyu ministers are defending the Kibaki presidency.

Martha Karua and Mirugi Kariuki have openly castigated Uhuru Kenyatta as an ethnic traitor because the KANU head honcho works closely with that tribal slur, Raila Odinga.

Robinson Githae was quoted in the papers as saying that the Agikuyu will not stand by as the Orange team tries to bring down the government and made a specific ethnic appeal to the Agikuyu to come out in numbers higher than the Luos to ensure the Wako Draft passes.

Njenga Karume had lunch with Ndura Waruinge leading the former Mungiki head to declare his support for the Bananas team.

One need not detail the hate filled vitriol of the Kalembe Ndiles, Danson Mungatanas and the Citizen media outlets and others to make the same point.

I find it ridiculous to see the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights to equate the comments from some Orange team leaders to the above examples of outright ethnic hatred.

Of course in the same breath, I commend the commission in lambasting the organizers of the Kisumu police shootings.

Going back to Maina Kiai’s op-ed:

Ndugu Kiai, some of us have been calling on Kenyans to look beyond not only November 21, 2005, but 2007 as well. We have been doing this consistently for the last three years and more. Yet, for a long time, the Onyango Oloos and the Adongo Ogonys were dismissed, maligned and castigated by some of our very own comrades who suddenly discovered that we were Luos- largely because some of us refused to whitewash the sell out and tribal tendencies of the NAK cabal.

For some of us, the only change worth taking about in the LONG TERM is a socialist transition. Our views regarding this are in the public domain.

However, having participated in popular and democratic struggles not only in Kenya but elsewhere around the world we know that the MOST consistent path to socialism is through democracy. Democratic struggles by their very nature are complex, often contradictory affairs. It is only by PARTICIPATING in these struggles that we widen the democratic spaces by challenging the assumptions and agendas of the mainstream politicians- this is a point that I have made in the following essay:

Ndugu Maina: why do you insist on seeing only Raila, Kalonzo, Uhuru, Ruto, Balala, Mudavadi etc at those Orange rallies?

How about those tens of thousands of wananchi flocking to these rallies all over the country?

Ndugu Maina, do you think that these people come to these rallies because they are Luos, Kambas, Kales, Wapwani, and WaMaragoli etc?

Is it possible that these wananchi come to the rallies because the Orange leaders ECHO the wananchi’s views?

Perhaps it is time that the Maina Kiais of the Kenya Civil Society sector ceased and desisted from the haughty sneers from the apparent sidelines- I say apparent because I saw an op-ed in one of the papers co authored by the same Maina Kiai voicing strong support for a key section of the Wako Draft. What I had wanted to say to that piece was around the total package and the process leading up to it, as opposed to isolating a nugget here and there.

I have noticed that Maina Kiai uses language very similar to those of his former KHRC colleague Makau Mutua especially as regards this nebulous and unscientific notion of the “political class.” Rather than rehash all of my arguments critiquing this notion, I will just repost a link to my riposte to Prof. Makau and hope that it suffices.

In my opinion, Maina Kiai and his green wearing comrades are actually closeted supporters of the Yes side- if one discerns carefully one notices more ink spent on castigating the Orange leaders with a few harmless comments blasting the most obvious gaffes of the Bananiacs thrown in to cover their butts.

In my opinion also, contrary to the snide remarks of Maina et al, the referendum is actually about the constitution. In my opinion, the contest is NOT about a very narrow clique of politicians-unless we consider all those millions who have been flocking to the Orange rallies to be goats and donkeys.

As a matter of fact, I happen to believe that the police went to suppress the Likoni rally precisely because it is becoming more and more apparent from the television footage on the nightly newscasts that the NO campaign is mushrooming into a popular national uprising against the status quo.

CONTINUED....

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Three:

At the moment it is IMMATERIAL who the wananchi are listening to. In 2002 they were rapt and captivated by Mwai Kibaki, Moody Awori, Charity Ngilu and other political turncoats. The very same much maligned wananchi can no longer be hoodwinked. In the same vein, if the Kalonzos, Railas, Balalas, Mudavadis etc change tack and change course a year from hence, expect them to get the same treatment.

Contrary to Maina Kiai’s call for prayers for among other things, “stability” and “good governance” Onyango Oloo calls on wananchi to watch their backs to ensure that a police bullet does not pierce it based on orders from above; I call on Kenyans to come out in MASSIVE NUMBERS to reject the odious Wako Draft.

After the November 21st referendum, I call on Kenyans to organize themselves in fighting for popular democracy and a progressive constitutional dispensation. I call on Kenyans to forge alliances both temporary and long term with people who share the minimum quest for a new democratic constitution. This will imply working with mainstream politicians of all stripes to the extent they can be stretched ideologically.

Back to the Likoni carnage.

In page two of the Saturday Nation we read that:

Mr. (Hisham) Mwidau and (councilor Ali) Mwakunyapa said their (Orange Likoni) rally was licensed more than two weeks ago and they did not understand why the police were attempting to prevent it.

Later, Mr. Odinga, accusing the police of over reacting, said Mr. Mwidau had notified the police of a change in the rally programme which they had acknowledged. The minister said the police had told him the Likoni rally had been cancelled because it had been decided that no rally should be held in Mombasa until President Kibaki had left town for Nairobi on Sunday.

Is this true?

Why would the police forcibly and crudely suppress a public rally simply because the leader of the Yes side was in town for more pork barrel politics? It is significant to note that PRIOR to the arrival of senior police officer William Mbithi on the scene, the Likoni rally had been proceeding quite peacefully. The fact that the police ONCE AGAIN used LIVE BULLETS on unarmed civilians is the clearest proof that the killing of five people in Kisumu was premeditated murder.

How many more Kenyans are the Kenyan police planning to kill to ensure that the Yes side wins?

How many Kenyan social justice activists are going to rush to denounce these acts of fascist thuggery?

I had wanted to write on the outlandish decision to cart off our animals to Thai zoos, but by now, most Kenyans in that field have pointed out the dastardly role of the Kenyan government in the process….

Onyango Oloo
Nairobi

[miguna]

Oloo:

We join you in condemning this government brutality against its own people. It is obvious that ODM is being targeted. And I am now more convinced that political assassinations have been planned...Unfortunately, Kenya is a divided society; economically and politically. The side that controls our economy also owns and controls the media. That is why you could not see the editorial condemnations of this naked dictatorship. That is why the pictures are skewed. But we know, and they know we know.

We must remain vigilant, committed and consistent in opposing, fighting and exposing this DICTATORSHIP.

Peace

[aeichener]

miguna said:

That is why you could not see the editorial condemnations of this naked dictatorship.

Oh, piffle...

You would be hard pressed to find *any* US newpaper - exempli gratia - publishing such a scathing critique of its government as Macharia Gaitho's editorial commentary of November 1st in the "Nation".

Alexander

[miguna]

Sunday November 13, 2005


They’re destroying our country with fear, this bunch of cowardly tribalists
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Chaacha mwita

Picture this: A top Government minister meets a prominent former leader of the dreaded Mungiki in the full glare of media cameras.

After the meeting, the former Mungiki leader tells the world that he has been tasked with mobilising 3,000,000 youths in Nairobi to support the Banana Agenda.

In case you forgot, Nairobi has no more than five million residents.

Therefore, Pastor Ndura Waruinge is to single-handedly mobilise over 60 per cent of the city to support Banana!

Yet it must be asked, if Njenga Karume cannot mobilise three million people with all the resources at his disposal, why should Ndura manage to do so?

Or is this just another "special project" the Minister for Special Projects is supposed to accomplish?

Indeed, why should Karume, a secretive political animal, meet Ndura in public?

Anyhow, a day later, MPs Njeru Githae and Alfred Nderitu initiate talk of 600 people being trained "in the forest" and 200 others "in Nairobi" to overthrow the government using "rocket launchers, ammunitions and other extremely dangerous weapons".

Prior to this, a statement by two Orange politicians that unpopular constitutions only invite the popular will of the people to overthrow them, is taken out of context, twisted and passed off as an actual declaration of coup plans.

It will not be surprising to hear more of these wild allegations, including, perhaps, witness a few high-profile arrests and parades of "the enemies of the people" in the upcoming days. After all, it will be falling into what seems like an orchestrated campaign to create fear among voters, the aim being to tilt the scales against the camp seeming to be ahead.

Ultimately, it is aimed at creating a justification for an intimidating presence of State security agents on Referendum Day, especially in areas where a high voter turnout would be unwanted by the establishment.

Such intimidation would keep fearful voters away thus diminishing the leading camp’s chances of a decisive win. This was done in Tanzania with great success recently during the Zanzibari presidential election.

But in Kenya, what makes it stink to the high heavens is the tribal dimension it has taken. Otherwise why would the same politicians alleging evil plots urge their tribespeople in their mother tongue to turn out in big numbers and vote?

Shame!

It does not take a genius to discern what is happening — encouraging a high voter turn out in areas of solid support and discouraging the same in areas of low support.

Here, it is befitting to state that tribalism reeks whether practised by a Kikuyu or an El-Molo.

Meanwhile, as the tribal card is flashed again and again, three major opinion polls show that the Orange camp enjoys a wide lead in all provinces except Central.

The establishment, which is spearheading the Banana Agenda, must be desperate to close the gap.

What does it do? It tries a hate campaign against its antagonists. Nothing doing. It attempts the carrot and stick approach dishing out goodies with abandon, while threatening rebels with the sack and incarceration. Nothing doing.

It silences or co-opts key figures from various parts of the country. Nothing doing.

Meanwhile the clock is ticking.

In desperation the establishment resorts to the classical political tool of all time — fear, in modern times better known as terror.

Through its stooges and lapdogs, it initiates a fear campaign. Innocent people, including children, are shot dead and blame immediately allotted to the camp labelled "bad". Kenyans are promised, and given a peep, into the fearful days ahead. Terrorism is here with us!

Mark you, no less a personage than the modern father of terrorism, Osama bin Laden is alive to the effectiveness of fear as a weapon. Listen to him: "Terror is the most dreaded weapon in the modern age. It can add fear and helplessness to the psyche of the people…"

To further illustrate how effective fear can be in achieving a political end, allow me to quote indulgently from an article, ‘Fear: The Foundation of Every Government’s Power’ by Robert Higgs as published by the Independent Institute: "All animals experience fear — human beings, perhaps, most of all…. Fear alerts us to dangers that threaten our well-being and sometimes our very lives. Sensing fear, we respond by running away, by hiding, or by preparing to ward off the danger….

"Our evolved physiological makeup disposes us to fear all sorts of actual and potential threats, even those that exist only in our imagination.

"The people who have the effrontery to rule us, who call themselves our government, understand this basic fact of human nature. They exploit it, and they cultivate it. Whether they compose a warfare state or a welfare state, they depend on it to secure popular submission, compliance with official dictates, and, on some occasions, affirmative cooperation with the State’s enterprises and adventures (no matter how ill-informed). Without popular fear, no government could endure more than 24 hours…. Public opinion itself rests on something deeper: fear….

"Sometimes the government, as if seeking to fortify the fear mythology with grains of truth, does protect ‘its’ people — even the shepherd protects his sheep, but he does so to serve his own interest, not theirs, and when the time comes, he will slaughter them as his interest dictates.

When the government fails to protect the people as promised, it always has a good excuse, often blaming some element of the population — scapegoats (such as political rivals)."

See! These are a bunch of opportunistic tribalists imagining all Kenyans are fools and gullible to their base schemes. Know what fellow Kenyans?

These people are destroying our country and some of us are helping them achieve their goal.

Higgs concludes his article thus: "Were we ever to stop being afraid of the (perpetrators of fear) and to cast off the phoney fears they have fostered, they would shrivel and die…." That is my word to you.

Disregard their fear-mongering no matter the number of police officers at your door and vote on Referendum Day.

[politicalmaniac]

OO

I stole 5 gems (listed below) from your essay and put forth the questions to my YES business colleague. I had been struggling a little bit, to formulate talking points/questions to frame our discussion points.

I dont know how one, in good conscience, can vote YES.

Needless to say the guy had no coherent answer to these question and points.


1_ Struggling to win political power is NOT illegal and certainly does NOT negate patriotic and progressive principles.

2_Why was it OK in 2002 for the same wanasiasa to be lauded for supporting the Kibaki presidential bid and completely haram for the same politicians to point out the Kibaki faction has sold out the wananchi?

3_It is also important to put the referendum campaign into perspective. Let us remember that people who are now coalesced into the NO camp VEHEMENTLY OPPOSED the very idea of a referendum and were among the first to go to court to try and stop it. Prior to that, parliamentarians opposed to the Kilifi and subsequently the Wako Drafts pleaded with their Yes counterparts in the Bunge up to midnight for the government to SPARE KENYANS the spectre of a very divisive campaign. Outside that National Assembly, thousands of other democratic and patriotic Kenyans staged three days of mass action with the same purpose


4_Ndugu Maina: why do you insist on seeing only Raila, Kalonzo, Uhuru, Ruto, Balala, Mudavadi etc at those Orange rallies?

How about those tens of thousands of wananchi flocking to these rallies all over the country

Its painful to watch, daily, the retrogressive Kibaki politics.