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Post by Onyango Oloo on Jan 24, 2006 23:11:12 GMT 3
The Long Illness Presaging The Funeral of NAK
A Digital Essay by Onyango Oloo in Mali
EDITED SECOND DRAFT
Part One
There is a certain lucidity which comes from detachment.
Our fatheyz and matheyz were right after all about sitting too close to the television.
I mean: here I am, in West Africa on the verge of venturing northwards to the Maghreb- and from across the regional temporal and spatial divide, the concrete situation in that relatively tiny east African nation called Kenya has never been clearer.
A sustained gaze at the sordid and sullied tapestry of contemporary events unfolding in Nairobi easily induces a series of Eureka! moments as the connecting threads between the firing of Ondego and the hiring of Mwaruwa; the incarceration of the Kabogo clan and the sale of KPLC shares; the dissension in Central Province and the sabre rattling in the Rift Valley; the Anglo-Leasing exposes in London and the intra- NAK fallouts in Nairobi; the Presidential tryouts in ODM and the Presidential flip flops at Ikulu become more and more self-evident with each new sunrise.
To illustrate.
Is there any correlation between the seemingly random freak accident that is hogging the Kenyan headlines as I churn out these clauses and compound sentences and the self-destruction of the andu aitu cabal?
Not exactly a dyed in the wool conspiracy theorist, I still feel I am no kook to see the January 22nd building tragedy as a poignant metaphor of the state of neo-colonial state atrophy in Kenya.
In other words, the crumbling of the unfinished nyumba in our accident prone capital region is a brutal echo of the crumbling Mount Kenya nyoomba edifice stacked with card carrying apologists cowering, shell-shocked and stupefied in the debris filled corridors of NARC dwindling political power.
Mwai Kibaki may or may not feel like screaming et tu, Githongo?as he spectates while his close friend’s offspring twists the dagger in the innards of a soon to be discarded also ran clique of political has beens fizzling on the vista of our national struggles.
Am I being delphic and cryptic in my apparently opaque inscrutability- in other words, do you have a clue about what the heck I am yabbering and yammering about?
Patience, my compatriots, subira kweli, huvuta heri.
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Post by Onyango Oloo on Jan 24, 2006 23:12:45 GMT 3
Part Two:
eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=35500
Most of Kenya’s keen political pundits and analysts are quite blasé about the whole media generated hyperventilation regarding the Anglo Leasing shamefest.
Interesting and explosive revelations from John Githongo no doubt, but all this is terribly old hat you know what I am saying?
The details of the Goldenberg surpassing Kibaki sanctioned, cabinet supervised Anglo-Fleecing white collar crime wave emerged in different corners of the public domain almost two years ago.
The imprimatur given to the well-circulated allegations via the publication in the Times of London and the Guardian serves to underscore our junior neocolonial underdog status in the global imperialist pecking order and food-chain. It is as if the British mainstream corporate media is paraphrasing the C.G. Seligmans and Hugh Trevor Ropers of post-colonial yore in declaring that nothing is news in Africa unless CNN and BBC deign to grace it with an ephemeral mention in their daily and nightly bulletins.
From my Bamako vantage point, I see a seismic shift far more shattering than the murderous after effects of unsupervised, haphazard Nairobi urban planning that will continue to birth more architectural disasters in the months and years to come.
The embarrassment of the Anglo Leasing scandal is the latest page in an unbroken sequence of vice riddled snafus that has dogged the Kibaki regime like an unstanched boil in a sensitive section of the tender rear quarters of an arrogant clique that has refused to open its eyes and see; stretch its hands and feel; breath in and smell, strain its ears to hear; interrogate its conscience and reflect.
It is not accidental that Dr. Chris Murungaru is the macabre ogre starring in this unfilmed Kenyan gothic horror piece. The Kieni MP epitomises all that is wrong with the NAK cabal-tribal, vicious, arrogant, corrupt and totally oblivious to the continuing destruction of the once noble Unbwogable Spirit that swept the masterminds of Goldenberg from power only to usher in the Uber Ufisadi Mabingwa of the post 2002 political sub-era in Kenya.
At the crux of the self-implosion of Kibaki, Murungaru, Mwiraria, Murungi, Michuki, Muthaura, Murage, Wanjohi & Karume Company Ltd is the Grand Betrayal of the democratic aspirations of the wananchi who bequeathed NARC with the task of midwifing a new constitutional dispensation in Kenya.
Without the legal safeguards wrought by a people-driven constitution, many Kenyans like the present writer are totally unsurprised that the civilian junta in Nairobi is lurching from one scandalous fiasco to another ministerial cash grab.
As Ngugi wa Thiong’o observed when he was still an activist and a revolutionary, in the post 1992 period, Kenyans inherited Moism-KANUISM without Moi or KANU. Looking at some of the present political gangsters in power we see some of them outdoing the Aringos and Kamothos of yesteryear.
The NAK cabal has dispensed with all pretences of being "national representative": look at the tribal backgrounds of the key pseudoideologues around the sitting (more properly the sleeping) head of state and ask yourself why the referendum voting patterns emerged they way they did.
To say that President Kibaki's government is facing a severe crisis is like describing a terminally ill patient as wrapping up their two day bed rest.
It is virtually IMPOSSIBLE for Kibaki and NAK to jump out of their own self-made Shikukuesqe grave. A coterie that has lost the sense of hearing and the sense of sight is a coterie that is waiting for its inevitable requiem mass.
Fortunately, this is GREAT NEWS for the vast majority of Kenyan wananchi. The sooner the nouveau kleptomaniacs and slothocrats are done for, the faster Kenyans will deepen their rocky attempt at consolidating our democratic culture, our democratic institutions and our open political and social spaces for human action and interaction across our beautiful but tortured nation.
Somehow, I cannot fathom the outrage in the public domain about Anglo Leasing and so on and so forth, when bigger and more devious economic crimes are being unleashed against the Kenyan people.
I have been genuinely perplexed at the widespread non-reaction at the news that Kibaki’s insiders have made a strategic investment in Kenya Power and Lighting Corporation. For those advance attack hounds pre- emptively positing that Kenyan citizens have the right to make money where they can my retort is that all that laissez faire yabba yabba doo is fine and dandy, subject to certain principled and patriotic provisos and caveats.
One being, are the government procurement and investment policies infused with transparent safeguards?
How about conflict of interest situations?
Should an incumbent transport minister roll out a private fleet of municipal buses which deepen and consolidate the privatization of public services like bus transportation?
Who says that each and every department of almost every parastatal must be either headed or controlled by individuals who are close to very well-connected politician-businessmen?
When will the five companies belonging to the handful of cabinet ministers be dragged to court and charged (if there is such a charge to begin with) with undermining our national sovereignty and threatening our food security through their cynical manipulation of the devastating famine?
Who of the local comprador bourgeois fat cats will turn out to be the internal silent partner of the Chinese when they "win" the bid for the Second National Landline Telephone Carrier? On a related note, after Telkom has been gutted and destroyed, with staff pulverized by Thatcherite retrenchments, which local consortium of shady overnight (shilling) multi-billionaires will emerge as the Kenyan variant of Canada's Telecom supremo Ted Rogers?
Where I am here in Mali does not allow me to expound further on this due to time and technical constraints.
A long time ago- circa the year 2003 for instance- I was a more indulgent fortysomething Kenyan waiting for Kibaki to yank his foot out of his mouth. Were I the very same identical Kenyan pontificating way back in those ancient days, I would have strongly suggested that the best option for the Kibaki-NAK space cadets would be to dissolve the dysfunctional government and call for fresh multi-party elections.
These days, not having much patience for certified political charlatans, I merely shrug my shoulders and sigh:
Wacha wajika’ange na mafuta yao.
Onyango Oloo
Bamako, en route to Casablanca Morocco.
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Post by mongobeti on Jan 25, 2006 12:42:29 GMT 3
Good piece, Ati Kibaki now cuts short his trip in Sudan because of the accident and flies back to town. Since when did he start being so compassionate about the common man?
...and too bad your trip to the Maghreb will not include my current abode- Tunis. We would have enjoyed a cup of Tunisian tea, overlooking Carthage (or what remains of it), in the land of Hannibal the Great
Simbi-Nyaima
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Post by aeichener on Jan 25, 2006 13:21:59 GMT 3
Were I the very same identical Kenyan pontificating way back in those ancient days, I would have strongly suggested that the best option for the Kibaki-NAK space cadets would be to dissolve the dysfunctional government and call for fresh multi-party elections. Wouldn't it be easier if Kibaki dissolved the People, and elected himself a new one? (free after Brecht) ;D Alexander |
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Post by Onyango Oloo on Jan 25, 2006 15:25:36 GMT 3
Good piece, Ati Kibaki now cuts short his trip in Sudan because of the accident and flies back to town. Since when did he start being so compassionate about the common man? ...and too bad your trip to the Maghreb will not include my current abode- Tunis. We would have enjoyed a cup of Tunisian tea, overlooking Carthage (or what remains of it), in the land of Hannibal the Great Simbi-Nyaima Thanks for your feedback and kind words. There is a certain young Phillip who flows from a Kenyan soccer pedigree in your domicile. Have you ever met? If not, I will tell him to look out for you. Onyango Oloo
Bamako |
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Post by Onyango Oloo on Jan 25, 2006 15:50:20 GMT 3
ndauosa Today, 06:01 AM Post #2
Group: Wananchi
Posts: 12
Joined: 19-January 06
Member No.: 2,828
Your Location: south africa
I must admit that going through your comments always incites me, leaving me with the feeling of a country gone down the drain and with no hope of redeeming it, unless drastic measures are taken.
Have the best of Magreb.
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Post by mongobeti on Jan 26, 2006 17:25:31 GMT 3
OO,
Yes, indeed Philip Thigo is here in Tunis, working with an international Human Rights organization. Iam myself plying my trade in development banking.
Bon sejour au Maroc!
Simbi-Nyaima!
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