Post by Onyango Oloo on Aug 8, 2014 13:27:49 GMT 3
A Digital Essay in Two Parts, by Onyango Oloo
PART ONE
SECOND, Revised Version
SECOND, Revised Version
I want to kick off this piece with some light entertainment.
First off, there is this music video featuring an up and coming East African artiste going on and on in Kiswahili about "Nyani Haoni Kundule":
Translated into English, Nyani Haoni Kundule is a proverb which simply means that
that the Baboon Can Not View Its Own Backside, but it is QUICK to point out, sneer and jeer at a fellow baboon pointing out that its arse is PINK or whatever colour that particular ape's hind quarters appear to be.
At this point, I will NOT explain the MEANING of that Coastal East African proverb although many of my Kenyan readers are familiar with that expression.
A couple of months ago, when some of us pointed out that the historically drawn out tensions over land in Lamu County were part of the underpinnings of the apparent eruption of violence in that part of Kenya we were dismissed by a motley crew of status quo apologists, toilet mouthed tribalists and human ostriches doing their traditional head burying rituals.
So, it is with a sigh of relief, that we now greet the belated acknowledgment from the highest echelons of the Executive that indeed, elite spurred land grabbing is one of the key factors which will help to explain and unravel the north-eastern Kenyan imbroglio in Mpeketoni, Witu and its environs in which innocent Kenyans were ruthlessly slaughtered like hapless goats.
Sadly, this 23rd hour candid admission by Kenyan political leaders who are themselves not totally above reproach
How TJRC Land Chapter Was Censored
6/3/2013
A senior official at the Office of the President asked the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission to 'sanitise' the report's chapter on historical land injustices so that the report could be accepted by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
A senior official at the Office of the President asked the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission to 'sanitise' the report's chapter on historical land injustices so that the report could be accepted by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Three international commissioners- retired Ethiopian diplomat Berhanu Dinka, US law professor Ron Slye and Zambian High Court judge Gertrude Chawatama have revealed that the Office of the President forced the commission to submit an advance copy of the final report to it and Attorney General Githu Muigai.
After submitting the report, the OP then exerted pressure on the commissioners to make changes to the document. The Kenyan commissioners who had stood firm on their resolve not to amend any section of the report eventually caved in and made changes to the chapter on land.
The three foreigners who were members of the commission said they were “shocked” and “saddened” by the turn of events and eventually led them to submit their dissenting opinion on the commission's findings on land.
In their dissenting opinion on the land chapter, the three said the OP instigated the watering down of paragraphs 203, 227, 231, 257 and 261 of the land chapter. (See the original text of the findings on Page 24).
“A number of commissioners, including at least one of the international commissioners, received phone calls from a senior official in the OP suggesting various changes to the Land chapter. These suggestions included the removal of specific paragraphs,” Dinka, Chawatama and Slye said in a statement yesterday.
The changes suggested were eventually effected despite protests from the three who were seconded to the TJRC by the Kofi Annan-chaired Panel of Eminent African Personalities.
ictj.org/news/how-tjrc-land-chapter-was-censored
To see how we covered this event in Jukwaa please click on the link below:
jukwaa.proboards.com/thread/8482/dissenting-opinion-tjrc-international-commissioners
The Hague May 14, 2013. REUTERS/Lex van Lieshout/Pool
By Humprey Malalo
NAIROBI, June 28 (Reuters)– Kenya’s High Court ordered
Deputy President William Ruto on Friday to surrender a 100-acre farm in the lush Rift Valley and pay compensation to a farmer who had accused the politician of grabbing the land during election violence five years ago.
The ruling, seen as a key test of the Kenyan judiciary’s newly won independence, came as Ruto and President Uhuru Kenyatta prepare to face trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity in connection with the post-2007 election mayhem, in which more than 1,200 people died.
Justice Rose Ougo ordered Ruto to vacate the farm and pay compensation of 5 million shillings ($58,200) to the rightful owner, Adrian Muteshi, 70, who had accused Ruto of evicting his farm workers during the fighting in 2007-08.
A swift and transparent resolution of the land dispute involving Ruto, filed in late 2010, is seen as a critical test for the courts, which have been strengthened by a new constitution making them more independent of the politicians.
Kenyan judges have long been seen as hirelings eager to issue rulings at the whim of the political elite.
Ruto had argued that the land had been legally transferred from Muteshi to a third party, Dorothy Yator, from whom the deputy president said he had purchased the land. The judge ruled that Ruto had acquired the land fraudulently.
“I order the deputy president to pay 5 million shillings to the farmer as compensation … I conclusively find that Muteshi is the owner of the land,” Justice Ougo said in her judgement.
“From the evidence before me, it is clear that there were fraudulent activities in the manner the land was sub-divided and sold,” she added.
“HAPPY MAN”
Ruto’s lawyer Katwa Kigen told Reuters he would appeal.
Muteshi, who said he had fled his land in 2008 at the height of the post-election clashes, welcomed the verdict.
“I am a happy man since the land in question has been given back to me,” he told Reuters outside the court after the verdict, though he added that the compensation was not enough.
By Humprey Malalo
NAIROBI, June 28 (Reuters)– Kenya’s High Court ordered
Deputy President William Ruto on Friday to surrender a 100-acre farm in the lush Rift Valley and pay compensation to a farmer who had accused the politician of grabbing the land during election violence five years ago.
The ruling, seen as a key test of the Kenyan judiciary’s newly won independence, came as Ruto and President Uhuru Kenyatta prepare to face trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity in connection with the post-2007 election mayhem, in which more than 1,200 people died.
Justice Rose Ougo ordered Ruto to vacate the farm and pay compensation of 5 million shillings ($58,200) to the rightful owner, Adrian Muteshi, 70, who had accused Ruto of evicting his farm workers during the fighting in 2007-08.
A swift and transparent resolution of the land dispute involving Ruto, filed in late 2010, is seen as a critical test for the courts, which have been strengthened by a new constitution making them more independent of the politicians.
Kenyan judges have long been seen as hirelings eager to issue rulings at the whim of the political elite.
Ruto had argued that the land had been legally transferred from Muteshi to a third party, Dorothy Yator, from whom the deputy president said he had purchased the land. The judge ruled that Ruto had acquired the land fraudulently.
“I order the deputy president to pay 5 million shillings to the farmer as compensation … I conclusively find that Muteshi is the owner of the land,” Justice Ougo said in her judgement.
“From the evidence before me, it is clear that there were fraudulent activities in the manner the land was sub-divided and sold,” she added.
“HAPPY MAN”
Ruto’s lawyer Katwa Kigen told Reuters he would appeal.
Muteshi, who said he had fled his land in 2008 at the height of the post-election clashes, welcomed the verdict.
“I am a happy man since the land in question has been given back to me,” he told Reuters outside the court after the verdict, though he added that the compensation was not enough.
When it comes to suspicions percolating around irregular allocations of land.
This was soon followed by a tawdry vuta-ni-kuvute (tug of war for those unfamiliar with the Kenyan national language) pitting disparate fractions of the ever feuding factions of the country’s comprador bourgeois neo-colonial elite.
On the one hand, we spectate at the surreal burlesque, where some of the powers that be would have us believe that land grabbing in Lamu County started in 2011 and ended in 2012.
On the other hand, we catch our sharp breath, aghast at the counter narrative and looming threat of spilling some political legumes should an oppositional prince be pilloried- or for that matter, hanged, drawn or quartered.
This macabre and distasteful colloquy of the deaf, at the national stage, leaves the long suffering people of Lamu, Kilifi, Kwale, Tana River, Taita Taveta, Mombasa and indeed, Kajiado, Narok, Nakuru, Eldoret, Mount Elgon and numerous other Kenyan neighbourhoods where land-based historical injustices are the matchboxes that has lit a thousand forest fires of ethnic and regional bloody contestations with an anguish gnawing at their innards.
And for those of us-at the Kenya Land Alliance, Mazingira Institute, Pamoja Trust, Haki Yetu, Muhuri, Haki Africa, Kenya Human Rights Commission, Mpido, Ilishe, Ujamaa and a host of civil society and grass roots community researchers, organizers and mobilizers all over Kenya-who have spent decades documenting, advocating, highlighting and mobilizing for agrarian and democratic reforms around land we are bemused, but more than a little irritated at all this unnecessary showboating from quarters who properly belong to the dungeons maintained by the managers of assorted penitentiaries from Shimo-la-Tewa to Manyani to King’ong’o, to Naivasha to Kamiti to Kodiaga.
They just don’t get it, some of us mutter, between gritted teeth and underneath furious, furrowed brows.
It is NOT about YOU, Dear Bwana Kubwa Mlowezi Land Grabber, nor is it about your insane obsession with clinging on to your dubious mandate to misrule this country or your benighted determination to loot all you can from the national coffers and the collective natural resources which properly speaking should be conserved and reserved as the inheritance and endowment of future generations of Kenyans.
When thousands of young Kenyan agricultural workers, poor peasants, fledgling urban elements declasses, aspiring petit bourgeois traders, pastoralists and fledgling tai tai organic intellectuals formed the bulwark of the Kiama Kia Muingi/Kenya Land and Freedom Army over sixty years ago in what eventually became known to the world as the Mau Mau Uprising, there was a single burning issue motivating them to brave the murderous Johnnies and their equally shameless Kimemendero home guard collaborators-freedom, driving them to demand for agrarian reform which they lucidly saw as being intricately tied up with our right as a nation to exercise our inalienable right to self-determination.
When our political great grandmother
Me Katilili teamed up with her comrade Wanje wa Mwadori to lead the Miji Kenda peasants of Kilifi County to oppose poll tax and hut tax, land was at the centre; same with Mwangeka among the Dawida people in what we now call Taita Taveta; the great military leader Koitalel arap Samoei is today honoured as a national martyr who was shot dead by a two faced colonial land grabber; Elijah Masinde and Dini ya Msambwa used the ideology of a homegrown spiritual awakening to rally the Bukusu people in Bungoma County against the settler land grabbers and exploiters of African labour; when Jaramogi Oginga Odinga issued the clarion call of Not Yet Uhuru, he was merely affirming that the patriotic project of Dedan Kimaathi, Sarah Sarai, General Muthoni,Field Marshall Mwariama General Bamuingi, Mary Nyanjiru, Bildad Kaggia, Cege Kibacia, Muindi Mbingu, Achieng’ Oneko, Pio da Gama Pinto, Makhan Singh, Fred Kubai and other wazalendo was still unfinished, we Kenyans had to emulate our Mozambican, Angolan, Guinean, Cape Verdian camarades and companeras in embracing the truth of the truism captured by the Lusophone adage a lutta continua/mapambano yangali yanaendelea/the struggle continues…
Land-based historical injustices and agrarian reforms formed part of the main cross-cutting themes running through the entire constitutional review process-championed by such stalwarts like Yash Pal Ghai, the late Prof. Kavetsa Adagala, Ole Kina, Davinder Lamba, Makau Mutua, the late Dr. Odhiambo Mbai, Muthoni Wanyeki, Steve Ouma, Martin Shikuku, the late Ooko Ombaka, the late Katama Mkangi, Rev. Timothy Njoya, the late Bishop David Gitari, Suba Churchill, Morris Odhiambo, Oduor Ong’wen, Willy Mutunga, Njeri Kabeberi, Kathini Maloba, Mwashengu wa Mwachofi, Khalif Khelef, Sofia Abdi, Munir Mazrui, Mohamed Mbwana and many other patriots.
In other words, the land question is the main component of the National Question in Kenya.
It is what has defined and described what propelled disparate forces such as Mau Mau, KPU, DTM, Mwakenya and even Mulungunipa, Mungiki, FERA, MRC, the Sabaot Land Defence Force, to cite a handful of movements and outfits, to do what they did and are currently doing.
Emerging evidence would seem to indicate the HSM, better known as Al Shabaab, is morphing from a Made in Somalia military militia propagating political Islam and nationalism within its former domestic context in the environs of Mogadishu, Baidoa, Puntland, Juba and elsewhere into a quasi Eastern/Horn of African regional force which has taken it upon itself to agitate for and propagate the aspirations of those populations in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and other parts of the region that it deems oppressed by an infidel pro-Western state apparatus.
Given the above, the question of land-based historical injustices and its corollary, equitable and egalitarian agrarian reform on solid and consistent social justice precepts soars above, nay, transcends the parochial, philistine, moribund urinating contests between this or that fraction, this or that faction of the Kenyan comprador, neo-colonial bourgeois elite. This should not be a spitting competition between Aden Duale and Otieno Kajwang' or a shouting match between Jubilee cabinet secretary Charity Ngilu and her erstwhile ODM insider, former Lands minister James Orengo.
In a couple of weeks, Kenyans will remember that it was on August 27, 2010 when we ushered in a historical milestone with the promulgation of the constitution-a huge democratic victory after all those decades of moiling and toiling for a new dispensation; a struggle punctuated by imprisonment and exile; assassinations, state engineered ethnic clashes and flare ups of irrational terrorist violence; years of strife and uncertainty; long dark periods of grand corruption and mega larceny; an entire epoch of brutal one party dictatorship; a long night of stolen elections and ferociously contested mandates to govern, or rather, misgovern.
Unfortunately, the leaders who were given the task of implementing our much admired constitution were birthed in the miasma and mire of Moi’s ethnic laced kleptocracy; some of its key figures were the captains and coaches of Red FC which fought a tooth and nail battle against the very values, the very ideals, the very principles, the very structures that they swore under oath under public floodlights, to defend with every sinew in their very beings.
First, they ran for office under direct defiance of Chapter Six of the 2010 Constitution with its strictures on integrity; secondly, they ignored the law regarding crimes against humanity; thirdly they retraumatized the victims and survivors of the post-election violent trauma by trivializing the ordeals of murder, the savagery of rape; the obscenity of homes turned into infernos barbecuing trapped human sacrifices; fourthly, they embarked on a looting spree of billions of tax payers’ money, treasure troves of national natural wealth and went on a rampage with their Chinese cohorts against the dwindling elephants, rhinos and other endanger wild fauna.
And of course they did not forget about the land.
No, they did not forget to grab the land.
Like they had always grabbed all these years.
These then, are the self-appointed
Simón Bolívas and
José Martís of Kenya; the
Zapatas and
Guevaras of East Africa; the
Thomas Sankaras and
Chris Hanis of these shores, slopes, rivers, lakes and mountains.
They would have us believe that their Magic Fairy Charity Ngilu, with a simple wave of her majestic ministerial wand will right the wrongs of Mpeketoni, Kijipwa, Jipe, Waitiki, Mau, Mount Elgon.
Check out how a well known, articulate ethnic chauvinist pens this pathetic apologia for Big Tribe Arrogance:
www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Why-some-ethnic-groups-become-pet-subjects-of-hate-/-/440808/2410734/-/2a4u1l/-/index.html
Check out this juicy bit, right at the opening paragraph, where the writer equates the Agikuyu of Kenya to the Jews:
The recent hideous selective slaughter of ethnic Kikuyu in Mpeketoni in Lamu County is not unique in human history.
History is replete with such outbreaks of inter-ethnic violence on a massive scale: against the Jews in Europe, the Chinese minority in Southeast Asia, against Ibos in Nigeria, against the Lebanese in Sierra Leone, the Japanese in Peru, Indians in Burma and Armenians in the Ottoman Empire ages ago.
But what do all these groups have in common and why are they hated so much?
Excuse me while I take a few seconds to recover from the irresistible mirth which threatens to choke me to an early grave.
On the other hand, my good friend, one time mentor who recruited me into and passed the baton in the Social Democratic Party is determined to cleanse himself of the Jubilee contagion:
www.standardmedia.co.ke/ktn/video/watch/2000081702/-james-orengo-releases-a-list-of-senior-government-officials-who-irregularly-acquired-land
At this point I remind myself of a poem I wrote in 2004 about the Goldenberg scandal
Who Will Bell The Cats of Goldenberg?
A Poem by Onyango Oloo
Monday, February 23, 2004
Inspired by Aesop's ancient fable:
What
are we going to do
with all this pain
What are we
going to do
with all this pain
What are we going to do
What
Are we
Going to do
With all this pain
We have finally started rummaging through the
Piles and piles of dirty secrets from our own recent, gory, blood-stained
Chapters of shameful, repressive memories
Of dictators doing dreadful things on Fridays
Before strolling to church on Sundays
Whistling cheerful tunes
Like overflowing uji, we see the truth spilling out
From the mouths of long lost house maids
We hear the terrible truths of ministers dragged to their
Brutal ends whilst farm hands boasted of hyenas bleating for mercy
What are we going to do with all this blood
What are we going to do with all this blood
All this blood spilling on to the front pages of our national conscience
What shall we do with all this blood
All this blood splattering the well known pin striped suits
For months we have heard of the robbers in the cabinet
Supervised by their god fearing warlord as they stripped
The Central Bank empty
What shall we do with all that shame
The shame of leaders looting our national coffers
These commissions of inquiry to find out the well known truths
Seem to be traveling on well worn paths to familiar obscurity
What shall we do with all these painful truths
What shall we do with all these painful truths
What shall we do with all these shameful facts
What shall we do with all these shameful facts
We know that Moi and Saitoti and his sidekicks stole
They grabbed and they looted
They swindled and they confiscated
All in the name of power, in the pursuit of greed
Worshipping King Avarice and Queen Arrogance
We have known for a while that Nicholas Biwott and his shadowy sidekicks were fingered
As the masterminds in all those dastardly crimes
Crimes of kidnapping
Crimes of torture
Crimes of grievous bodily harm
Crimes of premeditated cold blooded murder
Crimes of cover up
Crimes of deceit
They have been fingered
And they have never even bothered to clear their names
In the comfort that power was on their side
And the killers were on their payrolls
Today they can try and pin the murders on the murdered ones
And the Central Bank robberies on the incarcerated ones
Pattni will be made to pay because he is the Indian Scapegoat
As the real Goldenberg Mafiosi look to the Mafia barons in power for salvation
Who will bell the cats of Goldenberg
The mice of Kenya are asking
Who will bell the cats of Goldenberg
But what are we going to do with all this shame, all this pain
What are we going to do with all these painful truths
It is not the truth we seek, for we have had it for a while
It is not proof we need, for it was all clear as mud
Even those crimes committed in the dead of night
What we seek is not truth, but justice
What we seek is not truth, but justice
It is justice we seek for we know the truth
It is justice we seek for we know the truth
What we seek is not closure, but punishment
Let the robbers get their day in court
Before they start their years in Kamiti
Let the killers get their day in court
Before they start their long sojourn in G Block
It is time they exchanged their three piece suits
For the new uniforms of Kamiti and Manyani
They did the crimes, now it is time to do the time
But who will take the first step of attaching the handcuffs
On those leading suspects
Who even as we speak chortle in the back seats
Of their tinted limousines
As we write, the country awaits a reshuffle
That will bring the robbers and killers back to centre stage
And that is why I ask
What shall we do with all this pain
What shall we do with all this pain
We must do something with all these painful truths
We must do something with all these painful truths
We must do something to wash away all this shameful blood of the innocent
Before a gaping wound opens up to consume us all.
Onyango Oloo
Montreal
8:25 PM
Monday, February 23, 2004
A Poem by Onyango Oloo
Monday, February 23, 2004
Inspired by Aesop's ancient fable:
What
are we going to do
with all this pain
What are we
going to do
with all this pain
What are we going to do
What
Are we
Going to do
With all this pain
We have finally started rummaging through the
Piles and piles of dirty secrets from our own recent, gory, blood-stained
Chapters of shameful, repressive memories
Of dictators doing dreadful things on Fridays
Before strolling to church on Sundays
Whistling cheerful tunes
Like overflowing uji, we see the truth spilling out
From the mouths of long lost house maids
We hear the terrible truths of ministers dragged to their
Brutal ends whilst farm hands boasted of hyenas bleating for mercy
What are we going to do with all this blood
What are we going to do with all this blood
All this blood spilling on to the front pages of our national conscience
What shall we do with all this blood
All this blood splattering the well known pin striped suits
For months we have heard of the robbers in the cabinet
Supervised by their god fearing warlord as they stripped
The Central Bank empty
What shall we do with all that shame
The shame of leaders looting our national coffers
These commissions of inquiry to find out the well known truths
Seem to be traveling on well worn paths to familiar obscurity
What shall we do with all these painful truths
What shall we do with all these painful truths
What shall we do with all these shameful facts
What shall we do with all these shameful facts
We know that Moi and Saitoti and his sidekicks stole
They grabbed and they looted
They swindled and they confiscated
All in the name of power, in the pursuit of greed
Worshipping King Avarice and Queen Arrogance
We have known for a while that Nicholas Biwott and his shadowy sidekicks were fingered
As the masterminds in all those dastardly crimes
Crimes of kidnapping
Crimes of torture
Crimes of grievous bodily harm
Crimes of premeditated cold blooded murder
Crimes of cover up
Crimes of deceit
They have been fingered
And they have never even bothered to clear their names
In the comfort that power was on their side
And the killers were on their payrolls
Today they can try and pin the murders on the murdered ones
And the Central Bank robberies on the incarcerated ones
Pattni will be made to pay because he is the Indian Scapegoat
As the real Goldenberg Mafiosi look to the Mafia barons in power for salvation
Who will bell the cats of Goldenberg
The mice of Kenya are asking
Who will bell the cats of Goldenberg
But what are we going to do with all this shame, all this pain
What are we going to do with all these painful truths
It is not the truth we seek, for we have had it for a while
It is not proof we need, for it was all clear as mud
Even those crimes committed in the dead of night
What we seek is not truth, but justice
What we seek is not truth, but justice
It is justice we seek for we know the truth
It is justice we seek for we know the truth
What we seek is not closure, but punishment
Let the robbers get their day in court
Before they start their years in Kamiti
Let the killers get their day in court
Before they start their long sojourn in G Block
It is time they exchanged their three piece suits
For the new uniforms of Kamiti and Manyani
They did the crimes, now it is time to do the time
But who will take the first step of attaching the handcuffs
On those leading suspects
Who even as we speak chortle in the back seats
Of their tinted limousines
As we write, the country awaits a reshuffle
That will bring the robbers and killers back to centre stage
And that is why I ask
What shall we do with all this pain
What shall we do with all this pain
We must do something with all these painful truths
We must do something with all these painful truths
We must do something to wash away all this shameful blood of the innocent
Before a gaping wound opens up to consume us all.
Onyango Oloo
Montreal
8:25 PM
Monday, February 23, 2004
The question of land and agrarian reform has occupied a lot of minds across the world for many, many years.From Guinea Bissau to Cuba, Vietnam to Brazil entire social movements and revolutionary projects around the world have been built around the question of land.
MST, Brazil's landless people's movement is probably, at this time, the world's most powerful social movement.
Here is what one of its key leaders was saying not too long ago, in a joint opinion piece:
People's Agrarian Reform: An Alternative to the Capitalist Model
by João Pedro Stedile and Osvaldo León
ALAI AMLAT 02/07/2014.- Since the 1980s, we are living in a new phase of capitalism, marked by the hegemony of finance capitalism and transnational corporations, which have gained control of the production of the principal commodities and world trade, generating structural change in agricultural production.
This control over goods by financial capital that circulates in the world in proportions five times greater than their equivalent in actual production (255 billion dollars/year in currency, for 55 billion dollars/year in goods), transforms natural assets – such as land, water, energy, minerals – into mere commodities under its control. And due to this, there is an enormous concentration of property in land, natural assets and food.
In effect, at the present time, close to one hundred food and agriculture transnationals (such as Cargill, Monsanto, Dreyfus, ADM, Syngenta, Bunge, etc.) control the greater part of world production of fertilizers, agrochemicals, pesticides, agro-industries and the food market. This is because foods are now sold and subject to speculation in international markets, like any raw material (iron, petroleum, etc.), and the big financial interests acquire millions of tons of food for speculation. Millions of tons of soya, maize, wheat, rice, even harvests not yet planted, for the year 2018, are already sold. That is to say, millions of tons of grain that do not exist already have owners.
This production model that capital is now establishing in the whole world is known as agribusiness, and this basically involves organizing agricultural production in the form of monoculture on an ever increasing scale, with the intensive use of agricultural machinery and toxic chemicals, along with the growing use of GM seeds.
Thus this productive model of agribusiness is socially unjust, since it tends to expel the workforce from the countryside, it is economically unsustainable, since it depends on the import of millions of tons of chemical fertilizers; it is subordinated to large corporations that control seeds, agricultural inputs, prices, the market and are left with the greater part of profits from agricultural production. It is not environmentally sustainable, since the practice of monoculture destroys naturally-existing biodiversity; the irresponsible use of toxic chemicals destroys the natural fertility of soils and their microorganisms, contaminates the environment, and above all, contaminates the food produced, with grave consequences for human health.
In Brazil, the National Cancer Institute (Inca) warned in February that the prognosis for this year is 546,000 new cases of cancer in the country, the greater part caused by food contaminated with pesticides, above all breast and prostate cancer, since these are the more fragile cells where the elements of chemical poisons act.
Food sovereignty
In the face of this agribusiness model that looks to the production of dollars and commodities, rather than foods, we urgently need to renegotiate, throughout the whole planet, the principle that food cannot be a mere commodity. Food is a right of survival, so that every human being should have access to this energy to reproduce as a human being, in an equal way and without restriction.
In Via Campesina we have developed the concept of food sovereignty, based on the need, in every place in the world, for the people to have the right and duty to produce their own food. It is this that has guaranteed the survival of humanity, even under extremely difficult conditions. And it has been biologically demonstrated that in every part of our planet it is possible to produce food for human survival, based on local conditions.
The key question is how to guarantee peoples’ food sovereignty. And for this we must defend the need for all who work the land and produce food, farmers and campesinos, to have the right to land and water. This is a basic human right. Hence the need for a policy of distribution of natural goods (land, water, energy) among all, which is what we call agrarian reform.
We need to guarantee national and peoples’ sovereignty over the basic goods of nature. We cannot subject these goods to the rules of private property and profit. Natural assets are not the result of human labor. Because of this, the State, in the name of society, should subject these assets to a collective, social function, under social control.
We must ensure that seeds, different strains of animals and genetic improvement made by human beings over history, are accessible to all farmers. There cannot be private property of seeds and living things, as is now being imposed by present-day capitalism with its laws of patents, GM seeds and genetic mutations. Seeds are the heritage of all humanity.
In every locality, every region, we must ensure that necessary foods from the local biodiversity are produced, in order to preserve food customs and local culture, which is even a question of public health. Scientists, medical specialists and biologists tell us that the alimentation of living things, for their healthy reproduction, must be in harmony with local habitat and energy.
We need government policies that encourage the practice of agricultural techniques of food production that are not predatory with respect to nature, that do not employ poisons and that produce in harmony with nature and biodiversity, and with abundance for all. This is what we call agro-ecology.
We need to prevent transnational companies from continuing to control any part of the production of agricultural inputs and the production and distribution of food. And at the same time, to move toward the adoption of practices of international trade in foods among peoples, based on solidarity, complementarity and exchange, rather than on oligopoly dominated by the US dollar.
In addition, it is incumbent on the State to develop public policy that guarantees the principle that food is not a commodity, that it is a right of all citizens. People can only survive in democratic societies, with minimal rights guaranteed, if they have access to the necessary food-energy.
A new model of production
Under the hegemony of this agribusiness model, in Brazil we are undergoing an accelerated process of concentration of landed property and agricultural production, with natural assets increasingly concentrated in the hands of an ever smaller number of capitalists. There has been an avalanche of foreign and financial capital to control more land, more water, more agribusiness and practically all external trade in agricultural commodities.
In addition, with this agribusiness model, an ideological class alliance has emerged between the big landowners and the media, especially television, journals and newspapers, which have become promoters and permanent propagandists for capitalist business in the countryside, as if this were the only possible modern and irreplaceable project. There is a symbiosis between the big media proprietors, agribusiness, advertising and economic power.
Under these new conditions, the struggle for land and for agrarian reform has changed in nature. Because of this, the 6th National Congress of MST (the Landless Workers’ Movement), in February of this year, adopted a programmer of Popular Agricultural Reform, because this is in the interest of the whole people. It is no longer an agrarian reform for the landless, but aims for structural changes that are necessary for society as a whole.
A policy of agrarian reform cannot be reduced to the distribution of land for the poor, although this can resolve localized social problems. It is a question of moving towards the establishment of a new agricultural production model. The reorganization of agriculture is urgent, so as to produce, in the first place, healthy food for the internal market and for the whole Brazilian population. To achieve this, it is necessary and urgent to implement public policies that guarantee support for a diversified agriculture in every biome, producing with agro-ecological techniques.
The government should dedicate more resources to agricultural research in food and not simply to benefit transnationals. This should include the establishment of a large programmer for small and medium agro-industries along the lines of cooperatives, so that small agriculturalists could have their agro-industries in order to add value and create a market for local products, among other things.
Obviously a popular agrarian reform will take more time and will be more difficult, since it will be necessary to raise awareness among urban dwellers in order that they will mobilize, for example, for healthy food, for the labelling of food products to indicate if they contain poisons or not, whether they have genetically modified components. And also to promote awareness of the contradictions of agribusiness with respect to food, climate change, the environment and employment.
As the program of MST indicates, we now face new challenges, such as:
a) The popular agrarian reform should resolve the concrete problems of the population that lives in the countryside.
b) The agrarian reform has as its base the democratization of land, but it seeks to produce healthy food for the whole population, an objective that the capitalist model is unable to pursue;
c) The accumulation of forces for this kind of agrarian reform now depends on a consolidated alliance between campesinos and urban workers. The landless alone cannot achieve the popular agrarian reform.
d) This represents an accumulation of strength for campesinos and the whole working class in the building of a new society.
João Pedro Stedile is a member of the National Coordination of MST and
Brazilian Via Campesina.
Osvaldo León is the Director of “América Latina en Movimiento” (ALAI).
Fidel Castro had a father who could have been Jomo Kenyatta-a wealthy plutocrat who grabbed land from the poor.
So what happened later?
Here is an excerpt from a review of a Castro biography:
In describing those Cubans who allied themselves with the US to attack the Revolution at Playa Giron in 1961, he comments that ‘among the invaders there were many who were the sons of large landowners and wealthy families. There you see clearly the class nature of the invasion’ (p263).
How was it then that Fidel, the son of a large and wealthy landowner, was able to publicly declare on the day before that counter-revolutionary invasion: ‘This is a socialist and democratic Revolution of the humble, by the humble, and for the humble’ (p638)?
The answer lies in part, as he points out, in his family’s class origins. Castro’s father, Angel Castro, had been an illiterate immigrant from Galicia in Spain who had known grinding poverty and who never forgot his roots. Castro describes his father’s concern at the plight of the landless labourers during the tiempo muerto, the period of near starvation between the end of the sugar harvest and planting, and the measures he took to alleviate the situation.
At Havana University in 1945, Castro tells us, ‘The leftists saw me as a queer duck – they’d say, “Son of landowners and a graduate of the Colegio de Belen, this guy must be the most reactionary person in the world”’ (p94). While 20 years earlier, student Julio Mella, founder of the Cuban Communist Party, had been ‘the presiding spirit’, the odds were considerably different now: ‘Of the 15,000 students... there were no more than 50 active, known anti-imperialists’ (p94).
SOURCE:http://www.revolutionarycommunist.org/index.php/reviews/245-review-fidel-castro-a-revolutionary-life-frfi-204-aug-sept-2008
How was it then that Fidel, the son of a large and wealthy landowner, was able to publicly declare on the day before that counter-revolutionary invasion: ‘This is a socialist and democratic Revolution of the humble, by the humble, and for the humble’ (p638)?
The answer lies in part, as he points out, in his family’s class origins. Castro’s father, Angel Castro, had been an illiterate immigrant from Galicia in Spain who had known grinding poverty and who never forgot his roots. Castro describes his father’s concern at the plight of the landless labourers during the tiempo muerto, the period of near starvation between the end of the sugar harvest and planting, and the measures he took to alleviate the situation.
At Havana University in 1945, Castro tells us, ‘The leftists saw me as a queer duck – they’d say, “Son of landowners and a graduate of the Colegio de Belen, this guy must be the most reactionary person in the world”’ (p94). While 20 years earlier, student Julio Mella, founder of the Cuban Communist Party, had been ‘the presiding spirit’, the odds were considerably different now: ‘Of the 15,000 students... there were no more than 50 active, known anti-imperialists’ (p94).
SOURCE:http://www.revolutionarycommunist.org/index.php/reviews/245-review-fidel-castro-a-revolutionary-life-frfi-204-aug-sept-2008
And this is something from
Castro himself.
We know that Uhuru Kenyatta, despite his patriotic, powerful and promising first name, IS NO FREEDOM FIGHTER. Jesus Christ will come back BEFORE the current President initiates land reform in Kenya.
We must therefore look elsewhere if we want to see radical, transformative and sustainable land reforms in our country.
Where do we look?
Who will lead the struggle for agrarian reforms in Kenya?
I answer that question in the concluding part of this digital essay.
Stay tuned.
Onyango Oloo
Nairobi, Kenya
? ''equitable and egalitarian .. consistent with the precepts of social justice'', may not necessarily be compatible with the ECONOMIC DICTATE of most effective and maximised economic usage, as per the the industrialisation agenda?
Canadian Mutunga will rule in his collaborative thesis 
. ''That is the law''. And you can not beat them at it, because, like the colonial law, they made it customer-designed to suit themselves. After stealing the land from Wanjiku, they will sell it back at a huge profit to Wanjiku! That is called smart business in that world. And it rules. Fanya fujo uone!
! I will oppose the first agrarian reform and keep my culture.
)protocol is triggered? and the world is round with smart lawyers.
