Post by Onyango Oloo on May 3, 2015 18:05:00 GMT 3
A Digital Essay by Onyango Oloo in Nairobi
The fractious and boisterous Kenyan commentariat, twitterati and other cleavages of our country’s hyperactive chattering strata, online and offline, have been hyperventilating for the past fortnight or so, over President Uhuru Kenyatta’s appointment of 320 personalities to various positions within the state and parastatal structures.
Given the tribal obsessions which prevail in Kenya, it is hardly surprising to observe the thick ethnic lenses through which these appointments have been viewed with some pundits keeping a score sheet detailing which regions have “won” and which have “lost” in the seemingly seismic shuffling of musical and political chairs.
There are those who ascribe an omniscient presidential magic wand shuffling the deck and moving the pawn pieces in an unfolding game of realpolitik, a trailer to the anticipated 2017 electoral contest.
Without necessarily dismissing the above notions, I would prefer to do a slightly different take on the recent mainstream developments in the corridors of Kenyan power.
I am positing that the most useful way of analyzing President Uhuru Kenyatta’s appointments is to see them as sinecures calculated to consolidate his class position and power base in perpetuating the half century stranglehold by the Kenyan comprador bourgeoisie on the neo-colonial management of state power through a process of calculated elite pacting as the east African nation-state warms itself up as a regional sub-imperialist hub helping to coordinate the geo-political interests of global monopoly capital.
Huh?
WTF?
What did Onyango Oloo just blurt out?
“Sinecures”?
“Elite pacting“?
“Comprador bourgeoisie“?
“Neo-colonialism“?
“Sub-imperialist hub“?
“Global monopoly capital”?
What’s all that for Chrissake?
Can he translate all that jargon and gibberish into PLAIN ENGLISH for crying out loud?
Well, Oloo is more than happy to oblige.
Let me commence with a simple definition of terms.
First, when I say “sinecures” what do I mean?
si•ne•cure
ˈsīnəˌkyo͝or
Noun
A sinecure (from Latin sine = "without" and cura = "care") means an office that requires or involves little or no responsibility, labour, or active service. The term originated in the medieval church, where it signified a post without any responsibility for the "care of souls", the regular liturgical and pastoral functions of a cleric, but came to be applied to any post, secular or ecclesiastical, that involved little or no actual work. Sinecures have historically provided a potent tool for governments or monarchs to distribute patronage, while recipients are able to store up titles and easy salaries.
And “elite pacting”?
An elite pact is an ‘agreement among a select set of actors which seeks to define (or better, redefine) rules governing the exercise of power on the basis of mutual guarantees for the “vital interests” of those entering into it’…elite settlements [are defined as] as ‘relatively rare events in which warring national elite factions suddenly and deliberately reorganise their relations by negotiating compromises on their most basic disagreements’. As instruments of political change, elite settlements have several consequences: they are elitist in form and content, undemocratic, create patterns of open – yet peaceful – competition and they transform unstable regimes.
-excerpted from Cadres, Capitalists, Elites and Coalitions: The ANC, Business and Development in South Africa by Jo-Ansie van Wyk, Nordiska Afrika Institutet, Uppsala 2009 Discussion Paper 46
Who are the “comprador bourgeoisie”?
A comprador or compradore (Chinese: 買辦; pinyin: mǎibàn, or 江擺渡 jīangbăidù, or 康白度 kāngbăidù) is a native manager of European business houses in East and South East Asia, and, by extension, social groups that play broadly similar roles in other parts of the world.
The term comprador, a Portuguese word that means buyer, derives from the Latin comparare, which means to procure. The original usage of the word in East Asia meant a native servant in European households in Guangzhou in southern China or the neighboring Portuguese colony at Macao who went to market to barter their employers' wares. The term then evolved to mean the native contract suppliers who worked for foreign companies in East Asia or the native managers of firms in East Asia. Compradors held important positions in southern China buying and selling tea, silk, cotton and yarn for foreign corporations and working in foreign-owned banks. Robert Hotung, a late nineteenth century compradore of the British owned trading conglomerate Jardine, Matheson & Co. was believed to be the richest man in Hong Kong by the age of 35. Notable compradors during the Republican Period in 20th century China included Zhang Jiaao of Shanghai and Tong King-sing of Guangdong.
In Marxism, the term comprador bourgeoisie was later applied to similar trading-class in regions outside of East Asia.
With the emergence (or re-emergence) of globalization, the term comprador has reentered the lexicon to denote trading groups and classes in the developing world in subordinate but mutually advantageous relationships with metropolitan capital. The Egyptian Marxist Samir Amin has discussed the role of compradors in the contemporary global economy in his recent work. In addition, the Indian economist, Ashok Mitra, has accused the owners and managers of firms attached to the Indian software industry of being compradors. Growing identification of the software industry in India with comprador 'qualities' has led to the labeling of certain persons associated with the industry as 'dot.compradors'.
-from the entry “Comprador” in Wikipedia the free dictionary.
As for the other seemingly esoteric terms like “ sub-imperialist hub” and “global monopoly capital, I invite you dear reader to get off your lazy arse; do what I DID: make Google YOUR FRIEND TOO, pal.
Now that we are more or less on the same page, in terms of ideological terminology, let us proceed shall we?
It is my position that the recent appointments had to do with the following factors:
1. The Gikuyu dominated TNA faction of the Jubilee regime has fallen out with its increasingly disenchanted Ruto led URP-Kalenjin contingent;
2. There is a reconvergence of the original KANU ancien regime;
3. There is a need for Uhuru Kenyatta and his backers to fish for new comprador class siblings-even if this means reaching out away from the Uhuruto tribal duopoly to erstwhile partners in KANU, FORD People, Ford Kenya, New Ford Kenya and even ODM backyards;
4. With the re-emergence of Kenya as pivotal to the goals of US led western imperialist machinations it would be prudent for Uhuru Kenyatta to mend fences with Barack Obama, the European Union and her other G-20 partners;
5. The Uhuru faction has decided to jettison some key former allies, including the Gikuyu securocrats and apparatchiks inherited from Kibaki and some of William Ruto’s allies;
A Nairobi-based scientist professor that I often share ugali and osibuko with on weekends intimates to me that perhaps what is also in the offing is not too silent dog fight between the Uhuru allied Gikuyu comprador elements squaring off against some Kalenjin tycoons in the former Rift Valley on the one hand and the parvenu emergent Somali billionaires on the other.
By all accounts, William Samoei Ruto’s goose is cooked, not only with the Uhuru insiders but also among the Kalenjin cluster, as can be evidenced by the increasing assertiveness of political titans like his own namesake Isaac Rutto and the younger Moi who is currently a senator but maybe on standby for Ruto’s own VP slot. It is a badly kept Nairobi secret that Ms. Bensouda and her ICC colleagues are champing at the bit, eager to welcome the former Eldoret MP as a long term guest at The Hague with the tacit connivance of the incumbent head of state in a manner eerily reminiscent of how Olusegun Obasanjo stabbed Liberia’s Taylor in the back.
With the looming visit of Obama to these shores in the next couple of months, the astute Uhuru Kenyatta, ever the savvy entrepreneur, with the Machiavellian Tony Blair blathering strategic tit bits in his ear may find it prudent to broaden his class power base beyond the narrow tribal tyranny of two tribes.
The hauling of septuagenarians and octogenarians from retirement is a clear warning shot to the twenty something and thirty something whiz kids and social media technocrats of Dennis Itumbi's ilk that the WAZEE are back. Goodbye digital Jubilee! The Future of Kenya is a revamped KANU comeback with Mzee Daniel arap Moi playing the role of Kenya’s Deng Xiao Ping.
It is certainly NOT an accident that Uhuru Kenyatta picked FIVE members of Nyachae’s immediate family. It is NOT happenstance that Wenwa Odinga, Raila’s sister was appointed. Gershom Otachi was among Uhuru Kenyatta’s retinue of lawyers during the ICC trial. My friend and former Bunge la Mwananchi mainstay Samson Ojiayo actively and openly campaigned for TNA in 2012 and 2013 so his appointment into one of the plethora of water boards is not a surprise. Musikari Kombo got 40 per cent of the vote in his futile bid to become Bungoma senator so he may wedge a Jap enclave which may eat into CORD’s vote come 2017.
It is not entirely inconceivable that CORD ITSELF may be SWALLOWED wholesome in whatever ruling formation the comprador bourgeoisie decides to cobble with the next eighteen months. Kenyans should NOT be surprised if Kalonzo Musyoka finally defects, followed soon after by Moses Wetangula with Raila Odinga saying Uhuru Tosha! in February or March 2017.
Onyango Oloo
Nairobi
Sunday, May 3, 2015
Nairobi
Sunday, May 3, 2015
