Post by Onyango Oloo on Oct 9, 2017 21:31:02 GMT 3
A Digital Essay from Onyango Oloo
Dear Comrade:
First of all, I do not use words loosely; especially such a term as “comrade.”
I do not employ the term in the way it was used once upon a time by Kenyan university students to refer to each other regardless of political affiliation. I do not call somebody "comrade" in the way South Africans use it to call their compatriots as having somehow graduated to be siblings in the struggle. You and I have never been members of the same party, so strictly speaking, I should not be calling you by that appellation.
I call you “comrade” because we have shared some values (or so I thought!) on human rights, democracy and social justice.
Depending on how you respond or do not respond to this Open Letter, this may be the last time I call you “comrade.”
You know I am always writing something-a blog; a political pronunciamento; a civil society proposal; a poem or even occasionally a play. And you are not the first Kenyan I have addressed an Open Letter to. Back in the 1990s I wrote to Raila Odinga, the late Adhu Awiti and even Kiraitu Murungi, the lawyer who represented me at Kamiti Prison and later STOLE the 100,000 shillings the Kenyan Court of Appeal awarded me when they ordered my release from the maximum hell hole in 1987.
One of the characteristics of Onyango Oloo’s Open Letters is invariably their very public distribution. When a letter becomes “Open” it ceases to be a secret piece of correspondence. Instead, it becomes a platform for discussion and debate, with people weighing in from all angles.
Why am I writing you today?
First of all, I had previously indicated in one of my recent digital essays that I would be doing so.
But most of all it has been spurred on by your “conversion” at the Serani grounds from a former leader of one of the seminal components of the NASA opposition bloc to a mere apparatchik or spanner boy for Uhuru Kenyatta.
I have read the exposés of your character in various social media platforms by some of your own former fellow students and civil society companions.
So far I have largely refrained from commenting apart from sharing news updates on my Facebook wall and timeline.
But since I detest gossip I am going to publicly confront you with some of things I have heard about you.
Way back in May 2009, a senior Kenyan journalist who is very well respected for his investigative acumen laughed openly at me in Nairobi when I called you a human rights activist.
This was during the days when you were, if I am not mistaken Vice Chair of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
He then proceeded to shock me with his guffaw: “So Oloo, you don’t know your friend is a Special Branch informer for the Kenyan government?”
In my bewilderment, I kept my silence after all, at that time I did not know the journalist very well so I was unsure where he was coming from.
Hassan Omar, is there any truth to this allegation?
I am posing the question now in early October 2017 because just today, a human rights colleague who has worked with you on a number of civil society initiatives told me that you were actually nominated to KNCHR by KANU at the instigation of a well connected uncle. The same person told me that you are married to a niece of one of Jubilee’s top honchos. Such a private social possibility is by no means a “capital offence” which should be held in any way against you. But the context of the “revelation” was to buttress his argument that you “have never been a human rights activist”.
Leaving aside this anecdotal side talk, I now want to ask you some direct questions.
When you shook hands warmly with Uhuru Kenyatta and embraced vigorously with William Ruto and other Jubilee leaders, had you forgotten what had come to your knowledge as the second in command of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights?
Namely the direct complicity of the two in serious crimes against humanity which made the two the top suspects in the International Criminal Court? Were you not smeared by the blood of the post-election victims or did Uhuru’s red kanzu shield you from seeing the red stains? As a senior member of such a big human rights body could you not recall what even I knew about the assassinations and eliminations of countless Mungiki members hunted down and killed after they had done their horrors in Naivasha, Nakuru, Muranga and Kirinyaga?
Did you forget while endorsing Chiloba that you are challenging the Mombasa Governor’s race where among other things you are castigating IEBC where Ezra Chiloba is the CEO?
Most importantly, what happened to your principles if you had ANY?
Is this not plain UBARAKALA?
Just an aside to my Kenyan readers who may have challenges in the national language Kiswahili, “Ubarakala” translates into English as “OPPORTUNISM”.
You know I speak candidly from the heart.
I hope I have given you something to chew on.
Dear Comrade:
First of all, I do not use words loosely; especially such a term as “comrade.”
I do not employ the term in the way it was used once upon a time by Kenyan university students to refer to each other regardless of political affiliation. I do not call somebody "comrade" in the way South Africans use it to call their compatriots as having somehow graduated to be siblings in the struggle. You and I have never been members of the same party, so strictly speaking, I should not be calling you by that appellation.
I call you “comrade” because we have shared some values (or so I thought!) on human rights, democracy and social justice.
Depending on how you respond or do not respond to this Open Letter, this may be the last time I call you “comrade.”
You know I am always writing something-a blog; a political pronunciamento; a civil society proposal; a poem or even occasionally a play. And you are not the first Kenyan I have addressed an Open Letter to. Back in the 1990s I wrote to Raila Odinga, the late Adhu Awiti and even Kiraitu Murungi, the lawyer who represented me at Kamiti Prison and later STOLE the 100,000 shillings the Kenyan Court of Appeal awarded me when they ordered my release from the maximum hell hole in 1987.
One of the characteristics of Onyango Oloo’s Open Letters is invariably their very public distribution. When a letter becomes “Open” it ceases to be a secret piece of correspondence. Instead, it becomes a platform for discussion and debate, with people weighing in from all angles.
Why am I writing you today?
First of all, I had previously indicated in one of my recent digital essays that I would be doing so.
But most of all it has been spurred on by your “conversion” at the Serani grounds from a former leader of one of the seminal components of the NASA opposition bloc to a mere apparatchik or spanner boy for Uhuru Kenyatta.
I have read the exposés of your character in various social media platforms by some of your own former fellow students and civil society companions.
So far I have largely refrained from commenting apart from sharing news updates on my Facebook wall and timeline.
But since I detest gossip I am going to publicly confront you with some of things I have heard about you.
Way back in May 2009, a senior Kenyan journalist who is very well respected for his investigative acumen laughed openly at me in Nairobi when I called you a human rights activist.
This was during the days when you were, if I am not mistaken Vice Chair of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
He then proceeded to shock me with his guffaw: “So Oloo, you don’t know your friend is a Special Branch informer for the Kenyan government?”
In my bewilderment, I kept my silence after all, at that time I did not know the journalist very well so I was unsure where he was coming from.
Hassan Omar, is there any truth to this allegation?
I am posing the question now in early October 2017 because just today, a human rights colleague who has worked with you on a number of civil society initiatives told me that you were actually nominated to KNCHR by KANU at the instigation of a well connected uncle. The same person told me that you are married to a niece of one of Jubilee’s top honchos. Such a private social possibility is by no means a “capital offence” which should be held in any way against you. But the context of the “revelation” was to buttress his argument that you “have never been a human rights activist”.
Leaving aside this anecdotal side talk, I now want to ask you some direct questions.
When you shook hands warmly with Uhuru Kenyatta and embraced vigorously with William Ruto and other Jubilee leaders, had you forgotten what had come to your knowledge as the second in command of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights?
Namely the direct complicity of the two in serious crimes against humanity which made the two the top suspects in the International Criminal Court? Were you not smeared by the blood of the post-election victims or did Uhuru’s red kanzu shield you from seeing the red stains? As a senior member of such a big human rights body could you not recall what even I knew about the assassinations and eliminations of countless Mungiki members hunted down and killed after they had done their horrors in Naivasha, Nakuru, Muranga and Kirinyaga?
Did you forget while endorsing Chiloba that you are challenging the Mombasa Governor’s race where among other things you are castigating IEBC where Ezra Chiloba is the CEO?
Most importantly, what happened to your principles if you had ANY?
Is this not plain UBARAKALA?
Just an aside to my Kenyan readers who may have challenges in the national language Kiswahili, “Ubarakala” translates into English as “OPPORTUNISM”.
You know I speak candidly from the heart.
I hope I have given you something to chew on.