REMEMBERING TOM MBOYA: A PERSPECTIVE

[jakaswanga]

REMEMBERING TOM JOSEPH MBOYA NDIEGE, A PERSPECTIVE

[Wuora nene onenona mang'eny
Kopuonja dongo chien'g amed neno mang'eny.]

.......... loosely translated as......

Those days I saw a lot through the lens of my father
He was training me to grow up and see even further.

Damn Onyango Oloo and his digitals, the original one I said. He cut down to the chase, and quoted Amilcar Cabral on his famous essay which reached the notorious conclusion, that without class suicide, the petit bourgeoisie that runs the comprador post-colonial state, are in the rut of conditioned rats caged in a tunnel.

I wanted to play football in the lawn of the Uhuruto state house, breaking the windows one by one to let some fresh air in and all secrets out. But the go-dd-amned Oloo like threw a grenade into Ikulu, and broke all the windows at once, so that even before all the smoke have cleared, and the cabinet formation barely finished, this administration is already naked, demystified to its Washington Consensus genetic blue-print, all the way to its Bretton-Woods econometric genes.
HERE: demokrasia-kenya.blogspot.nl/2013/04/a-macro-economic-analysis-of-jubilee.html

As Chanteur Ndugu Rabi used to 'bark' in the Great Victoria Kings of Dr. Collela Mazee Jabar Ochiago when the star drummer Omoya Ukwala was on a roll: Omoya in e wich-Mbuta motamo Joramba gueno! Modong'go to wakia! I can musingly say: Ndugu Oloo has solved the ideological compound equation, the rest of the answers will be naught!

That is, so long this class lead their nations then, the fate of those nations is sealed in a neo-colonial tomb of doom, that of capitalist underdevelopment. Uhuruto is, by this analysis, just the latest blind pretender(s) emerging to lead the flock around the same old block. And we will have ample time to accompany them in this futile journey, yes, Nyaparas to Bretton Woods monetarists raising high the flag of pan-afric emancipation from imperialism! Aha Aha!

I think of global capitalism as this shining palace of Good Old King Minos of old Crete. Upwards in the main halls is a facade of sophistication and civilisation, of beautiful people in glamour and glitter parties, where hordes of celebrities ---one more bling-bling than the other--- converge, but in the dungeons below these magnificent halls where perpetual banquets of obsessive opulence proceed, lies the horrific secrets of the conditions of labour in the third world, the world of slavery, including child sex-slavery. Well, under the palace of King Minos was tomb of doom called the Labyrinthia, wherein the monster Minotaurus dwelled, awaiting sacrifices of condemned damsels to be delivered for ritual ravishing and devouring, at his pleasure, ---Damsels that were one-time use-objects like Bangladeshi textile workers or maids in the Middle East. Glimpse here  
 jukwaa.proboards.com/thread/8357/labourers-bangladesh-use-discard-people

Successive generations of African leaders and politicians, being of the comprador mode or robotic serial make, have been nothing but gate-keepers ushering their people and nations into the bowel of the beast, and then standing guard as inverted bouncers to keep them there, thwarting every attempt at a break out, murdering every visionary who try bring forth an idea to thread a way out: Chris Hani, Amilcar Cabral, Eduardo Mondlane, Steve Biko, Pat Lumumba. The kill-list of the bouncers is long. Damsels at the ritual slaughter house. Sacrifices.

Every generation of the neo-colonial polity is doomed to recognise and grapple with the reality of their existence in this cage. And in this they come to terms with the apparently, infinitely-mazed dungeon of capitalist under-development, this Minotauric maze in which they are sacrificial lambs, this tomb of doom where regime after regime, country by country, generation after generation, the African peoples are kept under lock and key. Every generation then, has the choice only of the decibel at which to echo the battle-cry on, for even as one surrenders to ones sealed fate, there is always the instinctive, indefatigable drive to live, to fight on. Especially in us humans as a species. Surrender contradicts our dignity and biological instincts.

It is what makes us war-like, a species that constructs a bill of rights and goes to war to defend and effect freedom. When our aspirations and freedoms are thwarted ritually, it takes massive organised terror to keep us in check. There is no such thing as surrender to oppression, there is only an, on the surface, post pacification period in which the balance of forces is with the militarily dominant oppressor. Running his --World-- Order. And in its bowels, the seeds of liberation germinate.

It takes the monopoly of murderous state power to have this appearance of peace and wilful compliance. And so even under the reform CJ of Kenya, the police will still conduct a shoot to kill policy, in effect, death squads. Not that any of your ace lawyers you recently saw dancing with the CJ over Wanjiku's sores will give a hoot quoting the bill of rights! --In the week we were obsessed with the election petition in court, I counted at least 12 young men shot dead by the police on suspicion they were members of the Mombasa Republican Council [MRC]. I guess terrorists will be destroyed on sight, on suspicion, and Miranda Rights? Naah, even POTUS Obama the civilised has done away with them.
SO LET ME MOURN MY OWN DEAD. THE LAW OF MY LAND CARES NOT FOR A LIFE.

The new law was the old shoot to kill the children of a lesser god,
Protesting the ruling of Mutunga your petition was signed in blood.
Yo three dead Luos in Kondele: litter swept off the streets as our lawmen laugh.
Yo three dead Luos in Kondele: litter swept under the earth as our elite applaud.

SO WHAT HAS THIS TO DO WITH TOM MBOYA??
Bear with me, will you! you will have heard of foreplay, haven't you?

Some of my generation recognising their harsh fate as inmates at the Minotauric cells of Daniel Arap Moi and his KANU jailors, and deciding not to cooperate with the monster, went desperately hoping for a Messiah and searching for a Jason in concert with an Ariadne, even if a doomed romance.

Thread me a way out of this Maze, O Yason
Charm me a way out into the sun, O Ariadne
For sooth the heavens did not ordain me this fate
Born merely to appease the appetites of a beast.

Under such critical conditions then, necessity becomes even more the mother of creativity, such that it becomes inevitable that all that which is assumed known, remembered or taken for granted, is [re]evaluated and subjected to more rigorous, scientific read. --Looking for the wrong turn, the overlooked formula, the misinterpreted fact. Looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. Yes, banging heads against the wall of the prison, sounding off if some echo betray a hollow through which a way out can be busted. And it is this --permanent stagnation-- crisis that blew me back course to TJ. Once the man Kenya wanted to forget.

Yes, TOM JOSEPH MBOYA NDIEGE.
But I really wouldn't be able to give him a look over, leave alone a thorough-going ideological post-mortem, without fully putting my Ol'Man in the center of the story.
For as I stated in the beginning....

Those days I saw a lot through the lens of my father
May be he was training me to grow up and see even further

End 1.(But this is a song actually, and the refrain goes: Damn Onyango Oloo!) Remember that.

[jakaswanga]

TOM JOSEPH MBOYA NDIEGE
THE MAN KENYA WANTED TO FORGET! It was David Goldsworthy whot wrote the book with that famous title.
books.google.nl/books?id=i4QEprESUd4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

More tit-bits on the man Kenya allegedly wanted to forget.
www.tommboya.org/index.php/news/articles/111-why-mboya-is-the-man-kenya-should-not-forget

He has been dubbed the man Kenya wanted to forget. ---[though NOW honoured with a prominent statue in Nairobi CBD, we seem to have changed our minds, shame-facedly but still....]

Ah, National archives you call yourself
Fort of a building at the centre of Nairobi
Your vaults emptier than our history books!
A colossal monument to collective amnesia
A colossal prod toward the hunt for missing links!

Of course others were not joining Kenyans in their self-induced official amnesia .. North Americans can quench some thirst at content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt9b69q71x&chunk.id=scopecontent-1.7.4&brand=default .. their libraries were building whole wards on the man for posterity. See also news.stanford.edu/thedish/?p=4319

Nevertheless to some like ma-Ol'Man, even as dead he went absent from the --for lack of better term--- national archives, Tom Mboya was like the first lost love. Ever a permanent haemophilic fixture in the heart of our Society. If we did not speak often of him, it was lest we embarrass our current partners with the intensity and genuineness of our feelings for him still; or out of fear that, should we betray how shallow our loyalties to whomsoever the current pretender King of our Hearts be, the consequences could be annihilation if not worse.

So we accommodated, out of self preservation. Prudently. And just like his murderers, we too pretended to forget. Mostly.

But like an early sect of Christianity consisting of wayward monks maturing on the fringes of empire, our faith in a prosperous Kenya for all, kept vigil on her 'promises' like Tom Mboya, and as time passed, fiction and fact blurred and these 'promises' became saints and foundations of a cult in certain sectors of certain communities. So they said: When that dawn that is so dreamt of breaks, shall he resurrect and his promise be fulfilled. THE BEST PRESIDENT KENYA NEVER HAD they chorus in some kind of AYIE [fellowship recital in church], meaning every subsequent president of Kenya is cursed with the MBOYA standard. Will HE by sheer achievement and competence, confine to rest, This Ghost at the centre of the country's politics? Will the latest excellency, Appease Kenya's dreams and fulfil her peoples historical will, Or will the Ghost of Tom Mboya's legendary abilities and promise, thwarted young, be the big shoes too big for any Mr. President? ---That is perspective.

Kenyatta 1 failed, Moi failed, Kibaki-Raila failed, and now it is Uhuruto's turn at the wheel.
---Gamblers place their bets, we are business. That is a prospect.

Under my father then, I grew up with this CULT, and has had to come to terms with it, emotionally and scientifically. Not that I really understood it that way from the beginning -- a cult, but it was only when I went looking for the best thinking to have been authored on neo-colonialism that the ghost of TJ awakened in my consciousness and started screaming for a decent ideological burial, or appraisal so to speak.

Decent does not in my case necessarily mean hoisted atop a divine pantheon. But who knows what is to be?

I have to always repeat I can not completely tell this tale without a detour to say something about my father. It was he who, purposefully or not, bequeathed unto I the passion for the man. But fleet in step will I add that the passion would be latent until it was ignited by Okot P Bitek. Much later. In combination with other circumstances of course.

Okot was brutal in his manifesto, toward a cultural revolution, and when Amilcar Cabral would help me decode him further, I went to weep at the grave in the heart of my father. Lo, an explosive merger of heart and mind as in a revelation. It was then that I began to maturely understand the wailing, gut-wrenching songs of composers like George Ramogi (fondly called Omogi wuod Weta) of the legendary CK Dumbe Dumbe Benga band, when they interpreted the grief of a whole people and immortalised it in song.

'Kiparo ndalo mag Ukoloni, Mboya Kandiege nochung' ka-siro m'Ohuru okelo'
Thinking of the days of colonialism, TJ stood a pillar and brought Independence.

And right there in that George Ramogi wail, too with Orwa Jasolo and Ojijo George crying on guitars, is the question encoded: Thinking of the days of Neo-Colonialism, would TJ commit class-suicide and bring liberation from the comprador mode of production?

Now we are gettin somewhere, aint we!

-----END 2----

[jakaswanga]

PINY AGONDA OMERA!

Even though he spotted a wide gap in his lower dental works, where some six teeth had been permanently uprooted, which was the trademark tribal rite of passage which gave the Luo their baptismal 'Onagi', Obama most senior, that is the grandfather of the current POTUS, as a resident native of colonial Kenya, was referred to and officialy listed as a boy by the white, British colonist. This infatilisation of the native adult was an active colonial policy of distorting the personality of, and denying the humanity of the black citizenry. --(Incidentally I now hear there is this movement in the USA known as BLACK LIVES MATTER!)

Decades back, young Barrack in from the USA found his grandfather's ID in an old box. He was rummaging through the earthly remains of his late father, looking for his roots and history, exploring, there to fully construct his identity. Two generations later, with Barrack back as POTUS to the birthland of his father, what would the old man think were he to come back and look at his grandson, bringing Kenya to a standstill and monopolising live, the world's TV channels as, attended by a host of whites for elite security, he narrates that trip of his home with Auma for the first time, when they chanced on the papers of their grandpa. I wont take bets, for, might not the old man in the customary Luo haughty disdain --in the fashion of the much misunderstood jocular jest called nyadhi, look at President Obama and spit: 'Go try harder boy! Wake me up when you are as important as God, and can give me a free ticket to heaven, punk!'

There is this tale I remember of the warrior Greek King, Alexander the Great. Legend goes he had conquered the whole world or so he believed, wherefore he collapsed in tears, having no other land to conquer. Then did this Persian old man spit at the Greek boy: 'look up, nuisance, fly and go conquer the stars, and be my guest!'
One version says for his insolence Alexander slew the jester with his sharp sword on the spot; another claims the young King smiled sheepishly and went into thought, and concluded Space was the realm of the gods, and it would be a foolish man indeed who attempted to fly up and take a peep at the god's dwellings!

NB: (there are two notorious cases from the days of the independent struggle when Jaramogi, performing nyadhi in the colonial language, caused quite a stir. The first was what became reported in the english press as Communism is food to Mr. Odinga. The second was when Jaramogi did not just disagree with God, but corrected Him. This was after a British politician claimed Britain was ruling Kenya with the blessing of God. Oginga Odinga was quick: that is a mad God, and I am happy to set him right! (mano Nyasaye ma wiye rach kendo wechege obam!) -- a heretic, the colonial press yelled in hysterical ecstacy!

US PRESIDENT BARRACK OBAMA AT KASARANI (I)

I had to think of Tom Joseph Mboya as Obama addressed the world from Kasarani Kenya. I never saw Tom with my own eyes, and if I did, I do not remember it consciously. I was much too young when he died. Nevertheless I absorbed the myth through my dad. And internalised the cult through the same. By all accounts he was an electrifying man. His ability created tremendous antipathy in lesser men, and wherever Tom was, many an opponent recognised superior competetion. And so fate conspired with dummies to snap out the promise. I seriously think were he, my dad, alive today and taking stock as Obama takes Kenya by storm, it would be a vision of Tom Mboya to him.

Occasionally as a young man I would praise a politician in the presence of my dad. He would wince, then his eyes would recede into a far way look, dimming like a slowly dying light. He would breath deeply and close his eyes totally, then open them and, his eyelids flickering rapidly, his eyes would flash and the corners of his mouth twitch: 'Boy, even your Jesus holds no rank in my heart when I think of Tom.'
In those days I thought that was blasphemy. These days I shrug. To each, his Messiah, to each his heart's desire: Jesus, Mohammed, Budha, Tom Mboya, Grand Kali, Kulkulaikan, Uhuru Kenyatta, or, like yours truly, booze cu.nt and butt!

But do I say. And if I do, do I care?

I any case I watched and listened to Obama with one eye and ear trained on my father. And I heard him tell me: 'Obama wouldn't have had to give us lectures like that, had Tom lived and become President of Kenya! –-we would be beyond South Korea, the example Obama gave as once our equal in 1970!'
But Alas, this is the era of hotel addicts like Jack Ranguma, sugar addicts like Evans Kidero, and more of the same, the cream of theiving mediocrity which has drifted to the top under the corrupted stewardship of Amollo the bulldozer.

And then there was Obama, and the trauma of our great lost leaders who died without achieving their prime, was exorcised!

[jakaswanga]

owaahh.com/18-rare-photos-of-tom-mboyas-wedding-to-pamela-odede/












Julai sitini na tisa, Juma mosi tarehe tano, nduru yande kowa lisasi ochielo Mbuya Jarusinga --George Ramogi.

On the 5th of July 1969, all round me the air was thick with the sounds of sorrow, Rusinga TJ gunned down.

[jakaswanga]

HISTORICAL COLD CASES KENYA: A CULTURALLY SOLVED!

'And the Big Man, why don't you go after him?'
–---Nahashon Njenga Njoroge, November 8th, 1969. Kamiti gallows.

It is no secret where I come from, that when the condemned Nahashon Njenga Njoroge –--no family to the current central banker Patrick--- , uttered these as his last words in mitigation before his swing at the gallows, the Big Man he meant was Jomo Kenyatta. That is the father of the current president Uhuru. Luo folklore thus records Kenyatta killed Mboya. The trigger-puller was a mere Patsy, a pawn in the great game of futures.

That is the folklore, there is of course another version, (the one we teach in school and test at exams!)

But National Truth archives unavailable in Nairobi –--eaten by termites, crumbled by humidity and heat, destroyed by deliberate government action, stolen by rats, in addition to the fact that the key players in the event are dead with their secrets buried along, folklore becomes The General Authority.

What Historians like me teach in school –---Mboya was murdered by a lone gunman, possibly an acquaintance whose wife loved to impale herself on his pole while squatting, is the kind of joke one usually gets very well paid in Africa for.

Njoroge remains the official lone gunman in this case, the only person ever held to judicial account for Tom Mboya’s convenient elimination. Decades later, however, many are still searching for the real story.
* From the London Times‘ unsigned July 7, 1969 obituary of Mboya.

** Allegedly by Njoroge; the assassin was not caught on the scene and Njoroge denied pulling the trigger, telling the court that Mboya was his long-time friend. (London Times, September 10, 1969) There are plenty who consider Njoroge a fall guy.

A lot of classic NGO proposals to trap funding from the Usual Suspects fall into this category of urbsurdities, or jokes for high pay. Most if not all African top bureaucrats are a perfect match too for overrated public jokes, like the current Kenyan JSC, delivering incompetence for a lion's stipend and hefty perks. World Bank field operatives who have pot-marked the face of Africa with the monumental ruins of the so-called White Elephant stupidities too, were paid sky-high rates for their jokes. I should also mention ace consultant Mutahi Ngunyi. His 60M for branding a solitary Kibera toilet for Anne Waiguru, the NYS Queen looter, is another excellent example of the kind of jokes I am talking about. The examples abound, like wild weed that run wild on a fertile farm abandoned.

There! and you thought it is at the department of history where the weirdest of jokes are told for a fee!

Growing up at the Lake we heard stories about the Mboya murder. Some of them in very beautiful and powerful songs. And the Kenya Criminal Investigations department, no better that time at investigating murders than it is today, held its tongue and unearthed no truth –---current CDI director Ndegwa Muhoro is calling in the FBI to unravel the already slam dunk case of lawyer Kimani, bodaboda operator Josephat Mwendwa, and cabman Joseph Muiruri, recently fished out of Ol Donyo Sabuk after a police kidnap. Pray the FBI is better bred than the Scotland Yard whose Ouko report we know not.

The point is with this kind of CDI, folklore is as good a version as any.

–-Come, O Truth Serum!
Let Mr. Folklore have a sip
To test the fork of his tongue!

Just as any boy growing up anywhere hears the tales of his land, young Uhuru Kenyatta too, growing up at State House, surrounded by the humid air of conspiratorial whispers jostling for his father's ear, must have heard tales he dare not tell.

Not that he has to. Aint redacted the name of the game? Top Secret the writ on the seal? which is exactly why Folklore is an authority. Power insists Truth is beyond public knowledge, much like an Egwugwu in old Umuofia! (For instance the CIA archives on the murder of JFK, 50 years on, are still deemed too hot for the American mind!)

So let us figure a day in school and a chance confrontation with a provocative tart of a bully, like the rumoured one in a Swiss boarding school where the current leader of North Korea was, Un, who teased like, 'Hey Puffy Cheek, go slow on them chocos and king burgers!'



'You gonna break Dizzy Gillespie's record puff?'





So too must have been a day in junior school when spoilt boy to spoil boy, young Muigai was rudely confronted with: 'I hear your father killed Mboya, was it pus-sy of power!?

Henceforth was young Muigai's innocence ruined of course. And everytime some Big Man came to whisper in the ear of his father, a thought always formed in his mind, a question that may be never escaped into words which grew volume, or did, but we shall never know.

NB: Uganda has some former First sons in politics. It sure is an aristocracy condensing there, which may be the surest way to ensure the dynastic succession proposed by Museveni. I have seen some coded questions being lobbed at the son of Obote and the son of Amin –--questions about murder and mass murder.

Fascinating stuff. Artful dodgery!

It made me imagine who, amongst our broadcasters would ask President Kenyatta how he lived through he JM Kariuki murder. Did he notice it at State House?

Tom Mboya is too far back I would guess.

Fascinating it would be, to hear Muigai tell –--his redacted tale of course!

But we have Foklore don't we? (this Sh!t thing called culture! Does it redact!?)

(Cultural) Imagination is like human needs, infinite! Imagine yawa!

[jakaswanga]

1969 5th July tales, Tom Mboya breathes his last









Julai sitini na tisa, jumamosi tarehe tano,nduru yande kowa lisasi ochielo Mboya Jarusinga ---George Ramogi.

[jakaswanga]

THE BOTCHED MBOYA DAY 2018 (part one)

But while a group of us in the Lobby group have been enjoying themselves debating Tom Mboya, the nation of Kenya has of course been consumed with the passions of the 2022 succession. Behind this smokescreen if of course the toppled can of worms which the Jubilee regime has become. When a regime blatantly sells poison to its own people, its moral bankruptcy is supremely illustrated even to itself. State House Kenya is rotten to the core.

This crisis point reached by Kenya due to successive incompetence at the top, highlights the opportunity costs of the early demise of Tom Mboya. Never in Kenya as now, has Mboya's colossal capabilities been so glaringly absent, like when I told the fanclub that William Ruto is currently our most dynamic national politician. He is the future of Kenya, which means doom. If Moi's period of darkness was Doom One, Ruto's will be the second Doom! Imagine this steep negative evolution of Kenya, from a downed labour star in 1969, Tom, to a YK'92 looter-goon and former ICC-indictee, Ruto. Between 1969 and 2018, Kenya became an unhinged, runaway farm of rogue beasts. Truly it is high time for Upright Mankind to move in and tame the beasts, bring order, end the free-for-all and have the fertile land scientifically tilled for the profit of all. The regime of the beasts must go extinct, it must be relegated to a museum peace or the fabled historical dump heap! Wildebeests if too many can always shot to thin them. After all, mankind sometimes in a crisis, for instance overwhelmed by bandits, will run a policy of shoot to kill. As a matter of fact I remember one, Sheriff John Michuki, putting on a bloody ruthless act as he sought to rid the land of the Mungiki.

My dad used to sing me a song which starts: Julai sitini na tisa jumamosi tarehe tano, it was like the world stood still for me when the cry came a bullet had shot Rusinga Tom, dead.

And the Swahili saying: baada ya dhiki, furaha!

[jakaswanga]

[jakaswanga]

THE MBOYA CULT HAUNTING

this year there was a flurry of activities: JOWI! JOWI!

Remembrance without copying.

You could say that of Bob Collymore too. Colymore is the celebrated man who replaced the now again recycled Michael Joseph at the helm of SAFARICOM. To all purposes he was an apt replacement and a very able CEO.

Politicians, one and all have been quick to heap praise upon the late Collymore. But none, dare honour him with the greatest form of flattery, imitation. No, his leading example is beyond their behavioural faculties of mimicry.

And that is the Thomas Joseph Mboya cult too.

Odhiambo Ndiege Ounga Mboya set the bar in the sky. That fact, or achievement, remains the greatest cultural signifier of the alienation of our elites. --this alienation continues to manifest itself in terms of incompetence, laziness, greed and financial debauchery; economic cannibalism and political infantilism. And murder.

Okay. We are confronted with loss. But the legendary benga-rhumba guitarist and composer, Omogy Georgy of Continental Kilo DumbeDumbe, in his memorial song to Tom, sang thus:

Huzuni itakwisha polepole.
Kuzaliwa Harusi yake ni Matanga,
Hoyee Tom.

The Swahili people too have a saying: Baada ya dhiki, Furaha.

So, by and by as time passes, the trauma wanes. The Soul copes. Life continues. Culture heals and reflects, Culture adapts, compares and struggles on .... as new traumas, thick and fast, are rolled out by the onward march of history.

The Uhuruto affliction for instance has been another culturally speaking, running sore. It has been a cancer of incompetence; it has been a fest of graft at the heart of government. An abomination, yet more or less tolerated. The necessarily moral degeneration which paves the way for a people to tolerate stuff they know in their hearts to be abominations is the socio-pathology we spend so much time investigating.

Only cultural takes will suffice.

In all its challenges, the Mwai Kibaki administration still had flashes of insight which were a throwback to ----or foklorish reminders of----- the brilliance and ability of distant men like Tom Mboya. As drunk and as mentally eroded as Mwai often was, he could still be caught THINKING, and thinking big. The likes of Francis Muthaura and Anyang' Nyong'o, Raila Odinga and John Michuki, even as they squabbled like slayqueens over a corruption-funded purse, were not totally brain-dead to the economic logic of the land. Also, they seemed to have an instinctive inkling of the necessity for a historical mission.

But I am afraid the Jubilee regime of Ouru and Ruto has been a total comatose. There has been no brain activity measurable in this thing. It has all been animal instinct, raw, of the predatory, feeding-frenzy kind. ---Most of the infrastructure white elephants they have been flogging dead by fraud were 'brainchilded' in the first Kibaki administration. That was when the consciousness of what a period of darkness the Moi regime had been, fired the urgency of regenerative thought, fed a surge toward an economic revival.

Exit Kibaki, enter Don Quixote Ouru and Pancha Ruto, the pendulum took a recidivistic lurch back to (Moi-KANU) pre-history. In this respect, one might think of the new word from Algeria: NECROCRACY. The rule by a corpse, or half corpse as Boutaflika they characterised. Well, in Kenya the presidential duo were and are physically very healthy and able-bodied. It is only mentally that they are dead and ideologically, corpses kabisa.

But no worries, the deep state has moved into the vacuum. And the credit lines hold because of geopolitics. The only advantage of the deep state is that they have a survival instinct, they are not merely captive to the overriding frenzy of feeding, that run-away frenzy which has gone suicidal under the 50/50 meat-cuts at the Jubilee table.

Then does the cultural significance of Tom Mboya, and more so his example in government, become the elephant in the cabinet room.

WHY WE MOURN SAFARICOM'S COLLYMORE, GENUINELY.

Collymore led East Africa's most profitable company, which announced a 63.4 billion shilling ($617m) annual net profit in May. He spearheaded Safaricom from 2010 onward, and helped grow its subscriber base from 17 million to more than 30 million, according to data from the company's recent financial statements.

But Collymore may be best remembered for marshalling Safaricom through its development of mobile applications that helped millions of low-income people in Kenya and across the globe gain access to banking services for the very first time.

There is no overstating it. For the mass, the love for Collymore is transactional, a quid pro quo.

SAFCOM is a ruthless company. A monopolist, or near monopolist. But they are not a rip-off game. They have a highly responsive customer service desk. Neither do they promise what they can't, wont and don't deliver ---like KENYA POWER company for instance.

Kenya power has done connections to the last 500m of Kenya. Yes they have, at least officially in their website once and according to DP Ruto, enumerating the magic of Jubilee against Raila's lordship over poverty. Only there is never power in 90% of Kenya, and even if you are in Nairobi, the GDP generator, you gotta know where you live or else you are in the permanent dark zone, or permanent black-out zone. But the bills will be real. And then some.
1.

Sh6.3 billion scam erupts at power transmission firm

Paul Wafula 10th Jun 2018

The Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) is now the latest in what is turning out to be a long list of Government agencies where runaway plunder and loot override public good, common sense and morality.

The scam unearthed by internal auditors now makes the electricity transmission company the fourth State body to be rocked by a scandal after the National Youth Service (NYS), Kenya Power and the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC).
One of the contractors at Ketraco claimed idling fees for 21 months for his workforce and equipment at a rate of Sh108 million per month for doing nothing. Some expatriates were being paid Sh200,000 per day. These led to a Sh3.8 billion bill slapped on the taxpayer.

Kenya Power is a thieving racket.

2.

High bills: How Kenya Power staff stole from you

Friday June 28 2019

Kenya power staff colluded with individuals and organisations to steal from consumers through inflated bills, an investigation has revealed.

The finding discredits a claim by the power distribution company last year that the inflated bills were as a result of migration to an Integrated Customer Management System (inCMS) and the backdating of bills in order to recover an outstanding Sh10.1 billion owed by customers.

The inflation of bills, Kenya Power argued, was necessary because it did not want to raise power charges during an election year, so it had to recover the money that had caused a huge hole in their 2017 financial statements.
UNREGISTERED METRES

But here is the juice about promises made and kept otherwise

OBSOLETE
In the settlement, Kenya Power agreed to stick to tariffs approved by the ERC and set up billing query centres countrywide.
In May 2017, Kenya Power acquired a new inCMS to replace the Integrated Customer System (ICS), which had been in place since 1997. At the time, the company argued that it needed a new system because the old one could no longer handle its huge customer base.
"This old system is obsolete and cannot accommodate the current company growth rate and the new customer base of 5.8 million users, real time," said Eng. John Wekesa, the power firm's chief engineer in charge of the new system during its launch

Modern man, Engineer John Wekesa! Modernised systems too, ostensibly to cater for a Hugely expanded customer base!

But Huh!? Ghenya! Just another cover story like the modernisation at the treasury which introduced HODUMA number, sorry, IFMIS payment platform. Last you heard was counties paying billion bills they didn't incur in Sudan! IFMIS manenos.
Modernisation modernisation everywhere, but not a service improved (if you remember the rhythm of that poem about the dryness of throats at sea, amid plenty of water!)

I am saying I don't characterise the Uhuruto regime as BRAIN-DEAD for verbal effect. (the comprador are historically late anyway). But anybody who cares to fathom the primacy of power, or energy, to the process of rapid economic and industrial growth, will know the score: joke with power supply, you are dead meat. An antic civilisation.

So, comparing our Kenya Power Company, I came to brain-dead after taking a look at the power consumption and grid reliance (graphs) of countries like South Korea when they hit the turbo lane up.

No Black outs permitted. Need be, then nuclear power supplements. Hard-boiled leaderships.


And this ---insider rot---- detail will compare to what went on at KRA, the revenue authority. A cartel hijacks the organisation and circumvents due process, corrupts service delivery

UPROAR
Sources say Kenya Power might have lost up to Sh1 billion as some of its employees had manipulated its billing systems and diverted money to their pockets. Part of the money was used to reimburse customers who filed their complaints with the company after the matter caused an uproar.
At some point, the heat was too much that the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) scraped a Sh150 fixed charge on electricity. In July, ERC argued that this move would reduce the overall unit cost of power from an all-time high of Sh17.77 kilowatt per hour to Sh16.64.

At KRA we read

Arrests show the rot that is Kenya Revenue Authority

02/05/2019 NAIROBI. The arrest of more than 40 Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) employees over corruption allegations has lifted the lid on deeply entrenched cartels that have for years made a fortune by contributing to the loss of billions of shillings in revenue.
TOP OFFICIALS
The detailed inner workings of the tax cartels include colluding to cheat the automated system, with some workers said to receive as much as Sh500,000 per day in bribes.

Now these are a few case studies. But if one has time and goes through all the scandals in public domain .... ... think of phantom dams, eurobonds, defence procurements, NYS'S ..... the systemic control of the financial heights by the cartels of corruption are clear. The CAPTURE is the rule at every hook and nook of state bodies.

That is not a country led by mentally active people. That is a state on the suicide watch, failing.

Thanks to the DRIP-DRIP CREDIT-LINE FROM CHINA, we can mask our comatose inertia.

It is in these circumstances when a people shed genuine tears for a genuine deliverer of service. Like Bobby Collymore of Safaricom.

And when a nation does that, finds a honest feeling somewhere in her recesses, they can not FORGET THE MAN THEY duplicituously PLEDGED TO FORGET. The King of achievement and performance, Thomas Joseph Mboya. He was shot July 5th 1969, exactly 50 years ago today July 5th 2019.

Education? Where the British had spent 50 years training a handful of Africans at their prestigious universities, Tom Mboya was a Big Bang Instrument: 5000 Kenyans in two years to the best American Universities. The name Obama may be the best known of them today.

I mean when Mboya was at the London School of Economics, he informed the Colonial Office he wanted 500 places around British institutes of higher learning for Kenyans, and 1000 places in lower technical colleges. The colonial office didn't bother to respond. So Mboya flew to the United States for an audience with the younger Kennedy. That was another coming man, then. 10000 University places TJ wanted. To his credit the younger Kennedy did not flinch. 'That is a bill, Mister. College costs money in the USA!'

That is the kind of man Mboya was before he was 30 years old. And his ambition was to be president of Kenya. Once you know that, you will understand why we had to forget him, at least try to in the era of abundant mediocrity when we couldn't be ourselves.

Because, thereafter, seeing the things which have become president of Kenya, and the things which, today in 2019, are running for the honour, you may be excused if you thought the gods turned their back on your country! small minds at the top and corruption becoming normal.

Mama Mia! I am all for the Chinese take-over of Gikomba. May be they can build a modern mall there and call it CHIKOMBA.

Think about it, a stadium of a mall at Gikomba. Xenophobia would thaw! Toilets, showers, seats, drainage water&sunproof overheads for Wanjiku.

That is what Mboya had in plan for 1970. I think I will take it up with one of Emperor Xi's clerks at EXIM Bank. Maybe Toi in Kibera and Soko Chijinga too can be Chinised at the same go. ---To remember the intent of TJ Mboya.

'Ok ber ka uuso alot to ubet e brain is in the toilet gi chieng'!'

'it is not good for folks to sit amidst sewage selling edibles,' Tom had clicked his tongue, buying a fruit at a sidewalk in Muthurwa, then not so dirty as now!

POST SCRIPT###The murder of Tom Mboya is a bit awkward in our History books. One side it is a rounded off story. Njenga Njoroge did it and was hanged. On the other side there are other facts which don't tie and surrender it a cold case. Njoroge was a fall guy, and he knew it, and said so at his execution: how about the Big Man?

If there is an old copper in your village he would have told you who actually pulled the trigger if you were interested. And who ordered him to. These bits are not in the history books of the syllabus! Neither are these political murders ----name them--- in the cold-case books of DCI George Kinoti!

Call the FBI to help perhaps!?

Naa. Ask a simple question, see where the best answers lead. Why did the DCI go to the American FBI, and not the Chinese AI who do everything technical for us these days that we firmly look East!?

Call it a colonial hangover and secret pacts, like why Mboya first went to the British for educational help while CHOU EN LAI was touring Africa, offering scholarships and locomotive trains!

Omera! Eeee! Chou en Lai!? Mano to an'go?