NASA's Tweedlum to Jubilee's Tweedlee

[Onyango Oloo]

DEAR READERS PLEASE NOTE:

I HAVE NOW CLEARED THE PLETHORA OF TYPOS WHICH LITTERED EARLIER VERSIONS OF THIS ESSAY. I ALSO WANT TO SAY A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL THOSE PEOPLE ON FACEBOOK WHO HAVE LIKED OR SHARED THE PIECE. ALSO I HAVE GOT SEVERAL POSITIVE, ENCOURAGING COMMENTS ON TWITTER AND ELSEWHERE. THANK YOU!! IT MAKES THE SHEER SLAVE WORK I DID IN SAGANA AND NAIROBI WHILE STRUGGLING WITH A BOUT IF ILL-HEALTH WAS WORTH IT AFTER ALL.



Part One

A digital essay by Onyango Oloo



First of all, I am in a cyber cafe kicking myself and cursing audibly.

Why, you may wonder.

Because of a rookie error which should not occur to a blogger of thirty years experience such as Onyango Oloo.

This is what happened.


I just lost the original of this piece online.

Well strictly speaking, it was not the ORIGINAL original because fortunately I worked on the essay biro upon fullscap paper last night at my apartment. Since I do not have internet where I am staying I saved all ten hand written pages to be dispatched today. I consciously waited until today, Friday, April 21, 2017 because I wanted to cover the Jubilee nominations along with other material covering NASA and other ideological considerations.

At some point,I minimized the Jukwaa page to venture elsewhere online to check out what was happening to the Jubilee nominations.

To cut a painful long story short, that is when I lost the essay I was working on.

At this second try, I am taking two precautions: saving what I am working in Jukwaa as a Microsoft Word document and also emailing it to myself while the work is in progress.

Let me make a second, hopefully valiant attempt although the little bon mots I had included in the Jukwaa version have disappeared in cyberspace, leaving with a warning to all bloggers,don't make the same mistake that I made about forty five minutes ago.

Here we go again.

I am presently residing in Sagana, Kirinyaga County, my latest home after Bamburi, Mombasa County, Kasarani, Nairobi County, Luanda Dudi, Khiswero, Kakamega County, Montreal, Quebec Province, Toronto, Ontario Province. Been here for the last two months.

Observing the political shenanigans from deep within Jubilee territory is fascinating.

Virtually all the aspirants in Kirinyaga, with the exception of Martha Karua, who is tactically supporting the Uhuru/Ruto ticket are all going for the Jubilee ticket.

Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta is a mega mugithi superstar, a demi-god whose every utterance is gospel, affectionately lionized as Kamwana, Mtongoria or Muthamaki. He is guaranteed 98% percent of all the Presidential votes in the Gikuyu speaking counties. In Sagana, I passed by a mechanical garage in the Nixx, Roots Resort,Skyline and Genesis area in the downtown area where one stubbornly defiant worker was playing at top volume one of Osogo Winyo’s hits indicating perhaps, an August 8th vote for NASA. But this area of Kirinyaga remains a no go zone for the opposition.

Sagana is a mid sized commercial/agricultural town with a fairly minuscule downtown. Apart from the provision stores, supermarkets, bars, butcheries, pharmacies, hospitals, churches that dot Sagana, it also boasts a thriving fisheries where locals like myself can purchase fried tilapia, mud fish and other varieties for a quick evening meal- that is if we don’t want to venture into the eateries for a slightly more expensive sit down dinner.

Rivaling the nearby Kagio market town which attracts commercial buyers looking for cheap vegetables from Nairobi and a bit further off from Kerugoya where you have to go if you want to open a bank account with Barclays, Coop or KCB- you can open an account with Equity, Fortune from Sagana. You have to travel all the way to Baricho if you want the top officials to take your finger prints unlike Sagana where they are slightly diffident. You find Huduma Centres in Kerugoya and Muranga town but not in Sagana. If you are Christian and looking for a place to worship Sagana is littered with Catholic, Anglican, PCEA, KAG churches. Even Prophet Owuor has a temple and I spied a mosque.

Although the natives of Sagana speak the Ndia accent (distinct from Martha Karua’s and Anne Waiguru’s Gichugu’s northern Kirinyaga Gichugu argot) there are many transplants from elsewhere in Gikuyu, Embu , Mbeere and Mwea territories. You also find migrants who speak Kikamba,Kisii, Luo, Somali and Gujarati at home.

The town has attracted outsiders partly it is located around Makutano and only a river separates it from Muranga County.

By the way, the popular entertainment icon Charles Njagua Kanyi, popularly known as Jaguar-who is fighting to represent Starehe on a Jubilee ticket, was recently in the news for all the wrong reasons. He was said to be involved in a road accident on the Makutano-Sagana route where his Range Rover killed a boda boda rider and hi passenger. Although he later showed up to deny all charges, it is is still unclear whether Jaguar was actually driving or whether a lady friend was the one allegedly driving. Other reports to a male driver.

The Ndia people are full of uncomfortable memories how not too long ago they were demonized and derided by their Agikuyu cousins as inferior and lowly “Kairos” only slated to clean public toilets. To see the emergence of Martha Karua, Anne Waiguru and late spy chief Kanyotu is like a latter day revenge for people of Kirinyaga.

Part of the growth of Sagana has a lot to do with the proximity to the Grand Coalition Vision 2030 project known as the Thika Super Highway.

Uhururuto's regime in it its desperate to showcase its achievements and get away from the major scandals including Eurobond, NYS and other corruption blemishes and its tenderpreneurship deals which have touched President Kenyatta own family, not to speak of the land grabbing which gave Ruto the Arap Singh moniker after the protest which forced primary school KIDS to come out in protest, the Jubilee regime has opted to boast of its infrastructure projects.

True, driving through Kiambu, Muranga, Nyeri, Kirinyaga and Embu Counties as I have done in the last year, the roads, while not the Canadian version, are quite modern, almost akin to the roads in Manzini when I was down in Swaziland in 2009.

What a sharp contrast to the living nightmare in the capital city Nairobi on Outer Ring Road, past the Kangundo Road Junction where I was trapped for two hours last month when I paid a visit to my younger sister’s place in Donholm or the sorry situation in Kenya’s second largest metropolis of Mombasa around Mtamboni, just off the route to Malindi all the way to Bamburi Mwisho going towards Camp David grill next to Anwarali in the Mtopanga, Bakarani area.

At this point, let me venture online once again to check out the Jubilee April 21st nominations.

I still remember from my earlier visit of Bishop Wanjiru being captured by KTN cameras dishing out cash bribes; of chaos at Bomas where supporters of Mike Sonko were involve in a fist fight with goons owing allegiance to Maina Kamanda; This after Tuju citing Nairobi “large Muslim community shifted the nominations from Friday to Monday. I wonder if this applied to Isiolo, Garissa, Mandera, Wajir and large parts of the Coast with significant Muslims, a lot of them claiming affiliation to Jubilee; of the Bomet Jubilee contest being pushed to Tuesday, April 25 because aspirants talking of “shoddy preparations”; of the Jubilee Regional Coordinator over Secretary General Raphael Tuju’s objections cancelling the nominations in Kericho, of a Kiambu parliamentary aspirant being found hopefully alive in Narok after disappearing for a couple of days; the incumbent Narok North MP defecting to ODM on the eve of his party’s nominations.

And in Embu, according to a KNA story filed by Christine Muchira,Embu Jubilee nominations plunged into disarray after an unprecedented four hour delay due to lack of adequate voting materials and irregularities reported in polling centres.

The nomination exercise aborted after several aspirants led by Runyenjes MP Cecily Mbarire who is gunning for the gubernatorial seat stormed into the Kirimari Boys’ High School tallying centre in Manyatta Constituency where ballot boxes and papers were yet to be dispatched to polling centres by 10am.

Mbarire who was flanked by Manyatta MP John Muchiri and Kirimari MCA Ibrahim Swaleh deplored the lack of lids for ballot boxes and claimed that the inadequate ballot papers were being selectively dispatched to the strongholds for the incumbent Governor Martin Wambora.

Chaos and confusion characterised the tallying centre as supporters of the politicians disrupted the issuance of voting materials and demanded that the exercise be called off until the Jubilee Party was ready to conduct better organised nominations.

The leaders unanimously termed the primaries as a sham and regretted having paid nomination fees and recruited poll agents in every polling station, then face an election that was seemingly not credible due to disorganisation.

The nomination exercise was paralysed after the politicians led their supporters in a mass walkout and warned election to stop voting in any polling centre that materials had been dispatched without proper prior arrangements and securing of ballot boxes.

The leaders also demanded an explanation as to why transport to polling centres was not arranged early enough to enable the electorate to commence casting their votes by 6am, yet the party had more than three weeks to prepare for the primaries.

The politicians also alleged that there were plans to rig the primaries as evidenced by the massive irregularities that they claimed worked to the advantage of their opponents.”

Eventually, according to a story filed by Nyaga, Jubilee cancelled nominations in 11 counties saying in print “Jubilee party has cancelled nominations in 11 counties mainly from the rift valley region due to what they term as unacceptable anomalies".

Jubilee’s Secretary General Raphael Tuju had also postponed nominations in a number of constituencies in Kiambu, Laikipia, Meru and West Pokot counties.

The 11 counties include Narok, Kericho, Bomet, Nakuru, Baringo, Embu, Trans Nzoia, Elgeyo Marakwet and Nandi.

Chaos marred party primaries in the 16 counties out of 22 counties which jubilee held the exercise after technical hitches delayed the process.
The slow start of voting process gave rise to grievances by disgruntled supporters and eventually the political heat became uncontrollable in some areas.

In the rift valley region, a perceived Jubilee stronghold was the most notorious, aspirants and incumbent leaders in Kericho, Uasin Gishu and Nandi protested against delaying tactics and inadequate voting materials and eventually dismissed the whole process.

No worry folks. I recalled all that from human memory.
And in case you are wondering this digital essay is being composed in Microsoft Word in this cyber café which is charging me an arm, a leg and my neck for redoing this.

The lady who runs this place and is rooting Anne Waiguru to be nominated for the Kirinyaga Governor’s slot informed half an hour when she came from the nominations place that the incumbent was caught in a scandal with stolen boxes of nomination papers.

She says precisely because of the money Anne Waiguru is supposed to have stolen, that is why Kirinyaga want her to be Governor. But if I remember my political prisoner days at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison I recall that felons are quite reluctant when it comes to sharing the loot. I remember two first cousins who jailed by the same court on identical joint robbery charges. They served their seven years jointly and were in my Block B Number 8. They finished their term on the same day and left prison together. On reaching "Raia" in other words the outside world, the older cousin got a "wera"-in other words an appointment with some of his outside criminal contacts to participate in a rather lucrative robbery in Nairobi. Somehow his younger cousin got to know about the planned heist. He got upset that his own relative who had spent time with in Kamiti kept him out of the plans. So he decided to rat on his cousin to the dreaded CID who laid a trap for the would be robbers and shot them dead. As for the snitch he was apparently not aware that the cops could not trust a hardened criminal who could sell out his first cousin in such a brutal fashion. A week later, the same police officers who had killed his cousin hunted him down and extra judicially assassinated him.

Let us see what other Jubilee treasures the massive internet holds.

According to a news report, in Meru, Disgruntlement in Meru County Jubilee Nominations as Voting Delays

There was a sluggish and dull atmosphere in Meru County as Jubilee nominations started on Friday morning.

The process is reportedly ongoing however with disgruntled voters as the process started hours later. The reason for the delay as pointed out by JP Meru branch secretary Alhajji Mwendia and even the residents of the areas, is delay in the availing of ballot materials.

In Meru town voting started in the town Centre shortly before 10.00 am, with voters idling around for hours end on waiting for the voting process to get underway.

What was however not adding up to a number of residents was the reasons underlying the delay yet the voting materials had been stored less than a kilometer away in the station of the local Directorate of Criminal Investigations.

Several aspirants have raised concerns over the process saying plots to rig are rife in their respective counties.

While in Nanyuki, Police fired in the air to disperse angry youths burning ballot papers at the Bungoma Primary School polling station in Nanyuki.

The angry voters engaged police in running battles as they complained that some aspirants’ names were missing from the ballot papers.

Voters at the Kanyoni nursery school also burnt the ballots saying the Jubilee party should be well organised.

This made the police to fire at them to disperse them. Some of the voters also protested delays and hitches during the process.
The nominations failed to kick off on time in many polling stations but JP Secretary general Raphael Tuju said they will proceed as per the party’s schedule.

Supporters, who started streaming in the polling centres from as early as 3am complained of delays.

Others opted to go back home, On Thursday, Uhuru warned against violence in the Jubilee Party primaries and ordered police to deal firmly with culprits.He said the party will not entertain such chaos and that “any acts of violence will lead to disqualification”.

In the Rift Valley, Nandi Hills MP Alfred Keter warned a section of officials working in DP William Ruto’s office from interfering with Jubilee Party affairs.

He told the lot to resign for “spoiling the Jubilee party” following the delays that marred the first day of the ruling party’s primaries.

The exercise did not kick off in most polling stations in time despite voters queuing from as early as 3am to cast their ballot.

“We demand that they leave office for interfering with Jubilee Party affairs,” Keter told his supporters on Friday.

The legislator said the Jubilee nominations need to be free from any form of influence by government officials.

“We want a free, fair and democratic process, so that we can have leaders that we want,” Keter said.

Keter was accompanied by and a section of Uasin Gishu aspirants .

Mandago vowed that the primaries in the region will not proceed as scheduled citing shortage of ballot papers.

“It is time we crack the whip. We registered more than 100,000 new voters so we must have enough ballot papers,” Mandago said.

“We have agreed as aspirants and members of the public that the primaries be postponed.”

Earlier, the governor and Kapseret MP Oscar Sudi demanded the cancellation of the primaries.

“Over 95 per cent of aspirants are concerned that the nominations will not be fair,” he said.

Mandago is facing off with Bundotich Kiprop also known as Buzeki for the top county seat.

Thousands of people lined up at the polling stations which were yet to be opened by as late as 9am.

At the MV Patel polling station in Eldoret, voters complained that the delay was a tactic to rig the polls.

On Thursday, Uhuru warned against violence in the Jubilee Party primaries and ordered police to deal firmly with culprits.

He said the party will not entertain such chaos and that “any acts of violence will lead to disqualification”.

“Chaos and violence that feature in primaries will not be tolerated. A culture of hooliganism will not be accepted.”

And in Muranga, Nominations in Murang’a County failed to kick off at 6am as planned due to what Jubilee Party officials termed as logistical hitches.

By 8.30am, ballot papers and boxes had not yet reached majority of polling stations subjecting voters to anxiety and tension. At Kiharu constituency, one of the party officials Caroline Wangari said transporters have demanded to be paid before transporting the voting materials.

Wangari said the transporters are also demanding more money than it was earlier planned, saying the party officials are working to solve the hitch.

Jubilee Party Murang’a County Secretary General Irungu Mwaniki, however said voting in some polling stations in Murang’a south started after 8am.

He however noted that drivers who were supposed to transport the voting materials from Murang’a Teachers Training College to constituencies, including Kiharu, Gatanga, Kigumo, Kandara and Mathioya had refused to do so, demanding to be paid first.

The drivers, he said also fear a replica of what happened in 2013 during The National Alliance (TNA) party nominations when they went for several days without being paid.

By 9am, transportation of voting materials kicked off, with Mwaniki promising that all challenges will be sorted out to give people a chance of nominating their favorite leaders.

Meanwhile, Murang’a county police commander Ms Naomi Ichami said police officers had been deployed to various polling stations ready to man the exercise.

“The ballot papers and boxes are in the constituency level and the report I am getting is that they have not been released to the polling stations,” said Ichami.

Let me stop here because the cyber cafe is closing.

And I have not even delved into the ODM fiasco or even the main ideological purpose for starting this essay.

Part Two continues tomorrow.

Now since I am on some medication, let me seek an early bed rest.

[jakaswanga]

SHAMBOLIC DAYS IN THE TOMB OF DOOM?

To read more of Jakwaswanga's article please go to the following link:

jukwaa.proboards.com/posts/recent#ixzz4ev0Bw3oF

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Two: The ODM Nominations

The Busia gubernatorial nominations started with a debacle where challenger Paul Otuoma claimed to have won overwhelmingly.

The ODM Election Board ordered a repeat of the exercise in only two of the stations, Teso North and South seen as a strong hold of the incumbent Sospeter Ojaamong.

Four people arraigned in Busia court after being found with marked ballot papers in aid of Ojaamong.

But in a surprising move, Funyula member of parliament Doctor Paul Otuoma said he will vie for the Busia governor seat as an independent candidate come August 8th this year. Otuoma has maintained he will not participate in the repeat elections in Teso North and Teso South as ordered by the ODM elections board.

According to a news story by Eric Abuga,”anomalies mar ODM nominations in Nyamira, Taita Taveta

“ODM party supporters crowd at Nyamira Primary in West Mugirango Constituency after exercise was temporarily halted over dispute on voter register.) Voting has temporarily been stopped at Nyamira polling station leaving voters confused on whether to use the IEBC or ODM party register. The confusion has affected several other polling stations in the county. Delays were also reported in Taita Taveta where the party nominations did not kick off at 6am as planned due to delayed delivery of polling materials. In Nyamira, the current Governor John Nyagarama's supporters want the use of the ODM register while his opponents Dr John Kumenda and West Mugirango MP Dr James Gesami prefer the use of the IEBC register. Several polling stations have been combined, with long queues already being experienced at the Nyamira polling station. Nyairanda, Nyamira Primary, Nyangoso and Bundi polling stations in Township Ward have been combined. A total of 4,985 party members from the four polling stations will be voting at Nyamira polling station. Florence Kebuba, the Returning Officer at Nyamira polling station said that the party list presented to them is not legible. "We are struggling to read the names. We have tried in vain to counter check with the IEBC register," says Ms Kebuba. The rooms are poorly lit with polling clerks being forced to use spotlights. Governor Nyagarama will cast his ballot at Nyamotureko Primary while Dr Kumenda and Dr Gesami will vote at Keroka Farmers and Ikurucha Primary School respectively. Dr Gesami has received support from other ODM leaders in the area including North Mugirango MP Charles Geni and County MP Alice Chae. The two got their direct nominations last month. The party will also conduct parliamentary nominations in West Mugirango Constituency where four aspirants Denis Anyoka, Polycarp Orero, Dr Ombogo and Julius Matwere are battling for the ticket.”

Also in news from my home constituency of Khwisero, Khwisero MP Benjamin Andola Thursday added to the growing number of legislators edged out in the ongoing ODM party primaries in Kakamega County. Andola, who had earlier garnered 6,154 votes to emerge victorious, boycotted a repeat exercise following cancellation of the results due to what Kakamega County Election Board chairman David Sasala termed glaring irregularities. Sasala said they were compelled to intervene and repeat the nominations after the primaries conducted on April 15 were marred by irregularities. Benjamin Andama was declared the winner, beating Kakamega Woman Representative Rachael Ameso to second place. Ms Ameso had protested that her strongholds in Kisa West did not vote and successfully petitioned the election board to call a repeat exercise. She had garnered 2,346 votes against Andama’s 3,995 before they were subjected to repeat polls. Earlier, Lurambi MP Raphael Otaalo, his Butere counterpart Andrew Toboso and Silverse Anami of Shinyalu had been defeated by their rivals. Meanwhile, the Amani National Congress (ANC) called off nominations in Malava Sub-county due to election anomalies.

In Kisii another report tells us that the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party nominees in Kisii had begun preparations for the August 8 polls in earnest after emerging victorious in the just concluded primaries. They are expected to join Governor James Ongwae, Senate seat aspirant Prof Sam Ongeri and Women rep nominee Janet Ongera who were given direct tickets. In Kitutu Chache North, lawyer Ogamba Migos won the nomination after garnering 5,622 votes against his opponent Elijah Kombo’s 1,333 votes. Former vocal Kisii ODM legislator Richard Onyonka, who recently defected to Ford Kenya, will face his seasonal political enemy, Samuel Omwando who won the ODM ticket with 3,526 votes against Antony Kibagendi who garnered 1,598 votes. Bomachoge Chache incumbent Simon Ogari who also defected from ODM to Jubilee will now face among many other candidates, Jeremiah Matoke who won the ODM ticket with 6,226 votes. His closest rival Job Nyangenya got 2,344. In Bonchari, former KCB Manager John Momanyi floored David Ogega with 3,665 votes against 2,226. Migos called on other winners to remain peaceful and campaign for the party. “We want to have a majority of local leaders voted on ODM party. We are glad that majority of the sitting MPs have regrouped and joined Jubilee, we will send them home,” he said. Free and fair On his part, Mr Momanyi said his victory was the first step towards a resounding triumph in theAugust 8 General Election. “Our party members have made us proud. This was free and fair exercise and for the first time residents have had a chance to express their voice and will, right from party primaries,” said Mr Momantyi. However, ODM National Election Board postponed the South Mugirango Constituency nominations after some goons attacked a vehicle carrying ballot papers and boxes.

In Migori County, Scopine Otieno and James Omoro Viol reported the reported the violence in Migori as claims of rigging primaries emerge Nyando constituency ODM aspirant Jared Okello Aspirants have invented a way of thorough protection of votes during nominations to avoid rigging saying that (There were claims some ODM polling officials were holed up in some venues in a well-orchestrated rigging scheme Two primary school teachers sustained serious injuries after a group of youth stormed a venue where ODM officials were undergoing training ahead of the Monday primaries. The two — Valentine Omollo, a head teacher at Rare Primary School and Beatrice Onduru of St Jonathan School — were training officials at Rakwaro Seminary ahead of the Monday primaries before armed youth struck and started beating up participants. Police said they had summoned two senior leaders from Rongo over the Thursday incident. Saturday Standard caught up with Onduru at Ladorpharma Hospital in Rongo town where she recounted the incident. She said she had been called for a meeting to train the officials on how to conduct the nominations by Ms Mary Ogodo, who is the constituency election officer. ALSO READ: “While headed there, I met a young man who told me we will be beaten in that meeting and I rubbished him off, I wish I had turned and gone back home,” she said. Condemned incident Onduru said the youth came in a pick-up, stormed the meeting and started beating people. “One of them kicked me several times all over the body especially on my ribs. I am now experiencing excruciating pain,” she said. Mr Omollo was referred to Kisii Level Five Hospital. Several others sustained injuries of varying degrees. The priest in charge of the seminary Father Richard Odhiambo condemned the incident. Rongo OCPD Kisaka Muganda said those involved would be arrested and prosecuted. Area MP Dalmas Otieno, who was at the scene, said it was ‘wananchi’ who invaded the seminary after learning that some people masquerading as ODM nomination officials were being trained on how to rig. In Homa Bay, several people were injured after a fight broke out at a hotel following claims a Senator and an MP from the neighbouring Migori were marking ‘illegal’ ballot papers. Trouble started after nominated MP, Millie Odhiambo and her supporters stormed the hotel to protest the rigging plans. In Suba, armed youth destroyed houses belonging to a member of the Homa Bay County Executive Committee, Consolata Yambo over claims a group of people were involved in ballot stuffing at the home. Stakes are high in Suba where ODM national chairman John Mbadi is fighting it out with former Raila Odinga aide Caroli Omondi.

In the meantime, ODM Primaries for Nakuru town west parliamentary seat were postponed due to anomalies in the ballot papers. The names of Eric Ogada and Jacob Luka were missing in the voting materials that were dispatched to various polling centers Tuesday morning. ODM county chairman Peter ole Osono said after consulting with the party's national elections board, they had decided to postpone the primaries until the issue is sorted out. The date for the primaries will be communicated later.

To the FORD-Kenya, Wiper and ANC Amani aficionados out there, forgive me for ignoring your outfits. You must admit they were not as full of melodrama as the ones which unfolded in the two larger parties. Which is probably a good sign of how your nominations were conducted.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Three: About the NASA Coalition Horse Trading

I can not end this piece without talking about the political horse playing in Jubilee and NASA.

Jubilee decided some time back to corral all the "friendly" parties into one gigantic outfit which, at least according to William Ruto was geared to make Jubilee rule for seventy years after winning the August 8th elections in the morning.

I want however, to concentrate for the rest of this essay on NASA, which is currently in a duel of who is going to emerge as the ultimate flag bearer.

According to media reports, some said to be leaked by ODM affiliated NASA insiders, the emerging scenario of a Raila-Kalonzo with Mudadavadi settling for a powerful Prime Ministerial position and Wetangula being consoled with either the Speaker of the Senate or the National Assembly is busy doing the social media and punditry rounds.

Before I delve deeper into the NASA speculation let me pause briefly on a rather lurid article which I read in the tabloid gutter press Weekly Citizen about a fortnight ago. When I read the article I immediately concluded that this was yet another work of the nefarious scribes of the National Intelligent Service unleashed as a floating balloon to confuse the NASA holoi poloi.

According to the rather well written speculative piece a Raila flag bearer bid will galvanize and bring to the voting booth all wavering Jubilee supporters, especially the tribalistic Luo hating Gikuyu Jubilee card carrying voters from all over central Kenya.

Before I comment much further, I must pause and head to Nairobi where I have been summoned for some rather urgent consulting assignment.

Please stay tuned.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Four:

NIS and Weekly Citizen's Lurid Disinformation Hatchet Job Against NASA

This view of the spy world connections of Weekly Citizen is bolstered by a front page story in the April 17-23 edition of the tabloid titled “America secret reports on NASA” the bulk of the article continuing on the next page which says in part:

“Only recently, a Washington- based political lobby, the National Democratic Institute raised issues over the country’s preparedness for a violence-free election. The NDI decried that with less than four months to the election, sound measures had not been put in place to avoid politically motivated violence at the elections.

“It has since emerged that various Western capitals with diplomatic outposts in Nairobi are worried about the fate of NASA. Their political desks have been filing reports to their countries on the unfolding events in the coalition with their ratings of its future being uncertain. In short, they are painting a bleak picture of the opposition…

“The fear within the diplomatic circles is that once NASA disintegrates, chances of failing to get a clear winner in the first round are high and is likely to ignite the kind of ethnic violence seen after Kenya’s 2007 elections.

“Diplomats are of the view that if the four principals fail to contain their egos and ambitions and they go their separate ways, they might as well be indirectly campaigning for Uhuru Kenyatta’s second term.

“The envoys aver that should ODM’s Raila Odinga, Wiper’s Kalonzo Musyoka, Amani National Congress MusaliaMudavadi and FORD-Kenya’s Moses Wetangula break up and fly their respective presidential flags, then no single candidate is likely to get 50% plus one votes.

“Sources say a section of envoys sympathetic to NASA have secretly been piling international pressure to force the four principals to agree on a compromise candidate to face Jubilee’s Uhuru Kenyatta.

“Towards the end of last year there were indications that Raila was the most preferred candidate to fly the NASA flag with Kalonzo as the running mate with Mudavadi as the chief minister designate.

“Sources say the diplomats have recommended in their briefs that Raila throws his weight behind either Mudavadi or Kalonzo the reason being, there are indications that another political contest between Raila and Uhuru could lead to post election violence and bring to the fore the decades long Kenyatta-Odinga political rivalry between the two families.

“Intelligence reports have indicated indicated that a win for Raila or Uhuru is likely to be contested to a win by either Kalonzo or Mudavadi…”


Speaking as Onyango Oloo, I long ago dismissed Weekly Citizen’s clap trap when a digital essay I had painfully composed in far off Montreal, Quebec was swiped, stolen by the gutter press weekly which today has the audacity to dub itself “Kenya’s Most Authoritative Political Newspaper” and without acknowledging the Kenya Times used to do that Onyango Oloo was the actual author of the original piece. Instead they had the gall to rebaptize the article as emanating from “Weekly Citizen Joint Report” or some other fiction.[/b]

But staying for a brief moment with the eight paragraphs excerpted above, even a rookie scribe can see for themselves the shoddy utterly NON-JOURNALIST bent of what is touted as a leading expose.

Number One: No sources by name are cited.

Number Two: Who are these faceless diplomats?

Who exactly are the “sources” talking of “envoys sympathetic to NASA” who have apparently piling pressure to force the four principals to agree on a compromise candidate”?
How did the lowly under resourced tabloid come across this gem which was not emblazoned in the Daily Nation, Standard or Star?

Is it a fact or a juicy work of gutter press titillation that “the diplomats have recommended in their briefs that Raila throws his weight behind either Mudavadi or Kalonzo”?

It appears patently obvious to me that this disinformation piece that is today politely called “fake news” is nothing but the imagination gone wild of a bunch of NIS spooks eager to earn their pay from their Jubilee handlers.

The fact of the matter is that none of the principals-five if you add in Bomet Governor Isaac Ruto has the potential clout of bringing out a nationwide, as opposed to regional or ethnic surge as much as Raila Odinga.
Leaving aside the Nyanza home base, ODM has locked in Mombasa County and most other Coastal counties- TaitaTaveta, Killifi, Kwale, large parts of Lamu and Tana River counties.

Kalonzo Musyoka holds sway in Machakos, Kitui,Makueni, portions of Mombasa like Chaani, the part of Kwale around Ramisi sugar factory, big parts of Nairobi including Pipeline, South B Kayaba, Kwa Ruben, the wider Mukuru and other working class areas and don’t forget Tanzania, Zambia and the North American and European diaspora.

Musalia Mudavadi can count on Vihiga, Kakamega, parts of Busia which are not rabidly ODM strongholds, large parts of Bungoma and the diaspora as well.

I am sorry to say that Moses Wetangula trails behind both Raila Odinga and Musalia Mudavadi in his native Bungoma.

As for Isaac Ruto apart from Bomet and Kipsigis wherever they can be found he is a force to be reckoned with due to his past stature as Chairman of the Governor’s Council and the growing popularity of his new party-but he does not come close to Kalonzo or Mudavadi.

Long suffering followers of this digital essay which is beginning to sound like a newspaper editorial, I have to pause here one more time.

I am currently in Westlands, Nairobi as I stated in Kirinyaga district and I was trying to take advantage of the free WiFi from a firm I used to consult in for the last four years.

Two things have happened.

My former boss has to go somewhere else and wants to lock up the office. And Zuku's erratic internet has gone haywire and disappeared.

So I am going to a cyber café in down town Nairobi where I will upload this latest chapter and call it a day until tomorrow because a very good friend of mine is waiting to chat with me.


So HOPEFULLY (because I remain an optimist), you will the last part some time tomorrow, Monday April 24, 2017.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Five

The Weekly Citzen Follows Agwambo to Madiba Land

Just before I move to the Nyama Choma of this essay, let me bore with a little gossip from the regular suspect-The Weekly Citizen. Some of my high brow pals sniff as me when I mention that rag. They are surprised that I even bother to look for it. This includes serious academic comrades who I have surreptiously cornered drinking the poisonous ink flowing from that publication. Another lecturer friend hinted to me some time back that Weekly Citizen is very popular at the University of Nairobi where both staff and student supply it with campus dossier.

As for me, I make absolutely no apologies for seeking out in the streets on Monday when it it comes out at fifty shillings.

That is EXACTLY what I did sometime this afternoon around Tusker in downtown Nairobi.

As in most issues, it led with a Raila headline It is a true and tested wisdom that a story about the former Prime Minister on page one is likely to sell out the paper-whether it be the Daily Nation, Star, Standard, Kenyan, Nairobi Confidential or what have you.

I am addicted to it because my late father taught me (way back when the Weekly Review was all the rage in 1974/1975) to be a news hound who at six o'clock every morning dashed from our Majengo Sega apartment to go and seek out the Standard and the Nation from the Swahili news vendor called Chaina who sold on Jomo Kenyatta Avenue near where Ecobank set up a branch of their Pan African bank a few years ago.

Like I said earlier in this essay, one of the surest way of following the National Intelligence Service is through planted tales in the Weekly Citizen.

Even by its outrageous, outlandish standards, the April 24th head line had me do a double take.

They say one way of telling the Kenyan gutter press from its Tanzanian and Ugandan relatives is that while the Dar es Salaam ilk always inject a lot of uchawi and mazuingaombwe stuff and Kampala is obsessed with sex and pornography while Nairobi is hooked onto POLITICS even there is witchcraft, sex, pornography or murder in the story.

"Kenya's Most Authorutative Political Newspaper" borrowed its lurid eye catcher straight out of the land where Magafuli rules with an iron fist:

]"Suspicion Raila visits top SA witchdoctor lifted out of the Johanesburg-based Sowetan in a piece on page 13 of the April 14, 2017 copy. According to the story

Raila attended a lenthy consultation with a Johannesburg-based Chief Hassan Mando who has a long list of African leaders on his client list" including Jacob Zuma and Yoweri Museveni

"According to the newspaper, Raila jetted into SA accompanied by his wife Ida and three aides. On his arrival, Raila was ushered into the Chief Mando's induba which is the sacred room where sangomas communicate with the ancestors. It says Raila spent six hours in the room while undergoing an intense ceremony. Raila was in the room with a young lady while Ida remained at the reception with the aides. It is not, however known if the lady was Rosemary or a female aide. Rala was dressed in traditional clothes and went through variou traditional ceremonies including cleansing by muthi, the spirtually curative medicine of the sangomas and thhe [/i]customary sacrifice of a pure white goat and two chickens. After the visit Raila flew in alone as Ida and the three aids flew back to through a private chartered plane."[/i][/i]

Presumabbly a jornalist from the Sowetan was right the sangoma's indaba talking copious notes and recording everything for South African and Kenyan posterity.

And dear Jukwaa readers, there you have it in black and white, courtesy of the Weekly Citizen, the uganga misadvenures of one Raila Amolo Odinga, would be NASA flag bearer.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Six:

Beginning of the END to this essay (Well, in a way sort of)

It is high time I wrote about the the main part of this essay:

Coaliton Politics and the Marxist-Leninist United Front strategy of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its experiences in the states of Kerala and West Bengal where the communists were elected to the provincial government in 1957, 1967 in Kerala and in West Bengal in 1977 where they ruled for thirty years.

But before I do that, I am glancing outside the window and I notice clear signs of a downpour.

Now I do not want to get soaked with rain.

I am so far away from the family which is hosting me here in Nairobi.

So, rather unfortunately, due to the bad weather, I have to truncate this seemingly endless endless essay to another day.

So with profound regrets, I have to say Sayonara! and Adieu! for now.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Seven:

A Short Break to Live Up to a Pledge I gave in Nairobi to Prof. Karuti Kanyinga

I am back in Sagana. I got to my new home last night.

Apologies for not updating the essay as earlier promised. I got caught up with consulting work while in Nairobi.

But there is a promise I made by email to one of my regular readers that I must immediately deliver on. Even though I know he must have seen the results by now one television and read it in the newspapers, my good friend, professionial mentor and sometimes NGO collaborator, Prof. Karuti Kanyinga of Nairobi University and the independent South Consulting gave me positive feedback in an email response after reading an earlier version of this essay and urged me to keep him updated on what is going on in Kirinyaga County.

So without any shame whatsoever, this is what I lifted directly from page three, third column, second to the eighth paragraphs of the April 25, 2017 Daily Nation:

In Kirinyaga, Governor Ndathi conceded defeat in the Jubilee primaries even before the final results were announced. He made the announcement after results in three consitituencies showed he was trailing Kirinyaga Central MP Joseph Gitari and forme Devolution Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru. The results from Ndia, Gichugu and Kirinyaga Central showed Mr Gitari was leading with 37,632 votes followed by Ms. Waiguru who got 33, 233 votes. Counting of votes for Mwea, which is the biggest and most populous consituency was ongoing. Mr Ndathi said the nominations were marred with irregularities…MPs Njogu Barua (Gichugu) Peter Gitau (Mwea) and Stephen Ngare (Ndia) lost in the primaries.

Elswewhere, the same paper informs us that Governors William Kabogo of Kiambu, John Mruttu of Taita Taveta, Benjamin Cheboi of Baringo and Cleophas Langat of Nandi all lost.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Eight:

NASA's Coalition Horse Trading vis-a-vis the Marxist United Front Strategy

Through meandering approach wading through the Jubilee and ODM primaries, I have landed at last on the point I wanted to make when I conceived this essay.

This is a major ideological beef I have the NASA coalition which emanates directly from what even some of my “Leftist” colleagues often dismiss as my “rather doctrinaire” Marxist-Leninist ideological leanings.

To put everything in historical, organizational and political contest:

Even though I am ethnically a Luo from the Kagola clan in Gem which produced Argwings Kodhek,Prof. Bethwell Ogot and I believe Isaac Omollo Okero (all of whom I count as blood relatives) and even though here in Jukwaa I have endorsed Raila Odinga three times for President, I have ironically NEVER BEEN A MEMBER OF ODM-despite the tribal talk of KANU, PNU, Jubilee and ODM die hards since 1997.

I was once a card carrying member of the SDP and even served as its Secretary General and later chief of Ideology. But I resigned my membership of the Social Democratic Party on the 15th of May 2015 for reasons I would rather not go into right now.

Following my almost five years at Kamiti Maximum Prison from Monday November 1982 to Wednesday, May 13, 1987 when I won a court of appeal case where I was awarded a sum of 100,000 shillings (quite an amount in 1987) which my lawyer, current Meru Senator and wannabe Governor Kiriatu Murungi pocketed illegally, I fled Kenya in September 1987 and immediately applied for protection with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees which immediately granted me asylum in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. But because Moi and his SB goons wanted to do for Kenyan exiles what they had in 2004 to Ochuka, Oteyo and his airforce colleagues-that is kidnap us back to Kenya, we (meaning people like the late Kaara Macharia a brother of Ngotho Kariuki and husband to renowned activist Wahu Kaara, the late Githirwa Muhoro, the now Canadian based Maurice Justice Adongo Ogony (the same Jukwaa analyst of note) and myself, Onyango Oloo, wrote a letter to the UN Human Rights office all the way in Geneva, Switzerland exposing these Moi-KANU fascist plans and asking for a third country for protection. The Federal government of Canada was among two countries which responded to our plea for help. Through their offices in Tanzania they interviewed some of us (the Mwakenya and KPF transplants demanded to be airlifted to Cuba or Libya for guerrilla training to come back and fight it out with Moi believe it or not!) And that is how, after almost a year of interviews during which course we were part of a Canadian National Film Board (with Adongo playing a leading part, the rest of us discarded on the editing floor) documentary called Who Gets In? in which the only footage which made the final cut was Adongo’s, on November 17, 1988, three badly dressed Kitenge clad refugees called Muhoro, Oloo and Adongo boarded an airplane for the very first time in our young lives on a KLM flight headed for Schipool, Netherlands and after an almost thirteen hours wait transferred to an Air Canada flight for Lester B. Pearson International Airport where almost an hour after midnight a racist White Canadian immigration officer called Mr. Scott welcomed us not with the clothes we were expecting for the second hand mitumba stuff we had left with other exiles in Dar es Salaam but with the bigoted comments about how we Africans would soon learn how cold Canadian winters were before issuing us with our brand new permanent residence documents identifying us as “New Workers” to be exploited and marginalized by the North American monopoly capitalist economy.


I continue in the next section.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Nine:

I stayed in Canada from November 1988 to the end of October 2005 as a landed immigrant who did not follow other refugees and permanent residents in later on applying for Canadian citizenship. Under the then existing regulations, I qualified in 1991. But I guess through a mixture of misplaced “patriotic pride” and some gross naivety about the realities of international travel barriers, I opted to remain a Kenyan citizen even though I first traveled to Canada on Tanzanian papers.

I first found how naïve I was some time in 1994 when some visiting MPs including the late George Anyona and the late George Kapten met with Kenyans somewhere in the University of Toronto where we raised our concerns of how we had been denied passports even though we wanted to travel back home.

Anyona and Kapten both promised to raise the issue in parliament when they got back.

To their credit, they both did.

Well, the second time I was confronted by the difficulties of traveling on a Kenyan document was in August 1994.

You see, I was part of the lobbyists fighting for awareness, knowledge and mobilization among Africans concerning HIV/AIDS in Ontario. In 1989 I was among a small bunch led by a formerly Kenyan-based woman Ugandan physician, my fellow Kenyan exiles Adongo Ogony and Karanja Nganga, the late Rwandese RPF leader Claude Dusaidi, the South African PAC activist Vuyusiswa and the Nigerian Peter who I forget his surname who started the first continental African immigrant organization dealing with HIV/AIDS in Canada which we called AUCA (Africans United to Control AIDS) before giving rise to a successor, also in Toronto called Africans in Partnership Against AIDS with both organizations receiving a modicum of municipal, provincial and federal funding support. In July 1994 our organization got an official invitation to attend an international conference on HIV/AIDS slated for Yokohoma, Japan . Since I was the Project Coordinator, I was one of two people who received a letter of invitation. Since I did not have a Kenyan passport, I promptly contacted the Kenyan High Commission which I believe was located in 415 Laurier Street East in the capital city of Canada, Ottawa. Times had changed since November 1989 when we, Kenyan exiles in Canada stormed the embassy placards in hand, and protected by the RCMP (the federal cops) in peaceful protest against the fascist and corrupt Moi-KANU dictatorship[/b] where I still recall the then ambassador Peter Nyamwyeya having the audacity to come out to photograph the demo for his masters in Nairobi. What he did not know was that one of us-Adongo Ogony was similarly armed with a powerful camera and he in turn took photographs of Nyamweya and his High Commission colleagues. The political situation had changed entirely in 1994 with the staff being more professional. When I contacted the embassy, they actually invited me to their office. At which point after interviewing me and reviewing my intelligence files they gave me a one way travel document to Kenya with the exhortation that I had to give it up immediately on arrival at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi and then formally apply for a Kenyan passport that would allow me to step in Japan for a conference scheduled for August the same year. To cut a long story short, my former lawyer Kiraitu Murungi and the future Chief Justice and long time colleague Dr. Willy Mutunga signed my application. The two late MPs called George-Anyona and Kapten had already raised the matter of Kenyans stuck in Canada without passports in parliament and there is a story that I have been unable to confirm to this day that at that time the then Attorney General Amos Wako had a clande lover-mistress who happened to have been a colleague of mine at the University and on the night Wako wanted to take her clothes for some love making my former classmate pleaded my case about lacking a passport. Astounded, the AG immediately contacted the Chief Immigration Officer, the late Francis Kwinga. That is how it came to pass that three weeks later I got a communication from Nyayo House inviting me to Kwinga’s office on August 18, 1994. The Japanese conference was long gone so I could only travel back to Canada. Once in Kwinga’s office after listening to a long lecture as to why I did not sneak back the way I had fled to Tanzania through a panya route, he opened one of his desk drawers and handed me a passport a few hours before I was scheduled to fly out of the country with the eerie warning that the passport belonged to the Kenyan government and all he needed to do was to make a simple phone call to JKIA to have the document revoked. Fortunately that did not happen. I safely boarded the Air India plane without incident. It is only after I got back to Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) that my travel saga begun. On producing my brandly issued Kenyan passport along with my weather beaten Canadian permanent residence document, the Indian airport authorities shook their heads in that familiar way and said, “Mr.David Oloo, we think you are trying to get into Canada illegally.” When I pointed them to my Air India ticket complete with an exit stamp marked right there in Mumbai they insisted that something was still not right with my papers. “Mr. Oloo,your name sounds West African. We have reason to believe you are actually a Nigerian. Only a crook from that country will bring here a passport from Kenya issued today and old Canadian papers from 1989. I am afraid we have no option but to get in touch with Kenya to send you back to Nairobi”. I was simply shocked at their bizarre behavior. After pleading with them to contact to get in touch with Canada for verification that I lived there as a bona fide immigrant, they finally relented to get in to get in touch with David Dix the Mumbai-based Consul General, pointing out that the Canadian High Commission was in far off New Delhi. For the moment I would be held in the transit lounge of Mumbai Airport until my matter was resolved. That is how I ended up on a steady diet of dhal for the next four days. Fortunately Mr, Dix came and after calling Toronto verified that I was both legally resident and employed in Canada allowing me to make the much delayed flight back to Pearson International Airport. .
This tale continues in the next part.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Ten:

First Ideological Stirrings

I first got involved with Marxism by viciously attacking the concept in a scathing piece only three weeks after I joined the Faculty of Arts at the University of Nairobi as a student of history, economics and literature partly inspired by a cynical piece dismissing the concept as “foreign ideology” not relevant to Africa. The author of the article happened to be Prof. Bethwell Alan Ogot, a first cousin to my own father Richard Achwal Oloo, sharing the same grandfather, Agina K’Opiche. Prof. Ogot also happened to be one of the people who lectured me in History at the campus.

I gave a particularly amateurish denunciation from a rather disjointed high school rendition of Pan Africanism. Feeling rather proud of myself I tore off the two page diatribe from my lined fullscap writing pad and rushed downstairs from my fifth floor cubicle that I shared with another first year student taking commerce named Henry Lagat. I made my way past the University Student Centre next to Tom Mboya Hall past the adjoining halls of residence down to the tunnel channel leading to the Central Catering Unit on the side.

Since I had noticed other articles pinned to the wall, I decided that this was a nice place to seek the attention of the wider community of students. Soon, I figured, I would be a major talking point with my brave display against such a sinister monster which had invaded our good place of learning.

The deed done, I proudly went on to feed myself on what was supposed to be chicken but students assumed were really flamingos because of their rather large size. I believe that day they were serving very hard chapattis.
I never got a single response to my incendiary expose of Communism.

Instead one day as I was going back to my room I ran into a brownish, shortish second year student speaking flawless Kiswahili and who lived on the first floor as opposed to my uptop fifth floor dwellings. He said hello and since I grew up in Mombasa I was happy to respond to him in equally flawless Kiswahili. He told me his name was Mwandawiro Mghanga and he was taking Kiswahili. I introduced myself as David Onyango Oloo.

He smiled with undisguised sarcasm as he remarked, so you are the one who posted that “idiotic, ignorant trash attacking Marxism with your REAL name?”

I was rather taken aback as to what I felt was his rudeness.

He went on to state that he was a convinced Communist. He further informed me that he would soon be running as a Faculty of Arts representative in the first ever elections of the reconstituted student body now known as Students Organization of Nairobi University having being revived from Nairobi University Student Organization(NUSO) after being banned by the Moi regime after campus riots the previous year.

Mwandawiro is a very nice and friendly guy and a spontaneous friendship soon ensued.

He spent the next few weeks introducing me to Marxism away from the garbage I had been fed in high school. He gave me a slim volume to read. It turned out to be the Communist Manifesto and when I took it back to my room I stayed past midnight drinking the words of [b Frederich Engels[/b] and Karl Marx written in the 1840s when the revolutionary collborators were still fairly young.

He was later to thrust into my eager hands a book my Form Six history teacher Mr. Meghji (who I suspect was a closeted socialist) from Aga Khan Kenya in Mombasa had fascinated me over. This was the famous Das Kapital, the first volume of Karl Marx’s treatise. To be quite honest I was rather unimpressed with the work. From what Mr. Meghji-the Zanzibar born South Asian to Kenya from Tanzania who had moved after the Afro-Shirazi racist takeover- I expected Das Kapital to be chock full of pronunciamentos urging the exploited proletariat to immediately rise up in anger to overthrow the hated bourgeois blood suckers exploiting them to prop up the hated capitalist system.

Instead, what I came across was a rather dry economics textbook written in 19th Century English talking about difficult to understand concepts like Surplus Value, Dialectics, Historical Materialism, Synthesis and Negation of the Negation.
I promptly put the volume aside.

At the time the University of Nairobi- especially the Faculty of Arts where I studied, was full of interesting stuff as well as STAFF. Education Theatre Two where I took my Literature and History lectures had lecturers like Prof. Micere Mugo who introduced us to C.L.R. James’ classic the Black Jacobins about Touisant L’Overture’s Haitian Slave Rebellion and Aime Cesaire’s evocative, poetic Afrocentric work Return to My Native Land. We were always fascinated by the lectures featuring progressives like Willy Mutunga, Shadrack Gutto, Micere Mugo, Katama Mkangi and Ooko Ombaka.

It was Mwandawiro Mghanga who introduced me to the rather subversive cyclostyled pamphlet Pambana-Organ of the December Twelve Movement" talking about how Kenya was not free and how the December 12, 1963 was merely a neo-colonial con trick which changed British orthodox colonialism for American led neo-colonialism where major imperialist powers like the United States, Japan, Germany, France and other Western powers who now together with Great Britain ruled Kenya jointly with their stooges like Kenyatta, Moi, Njonjo, Kibaki and other sellouts who had been homeguards when the Mau Mau Freedom Fighters were sacrificing life and limb to liberate the Wananchi.

This narrative was a confirmation of what had been obvious to me as a Form Six student in Mombasa.

Mwandawiro did not attempt to recruit me into the underground where he was virtually active telling by his familiarity with DTM and underground comrades that he introduced me such as the late Kariuki Gathitu.

The other event which heightened my political consciousness was Ngugi’s Maitu Njugira. The great Kenyan writer had not been offered his job back after his stint in detention. His supporters and students like Wanjiku Kabira and Makini found an innovative way of sneaking his work disguised as “rehearsal” at the nearby Kenya National Theatre. This were actually full length renditions featuring workers and peasants from Kamirithu and other parts of his native Limuru.

The piece shall be continued tomorrow since the owner of this Sagana cyber café has just informed me that she is closing.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Eleven:

The August One 1982 Coup Attempt

The biggest PR agents for Pambana and DTM turned out to be former dictator Daniel arap Moi and ageing journalist Hilary Ng’weno of the Weekly Review in their bid to discredit the Kenyan Left. Every time the hard working comrades of the underground managed to sneak some pamphlets somewhere in Nairobi or Mombasa it was none other than the President who announced at one of his public meetings that now Pambana was being written and printed in Malindi even as the Weekly Review melodramatically related that a group of “shadow, bearded academics” were continuing with their nefarious conspiracy of “spreading their unworkable Marxist conspiracies.”

This was the precursor of a crackdown in June 1982 on (to the surprise who thought that the Headquarters of the Communist Plot was at the downtown campus of Nairobi University) of largely Kenyatta University lecturers like Maina wa Kinyatti, Alamin Mazrui, Edward Oyugi and Willy Mutunga from the Law Faculty of Nairobi University. They were all either detained outright without trial or hauled to court in the case of Kinyatti and Mutunga on trumped up charges of sedition.

At that time, Mwandawiro and his radical colleagues who had taken control of SONU like Adongo Ogony, Oduor Ong’wen and to a lesser extent Paddy Onyango and Onyango C.A. had pushed the university student body to act like the unofficial opposition, especially after the then KANU Vice President led the draconian move to make Kenya a de jure one party state-although Kenya had operated as a one party dictatorship since the banning of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga’s KPU way back in 1969.

I remember how surprised on morning Sunday, August 1, 1982 by the sudden burst of gun fire in the middle of the halls of residence of Nairobi University. Like most students we assumed that we under attack by a bunch of armed criminals. When we went to the top of our buildings we were reassured by a group of young men almost our age. The only thing was that they were dressed in blue military uniform which identified them as belonging to the Kenya Airforce. Some of us knew some of them as former school mates from high school. They were quite friendly and even spoke some of our radical language like “Pambana!!” and “Power!!” one of them who appears like one of their leaders is reassuring us that the bad days are gone because they have done something to end dictatorship, tribalism, corruption and bad governance.

I will continue the tale tomorrow. I have to go now.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Twelve:

The older students, especially the third year political science guys were not as excited as we first years.

Some of them pointed out as a matter of fact that this was a coup d'état and cited how the first thing the military all over Africa and Latin America does when they shoot to power is to suspend the constitution and suspend all political activities.

But I still remember one coffee drunk student shouting somewhat incoherently:

“We are glad that Moi and his illiterate thugs have been shown the door! We now want a government of intellectuals!!”

Obviously unaware that most of the gun-toting Air Force mutineers were drunk like skunks.

We were unaware of the chaos, mayhem and confusion that would follow hours later with the counter-coup reprisals of the loyal Army units striving to bring Moi back to State House.

Soon, yet another bunch of over-excited students urged us to march downtown into the city to show our “ solidarity” at the breaking news of the Air Force act of “liberating Kenya at last”.

I was caught in the thread and throng of the bunch trooping proudly down University Way onwards to Koinange Street and turning sharply left on Kenyatta Avenue towards the Stanley Hotel on the corner of Kimathi Street. I witnessed some hooligan-students break into one of the shops selling suits, ties and other clothes- I believe one of these establishments happened to be the famous Sir Henry’s and without shame loot a brand new shirt that they put on immediately- proud of their new possession. Another student thug, in a perplexing display of obviously suppressed rage against “Wahindi” (innocent Kenyans of South Asian descent) pounced on a frightened driver securely locked up in his saloon car and mouthing some insult, punched the poor guy in his mouth without warning. I remember the calm voice of our Born Again SONU Chair Titus Adungosi who was with us pleading “Comrades, we are not criminals. Let us please behave. No looting or violence otherwise no one can tell us apart from the glue sniffing street urchins”.

He was largely ignored as the horde moved towards the Hilton.

On reaching Corner House, the rowdy university students turned right on Mama Ngina Street. Some of the self-appointed rabble rousing gang leaders said we should go towards City Hall. We did not turn towards KENCOM but made our way leftwards towards Intercontinental, turning when we reached Parliament Road. From there we made our way towards Harambee Avenue, going past the Attorney General’s Chamber and the Office of the President towards the Kenyatta International Conference Centre. As moths we were drawn to Vigilance House, the Police Headquarters on the same Harambee Avenue. There we noticed a bunch of armed and uniformed red beretted GSU guys lying on the ground facing us on the streets with their rifles cocked directly at us. But trust our youthful, naïve braggadocio!

Three students shouted at the cops, “What are you waiting for? Shoot us! We are not afraid of you!”

To the GSU’s credit, an older, saner senior officer was commanding his boys. He just smiled back and said,

“You are my children please stop your nonsense and go back to school”.

Saved from a massacre by a good cop, some of the sober students urged us to move on to Moi Avenue and go back to University.

This saga is continued…

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Thirteen:

One reaching the University, it was not long before we realized that things had changed dramatically with the loyal Army units moving against those who were now dubbed “rebels” and “mutineers”. Rather reluctantly and dispirited, the formerly eager fist pumping undergraduates ambled over to the deserted Central Catering Unit as a few sought their halls of residence.

I remember heading back to my Hall Mboya right up to room 513 on the fifth floor and found everybody huddled in groups of five or six whispering in scared whispers. There much speculation about what an enraged Moi would order hi blood thirsty and gun happy to do to us. He did NOT hide his hatred for us “watoto wa university” with our reputation for stoning motorists and rioting frequently.

“We are all going to bayoneted to death with our sister comrades raped by the GSU before our eyes” one second year who lived down the corridor on my floor fretted.

The remainder of students plotted various survival tactics.

Some plotted to immediately take safety beneath their tiny cots in their micro cubicles.

Others plotted to escape campus and join their relatives in the housing estates.

The student who had earlier warned about the danger of military takeovers- I recognized him as a member of my hall piped in.

“You see we third years saw all of this coming. Now wait for the state to launch a brutal bloody massacre in which the Wananchi will be crushed like flies.”

There were a couple of students who put on a brave face, coming up with instant urban legends of the brave Air Force comrades fighting “ Mundu Khu Mundu” and taking down some “enemy soldiers” in the streets.”.

Just then, a friend of mine who lived in one of the middle class estates announced that he was taking for home because he had borrowed his elder brother’s car and brought it to campus on Friday.

I immediately latched on to him.


“ Please Kamau, can I come with you? My uncle, my mom’s older brother lives on the street next to your house in Lavington.”

He looked at the picture of utter fright and desperation written all over my face and said:

“OK David, you can come along. Nobody else- my brother owns a VW Beetle and there is not enough room in the car.”

As soon as I got to my late uncle Walter Ombiro Wandolo’s place I found him pacing up and down his sitting room speaking to himself, startled by my sudden ring of the door bell. He immediately gave me a hug.

“David my son I am glad to see you. We thought the worst had happened. I am happy that you made it safely home.”

He then ordered me to take a quick hot shower and get ready to eat supper.


“We have already eaten. Now relax while I make a few phone calls” He said reaching out for his black land line rotary phone that he always kept padlocked.

I had him talk to his brother in law-husband to my mother’s elder sister who lived in Landi Mawe and worked at the Railway head office.
[

“I have rescued Jennifer’s first born. He is here in the house with me. He has to go to his home in Mombasa since the government has closed the university and ordered the students to report to their chiefs.”


"Bring him to Landi Mawe. I can organize a third class train ticket for tomorrow evening” was the reply at the other end of the phone.

So briefly, that is how I made my way from the university at around seven o’clock.

I was to later to hear horror tales how the vicious cops raided the university, raped female students, beat up and tortured their male colleagues and thoroughly humiliated and terrified students at the University of Nairobi main campus.

Early the next morning, my uncle, an extremely brave man decided to risk the danger and drive me back to campus to pick up my things. On arrival, the sullen and austere cops allowed us back into my living quarters where we dragged my books, box files and other papers piled up my in a brown carton box and my my clothes in a newish suit case down the five stairs to my uncle’s waiting car.

The rather long, eventful tale of how I made it to the Railway Station and later clambered on the Mombasa bound train chock full of my fellow university students and how I was arrested on the train past Mtito Andei and ordered into the Railway Voi Police Station after midnight and the next day transferred back to Nairbi under massive police excort and how I was later swung to Industrial Area Remand Home and charged with sedition and the near riot I almost caused in Remand on Monday, November First on my way to sentencing at the Nairobi Law Courts in the Kenyan capital's downtown and how the sixty or so students that I left in Block D later faced fire- including the likes of Philip Murgor who was a recent Presidential canditate, the MP Richard Momoima Onyonka, the late Mwakdua Mwachofi, the now Toronto-based Adongo Ogony, Paddy Onyango,the one time Executive Director of 4 C’s, the Mean Machine rugby stars Vitisia and Sagala and Kibisu Kabetesi, then a dread locked thespian and now a grey haired advisor to NASA principal Musalia Mudavadi and other episodes of how I was jailed and found UASU’s Muga K’Olale, Maina wa Kinyatti as well Peter Nicholas Oginga Ogego,the one time Kenyan High Commissioner to the United States [/b]and the late Titus Adungosi eating maharagwe and ugali at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison and how I sued the Kenya government for wrongful imprisonment because they had deproved of remission which and how the Court of Appeal ordered me releases in May 1987 and paid me 100,000 shillings which my lawyer and current Meru Senator Kiraitu Murungi ate greedily, san shame,without giving me a single penny-all that is part of my rather lengthy book called Entrenching the Kenyan Neo-Colonial Police State which is coming out soon.

Wait to read it.

Let me now go back to the long promised exposition of Bourgeois Coalition Power Electoral games and the Marxist-Leninist concept of the United Front.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Fourteen:

Today, May the First 2017 is the first year since 1959 that Cuba and the rest of the progressive world have celebrated the biggest international celebration of workers since the demise of the legendary revolutionary Fidel Castro.



In Kenya, thanks to the anti-communist stranglehold on the country's trade union movement since the early 1960s we have called this day following our country's imperialist masters "Labour Day" to hide the working class and Marxist origins of May 1st. When I was in North America it was similarly referred to officially as such-except the defiant Marxist, Maoist and Trotskyist groups who insisted on celebrating the day as it was originally called ever since it was so named in the late 19th century.



Today, instead of a pivotal election just approximately three months away, the Atwolis and other COTU leaders have limited their "demands" to a mere 22% wage increase as if that is the full extent of what Kenyan workers want in the light of the long history of imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism in this tortured country.

As we speak, NASA's much anticipated "big news" is now in place with Thursday's announcement that ODM leader Raila Odinga, Wiper supremo Kalonzo Musyoka will head the opposition ticket to face off against the arrogant, self-satisfied duo of Jubilee's Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto who have been bragging about a 70% victory come August 8th.

Amani's Musalia Mudavadi is the Prime Minister designate and Moses Wetangula and Isaac Ruto, the two other principals have been promised in writing that they will be made Deputy Premiers after an expected NASA led post-election referendum which will bring back politicians as opposed to technocrats to serve in the cabinet.

My major beef with NASA's arrangement comes from what even some of my good friends on the Left cite as my "rather doctrinaire approach" when it comes to reading Marxism-Leninism ideologically.

Quite frankly, I was long ago convinced of the United Front strategy championed and practiced by Communists over the decades all over the world starting from Europe, through Latin America, Asia and yes, Africa over the past seven decades.

Since I am NOT a Christian, Muslim,Hindu, Buddhist juju, sangoma, obeah or uchawi pracitioner, these ideological convictions are not convictions I imbibed through blind religious faith or superstition, but rather, a thirty-year close study in the theory and praxis of the ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin and their ideological followers like Ho Chi Minh, Le Duan, Amilcar Cabral, Joe Slovo, Angela Davis, Blade Nzimande, Jeremy Cronin to name but a few.

It was not just at the University of Nairobi and Kamiti Maximum that I imbibed these truths but my sojourns and interactions with revolutionaries from Canada, Greece, Iran, Colombia, Northern Ireland,India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Kenya, Burkina Faso, Sudan,Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, the Congo, Nigeria and Ghana over the years.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Fifteen:

Nearly eleven years ago, in November 2006, I led a largely Kenyan delegation (including the late Njuguna Mutahi and the equally late thespian Bantu Mwaura, the energetic poet-activist Ndungi Githuku, the famous television "Wilbroda" actor Jacquiline Ominde, the late human rights lawyer Ng'anga Thiong'o, the Kenya National Theatres mainstay Chris, the talented drama director Mueni) the Indian Social Forum unfolding at Jawarahal Nehru University in New Delhi, India. in my capacity as National Coordinator and titular head of the Kenya Social Forum which was hosting the Nairobi-based Secretariat of the East African Organizing Committee of the ill-fated January 2007 tragi-comic NGO infused rendition of the WSF held more like a tourist Maasai Market than a serious activist gathering at Kasarani Stadium on the outskirts of Nairobi overlooking Mathare, Baba Dogo, Huruma, Korogocho, Kariobangi working-class and lumpen-proletarian neighbourhoods of the Kenyan capital.

In India I met cross- dressers, transvestites, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, Dalit activists as well as a very broad cross-section of the sub-continents Left forces including trade-unionists, feminists, environmentalists, youth organizers and a variety of Leftists from unrepentant Trotskyists, die-hard Maoists, Soviet supporting CPI members to the people who impressed me the most, card carrying practitioners of the most revolutionary outfit in that country, the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The CPI(Marxist) were not just purveyors of slogans: they had participated in the formation of the first governments in the entire world elected to the power in bourgeois polls-the Kerala provincial governments in 1957, 1967 and later West Bengal in 1977 where they ruled uninterruptedly for a whole 30 years!

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Sixteen:

It is at the Communist Party of India (Marxist) stand at the India Social Forum at the Jawarahal Nehru University on November 12, 2006 that I purchased a hard copy of the book by Dr. M.V.S. Koteswara Rao, then Assistant Professor in Political Science Department,Nagarjunana University in Guntur. He received his Ph. D for his work, Communist Parties and United Front Experience in Kerala and West Bengal published in March 2003 by Prajakasti Book House in Hyderbad, A.P. India.

You can get your very own copy by writing to the publisher at Prajakastasti Book House,H. No. 1-1 1987 1 /2, Viveknagar,Chikkadpally, Hyedarabad-20. Or simply email at [e-mail].

The book, which runs into 317 pages including a Select Bibliography from page 282 consists of eight chapters followed by a section captioned Conclusions.

The book is my constant companion, traveling with me on my return journey through the Emirates plane ride from New Delhi to Nairobi, staying patiently in my Nairobi home library and coming along when I moved to Mombasa in November 2016 and is currently part of my bedside reading here in Kirinyaga County in early May 2017 along with all four volumes of the Final Report of the TJRC plus the explosive dissent of the three international commissioners who did not go along with the censorship of their Kenyan counterparts who were pressured by Uhuru Kenyatta’s State House officials to suppress Jomo Kenyatta’s shameful land grabbing in Diani, Taita Taveta and other parts of the Coast.

The author on page 62 says this about Coalition Politics:

Coalition, is a nom-Marxist approach to gain control over the government. It is a complex political manoevre to stick to or gain power.

He then goes on into an extensive exposition conveying the concepts of three person theory, game theory,minimum resource theory, and a lengthy explanation of coalition politics in France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Hollamd amd India herself.

Dr. Koteswara reveals that even though Marxism was introduced in India much later than the European countries, the Communists were active in the nationalist anti-imperialist struggle for independence which was achieved through Gandhi's and Nehru's leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1947.

In Chapter Four the author says that in the southern Indian state of Kerala's Assembly Elections of 1957 the still undivided Communist Party of India got 60 seats out of the 100 they were seeking. It had comfortably defeated the dominated Indian National Congress which got 43 seats. The CPI then formed a government in Kerala State on the 5th of April 1957 led by Chief Minister E.M.S. Nampodinand. However in a shameless, anti-communist counter move, the Central Indian regime under Jawarahal Nehru and his bunch of national capitalists, comprados, landlords and other feudal reactionary elements at the help of the Indian National Comgress dismissed the Kerala Communist State government on 31 July 1959 using a spurious reading of Article 356 of the Indian Constitution enabling the Indian National Congress and its conservative partners to push through a new backward regime in February 1960.

I am not done with this tale yet...

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Seventeen

Chapter Five describes Indian politics in Kerala between 1960 and the elections of 1965 with fission between the Indian National Congress and the split as well within the Communist Party which led to the emergence of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from the mother, CPI. The CPI (Marxist), because of their then pro-Chinese stance at a time when there was simmering ideological rivalry between Moscow and Beijing coupled with the border conflict between India and China, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was seen as a "traitor" by the nationalists who unfortunately included the old CPI which had strong affiliations with the Soviet Union.

In the subsequent Kerala legislative elections of 1967, the Communist Party of India(Marxist) got elected to 52 of the 59 they were competing against while their old colleagues in the CPI gathered only 19 seats. But the Indian National Congress was humiliated garnering only 9 of the 133 seats they were seeking. The two Communist Parties in Kerala were part of the United Front which included parties like SSP, RSP, as well as other United Front supported candidates who vied as independents. The United Front in total garnered a total of 117 seats of the 133 they were seeking. Other reactionary and conservative outfits outside the United Front included the Indian National Congress, the Kerala Congress, Jana Singh, PSP, Swananatra,Samasha Kerala, PSP, Muslim League, RPI and some backward independents who got a total of of 133 seat out of a total of 423 seats these parties contested.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Eighteen:

Dr. Koteswara Rao sums up the 1967 elections in two paragraphs on page 173 of his book:

The United Front registered a remarkable victory With 54.44% of the popular vote, it won 107 seats (87.96 %). The Communist Party of India (Marxist) share of the vote increased from 19.55 % in 1965 to 23.22 in 1967; the CPI share from 8.02 % to 8.52% and the RSP from 1.30 %. to 2.72%. And these figures do not include the independents supported by the United Front on both 1965 and 1967.

After exactly ten years after 1957, the Communists in Kerala got the opportunity to form the state government. In 1957, they formed a government of their own. In 1967 they formed in alliance with five more parties.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Nineteen:

I am not going to delve into Chapter Six or Seven of Communist Parties and the United Front Experience in Kerala and West Bengal but focus some of my attention to the last part of Chapter Eight which deals with the second part of the experience in West Bengal.

To summarize, the old CPI did not go into a United Front alliance in 1977 with the colleagues in the Communist Party of India (Marxist) but were part of what was called the Left Front which comprised the CPI (Marxist),FB, RSP, RCPI, FB(M) BBC, GL, SUC, WPI, MUL Jarkhand and independents.

In the 1977 elections, in West Bengal the Communist Party of India (Marxist) got 178 of the 229 seats they contested translating to 33.5 % of the votes. Whole the Indian National Congress got a paltry 20 of the 293 parliamentary seats they had fought for and the extreme;y reactionary Janata party got 29 of the 289 places they wanted.

According to the author,

The elections of 1977 gave am absolute majority to the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Still, the CPI (Marxist) extended all its Left Front partners up to join the new West Bengal state government thus extending the electoral front to government formation. The Left Front government was formed with the legendary leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Jyoti Basu as the Chief Minister.
[/i]

The good ideological point for Kenyans reading this is the Communist Party of India (Marxist) went on, GET THIS, to rule West Bengal WITHOUT INTERRUPTION FOR THE NEXT THIRTY YEARS!

Now let us turn our attention closer home:

The experience of the South African Communist Party and its partners in COSATU and the ANC down south of this very continent we inhabit.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part 20:

I will shamelessly, reproduce, word for word, an article from the Communist Party of India(M) entitled, Communist Party of India (M) Thirty Years of the Left Front Government in West Bengal:

The Left Front Government in West Bengal completed thirty years in office on 21 June 2007. The uninterrupted existence of a Left Front government in a State for thirty years is a remarkable achievement. This would not have been possible without the massive and unwavering support of the working people of West Bengal for the programmeand policies of the Left Front Government. In the course of this long tenure, the Left Front government has set a shining example of pro-people governance by implementing land reforms and establishing a decentralised model of local self- government through a three-tier Panchayati Raj,which has empowered millions of rural poor and irreversibly changed their lives for the better. Its record in defending secularism securing democratic rights and upholding probity in public life is also unparalleled. The Left Front Government in West Bengal continues to be an inspiration and source of strength for progressive and democratic forces across the country.

Historical Outline

The formation of the Left Front Government in West Bengal was a culmination of decades of struggles by various sections of the people — workers, peasants, teachers, refugees and students — under the leadership of the Left, and its biggest component the CPI (M). Faced with the rising tide of struggles and the growing influence of the CPI(M) and the Left, the Congress regime which was formed after it undemocratically rigged the elections in 1972 resorted to a reign of semi-fascist terror in West Bengal.The CPI(M) and the mass organisations faced the brunt of this repression. 1,100 Partyworkers and close sympathisers were killed.

The Congress was severely punished by the people of the country for its authoritarian and anti-democratic actions in the general elections of 1977 and the Janata Party Government was formed at the Centre with Morarji Desai as Prime Minister. The Assembly elections in West Bengal were held shortly after the general elections in 1977. The people came out to vote in very large numbers to get rid of the reign of terror. The Left Front won by over three-fourth majority.

While assuming office in 1977, the Left Front government was aware of the limitations of a State government in implementing pro-people policies within the existing Constitutional set-up While the major responsibility of delivering services to the people was with the State Governments, financial resources were concentrated in the hands of the Centre .Keeping in mind this constraint, the Left Front government embarked upon a programme to provide immediate relief to the people and implementing alternative policies in spheres where the State government had some say . The major initiatives of the first Left Front government were to carry out thoroughgoing land reforms and establishing a vibrant Panchayati Raj. These historic initiatives broke the back of landlordism in the rural areas, empowered the poor peasantry and agricultural workers immensely and decisively changed the correlation of class forces in favour of the rural poor. Large sections of the rural poor, especially the dalits, adivasis and minorities, gravitated towards the Left and the CPI (M). This section continues to be the most stable mass base of the CPI (M) and the Left Front till date. Several other pro-people initiatives were also undertaken regarding workers’ rights and social sector development, which benefited different sections of the people:factory workers, unorganised workers, government employees, school and college teachers, students, youth, women and the refugees. Through their experience, the majority of the people of West Bengal came to recognise the Left Front government as a pro-people government, a custodian of their rights and a fighter for their cause.

Therefore, since 1977, neither did the people ever look back nor did the Left Front government.

Land Reforms, Democratic Decentralization and Agricultural Success
Land Reforms

The land reforms initiated in West Bengal had three major components: (i) effective imposition of land ceiling and vesting of ceiling surplus land (ii) redistribution of vested land among the landless cultivators and (iii) securing of tenancy rightsof sharecroppers (bargadars) through a system of universal registration of tenant cultivators (Operation Barga). As a result of this thoroughgoing land reform programme, West Bengal today has the most egalitarian land ownership pattern in the entire country. While West Bengal accounts for only around 3% of agricultural land in India, it accounted for over 21% of ceiling surplus land that has been redistributed in India till date. The total number of beneficiaries of land redistribution in West Bengal is over 28 lakhs, which is almost 50% of all beneficiaries of land redistribution in post- independence India. The security of tenancy rights provided to the sharecroppers under Operation Barga was also unprecedented in India.The total number of recorded sharecroppers had reached over 15 lakhs, which accounted for over 20% of the total agricultural households in the State. Over 11 lakh acres of land was permanently brought under the control of sharecroppers and their right to cultivate land was firmly established.

After 30 years of Left Front rule, 84% of land in West Bengal is owned by small (2.5 acres to 5 acres) and marginal farmers (less than 2.5 acres) today, while the all-India figure is only 43%. Over 12 lakh acres of ceiling surplus vested land is lying with various State governments today but not being distributed among the landless. This shows the difference in the political will of the Left Front government in West Bengal and other State governments run by bourgeois parties. Moreover, around 56% of the total beneficiaries of land redistribution in West Bengal were dalits and adivasis. Dalitsand adivasis also comprised over 41% of the registered sharecroppers. To date, over 5.35 lakh women have been given joint pattas and 1.57 lakh women given individual pattas (ownership rights over land). Muslims have also benefited significantly from the land reforms programme. Proportion of land owned by Muslims in West Bengal is the highest among all Indian States which have a significant share (over 10%) of Muslim households in total rural households.

Following the onset of the neoliberal policies in the decade of 1990s, whatever land reform measures were undertaken in most Indian States in the post-independence period were sought to be reversed. However, in West Bengal an additional 95,000 acres of land was acquired in the 1990s under the land reform legislation and 94,000 acres redistributed. These figures for the decade of the 1990s account for almost all the land acquired and over 40 per cent of the land redistributed in the entire country.

The Left Front government has continued with the land redistribution programme30,000 acres of land was distributed among landless families in 2006-07.

Panchayati Raj

Reorganisation of the system of local government was one of the most important of the institutional changes brought about by the Left Front government. In the process,West Bengal has created a history of participation of the common people through theprocess of decentralisation, which is unique in India. A system of democratic elections to local bodies at anchal, block and district level was instituted: gram panchayats atthe anchal level, panchayat samitis at the block level and zilla parishads at the district level Elections to these local bodies were held in June 1978 . The newly elected panchayats were involved with the execution of land reforms. Panchayats took the initiative in exposing benami land holdings,ensured the identification of excess land and the declaration of vested land and were also given charge of ensuring the legal rights of recipients of vested land and bargadars over land. The panchayats were also involved in .

Arrangements for the provision of institutional credit for the beneficiaries of vested land and for bargadars.After the rural development projects were devolved to panchayats for implementation, the beneficiaries of land reform were given priority in the receipt of benefits from these projects. This was possible because through the panchayat election of 1978, a new leadership was established at the helm of the rural bodies from less privileged socio-economic backgrounds. The erstwhile village elite, including landlords and moneylenders, lost their dominance over the newly elected local bodies. The new leadership after 1978 came out of the tradition of peasant upsurge and struggle for land reform of the past three decades.

West Bengal is the only State in India to have had regular elections to local bodies every five years for the past 30 years. The aim has been to provide a substantial share of fiscal resources of the state to the local bodies. West Bengal was the first state in thecountry to make a serious effort at devolving funds from the state government level to the lower tiers of administration. The panchayats have also been assigned a large and substantial range of responsibilities that were earlier seen as under the purview of the district-level bureaucracy. The panchayats perform civic duties and undertake developmental activities like construction and maintenance of hospitals, schools and libraries, promotion of agriculture, cooperatives and cottage industries, child welfare activities, etc. They play an important role in the local-level planning andimplementation of government schemes. Panchayats in West Bengal have played an important role in activities like mobilising cooperation for improving agricultural production, management of local resources, and identification of beneficiaries for housing,poverty alleviation and social security programmes. This has made the panchayats a critical institution of local governance in the West Bengal countryside.

Over time, there has been substantial representation of the rural poor and of socially deprived groups like dalits and adivasis, as well as women, in the elected bodies. Allthis has helped to change the power equations in rural society as well as encouraged the social and political empowerment of social groups that were earlier marginalized.

The proportions of dalit and adivasi panchayat representatives in all the three tiers were over 37% and 7% respectively, well over their share in population. Since 1995, one third of the seats and positions of chairpersons in the panchayati raj institutions have been reserved for women. It is,however,noteworthy that the actualrepresentation of women exceeds one third as a number of women candidates also win in the general constituencies. Over 35% of the gram panchayat members are women. Also, 7 out of 17 zilla parishads have a woman sabhadhipati and 155 out of 351 panchayat samities have a woman sabhapati. In the late 1990s, the Panchayat Raj system in West Bengal was further strengthened by introducing gram sansads. These are the general councils of voters in every ward, that are required to meet twice a year with a minimum quorum of 10 per cent of voters to discuss the work done by the panchayats and utilisation of funds.

Successes in Agriculture

This “walking on two legs” strategy of the Left Front government; implementing land reforms and the establishment of an effective panchayati raj in West Bengal; has not only led to the political empowerment of the rural poor but has also brought about a rejuvenation of agriculture in the State. Since the Left Front came into office in 1977, foodgrains production in West Bengal has grown at the rate of 6 per cent per annum, which is the highest among seventeen most populous States of India. From a food deficit State witnessing famines and food riots during the Congress rule, West Bengal has emerged as a leading food producer in the country under the Left Front rule. West Bengal has emerged as the topmost producer of rice, vegetables and fish among all Indian States. Cropping intensity in West Bengal has increased from about 136 per cent in 1980-81 to about 180 per cent in 2000-01, second highest in the country. This has been achieved through significant expansion of irrigated land area through small and minor irrigation projects. In the backdrop of the neoliberal policies being adopted by the Centre since early 1990s, agricultural growth has slowed down across the country. While agriculture grew at less than 2% in India during the Tenth Plan period (2002-2007), the growth rate of agriculture in West Bengal has been over 3.5%. The Left Front Government has not only been successful in insulating the agrarian economy of West Bengal from the acute agrarian distress currently being witnessedacross the country, agricultural production continues to rise in West Bengal even today.

Industrialization: An Imperative

For most parts of its lengthy tenure, the Left Front government has had to encounter hostile governments at the Centre. There was a conscious effort on the part of successive Central governments, particularly those run by the Congress, to discourage industrialization in West Bengal since it was a Left ruled State. This was done both through a denial of public sector investment as well as licenses for setting up private industries. During Indira Gandhi’s tenure as the Prime minister in the early 1980s, a proposal for setting up an electronics complex in Salt Lake near Kolkata was shot down by the Central government on security grounds, because West Bengal was a border State! Permission for the Haldia Petrochemical project was withheld by the Central government for 11 long years. Moreover, the freight equalization policy for coal and iron ore robbed West Bengal, along with the other states in the Eastern region of India, of its locational advantage of being the most mineral rich region of the country.

Following these discriminatory policies pursued by the Centre and the vitriolic anti-Communist propaganda carried out by the bourgeois media, which led to some degree of capital flight, West Bengal experienced industrial stagnation during the decade of the 1980s. Traditional industries like tea, jute and engineering were on a decline. This aggravated the unemployment situation in the State, especially in the urban areas, besides causing hardships for the workers in the sick industries. The need was felt to make special efforts to reverse the trend towards industrial stagnation and re-industrialize West Bengal.

Meanwhile, a big policy shift had come at the national level when the Narasimha Rao led Congress Government adopted the “New Economic Policies” in 1991 following the dictates of the IMF and the World Bank. The neoliberal “economic reforms” initiated by the Central government abandoned the earlier emphasis on public sector investment, devised a strategy of liberalizing and deregulating the economy and laid emphasis on private capital, both domestic and foreign, as the main driver of economic growth. On the one hand these policy changes were clearly in the rightwing direction, which was opposed by the CPI (M) and the Left. On the other hand, it also meant an end to the discriminatory policy regime of the Central government, based upon licensing and freight equalization policy, which had caused enormous harm to the economic interests of West Bengal. It was in this backdrop that the he Left Front government had to devise its industrialization strategy. In September 1994, Comrade Jyoti Basu announced the Industrial Policy of the Left Front government in the changed scenario, which stated: “we are all for new technology and investment in selective spheres where they help our economy and which are of mutual interest. The goal of self-reliance, however, is as needed today as earlier. We have the state sector, the private sector and also the joint sector. All these have a role to play”. Following the adoption of the Industrial Policy, the industrial scenario in the state witnessed a turnaround,with important projects like Haldia Petrochemicals and Bakreshwar Thermal Power plants finally being set up.

This process of industrialization received further impetus after the Left Front government registered its sixth consecutive victory with Comrade Buddhadeb Bhattacharya as Chief Minister in 2001 and subsequently its seventh victory in 2006, with an enhanced majority. During the period from 1991 to 2006 a total number of 1,391 industrial units have been set up in West Bengal with a realized investment of Rs.32,338.95 crore and creating direct organized employment for 2.03 lakh persons.

The number of new industrial proposals in West Bengal is increasing progressively, especially in sectors like Iron and Steel, Chemical and Petrochemicals, Food Processing and Information Technology. Since the thrust of the West Bengal government’s industrial strategy is on employment generation, the focus is not limited to big industries alone. The state government has consciously provided policy support to small and medium enterprises, because of which the number of working small scale industries in West Bengal has increased from 19.1 lakhs in 1994-95 to 27.7 lakhs in2000-01, with employment in small scale industries during this period increasing from 43.8 lakhs to 58.7 lakh. West Bengal now ranks first among all States in respect to both the number of working units and employment generation in the small-scale industrial sector.

Unlike other State governments, which succumbed to the neoliberal prescriptions of the Centre, the Left Front government has followed an independent approach towards industrialization. Rather than following the policy of indiscriminate privatization of public sector units, the Left Front government has sought to strengthen them and earnestly tried to revive sick or closed industrial units. By repeatedly placing its views before the BIFR in the interest of industry and workers, the Left Front government has been able to obtain the sanction of revival scheme in respect of 79 units. Of these, 22 units have already been revived and about 25 more units are likely to be revived. SAILhas recently decided to invest Rs. 10,000 crore in the modernisation of the IISCO factory at Burnpur, which will be one of the biggest public sector investment projects currently being undertaken in the country. The Central government had earlier decided to privatize this sick unit. It was the protracted struggle waged by the IISCO workers and the principled position adopted by the West Bengal Government, which prevented privatization and has subsequently led to the revival of IISCO. Similarly, Bengal Chemicals, which had become a sick PSU, is being revived with Central investments worth Rs 440 crore. Recently, two public sector units, Coal India Limited and Damodar Valley Corporation have come together to acquire and revive the Mining and Allied Machineries Corporation (MAMC) based in Durgapur, a prestigious PSU that was closed few years ago. Closed units like Jessop and Dunlop have also been reopened.

Some controversy has arisen recently over acquisition of agricultural land for setting up industries in West Bengal, especially in the context of the Tata Motors plant in Singur and a proposed chemical hub near Haldia. While the opportunistic gang-up of the entire opposition, from the ultra-Right to the ultra-Left led by the reactionary Trinamul Congress, has sought to pitch the debate in terms of industry versus agriculture, the Left Front government has repeatedly emphasized the need for a balanced and harmonious development of both sectors. The slogan of “agriculture is our foundation, industry our future”, put forward by the Left Front before the Assembly elections of 2006 received wide acceptance among the people.

Welfare Initiatives and Constraints
The Left Front government in West Bengal has undertaken several pro-people initiatives to ensure all-round development of the State. The Left Front government has ensured significant expansion in the spheres of public education and health. Thenumber of schools in West Bengal has seen a substantial increase in the post-1977 period, with the number of secondary and higher secondary schools registering a four fold increase, from 4600 in 1977 to over 22,500 in 2006. Accordingly, the number of students appearing for the secondary board examination has increased from a little over 2 lakhs in 1977 to over 7.5 lakhs in 2006. Around 80% of the indoor patients in West Bengal today are treated in Government hospitals. These reflect the commitment of the Left Front government towards human development. The Left Front government has also taken some important steps to provide social security to workers like introducing a provident fund scheme for unorganised sector workers for the first time in the country (nearly 7.9 lakh workers have already joined the scheme so far), providing financial assistance of Rs. 750 per month to workers of closed factories and tea gardens and providing social security to the construction workers. Another important development in the recent years from the point of view of self-employment in West Bengal is the phenomenal growth of Self-Help Groups (SHGs).The total number of SHGs in West Bengal reached 3.8 lakhs in 2005-06, involving nearly 38 lakh persons, 90% of whom are women. This has opened up new possibilities for employment generation and women’s empowerment. When the seventh Left Front government assumed office in 2006, a dedicated Ministry to provide policy support to these SHGs was created.

The Left Front government has also taken positive initiatives to uplift the Muslim minorities, who comprise over 26% of the State’s population. The West Bengal Minority Development Finance Corporation, which was formed in 1996, provides training as well as soft loans for self-employment and scholarships for meritorious students among Muslims. The reforms brought about in Madarsa education in West Bengal are also noteworthy, especially the modernisation of curriculum including introduction of vocational courses and computer training and bringing the recruitment of teachers in madrasas under the purview of the School Service Commission. It is significant that 65% of students studying in the madarsas of West Bengal are girl students and 12% of students are non-Muslims. There is no doubt that much more needs to be done as far as people’s welfare is concerned, especially for the socio-economically disadvantaged groups, as has been noted by the West Bengal Human Development Report 2004 or the Sachar CommitteeReport 2006. The Left Front government has been proactive in taking initiatives to do away with the shortcomings that continue to exist in its developmental effort. For instance, the Left Front government was the first State government to announce a sub-plan for minorities at the state level to implement the recommendations of the Sachar Committee. Several new initiatives have also been taken to improve the quality of public service in school education and public health in order to improve the human development scenario. However, the capacity of the Left Front government to deliver in the spheres of peoples’ welfare and social infrastructure have been severely constrained by the limited availability of resources. Unless the resource constraint is overcome, major welfare initiatives cannot be undertaken. While a part of the additional resources can be generated through internal resource mobilization, much depends upon the direction of economic and social policies of the Central government too. The power to take crucial economic policy decisions in India rests with the Central government and not the State governments.

Conclusion

A big achievement of the Left Front government in West Bengal is its record in safeguarding democratic rights.Notwithstanding the vicious campaigns unleashed against it from time to time by its opponents, the Left Front government continues to remain firmly committed to democratic values and principles. Its impeccable record in upholding secularism, dealing with communal elements with a firm hand and defending the rights of minorities is a welcome exception to the programmatic orpragmatic communalism practiced by the bourgeois parties and the state governments led by them. While dalits and adivasis across the country continue to be victims of caste violence, it is indeed heartening to find that West Bengal has an almost zero rate of atrocities against dalits and adivasis. Born out of the struggles against authoritarianism and State repression, it is the commitment of the Left Front government to democracy, which has won it enormous credibility in the eyes of the people of West Bengal and enabled it to complete thirty years in office.
Despite the 30 years in power in West Bengal between 1977 and 2007, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has been grappling with intermitten reverses over the years. It eventually lost power in West Bengal itself and suffered other electoral defeats in other parts of India. Therefore, in a process of critical reflection the party reconceptualized the idea of the left democratic front at its 21st Congress in 2015:

The struggle to build this front is part of our endeavour to bring about a change in the correlation of class forces, to end a situation in which the people can choose only between two bourgeois-landlord parties, and get imprisoned within the framework of the present system. By gathering all Left and democratic forces together for further advance, the Party makes a beginning to consolidate these forces which, in future, will participate in shaping the alliance for People’s Democracy under the leadership of the working class. The left and democratic Front is not to be understood as only an alliance for elections or Ministry, but a fighting alliance of the forces for immediate advance – economic and political–and for isolating the reactionary classes that hold the economy in their grip.

These critical internal reflections apparently paid some dividends because the CPI(M) was recently in 2016 swept to power in another Indian state, Kerala, as part of a popular Left dominated front in which both Communist Parties in India participated.

[Onyango Oloo]

Part Twenty One:


Closer Home: The United Front Experience Down South

Some idle day dreamers have been peddling the myth that Communism is allegedly a “foreign concept” alien to Africa.

This is a grave insult to the plethora of Marxist-Leninists who have played a significant role in the liberation of Africa over the last fifty years or so.

Whether one is talking of the deep ideological outpouring of Samir Amin in Egypt in the north; the legendary Captain Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso in the west; the old Communist Party of Sudan which is almost a next door neighbhour to Kenya; the long running and feisty fisticuffs in Ethiopia and Eritrea; the intellectually endowed Ugandans, Yash Tandon, Mahmood Mamdani and Dan Nubedere who along with the respected Tanzanian lawyer Issa Shivji initiated the Great Dar es Salaam Debate in the early seventies; the world famous writer and revolutionary leader Amilcar Cabral of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, Abdul Rahman Mohammed Babu of Zanzibar and Tanzania; the late Sam Moyo of Zimbabwe, the first Angolan President and poet Agostinho Neto, the Mozambican doyen Marcelino dos Santos; the Marxists present in the Seychelles, Madagascar and Mauritius; some Leftist intellectuals from Kenya that I will not name check because I know most of them personally and some Nigerians, including Pablo Idahosa and Ghanaians that I have met in my sojourn as a political exile, whether one is talking of any of the above plus others, there is no doubt about the pervasive influence of Africans who were living and practicing Marxists.

But it is in South Africa where Communists have exerted the most impact. Apart from being continuous members of the ruling government ever since it achieved independence in April 1994, the SACP exercises a lot of influence in the ANC and COSATU which is the other partner in power. For example, the former Chairperson of the South African Communist Party, Gwede Mantashe, is currently the Secretary General of the African National Congress. Blade Nzimande, the head of the SACP is South Africa’s Higher Education minister. His Deputy, Jeremy Cronin, is Deputy Minister for Transport. Other members of the SACP leadership hold powerful positions not just in the National government but play key roles in the Provinces where some of them serve as Premiers. The SACP is also instrumental in COSATU being central in several trade unions.

Although the SACP played a major role at the Polokwane ANC Conference which led to the downfall of Thabo Mbeki, the right leaning neo liberal successor to the venerable Madiba, I am sure they are now regretting why they fought so tenaciously for the corrupt Jacob Zuma to become President.

In fact South Africa is a crucible and testing ground for actual United Front strategies in practice.

I will end this part by reproducing, in full, the entire SACP Central Committee discussion paper which appeared in the November 2016 edition of the always thought provoking ideological journal, African Communist.
which appeared in the November 2016 edition of the always thought provoking ideological journal, African Communist.

THE SACP DOCUMENT IS ITALICISED.


Now More Than Ever the SACP Has a Leadership Duty in the DR


This Discussion Document flows from discussions at the August SACP Central Committee meeting. Comrades are encouraged to submit responses as part of ongoing debate ahead of the SACP 14th National Congress in July 2017, where positions on issues raised in the document will be finalised.

The 3 August 2016 local government elections emphasised a worrying trajectory of decline in popular support for the ANC.
While at 54% the ANC still remains the electoral choice of the majority of South Africans, the gradual decline in support over several past elections and now the precipitous decline across most provinces and in urban as well as rural areas is a sobering indication of a trend. If not addressed, this loss of momentum will accelerate.
It is not, of course, just the electoral results of 3 August that are of concern. They are symptomatic of broader challenges. They are also less the consequence of opposition parties progressing and rather more the consequence of serious problems within the ANC. These include:

Systemic money-driven factionalism from top to bottom. The 20 intra-ANC assassinations in the run-up to the elections and the subsequent assassination of another ANC councillor-elect in Tsolo and killings in eThekwini are an indication of just how dangerously sick large parts of our movement have become;

The decision to run the ANC election campaign around the person of President Zuma also clearly cost the ANC many votes. Opinion polls suggest that President Zuma has a national approval rating in the lower 20% – far lower than that of the ANC itself. Where else in the world would a political party contesting in competitive elections choose to build its campaign around a deeply flawed personality cult?
Related to all of the above is the endemic corruption in and corporate capture of much of the ANC’s institutional machinery. This results in brazen manipulation of internal elections, membership lists, deployments, etc;

Not since 2007 have we seen such visible signs of division amongst the national leadership and the wilful bypassing of ANC and cabinet-mandated positions on matters such as the South African Broadcasting Corporation, South African Airways, digital migration, nuclear energy, or the “Zwane task-team” on the banks, etc.

There is a climate of extreme recklessness in parts of the ANC and in parts of government and across many parastatals.

While successive ANC conferences (and Alliance Summits) have recognised many of these features in general (corruption, sins of incumbency, factionalism, growing social distance from our mass base, etc.), in practice the ANC national, provincial and regional leaderships have shown little collective willingness or capacity to deal decisively with the issues.

One notable positive feature, however, of this year’s local government elections relates to the SACP. While we should not exaggerate, it is surely not inaccurate to assert that alone among the Alliance partners, the SACP has emerged more unified, larger in membership, and relatively active on the ground. Clearly, we have resource constraints and our own organisational capacity is uneven in different localities, but SACP activists played a critical role in many difficult situations, not least in areas which had become no-go zones for the ANC.

At our July 2015 Special National Congress we had already made the following observation: “The messages of support that we received from our Alliance partners, the ANC, Cosatu, and Sanco at this Congress have all affirmed the great hopes they are placing on the SACP as a Party of theory, a Party of activism, a tried and tested Party of revolutionary discipline...Last week’s Alliance Summit acknowledged that ... the SACP is the most stable and ideologically coherent formation within the Alliance. This is a time when the ANC is acknowledging many challenges related to incumbency and the influence of money on internal democracy. This is a moment in which the unrelenting capitalist offensive against Cosatu coincides with serious challenges to its unity and strength...more than ever before, we [the SACP] have a major responsibility...” (Declaration of SACP Special National Congress 11 July 2015.)

That was just over a year ago. The downward trajectory within the ANC has continued apace since then, and the apparent lack of capacity and will to deal with the systemic challenges are more apparent than ever.

This is the context in which the SACP and State Power Commission must now take forward its work. When this Commission was first established, following a resolution of our 2005 Special National Congress, the situation was similar in some respects, but also quite different in others.

In 2005 the SACP (and a more unified Cosatu at the time) were involved in a struggle against neo-liberal hegemony within government and the ANC, led by an internal bloc that we called “the 1996 class lsoproject”. However, in 2005 the SACP was also dealing with an internal reformist wing (perhaps about one-third of our CC at the time) which was closely aligned and actively collaborating with this 1996 class project. In this context, at our 2005 Special National Congress, some districts, notably Nelson Mandela Bay – legitimately frustrated at the side-lining of Party comrades by the 1996 class project-controlled ANC– called for the SACP to stand alone in forthcoming elections on a socialist/Marxist-Leninist platform. (Interestingly, the leading spokesperson for this at the 2005 SACP
Special National Congress was Irvin Jim).

The SACP July 2007 National Congress dealt effectively with our former internal reformist wing, and the ANC’s December 2007 Polokwane National Conference dealt a blow to the 1996 class project.

Post-2007, then, the internal demand for the SACP to stand alone electorally diminished for a time. However, the victorious Polokwane bloc of forces that was ranged against the 1996 class project led by Thabo Mbeki was itself a problematic marriage of convenience. It was composed of aleft-wing grouping constituted essentially by the SACP and Cosatu, on the one hand, and a rabid tenderpreneur network led by the ANC Youth League, including personalities like Julius Malema at the time. While the SACP/Cosatu axis opposed the hegemonic neo-liberal grouping from a principled left perspective, the “anti neo-liberalism” of the ANCYL grouping was essentially an opposition to any limits placed by Treasury on the rapacious looting of public resources. With the inevitable fall-out and growing tensions between different components of the Polokwane “marriage of convenience”, internal calls for the SACP to stand independently in elections have once again surfaced, particularly from the YCL and some provinces.
It is important that we understand the similarities and differences between the 2005 and 2016 situations:

The SACP is no longer confronted with a major 1996 class-project aligned, reformist faction within our own leadership ranks;
While there are legitimate tactical debates and differences within the Party (for example on the modality in which the Party is involved in elections) these differences are not grounded in major strategic divisions, or ideological factions;

While the beginnings of “Gupterisation” (the flourishing of parasitic behaviour) within the ANC certainly date back to at least the Mbeki era, the degree to which this has now taken hold is seriously more advanced and dangerous. In 2005 the SACP’s principal focus in the internal ideological battles within both the Party and between the Party and the ANC/government was against the hegemony of neo-liberalism. The Party advanced a series of national democratic programmatic (and institutional) proposals
– a democratic developmental state leading re-industrialisation (including beneficiation and localisation); a major state-led infrastructure programme; expansion of vocational training; urban spatial transformation; the transformation of the financial sector, etc. The Party also proposed a State Planning Commission. At its 2007 Polokwane conference the ANC endorsed all of these perspectives, and after the 2009 elections important but uneven progress was made in most of these areas. The unevenness (and deliberate undermining) of progress since 2009 (and particularly since 2014) in these and other areas has less to do with lingering neo-liberal perspectives, which of course still remain, and much more to do with the mushrooming of rabid corporate capture and parasitic looting.

The above are some observations concerning the current reality within which the question of the SACP and State and Popular Power needs to be contextualised.

What follows are some general points of principle regarding state power and elections: State Power and elections – five theses

Thesis 1

– State power is critical, but it is not an end in itself.

Thesis 2

– Electoral victories are important, but they are also not ends in themselves.

Thesis 3

– While electoral success is one means to achieving some influence and leverage over state power, electoral success (whether as a
majority governing party standing on its own, or as part of a coalition, or alliance), does not guarantee effective exercise of state power. Many other factors are at play, these include:

The institutional culture, capacity and strategic coherence across the range of state and parastatal institutions – including the public sector management cadre and rank-and-file public sector workers.

Left-wing electoral mandates can be undermined by a recalcitrant judiciary, by right wing generals, by a bantustan legacy in the civil service, or by a lack of strategic discipline across the state (see for instance the current tendencies for state owned corporation (SOC) chairs and CEOs to supplant electoral mandates and/or Cabinet policy decisions in Eskom in regard to independent power producers, or with Icasa defying broadband access policy.) None of this is to suggest that the state administrative cadre, or the judiciary, or armed forces are inherently conservative, or that transformation of these sectors is not one of the critical tasks of any progressive party (whether it is “ruling” or not);

Powerful external forces, whether regime change instigators or financial institutions like the IMF, the European Central Bank and ratings agencies can undermine an overwhelming electoral mandate (for instance against austerity – see the recent example of Greece);Popular electoral mandates can also be seriously undermined by governing party/coalition factionalism, ill-discipline and personality cults which, in turn are often linked to:

Corporate capture of both party political structures/personalities and of state and parastatal organs.

Thesis 4

– The question of state power
Corporate capture of both party political structures/personalities and of state and parastatal organs.
Thesis 4

– The question of state power must not be isolated from the question of popular power both inside and outside of the state. It is not only capitalist forces outside of the state that have actual or potential leverage and influence over state power. Organised and mobilised popular power outside of the state but also inside of it (for instance, by way of progressive public sector unions) can be decisive in supporting or undermining a progressive governing party’s capacity to govern. At the same time, we need to recognise that popular power is not necessarily progressive – fundamentalist, xenophobic, and fascist forces have also been capable of undermining or hijacking democratic dispensations by mobilising broad popular strata.

Thesis 5

– The correct approach for a progressive party to adopt in regard to electoral politics is not a timeless and de-contextualised matter that can be deduced abstractly and remain valid for all time. The specific conditions at any particular time, the particular electoral system, national political traditions and legacies and likely trajectories, and the electoral prospects of a party should all be clearly considered.

In regard to the last issue, for instance, a political party may have little prospect or even ambition of attaining state power in any immediate way through the ballot box, but this does not necessarily mean it should abstain from electoral participation. Before its unbanning in 1950 – the CPSA (Communist Party of South Africa) – actively contested (and won a few ward elections) in the midst of white-minority rule. The objective was to use the electoral space to mobilise and, as best as possible, popularise CPSA political perspectives. As the recent Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) electoral positioning has demonstrated, it is possible for an 8% party to have an impact on governance.

A similar “deal-maker” medium-term strategic electoral role might be

In this regard, tactical and strategic considerations need, also, to be contextualised within particular electoral systems and political party histories. What works in Brazil or France, for instance, might not work in South Africa and, conversely, it is important to understand our own potential advantages and challenges. In Brazil there is a direct election of the president by way of a two-round system. If no candidate wins over 50% of the vote in the first round, the two top scorers in the first round face-off in the second. This has enabled the PT (Workers’ Party), currently with around only 17% of national congress representation, to win presidential elections (twice with Lula da Silva and latterly with Dilma Rousseff) by getting a range of centrist, centre-left, and left parties (including thecommunist party, the PCdoB) to support their presidential candidate in the second round. France also has a two-round electoral system. In a first round in municipal elections, for instance, Communist, Socialist and various leftist formations might contest against each other. In a second round, where there have been pre-arranged agreements, the left parties will unite in supporting the candidate that performed best from within their ranks. In the recent past, this has enabled the French Communist Party (PCF) to control numbers of municipalities, while supporting socialist mayors in others.

In South Africa, without a two-round dispensation, there is certainly still the possibility of SACP candidates contesting ANC candidates in ward elections, for instance, with a view to forming a post-election ANC/SACP council coalition. However, given the level of tensions and hostility (even assassinations) within the ANC itself in ward candidate list processes, we should certainly not assume that it will be easy to achieve some pre-electoral “gentleman’s” agreement between the ANC and SACP. This, of course, does not mean that this strategic approach African Communist should necessarily be ruled out.

At the same time, we also need to factor in the internationally unique reality that we enjoy in South Africa as the SACP – the possibility and actuality of dual membership, that is the possibility and actuality of South African Communists participating as full members in all ANC structures. As we know from concrete experience this also gives rise to many challenges – the danger of being co-opted, of losing our own identity, of being treated as “second class” ANC members if not constitutionally, then in practice. But it also gives a unique opportunity to help to shape and take joint responsibility for the ANC. Would dual membership survive a situation in which the SACP contested elections independently? It is possible that the ANC would not allow this or the situation might deteriorate so seriously within the ANC that the loss of dual membership rights might be a necessary step – even a necessary step for the SACP to play an active role in rescuing the ANC in the medium term. Once more, we are flagging these questions not to rule out different options, but to provide the basis for seriously weighing up the pros and cons around any tactical and strategic choices.

Thesis 6

– multi-party elections in societies dominated by monopoly capital present serious electoral campaign challenges for principled progressive parties (and especially for a Communist/Marxist-Leninist party). This is, in part, related to the huge campaign expenses involved in so-called “competitive” multi-party elections in “liberal” capitalist societies.

The US political system is probably the most corporately-captured in the world. Huge sums of campaign money are required for contesting even relatively minor local public office.

Indeed, as several academic commentators have noted, the relationship between winning elections and election funding has often become inverted – with the very point of winning elections being to raise more funding in order to win the next elections. Needless to say, this electoral treadmill becomes a major avenue for corporate capture of individuals and of party political machinery.

By June 2016, with the actual presidential elections six months away, Democrat and Republican presidential hopefuls had already spent a combined R10-billion ($700-million) in their respective party primaries according to the US Federal Election Commission. This figure excluded the hundreds of millions more raised and spent by outside groups supporting different candidates. Clearly, this funding comes largely from the big US corporates (who often hedge their bets by simultaneously funding more than one candidate and both major parties). Bernie Sanders, who ran Hilary Clinton a surprisingly close race from a left-leaning position for the Democratic nomination, managed to challenge to some degree the corporate media and funding boycott of his campaign by using social media and crowd-funding innovations .

But, in the end, the corporate-dominated Democratic Party machine marginalised his efforts.

Although election campaign spending in South Africa is not as remotely expensive as in the US, electioneering has become an increasingly burdensome reality. The official spend figure from the ANC’s head-office for the 3 August local government elections is a whopping R380-million, this is the figure formally accounted for by the ANC Treasurer General. It is a figure that excludes the funding received by many individual ANC personalities and factions with strong ties to the corporate world, some of which would have been spent on the ANC campaign and some of it will have disappeared into private and factional pockets. Mpumalanga premier David Mabuza was provided with the use of an ANC-branded helicopter for 10 days on the eve of the elections and this, presumably, was not included in the ANC’s R380-million election budget. Mabuza was also reported to have received a donation of R7,5-million and 13 new vehicles from the businessman Robert Gumede (City Press, 31 July 2016).

The DA’s official electoral funding was not much less than that of the ANC. According to a Sunday Timesreport: “DA officials said its election budget of R350-million was likely to be exceeded thanks to private funders.” (31 July, 2016). Some of the DA’s funding, we do not know exactly how much, comes from foreign sources.

What about the EFF? On the evidence of a relatively prominent, nation-wide poster campaign and bearing in mind the logistical costs involved in several large rallies, the EFF clearly also had significant funding. A figure of “not more than R10-million” mentioned publicly by an EFF spokesperson is almost certainly an under-statement. However, it is clear that EFF funding was significantly less than that of the ANC and DA, which explains the R30-million election campaign debt one EFF leader has mentioned, as well as the EFF’s attempt to tax newly elected EFF councillors 50% of their salaries for the first three months.

(In a later section we will explain our analysis of the strategy behind foreign and domestic capital’s drip-feed funding of the EFF.) Apart from the proportional party political allocation made by the national and provincial legislatures, the actual sources of EFF funding are not publicly available. There are, however, occasional glimpses of where some of its funding might be coming from. In a 2015 City Press article,Adriano Mazzotti, an Italian with underworld connections and an associate of the convicted criminal Glen Agliotti, admitted that it was he who donated R200 000 to enable the EFF to register as a political party ahead of the 2014 national elections. In the same article Mazzotti declined to answer whether he was also assisting Julius Malema settle his R18-million liability with SARS (City Press, 29 April 2015). Malema’s association with Mazzotti clearly dates back to the period when he was still ANC YL president.

There is a further highly problematic feature of these hundreds of millions of rands spent by South African political parties in the local government election campaigns. It is money diverted from productive and developmental investment into consumables with built-in redundancy – posters, media advertising in the major monopoly-controlled outlets, T-shirts (mostly imported), and razzmatazz mass rallies. In short, this is politics as spectacle in which the monopoly-controlled media-advertising complex reaps millions with little or any developmental impact.
1
In short, the increasing Americanisation of South African electoral politics:

Further opens up our political system to massive corporate capture;

Weakens national sovereignty by way of foreign funding of South African political parties;

Creates a significant electoral entry barrier to any principled, anti-monopoly political party or electoral platform;

Feeds into the factionalising of the ANC and the undermining of its formal electoral mandate;

Diverts ANC and Alliance energies, resources and focus from campaigning and organisation directed at the actual challenges facing popular strata (unemployment, crime, household indebtedness) into a narrow electoralism; and

disproportionally favours a pro-monopoly, anti-working class political party like the DA.

For all these reasons the SACP firmly supports:

Tighter regulation to ensure full transparency in party political funding. The SACP certainly has every interest in ensuring transparency in party political funding, regardless of whether the SACP decides to participate independently in elections or not. But the ANC also needs to realise that it is in its own interests to ensure transparency is introduced, since donations to the ANC are often captured by individuals or factions, and since lack of transparency is a major pathway into corporate capture. In particular, foreign funding of South African political parties for election purposes needs to be
outlawed:

The signing into law of the Financial Intelligence Centre Amendment Bill. This Bill was passed by parliament early in 2016 but has
still not been signed into law by the President. Among other things, the Bill seeks to strengthen financial scrutiny of politically influential persons. This and other measures to deal with money laundering, corruption and financing of terrorism is an important means for addressing corporate capture and for safeguarding our electoral system.

continued programmatic commitment to pursuing a radical national democratic revolution. Which brings us back to our strategic Theses 1 and 2 flagged above – state power is not end in itself, nor is winning elections. We cannot have a narrow focus on state power and elections without locating the question of state and popular power within the more strategic question: power for what objectives? In the South African context this immediately raises the centrality of a radical NDR.

The Continued Validity of a 2nd Radical Phase of the NDR

Cosatu comrades prepared notes for a recent SACP/Cosatu bilateral which included the following observation: “Accepting that the SACP has chosen the NDR as the South African Road to Socialism...the question must be raised as to how Cosatu can work to popularise the SACP’s road to Socialism and position the SACP as the socialist government in waiting...” (Cosatu, Notes for a Bilateral Meeting with the SACP, June 2016).

While this observation was well-intentioned it betrays a problematic assumption. Certainly, the SACP’s core strategic purpose is to be a vanguard anti-capitalist force for socialism within the wider context of popular democratic struggles. But surely the SACP must not understand itself as “in-waiting”. The dangers of this “in-waiting” characterisation are several:

It implies that the SACP hasn’t (or shouldn’t) assume any governance responsibilities in this “stage”. Conversely, it would suggest that where we have a presence in governance, we are opportunistic hitch-hikers taking a free ride on the NDR but with an entirely different agenda. (This is something that the liberal media constantly taunt us with: “Who gave you a mandate to be in government?” – as if SACP members have not been members of the ANC since the 1920s);

The idea of the SACP as a “socialist government in waiting” can easily (but surely unintentionally) take us back to what the 1996 class project sought to do, namely marginalise the SACP in “this stage”, saying, in effect: “Yes, we agree, socialism is the future...but build it then” (with “then” understood to be some impossibly distant utopian future);

The “in-waiting” can encourage, on the side of the party, a narrow elite “socialist” vanguardism, typical of left-sectarian cliques.

This kind of vanguardism stands critically aloof from the realities
of the day, confident that its day will come. As we said, as the core theme of last year’s Special National Congress, the SACP must take responsibility for the NDR. In the wake of more recent events this is surely more relevant than ever before.

Against Mechanical Stageism – the NDR is not a “First stage” with socialism a “Second stage”

Since at least our 8th National Congress in 1995 where the slogan “Socialism is the Future, Build it Now!” was first officially adopted, the SACP has sought to break with the notion of “two-stageism”, asserting of the NDR:

It is not a “first stage”, with socialism a “second stage”;
•
It is not a “detour” but, in the current global and national reality, an NDR and socialism are deeply inter-twined;

Indeed, the NDR is not even best understood as the “most direct route” to socialism. This still implies that the NDR is a “road” (ie: a
strategy) while socialism is the “destination” (ie: the goal). This still has the shadow of stageism hanging over it, as well as the danger of imagining there is some inevitability about the relationship between the NDR and socialism (“our day will come – the inevitable advance of the forces of production are making it so”);

It might imply that socialism is an “end state” – rather than itself a complex transitional period characterised by many contradictions, advances but also likely retreats, that will require: an ongoing national democratic defence of the socialist project – without which socialism can be reversed (note how Cuba and China both defend their socialist advances and aspirations with their own versions of democratic patriotism).

The ANC does not own the NDR

In advancing the thesis that now more than ever the SACP must assume leadership responsibilities not just for socialism but also for the
NDR, we are not arguing for a “go it alone” SACP approach. We must be clear that advancing, defending and consolidating the NDR requires a broad popular movement against imperialism and monopoly capital.

The SACP is not, and should not aspire to be, the sum total of such a
broad popular movement.

On the other hand:

While the ANC, historically, has sometimes been the most important organisational form for this broad movement – the NDR is not reducible to, or simply identical with the ANC;

There were periods in the 1920s, for instance, when the ICU was, in practice, a more effective radical national democratic movement
than a rather respectable and often dormant ANC. Often suppressed from official ANC histories is the existence, in the 1930s, of an Independent ANC working closely with the CPSA, which, again, proved much more capable at that time than the formal ANC itself in organising the working class and rural poor. There are many other historical questions of this kind. For instance, was the UDF a more effective NDR mass formation than anything we have since post-1994?

We need to understand that the ANC does not have some God-given right to eternally lead the NDR. We need to recognise that at different
times during its nonetheless generally proud and heroic existence, the ANC has been largely missing in action. In acknowledging these realities, we better prepare ourselves for posing the difficult and painful questions of our time:

Can the ANC still lead the NDR? Is the ANC in a terminal downward spiral? Can the ANC be revitalised? Or will the ANC suffer a major break-up?

Do we need a re-configured Alliance? And if so, what actually do we mean by that?

Or do we need to help build a new popular movement/ND movement/Popular coalition?

These are painful questions because, dating back to the late 1920s, hundreds of thousands of South African Communists have gone to jail, have suffered martyrdom, have served in the ranks of MK, have worked tirelessly to build a powerful ANC capable of leading a revolutionary alliance. But, today, there are no clear-cut answers to any of the questions posed above. However, it is possible to distinguish some trends.

The negative problems within the ANC are more and more indicaive of systemic features that affect the organisation at all levels. This is not to say that there are not many good ANC comrades, and many pockets of relative health and of internal and surely growing resistance to the decay. However, for the moment, the most reckless and parasitic forces have managed to colonise large parts of the organisation. The ability (or even the willingness) of the ANC collectively to embark on serious self-correction is (at least for the moment) uncertain.

Will the ANC’s December 2017 National Conference (or an earlier conference as is being mooted) provide impetus for change? This is possible and desirable, but far from certain.

All of this means that in the current fluid situation the SACP should | not place all of its tactical and medium-term strategic calculations in one basket including (but not only) any decision about future modalities of SACP involvement in elections.

We must, as best as possible, seek to help the revitalisation of the ANC on the basis of a principled and unifying programme. In supporting such revitalisation the SACP must scrupulously avoid simply becoming part of another ANC faction or personality based fan-base.

In this respect there are self-critical lessons that as a Party we must
learn from the 2007-2009 period.

We must more clearly define (for ourselves in the first place) what we mean by a reconfigured Alliance, and proceed to reconfigure actively in practice – while engaging with our Alliance partners, of course, but without necessarily awaiting for full consensus that might never arrive;

We must, as the SACP, and with or without the ANC, continue to reach out to a range of progressive formations, in particular around practical programmes and issues – as we are doing with the South African Council of Churches corporate capture project, for instance.

Clearly, this means that, among other things, the SACP’s Red October campaigns are a critical means for rooting ourselves amongst the broad working class and popular masses. But here we need to ask more self-critical questions. What substantively have we achieved with our campaigns? Are we able to effectively sustain them? From one October to the next October, do we sufficiently review and assess progress?

If we understand our current challenge is to assume greater responsibility for the NDR in the current reality, then this must also have implications for the style and manner in which the SACP conducts itself. A narrow left sectarianism, preaching to other formations with a jargon-filled Marxist arrogance is exactly how we should not conduct ourselves. While setting an example of commitment, activism and strategic clarity in practice, we should also learn from other struggles and collective organisational experiences – for instance, of women in stokvels and co-ops. Or from those who, driven by desperation, “illegally” occupy land. We should not close ourselves off from other progressive influences on the youth – we should read, understand critically, and celebrate Frantz Fanon and Steve Biko, for instance.

But if we are to play a more active leadership role in the NDR– how do we understand the NDR?

An inability to provide a clear strategic understanding of the NDR in the current phase, still less of a radical second phase of the NDR, is one of the symptoms of the ANC’s serious decline. Part of the SACP assuming responsibility for the NDR must also be providing a broad strategic perspective and actual content to the NDR in the current phase. What follows is simply a schematic outline, in which, for the purposes of exposition we outline separately the three (in reality deeply integrated) pillars of the NDR (the “N”, the “D” and the “R”).

The NDR’s national dimension

The national aspect of our NDR itself embraces several components:

Radical/progressive nationalism – the NDR requires on-going mobilisation around the “national grievance” of the historically oppressed.

Communists must not abandon the “national question” to opportunists of the left (EFF), or of the right (tenderpreneurs, Gupta supporters). Nor must we abandon a radical and progressive nationalism in the name of espousing an empty “multi-racial” rainbowism. Any principled non-racialism (as the SACP has understood since the late 1920s) must place overcoming the systemic features that reproduce racialised inequality and poverty at the centre of its strategic perspective;

Nation building – nation building is not just the important cultural, symbolic, and ideological tasks (“Rhodes must fall”, de-colonisation, principled non-racialism, etc.), but also material conditions for nation building (a new development path, infrastructural transformation, overcoming apartheid space);

These latter national tasks in our South African reality can only be, also, anti-monopoly capital – for instance, the manner in which
private monopoly property holdings and property speculation block the transformation of apartheid urban geography;

Democratic national sovereignty– the “national” dimension of the NDR is also critically about consolidating an effective national
democratic state and popular power capable of defending our democratic national sovereignty as best as possible in a hostile world– ie: any serious NDR has to be anti-imperialist; but

To be anti-imperialist means also struggling in solidarity with all victims of imperialism, therefore a consistent anti-imperialism must
be internationalist.

When articulated in this way, it should be clear why an effective NDR in the South African reality requires a socialist vanguard party.

The NDR’s democratic dimension

Thoroughgoing democratisation of South Africa is both a key objective of and the principal means for advancing the NDR. It involves:

Deepening, consolidating and defending democratic constitutional rights (eg. the right to work – see the Freedom Charter “everyone has the right and duty to work”);

Deepening one-person one-vote representative democracy which involves new challenges:

Insulating democracy from corporate capture, money politics;

Dangers of factionalism, gate-keeping, candidate selection;
Tendencies towards federalist dissipation of the NDR via provincial legislatures for instance.

Participatory (direct) democracy – (re)-building organs of popular power. What is the experience with community policing forums, school governing bodies, ward committees, ward budgeting, community work programs, co-ops, worker control, etc? Have we been able to build popular power through these and other participatory institutions? If not, how do we organisationally advance democratic popular power?

the NDR revolutionary dimension

The revolutionary dimension of the NDR refers not to an event but to the revolutionary struggle for deep structural transformation – placing our political economy onto a new sustainable, developmental path that goes to the root in radically transforming those structural features that continue to reproduce the crises of racialised (and class, gendered and spatial) inequality, poverty and unemployment. In very general terms this involves:

A second more radical phase of the NDR;

A democratic developmental state bound by strategic discipline;

Unity of working class and popular strata– ie: popular democratic hegemony in all sites of power; and preferably sustained majority rule – (have we sufficiently leveraged sustained majority electoral support over the past 22 years?) and not two-party alternation.

Which brings us directly to:

the strategic party political agenda o imperialism & monopoly capital in
south africa – a “centrist” stalemate

Before considering the South African reality more directly, it is important to note that globally “liberal democratic” multi-party dispensations are now in deepening trouble, including within the advanced capitalist countries themselves. Many mainstream commentators are now speaking about a “crisis of representation”. This is in marked contrast to the 1990s triumphalism that proudly proclaimed that “liberal democratic” dispensations along with “free market” policies were a global and irreversible trend.

Some background might be useful. With the weakening, and the eventual collapse of the Soviet bloc and the ending of the Cold War period, (neo-)liberal think-tanks trumpeted the dawn of a “third wave of democratisation”, in which increasingly large swathes of the world would embrace “liberal democratic multi-party” dispensations. This was the agenda that was advocated and implemented in varying degrees throughout the former Soviet bloc. But it was also an agenda that targeted former pro-imperialist, authoritarian regimes, including white minority rule in South Africa. With the ending of the Cold War, many pro-Western regional gendarme states had become a liability to the globalisation interests of imperialism and pressure was placed on them to negotiate elite-pacted “transitions to democracy” (from the Philippines to the military juntas in much of Latin America, to PW Botha’s apartheid regime). Of course, this imperialist-driven “democratisation” agenda was not (and still isn’t) applied consistently – notably in the Middle East, with Zionist Israel and petro-feudal Saudi Arabia being obvious examples.

After 1994, and for several years, South Africa was hailed in imperialist circles as a poster-child for the supposed global “Third Wave of Democratisation” underway. President Mbeki’s African Renaissance took up this theme, promoting “liberal democracies” in Africa. Of course, the democratic breakthrough in South Africa was an important step forward, and both here in South Africa and in many parts of Latin America, for instance(Brazil,Chile,Argentina, Ecuador), progressive forces have been able to use democratisation toadvance more nationally sovereign, social and economic agendas, countering the worst of right-wing imposed structural adjustment programmes, expanding social security systems and even advancing some national (re-)industrialisation.

But for imperialism and local monopoly capitalist interests this was not what was intended as an outcome of democratisation in the global South. In particular, where democratically elected, left-leaning (or just centre-left) patriotic forces have achieved a degree of relative electoral permanency (in Brazil until recently, or South Africa, for instance), and therefore a capacity to drive systemic changes in their respective societies, this is seen as a threat to imperialist interests.

While various regime change and “colour” revolutions are attempted, the preferred imperialist option is to introduce “electoral uncertainty” and therefore regular alternation between political elites – a political, centrist stalemate. And yet it is precisely this kind of institutionalised “democratic” system that is in deepening crisis, even in the heartlands of Western democracy.

Without going into detail here, some of the symptoms of this crisis include the Brexit referendum, the Trump phenomenon and its counter in an unpopular “least worst” corporate candidate, Hilary Clinton.

There is the relative and unanticipated success of politicians and movements representing varying degrees of popular rejection of the “political establishment” in the heartlands of Western democracy. There are left-leaning politicians like the UK labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn (currently at war with his own parliamentary caucus), Bernie Sanders in the US, or formations like Syrisa in Greece and Podemos in Spain.

By and large, these political personalities and formations have drawn their strength by mobilising politically alienated younger generations, often relying on the new social media, YouTube, crowd funding and other means to bypass hostile media, and the corporate and the political establishment.

In many parts of Europe the old centre-left/centre-right alternance has been seriously disrupted. This is sometimes done by an anti-politics politics, as is the case with the Five Star Movement in Italy, led by a comedian Beppo Grillo, which now controls major cities like Rome and Turin. But the crisis of “liberal democracy” is also manifested in the alarming rise of chauvinistic forces (Trump, of course, but also United Kingdom Independent Party in the UK which mobilised the Brexit vote, or the AfD in Germany and extreme right-wing, proto-fascist movements in Greece and France, which have seen their electoral support rise significantly. In some cases, extreme right forces are now the dominant political formations in their countries (Austria, Hungary).

It is important always to remember that neither the SACP nor the broader ANC-led Alliance single-handedly shape the electoral terrain.

Other forces also do so. Since the late 1980s, the key liberal strategists aligned to both South African monopoly capital and imperialist think-tanks recognised the importance of having an “ANC brand” governing in South Africa, at least for a transitional period of a decade or two, without which stabilisation within the framework of a “liberal democracy” would be impossible. However, there were two problems for this strategic agenda:

The presence and influence of the SACP and a radical trade union federation, Cosatu. within the ANC-led Alliance; and

The fear that the ANC as an electoral party would achieve sustained and overwhelming majority electoral support. In a one-party dominant system, monopoly capital is often more limited in its ability to play off (and pay off) “competing” centre-left/centre-right parties. A political party or popular movement with sustained and overwhelming majority support has (in theory) greater autonomy from capital.

This fear of one-party dominance is why all the liberal media in the past weeks have hailed the August 3 election as a “maturing” of South Africa’s democracy – as if previous 60% plus majorities for the ANC were a sign of electoral “immaturity”.

The current flirtation between the DA and EFF is not part of either’s long-game strategy. In particular, the DA’s medium-term strategy is to
make common ground with a moderated ANC – either in a coalition or in a liberal centre-right/centre-left dominated electoral dispensation of the kind that has (but increasingly no longer) characterised “mature” liberal democracies. This is a preferred outcome for monopoly capital and imperialist circles – because it provides for the appearance of democratic choice and competition, but essentially introduces an institutionalised stalemate that would be especially inappropriate for our South Africareality that so evidently requires a major structural revolution.

When Zille was still DA leader she frequently articulated a perspective in which the DA, once it had knocked the ANC down to below 50% support nationally, would be able, as part of a coalition deal, to force the “constitutionalists”, “the moderate centre” within the ANC to cut loose the “radicals” on the “left”. This is exactly the 2019 agenda that commentators like Alistair Sparks and Peter Bruce have recently evoked (see Bruce: “Coalition deals will soon test South Africa’s political maturity”, Business Day, 5 August 2016). In this article, Bruce ures Maimane to explore coalitions with the ANC in Johannesburg and Tshwane: “We all know Zuma is a problem. But, as we are constantly reminded by the voices raised against him within the ANC, his party is not a lost cause.”

The DA won’t do this now, not because they believe the EFF is closer to them, but because coalitions with the ANC at this point don’t suit the DA’s 2019 agenda. It hopes to bring the ANC down below 50% nationally by then, as a result of its own inroads but also as a result of on-going inner turmoil within the ANC. It is only then, from a position of greater strength, that it will explore cooperation with a weakened ANC.

We are not suggesting that there is some grand conspiracy – but there is a strategy! And this broad imperialist/monopoly capital/DA strategy also explains the love-hate positioning from these quarters in regard to the EFF. The acres of media coverage that the EFF has enjoyed over the past two years is, in part, a measure of the dumbing down of media commentary in South Africa, in which one-liners and melodrama drown out serious analysis. But it is also a result of the role required of the EFF – to knock the ANC’s electoral majority but without the EFF itself advancing much beyond 8%. In this sense, the EFF has perfectly performed its assigned role within this strategy in these local government elections.

It is precisely the role that many commentators from the mid-1990s had hopefully assigned to the SACP – with their endless and hypocritical encouragement of the SACP to fight elections on our own.

It is noticeable that there has now been a relative cooling in the commercial media towards the EFF, but from a neo-liberal perspective they still have an 8% role in the run-up to 2019. Of course, we should not make the mistake of believing that all or even a majority of EFF leaders, let alone supporters, are knowing role-players in this agenda. The EFF leadership is also hoping to split and/or knock the ANC down to less than 50% nationally and provincially. In the post 3 August negotiations, EFF leaders indicated to the ANC negotiators that they would “never” form a coalition with the DA.Their only coalition partner, they said, would be the ANC – “but not now”.

The imperialist/monopoly capital/DA strategic agenda might play out successfully. But it will be a disaster for South Africa. The NDR will be stuck and the state capacity to transform the underlying systemic features reproducing racialisedinequality, poverty and unemployment will be set back even further.

One of the key weaknesses and a strategic blind spot of this DA/monopoly capital agenda is its inability to read and understand the impact and role of the SACP.

They characterise the ANC as being in two blocs:

A moderate “liberal”bloc – the “constitutionalists”

The “radicals”– the “Pirates of Polokwane”, to which the SACP and Cosatu are assigned, but along with the Guptas, Zumas, etc.

Given this DA/monopoly capital strategic agenda, it becomes clearer why the SACP’s current positioning – defending the constitution (which is not a liberal but, in many respects, a national democratic constitution), campaigning against corruption and corporate capture, becomes so important, in holding the line of a radical NDR underpinned by popular power.

While continuing to play an active, vanguard role in the struggle that has now intensified and broadened in the post-3 August period against corruption and against the abuse of state organs like the National Prosecuting Authority, the SACP has a wider responsibility. Yes, we must steadfastly support Treasury in its determined effort to hold the line against corruption. We must expose those who, out of rank opportunism, are attacking the major banks for flagging dozens of suspicious financial transactions. We must unite against corruption with all of those from within our broad movement and beyond, notwithstanding past
or present ideological differences.

We must also acknowledge that the problems of corporate capture and corruption have worsened and become more systemic over the past decade. We must be open to criticism and self-criticism about the SACP’s own shortcomings over this period.

But as a principled party of socialism, the SACP also has a wider responsibility. We must actively counter the narrative that all of South Africa’s problems of low growth and crisis-levels of unemployment and poverty are simply the result of a post-Polokwane “loss of moral compass”. Corporate capture of the state and of political movements is not just about venal, material corruption. It is also about ideological and moral capture. These latter forms of corporate hegemony were well advanced by the second half of the 1990s within key parts of both the post-apartheid state and the ANC.

The accelerated removal of capital controls, excessive trade liberalisation, misguided state complacency in allowing major South African
corporates to list overseas, and much more, saw trillions of rands flowing “legally” and illegally out of our country. The neo-liberal myth that public sector investment “crowds out” private investment and the failure to invest in key social and economic infrastructure from the mid-1990s further crippled job creation and local public and privately owned industries. This corporate capture by established monopoly capital of leading parts of the state from the mid-1990s was sweetened for many in the new “ruling” caste with narrow “black economic power” deals that further diverted hundreds of billions of rands out of potentially productive, job creating investment.

Since the mid-1990s the SACP has consistently advanced these perspectives and concerns. They require repeating and developing today – not to score a sectarian point, or to factionalise the necessary and immediately pressing requirement of a broad front against the most venal forms of material corruption, corporate capture and the abuse of the prosecuting authorities or the public broadcaster. The point is to ensure that the rolling back of Gupterisation does not simply take us back once more into the recent past. The ideological and programmatic corporate capture of key parts of the state from the mid-1990s created the conditions in which the systemic flourishing of outright corruption has now taken hold.

The future cannot be the recent past. Let us defeat Gupterisation to advance on the path of a radical national democratic revolution.

Revitalization and mobilisation of the key motive forces of the national democratic revolution

One of the most important observations of the SACP in its analyses of some of the setbacks from the 2016 local government elections, and some of the cumulative effects of theproblems analysed in this document, is that the ANC, and to a certain extent the Alliance as a whole, has been loss of contact with, or leadership over, the principal motive forces of our revolution. Sustained focus on organisation building both within the ANC and across the Alliance is fundamental. Given the important role that the SACP has to increasingly play in the revitalisation of the motive forces of our revolution it is essential that it defines, its own role in this challenge much more clearly.

While the rebuilding and reconnection with the principal motive forces of our revolution must still be headed by the ANC, this task can however not be led by the ANC alone. As agreed in our recent Alliance Political Council, each of the Alliance partners will have to look closely at its organisational structures and mode of organisation, particularly asking the question on whether these are still relevant. An important question to be asked by the Alliance as a whole is whether the modus operandi of the Alliance since 1994 has not exhausted itself.

If the SACP is to fulfil the many tasks identified above, it will be important that we direct much of our energies and resources into building a much larger, but quality and activist, SACP going into the next 10 years. The SACP needs to escalate its mass campaigns, and use these as platforms to deepen its work among the various sectors of society.

In summary

1. The NDR is in serious crisis – the SACP has a major role in providing ideological, organisational and activist leadership at this time.
2. The question of the Party and State Power needs to be considered
within this context and not in abstract terms.

3. State power and winning elections are not ends in themselves.

The question of state power should not be reduced to winning elections alone.

4. The political situation is fluid. There are many uncertainties about the ANC’s ability to address its own internal problems, and particularly what the outcome of 2017 will be. In this overall context it is important that the SACP keeps its tactical options open while continuing to build its structures, its ideological unity, and, above all, its
activism on the ground.




PART TWENTY TWO, WHICH IS HOPEFULLY THE FINAL PART, BRINGS THE WHOLE DISCUSSION OF UNITED FRONT STRATEGIES TO THE 2017 AUGUST ELECTIONS WHERE I POST QUESTIONS LIKE:

1. Cam Professor Anyang' Nyongo if he prevails as the mew Governor of Kisumu County,jump start a United Front stagegy in Nyanza?

2. Can Hassan Omar work with Ali Joho in devising a United Front process in Mombasa?

3. How about Oparanya and Khalwale in Kakemega?

4. Does Nanok has the foresight of initiating something similar in Turkana County?

5. Will Peter Munya work with NASA in Meru?

6. Governor Isaac Ruto is now the fifth principal. What are the progressive opportunities in Bomet?

7. And this is a big ponderable: Will Kidero work with Sonko in Nairobi?

8. At the MP level, Yusuf Hassan who is probably the most radical parliamentarian in Kenya today find in his heart to work with his natural allies in NASA and turn on his Jubilee fort?

9. Is Jaguar a candidate for radical recruitment to push through a democratic agenda given his youth and entertainment base?

ALL THAT IS COMING IN PART TWENTY TWO, SO STAY TUNED.

[Onyango Oloo]

From this digital essay so far, any discerning reader must have guessed by now that Onyango Oloo has NOT fallen heads over heels, in love and affection with NASA’s strategy to win power in the upcoming August 8, 2017 elections.



It is nothing but a scheme to grab power at the ballot box using a mixture of tribalism, personality politics and sheer opportunism.

To those who think that this is an endorsement for a SECOND TERM for the CORRUPT, TRIBALISTIC AND VAIN UHURUT0 REGIME, let me be quick to assure my readers that Onyango Oloo was OPPOSED to Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta and William Ruto BEFORE they STOLE the 2013 elections so shamelessly.

Jukwaa aficionados, if they look up my OLD THREADS from that period will agree with me that I wanted the pair plus the REST OF THE OCAMPO SIX taken to the International Criminal Court and that Ms. Bensouda would SUCCESSFULLY PROSECUTE THEM. I would be quite COMFORTABLE if RIGHT NOW they were SERVING, SIXTY YEARS in prison.

They ran for office in clear violation of the Kenyan Constitution, especially the part which talks about INTEGRITY.

They openly used TRIBALISM AND BLATANT LIES. For Uhuru Kenyatta he used his ill gotten wealth to CYNICALLY HIRE a BRITISH FIRM LINKED TO THE CONSERVATIVES to MANUFACTURE THE FICTION that this scion of NEO-COLONIAL OPPRESSION with TWO FATHERS- his biological dad Jomo and his political godfather, Moi- the first and second DICTATORS of Kenya was “ an anti-imperialist fighter”.

As I wrote in my 2013 Jukwaa piece, Did Uhuru Win? the elevation of TNA and URP to power was a mixture of electoral theft, computer hacking, propaganda and ethnic manipulation.

The few years Jubilee has misgoverned Kenya has been punctuated by SCANDALS AND BLATANT CORRUPTION. To name but a few, Eurobond, NYS, Waiguru, Kabira, Arap Singh, Gethi, tendepreneurship, the health scandal which has forced the American embassy to suspend their financial assistance to Kenya. On top of this the sheer tribalism using the myth of the discredited, corrupt Mutahi Ngunyi and his so called tyranny of numbers” has meant that Jubilee against law, order, decency and common sense, has MADE IT OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT POLICY to hire only Kikuyus and Kalenjins to TOP GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATIVE POSITIONS.

As if this was NOT ENOUGH, the much ballyhooed projects that Jubilee constantly boasts about has left you and I, plus our children, wajukuu, vilembwe and vilembwekeze mired in debt.
I hope I have made my position VERY CLEAR: SAY NO TO JUBILEE!!

But this does not let NASA off the hook.

Despite sharing initials with the African National Congress, Musalia’s vehicle, ANC is not even a close relative of its South African Counterpart. Raila Odinga is in the Zionist Apartheid state of Israel as we speak. The controversy over the sale of the Kenyan embassy in Japan plus the wheeling and dealing that made Moses Wetangula mint a cool 100 million over the Turkana mining prospects still hangs over the FORD-Kenya’s supremo’s head. And for years, Kalonzo Musyoka was KANU’s blue eyed boy, loyal to the core to Moi and jet-setting around the world in a desperate bid during Kibaki’s time supporting the PNU side of the Grand Coalition nusu mkate regime- including going to bat for Uhuru, Ruto and the Ocampo Six to salvage them from the Hague.

More seriously, most progressive African and Third World activist who embrace the concept of liberation, foreign aggression, independence have been busy agitating for the people of Western Sahara led by their freedom fighter movement to free that oppressed nation, not from European colonialists or Western backed imperialists but ironically, FROM A FELLOW NEIGHBOURING AFRICAN COUNTRY, MOROCCO SINCE THE 1970S. Polisario even established an office in Nairobi. It is supported by many members of the African Union, with Algeria, with a proud anti-colonial history at the forefront.

But consider the following picture if you may:



That is an image carried in the Nairobi newspaper, the Star. The caption to the picture says:


Raila poses with the Kenyan delegation to the Crans Montana Forum in Dakhla in March.

YOU NOTICE THAT JUBILEE SECRETARY GENERAL RAPHAEL TUJU IS RIGHT THERE, STANDING BEHIND AGWAMBO.

From Raila Odinga's ownFacebook page there is this story with the NASA's flag bearer own words:

"I am among other African political and business leaders brought together by the Crans Montana Forum under the High Patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morocco. The goal is to dialogue on ways and means of improving the living standards of the African people through economic empowerment, public health and respect for human rights."

The Facebook story has the following accompanying photograph which is the same as the one in the Star.

When it comes to Somalia there is an expose I did right here in Jukwaa in 2011 showing how Raila, Kalonzo and Wetangula were pleading with the Americans while they were senior Kenya government officials to be allowed imperialist assistance to intervene and invade a neighbouring African country.

To remind those who never saw my digital essay, here are some tidbits. This is from my piece posted right here in Jukwaa on December 11, 2011:


According to a series of revelations posted on the whistle-blowing site Wikileaks, I revealed to my readers, the Kenyan authorities had been plotting their moves in Somalia for almost four years now.

For example, I shared, on the 26th of January 2010, the US Assistant Secretary of Defence had separate meetings with Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Internal Security Minister George Saitoti and Defence Minister Yusuf Haji.

I then provided, courtesy of Wikileaks, a summary of that document:

"C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 NAIROBI 000159 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 2020/02/11
TAGS: PREL, PGOV, MOPS, MARR, SU, SO, KE
SUBJECT: ASD Vershbow Visit Highlights Regional Security Issues
CLASSIFIED BY: Mitchell Benedict, Political Counselor, DOS, POL;
REASON: 1.4(B), (D)

1. (C) Summary: During separate January 26 meetings, Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow met with Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Defense Minister Yussuf Haji, Chief of Defense Jeremiah Kianga, and Interior Minister George Saitoti. PM Odinga expressed serious concern over regional instability emanating from Somalia and emphasized that the international community has not acted with resolve as needed. The PM was equally concerned about the potential for Sudanese instability before and after the 2011 referendum. Minister Haji expressed his appreciation for defense cooperation and offered new details on Kenya's proposed "Jubaland Initiative" in Southern Somalia. Kenyan officials expressed concern over spillover of violence from Somalia and the flow of Somali refugees into Kenya."

Via the same Wikileaks source we are further informed that:

"During a one-day visit to Kenya on the 29th of January 2010, US Ambassador-at-Large for Counterterrorism Daniel Benjamin, discussed threats from Somalia, Islamic extremism inside Kenya, border security and Kenya's efforts to aid the Somalia Transitional Federal Government (TFG)when he met with George Saitoti, Minister of Interior and Provincial Administration.Saitoti was joined by Mathew Iteere, Commissioner of Police, Commandant K. Mbugua, Administration Police (AP), MG Michael Gichangi, Director General of the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS), and Nicholas Kamwende, Chief of the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU). The delegation met separately with Brigadier Phillip Kameru, Director for Military Intelligence (DMI). Accompanying Amb Benjamin to these meetings were Lee Brudvig, Nairobi Deputy Chief of Mission, Mark Thompson, S/CT Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism (Operations) , COL Rich Clarke, Joint Special Operations Command, MAJ Craig Miller, Liaison to S/CT, and Samuel Madsen, East Africa Regional Strategic Initiative Coordinator.
As far back as December 8, 2009 according to Wikileaks,

"During a meeting on the margins of the Djibouti IGAD ministerial visiting US Deputy Assistant Secretary Wycoff and Kenyan Minister of Foreign Affairs Wetangula agreed to continue to work together to promote stability and political reconciliation in Somalia. DAS Wycoff told Wetangula that the USG continued to strongly oppose the Kenyan "Jubaland" initiative as a bad idea that would more likely add to Somalia's instability than to help stabilize the country. Wetangula defended GOK plans to pursue its Jubaland (southern Somalia) initiative, implied that it was in evolving concept, and offered to facilitate better USG understanding of Kenya's plans. He also urged, as he had in interventions at the ministerial, international community support for the Somalia Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Wycoff agreed and highlighted the importance of supporting the Djibouti Peace Process (DPP) and efforts to promote political reconciliation. When the subject was raised, Wetangula excluded further expansion of the teeming Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya, which he said had received 12,000 refugees in November. The Foreign Minister took a hard line on Eritrea. He told DAS Wycoff that he had rebuffed efforts by the visiting Eritrean Foreign Minister to solicit support for a new Somalia reconciliation process. The Kenyan government had expelled Eritrean diplomats that Wetangula thought had played a role in the mid-September suicide bombing attack on AMISOM in Mogadishu."

More ominously, Wikileaks informed us that
"A high-level Kenyan delegation headed by Foreign Minister Wetangula used a long January 30 meeting on the margins of the AU Summit to lobby Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Johnnie Carson's support for the GOK's long-incubating Lower Juba initiative. Wetangula, the Minister of Defense, the Director of the National Security and Intelligence Services, and the military's chief-of-staff each in turn highlighted the dangers to Kenya emanating from Somalia and advertised an incursion into Somalia by the roughly two thousand Somali forces currently being trained by the GOK as the best solution. The Kenyan delegation assured A/S Carson that both Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the Government of Ethiopia supported Kenya's efforts and insisted that A/S Carson's longstanding concerns about the Kenyan plan had all been addressed. 2. (C) Summary and comment continued: A/S Carson tactfully, but categorically refused the Kenyan delegation's attempts to enlist USG support for their effort. He worried that the Lower Juba initiative could be very expensive, that it could catalyze clan and sub-clan rivalries, that success could create a rival to the TFG, that the GOK could be unwittingly providing training to future or current ONLF members, and that the GOK was not prepared to handle the domestic repercussions should their effort fail. The January 30 meeting marked Wetangula's third attempt to enlist A/S Carson's support and was only the latest in a long-running campaign by the Kenyan government to win USG agreement to its initiative. The persistence with which the GOK is courting the USG suggests, if nothing else, that they have finally awakened to the implications for Kenya of long-term instability in Somalia and are attempting belatedly to address the problem."


So clearly it is too much of a tall order to try and imagine NASA thinking beyond mainstream bourgeois and petit-bourgeois illusions about coalitions to take power during elections.

I remain a die hard Marxist-Leninist, The only people who share my Communist convictions about the United Front in Kenya, are like minded ideological thinkers like me. Some of them are to be found in the SDP that I resigned from but believe me or not, some are in ODM, Jubilee, other parties and some of them are without a party at all. I am very sure that some of my Jukwaa readers- in Kenya and the Diaspora plus a few foreigners. share my views which I distribute widely not just in Jukwaa.but via Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, KPTJ and various mailing lists.

So I will come to the official close of this long, long digital intervention by posing, without going into detail in posing the series of NINE QUESTIONS at the tail end of Part Twenty One:


1. Cam Professor Anyang' Nyongo if he prevails as the mew Governor of Kisumu County,jump start a United Front stagegy in Nyanza?

2. Can Hassan Omar work with Ali Joho in devising a United Front process in Mombasa?

3. How about Oparanya and Khalwale in Kakemega?

4. Does Nanok has the foresight of initiating something similar in Turkana County?

5. Will Peter Munya work with NASA in Meru?

6. Governor Isaac Ruto is now the fifth principal. What are the progressive opportunities in Bomet?

7. And this is a big ponderable: Will Kidero work with Sonko in Nairobi?

8. At the MP level, Yusuf Hassan who is probably the most radical parliamentarian in Kenya today find in his heart to work with his natural allies in NASA and turn on his Jubilee fort?

9. Is Jaguar a candidate for radical recruitment to push through a democratic agenda given his youth and entertainment base?