Why The Constantly Blundering NSIS Is A Big Danger To Kenya Part 2

There is an old Chinese proverb that says: “ask the youth, they know everything.”

This proverb is rather appropriate in describing many political commentors in Kenya at the moment. They have no interest in history and yet they love to be authoritative in passing judgment over various issues based on what they see as their intellectual capacity. Between yesterday and today I have gotten a pretty good idea of what some of them think whenever I indulge in this topic of the NSIS. Some of them even believe that I usually hurriedly sit down to base my writing on “ghosts and shadows” that do not exist. If indeed that was my style here, I highly doubt if we would have now been approaching 2 million hits in this popular political site. Indeed we are even witnessing an interesting trend where daily newspapers and entire media houses are frequently making great efforts to copy as much as they possibly can from Kumekucha.

But to be fair, yesterday was also the day I got an email from Central province from this lady who said in part; “I have read Kumekucha without fail for long time now and I can confidently say that what you write is the truth.”

What touched me most about this email was that as wars of a tribal nature rage in the country (and I am told even in Western capitals where Kenyans live) this Kenyan who happens to belong to the house of Mumbi was able to make her own fair judgement on Kumekucha.

I dare add that one of the reasons why the old dinosaurs are still in power in Kenya today is because the younger people of Kenya have chosen to accept things at face value. Nobody is really interested in thinking outside the box. I urge you folks never to take things at face value. Even here in Kumekucha. Hint: if you have time, take a look at yesterday’s comments (for Part 1 of this article) and see if you see a pattern. I can assure you that things are NOT what they seem to be. Secondly some nasty commentators suddenly went quiet. Why? Anyway am sure re-grouping may be happening even now, but please let us be ready this time round folks.

There are some pertinent questions regular readers of this blog must ask themselves and not be in a hurry to answer. Why is it that this blog always seems to be under attack? Why not other blogs and sites? Who would benefit most if this blog shuts down? Who would want to keep away regular sober commentators from Kumekucha as much as possible and why? Who would be terrified at the thought of most readers irrespective of their tribe or political inclination uniting here in Kumekucha for a common cause? Would this be important enough for them to spend as much resources as possible to stop this unity from ever happening?

Sorry folks I cannot answer those questions for you. There are some questions in this life that nobody can answer for you, you just need to find the answers for yourself no matter how long it takes.

During the election chaos early this year, the CEO of Safaricom Michael Joseph was put under considerable pressure to shut down the cell phone company’s popular sms service. Read the whole Economist article HERE. To his credit Mr Joseph (a tough native of South Africa) did not crumble under that pressure. Still that did not stop a number of Kenyans being charged with incitement based on the sms messages they sent from their phones (the cases are still going on). The extent to which the NSIS monitor most cell phone communications is unknown to many Kenyans.

To be fair to our intelligence service, the impact that the cell phone and the World Wide Web have had on Kenyan politics is much more considerable than most people seem to realize and it has been virtually unstoppable. Indeed experts have now identified improved communications between citizens of the planet as one of the reasons why the whole world seems to be suddenly spinning out of control virtually everywhere. But still there is no way to justify any effort to spend valuable money and resources trying to stop the unstoppable. And yet this is exactly what the NSIS has been doing and fortunes in taxpayer’s funds have been directed towards the effort of controlling mobile phone communications and the web.

Contrast this scenario with what is happening in neighboring Tanzania. The intelligence network in that country is second to none in the whole of Africa and yet their budget is nowhere near being as large as that of the NSIS. Admittedly Tanzania has benefited greatly from the “majumba kumi” (10 houses) system set up by founding father president Julius Nyerere. Under the system every 10 households has an officially recognized leader who reports everything to the authorities. Especially foreigners or strangers who have moved into the neighborhood recently, even if they are mere guests in one of the 10 houses under their jurisdiction. The result is that nobody in Tanzania “coughs” without the authorities knowing. Bear in mind that Tanzania is an administrator’s nightmare. It is a huge country, almost the size of Kenya and Uganda put together.

Recently the Tanzanian government has been increasingly concerned about Kenyans exporting crime into their country and has developed a very elaborate system for keeping an eye on Kenyans that involves the use of beautiful Tanzanian women agents whom they know most Kenyans have a weakness for. What you may not want to tell the immigration officer at the border, you will surely tell a beautiful girl who is falling all over you after a few drinks. They also have a sophisticated high-tech system being installed at the border that monitors the entry into the country of all traffic from Kenya using technology that involves photographing you at the border. But I digress. My point here is that the Tanzanians are known in the international intelligence community as people who insist on doing things in their own way. But oh my do they get results!!

It all has a lot to do with the fact that the intelligence system in that country, unlike in Kenya, was set up “giraffe style” where wise founding fathers clearly had a long term view in mind. As a result skills have even been passed down in a deliberate and orderly manner.

No comparison to poor Kenya where the Special Branch was reduced to a personal intelligence service for State House in last year’s general elections while all other projects remained under-funded and almost abandoned. The results of this can clearly be seen as the nation stands now on the brink of disaster.

Another huge difference between Kenya and Tanzanian intelligence is the tribal issue.

Oh yes, I can hear you sigh. Take heart, I too have sighed, but deeper than you have. Impeccable sources have confirmed to me that the NSIS has been torn right down the middle by tribalism in recent times. Trouble seems to have started when current Director General, Michael Gichagi took over. In fact other sources albeit less reliable, tell me that this could be the reason why the Kenyan intelligence ship is leaking more terribly that the famous Titanic ever did. Shockingly, there was a point in the run up to last year’s ill-fated general elections when reports were circulating on the web purporting to be NSIS research on the popularity levels of the two main presidential candidates. The scary thing here is not whether or not the allegations were true but the very thought that it was possible for such a confidential piece of information to be leaked from our national intelligence service and be widely distributed amongst Kenyans on the web. That fact alone tells you that it is in the best interests of the country to dismantle the NSIS as we know it today and start over.

P.S. Somebody has suggested that the idea of switching from the “British way” of doing intelligence, which was what the old Special branch was, to the American system which was the structure used in setting up the NSIS was a big mistake and has totally failed. Indeed American things do not export too well to Africa. They never have. But clearly all experts I have spoken to are unanimous in agreeing on one thing—namely the fact that the NSIS is a mess.