Kumekucha Gets Waki List

It is the oldest trick in the book, although I can already see all my lawyer friends violently resisting my use of the word "trick."

The way it works is that as all eyes are focused on a particular part of the legal contract like the amount of cash that you will get paid, a killer clause is sneaked in somewhere in the middle. At a place where you are bound to scheme through without really “seeing” it. You hurriedly sign, little knowing that you have just signed your own death warrant. That is the reason why we are always told repeatedly; “read the small print.”

Well earlier this year, the political class, some of the smartest, most evil guys in the land hurriedly signed the so-called Anan document without reading it properly. Well, they did read it very carefully, but only that part that talked about who would be in State House and who would wield what power. The assumption was that it was business as usual and that whoever occupied State House would as always do what they wanted to do.

Actually I am reliably informed that the fate of Kenya’s political class was sealed the minute we invited the African Union into Kenya to help sort out the post-election violence mess. The minute those guys came into the picture the whole matter moved into the jurisdiction of International courts and that now dreaded place where long suffering Kenyans may just begin to see justice—the Hague.

But nobody should bring out the Champaign yet, let alone the glasses. The political class as always have a game plan to ride out this crisis. The idea seems to pretend to accept all the recommendations of the Waki report, get a local tribunal in place and then do everything to influence that tribunal. This is Kenya where files disappear and evidence and witnesses vanish into thin air. Due process of course demands that you prove a person guilty and that can be a very tricky thing indeed, even when a person’s guilt is so obvious. Just ask the legal experts who were trying to get at the infamous Chicago crime lord, Al Capone.

The saddest bit in all this is that people died. Mostly innocent Kenyans. But who cares?

Kumekucha has obtained the full list of names in the secret envelope handed over to Kofi Anan. The list is published in Kumekucha Confidential our weekly email newsletter. If you are not a subscriber yet, subscribe now by sending an email to:- kumekucha-subscribe@yahoogroups.com


Bodies of post-election violence victims piled up at a Mortuary: Their blood is crying out from the ground. Will they ever get justice?

A tribute to Miriam Makeba- The departed songbird Africa will never forget

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Why This Drive To Surrender Our Sovereignty?

Forgive me for being naive, but I thought Kenya was a sovereign nation. After years of white rule, our founding fathers fought hard, shed a lot of blood and did away with certain comforts,whatever little they had, so that they'd replace white rule with black rule in Kenya. In 1963 President Jomo Kenyatta and his colleagues achieved that feat for us all. Every year we come together to celebrate the turn of events that placed us squarely in charge of our destiny...for better for worse.

At this point, we are going through one of the most challenging times in Kenya. With the Waki Report causing increasing anxiety in the nation, there have been loud calls by sober and thoughtful Kenyans to turn over our destiny and place it in the hands of the ICC. Just like the IMF and the World Bank, which have perfected the art of control of Africa's emerging economies and the Continent's people, the ICC is now being courted to do what the Westerners think the dumb Africans can't do for themselves.

And we are cheering!

I've always said we need homegrown solutions to our problems. We need solutions that are a reflection of our troubled political history, that respect our dignity as people with brains, and places us in equal footing with out Western brothers. Can anybody look me in the eye and tell me that the judge at the ICC will better accomplish this than our own judges? What makes him more qualified than our guys here? Is it the color of his skin?

Once again I'm aware of the unpopularity of what I'm saying here, but I reject this headlong plunge in the direction of placing the destiny of my nation in the hands of foreigners. Let me explain. Are we now happy that yesterday nearly twenty five ambassadors took to the hills to tell our leaders how to run Kenya? Are we excited that some Western security officials may jet in here to arrest our native sons? Where is our self-respect?

No, I don't condone what our leaders did. I don't condone the fact the elections were stolen, that the ECK is still playing games, that the constitution has not been brought in compliance with the prevailing realities in Kenya, that the question of land distribution is not being handled. But even in the face of all that, I can't surrender my dignity by calling on foreigners to help me figure out justice in my own land. I don't pretend to have the answers, but I know that if we soberly put our minds to it, we can come up with mutually acceptable ways to handle Waki and the future.

I commend the Cabinet for going easy on this matter yesterday. I may not see eye to eye with President Kibaki and all the men who planned the murder of Kenyans, but I must stand by my President to defend the right of this nation in deciding what's best for Kenya. If we carry out a nonpartisan investigation and find out which people actually funded and abetted the violence, let's crucify those people right here. That's what Independence means, folks.

Uhuru.

Jamhuri.

Tell me where I'm going wrong, my fellow countrymen.

Let the ambassadors shut up. Let's figure out how we can best handle this matter as Kenyans.

A tribute to Miriam Makeba- The departed songbird Africa will never forget

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Cheap, Safe Option: Kibaki for Local Tribunal

Unlike Justices Kriegler and Akiwumi before him, Waki knew better the naivety of entrusting the hyenas to guard the choicest of steak. He fully understood the deceptive ways of Kenyan leaders and you can imagine the fate of the secret envelope and its contents if he was naive . The secret envelope has totally rattled the powerful leaving them no option but to manufacture legal loopholes to save their scalps. And true to form and tradition Kibaki will fall for the cheap solution that leaves his DECEPTIVE hands strengthened in offering clemency to murderers.

Kenyan political class may have the monopoly to rape Kenya but one thing is certain, the Waki report will not be theirs to decapitate. Waki knew them inside out and there is absolutely nothing they can do to reverse the process and verdict. Annan will have to do what the world expects him to do to earn his EMINENT PERSON label. He must fill the void left by the chronic lack of leadership that has sees a president stay mum when during serial self-inflicted crises (PEV, arms/pirates etc) only to emerge from his slumber and declare an Obama holiday with political expediency top on his agenda.

The adage THE GUILTY ARE ALWAYS AFRAID has never proved so apt. Why then all these political heat when nobody knows the content of the envelope handed to Annan? Waki has stirred the political hornet’s nest. They have been left to do what they are best at in drumming TRIBAL support ala Kimunya.

Uhuru may been a late convert to seeking Justice but he is fooling nobody. You don’t make history in abandoning your office as leader of official opposition to neatly place your headon the chopping block. Political favours have sell-by date and Jomo Junior knows what Emilio will do. Even Njenga Karume now has the guts and temerity demand implementation of Waki report. Please tell me another believable gimmick.

Kenyans are no fools and Waki didn’t mention TRIBES but specific people whom his committee felt had cases to answer. Sirma’s outburst ‘you are either with us or against us’ may have made him sound intellectual but only to himself. If Ruto is innocent he has nothing to fear and he is better advised to free his conscience by clearing his name at the earliest opportunity.

Bondage of impunity
Waki’s noose is tightening. The good Judge has proved an a competent driver to Hague Express. The political class may enjoy the charade in buying time but this matter is one that has been cast far and wide. Pseudo patriots will foam at the mouth shouting sovereignty oblivious the fact that the same international they now derive snatched Kenya from the jaws of the near-Armageddon.

Ours is a country crying and begging for HONEST leadership bereft of cronyism and fraud. Kenya is yearning to be freed from the bondage of IMPUNITY. Make no mistake! Kibaki is no fool to implement Waki’s report that correctly identified State House address as the venture of planning of the massacres. He knows better than put a gun to his own head.

Meanwhile Kibaki’s 'SMART' apologists arel calculatively corrupting Obama’s virtues by asking us to borrow his inspiration. Give it to them for meticulously peddling such lies oblivious of how they conveniently and shamelessly mask over the common thread running through our locally minted yet stillborn YOTE YAWEZEKANA and the exotic YES WE CAN.

But again you don’t mention bones where old people are lest you unwittingly invite a curse for reminding them of their imminent demise. Well, no amount of political posturing will ground Hague Express which in the fullness of will be packed by fully-paid passengers.

A tribute to Miriam Makeba

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Can We Do An "Obama" In Kenya?

It is interesting that at a time when I am grieving so much over personal issues and what would have been, my mind goes back to that great friend of mine that I always talk about here. His name was "G" and those who have been on Kumekucha long enough know that he hailed from Luo Nyanza (although that was never an issue in our friendship, not even for a half a minute) and you also know that a lone gunman walked into his Nairobi office one evening in 2005 and pumped bullets into him.

Well, G had a striking resemblance to President elect Barack Obama. The way he talked, the shape of his head, the looks, even the smile etc. The only big difference was that my friend was very much on the dark side.

As I write this I wonder what he would have said about the Obama revolution in the United States. He was a skeptic, my friend and I watched as he struggled to look at things positively from the moment he discovered how important one's mental attitude is when somebody is seeking good results in anything.

Still he would have no doubt pointed to the enormous task the son of Kogello has before him. I can almost hear him laugh and say “Chris, our brother has been fed a suicide pass, why lie.” In rugby a suicide pass is where you hold onto the ball until your most brutal opponents are right next to your team mate and then you toss the ball to him. What happens next is painful but highly predictable and expected.

In other words the world is too messed up for even President Obama to do much to reverse the fortunes. The poor guy has been given the instruments of power in a house that is already burning down... fast.

But what is really in my mind today is how you and I can do an Obama on the current political class right here in Kenya. I mean haven't we just had enough of these guys even as they play out that circus over the Waki report? I know I have, so much so that I find it difficult these days to sit down and write any serious analysis of Kenyan politics, because it will always involve those selfish, self serving hyenas in sheep's clothing. And I am talking right across the political divide.

Well for those interested in dreaming with me please feel free to join in (you will remember that Obama's march to the White House started as a hilarious dream and that in this very blog, yours truly was laughed off for suggesting that the upstart would ever win the democratic nomination, let alone a ticket to the White House).

One key thing that will be required will be cash. And lots of it. There is no way you can run a decent campaign for State House without lots of cash. Now here we can borrow a leaf from Obama's magical fund raising machine. It was mostly done on the World Wide Web using viral marketing techniques and the huge fortunes were mostly raised in $20s and even lower denominations and contributions from ordinary folks.

Can the same be done in Kenya? Can just 10 million of the estimated over 15 million Kenyans roughly aged between 18 and 35 years old raise an average of Kshs 100 each? That will give our campaign kitty some serious cash would it not?

But there are other more urgent questions to ask. Are Kenyans even ready to do an Obama in the land where Obama originated from?

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Abracadabra, Let There be Lights in Kogelo

With lightening speed, Obama’s ancestral home at Kogelo in Siaya was fully connected to the national electricity grid in two days. And that came after Kenyans were granted an Obama holiday last Thursday while the Americans who elected him had no such luxuries. Either its the paradox of a so-called working nation in love with RECESS or the smart scoundrels grieving with king size tears and louder than the bereaved to mask their hitherto disdain.

Well, either way the true face of deception never fails to embarrass. Welcome to African brand of leadership of personal whims selfishly played to gain political scores at whatever cost. No prize is big enough to catch an eye when expediency rules supreme.

To hell with informed leadership from in front and by example. Mediocrity is our forte while integrity remains an alien virtue these shores of ours. We are led by the leash using outdated whims of yore. Anything unfamiliar is shunned and new ideas are summarily dismissed with the wave dinosaur hands struggling to steady the wheels. What is more, the leaders can chose their actions at any tangent well secure in the knowledge that their kinsmen will foam at the mouth trying to sanitize the rot on their behalf. In the process the country suffocates from official rigidity and becomes too intoxicated with the fumes of moral decay. The free fall towards self-destruction has been so effortlessly

Leaves you wondering what bleak fates await thousand of villages which don’t have their won Obama. So resources are there aplenty and can be SELECTIVELY deployed at the flash of a finger. And that proves the perils of personalized rule legalized in IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY. In the whole game Kenyans remain helpless collateral in the political chess board.

Kibaki seems to be on an ego trip to turn Kenyans into torches to light his Christmas tree. Kenyatta and Moi may have found it difficult to conceptualize what it takes to serve neither the commensurate responsibility demanded of the same service. But Kibaki perfection of penchant for contempt to all Kenyans is inexcusable in this age and time.

Forget about the nostalgic fad of being a scholar of yore. The present leadership simply acts on sectarian whims bereft of any intellectual spine. And as for the street rants that intellectuals don’t make good politicians you can as well go ahead and tell than to the birds so that they fly high in the skies.

Leadership from the rear
We need leaders with the mien and capacity to inspire and not promise miracles. Leaders with quality housed in the box above their shoulders who leave their names in history books as builders and custodians of durable institutions that remain the bedrock of a nation’s present and future prosperity in all spheres towards sustainable stability.

Smart leaders exploit crises to shape and make history. Formulating sound policies that outlive their reign is what uniquely defines them. Focused hope is a bankable virtue that once successfully sold to a populace gains a momentum of its own for the long term good. Instead what we have flying around us are jingoists who won’t miss an opportunity to populate any opening with their TRIBESMEN with no regard to equity and fairness.

While Einstein may have preferred imagination to knowledge, Kenyan leaders are very keen to demonstrate their lack thereof of both. The only commodity they sell and dispense in abundance is fertile and creative mind to fleece and rape Kenya to the bone. Our national sense of success is so impaired so much so that without opulence, you stand accused of laziness and failing to make hay when the sun shines.

One only hopes and prays that maybe someday soon Kibaki will shuffle in shame when he miraculously rediscovers that what is housed in his head is a brain meant to be used. Predictably, Emilio's apologists will readily jump to his defense with such cheap take as promoting tourism or creating a plastic higher pedestal of fake statesmanship or any such hollow derivatives for that matter. Well, we cannot stop them from cheering on the nude king.

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Waki's Is A Hit Job

About four months ago I called upon our political leaders to initiate measures to bring Kenyans to the Uhuru Park with the sole purpose of spearheading a national forgiveness campaign. The way I envisioned it, this would have been a time and a place where people who were massively wronged would look deep in their hearts and utter those difficult words: I Forgive You. Okay, I know you're about to say...how can you forgive a person who has not asked for forgiveness or even acknowledged their wrongdoing?

You have a point.

But this is eleven months since the debacle that was our elections and look at where things are going. We have a man named Waki, who has produced a report that suggests some prominent Kenyans decided to suddenly start planning to kill and maim other Kenyans. This is incredulous coming from a man of this judge's stature. Has Waki ever heard of the shameful distribution of land in Kenya? Has he ever heard of the blatant tribalism that characterised Kibaki's first term? Has he said anything about Kivuitu and gang? And has he bothered to warn the country of the potential bloodletting that may follow the full implementation of his report?

Here is where I come down on this matter. We have to see the Waki Report as nothing but a carefully packaged hit job. I don't know who's name appears on it, but I know for a fact that the blame for the events of December and January lie squarely with President Kibaki. This is the man Kenyans elected to protect them and ensure the security of the nation. Where was he when, as is widely reported, a meeting of a known gang was held in the State House, ostensibly to plan how to deny Hon. Odinga the presidency and terrorize Kenyans? Where was he when the Kalenjin warriors were organizing themselves into a force that would later kill many innocent Kenyans and destroy property worth millions of shillings? Indeed, where was the commander-in-chief when the forces he controlled killed and maimed people in Kisumu, Naivasha and Nakuru? Don't you think Waki should have probed these issues?

Like I said last week, we Kenyans created the situation we went through and must find ways to correct it. We don't need Kofi Annan and the U.S. ambassador, or anybody else for that matter, to tell us how, when and at what pace to do things. Had it not been for the troika that comprised Kibaki, Renneberger and Kofi, Raila Odinga would today be president and Kenya would have been the better off for it. So when Waki zeroes in on some two months worth of events and asks us to punish people who did things within that narrow window, conveniently ignoring years of injustices on Kenyans, he's asking us to practically succumb to the whims of those who have perfected the art of manipulation.

We will not do it.

Fellow Kenyans, time is rapidly running out. We can still save the nation we all love while we still can. Forgiveness. Atonement. That's the answer. The alternative is this misguided call for justice, which if you ask me looks a lot like revenge. State-sponsored revenge. What I find very disturbing is that pastors from various churches are also preaching this brand of justice! Can they look Kenyans in the eye and tell us where they've been for forty five years while the nation was descending into the mess we are in today? Can they look us in the eye and tell us why the Kenyan youth who participated in the demonstrations are guilty while men like Kibaki and Kivuitu are not?

I have to end this piece with a warning today: There can be no justice that the Kikuyu see as just while the Kalenjin see as a witch-hunt. There can be no justice that the Luo see as serving the interests of one community and not Kenya as a nation. And there can be no justice where the interests of Kenya are decided in foreign capitals. That's the raw truth.

There is a better way to have a fresh start. Let's go to Uhuru Park. Let's ask Kenyans to bury the hatchet. You'll all be surprised how much Kenyans are longing for that day.

The day of atonement.

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