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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Semi-permanent cosmetics in Africa?

The Nyatiti is a wonderful musical instrument that is perfect for singing praises and honouring somebody and it is my African instrument of choice to honour the kind of Kenyans I meet and feel proud to be a Kenyan. On the other hand the drum can be used for many things. Drums are beaten before some executions which is what I wish I could do to some of the Kenyans I meet, but for now drums of protest will do. Welcome to Kumekucha’s column that puts personalities, faces and real life incidents into nationals of the great sleeping giant nation called Kenya. Every Tuesday or Wednesday only here in the most popular blog on Kenyan news and politics.

Semi-permanent Cosmetics in Africa

Have you ever heard of semi-permanent cosmetics? Can you imagine waking up with make up for a long time to come? Say 3 to 4 years? Imagine the time you would save. The sheer convenience…

Well thanks to a very innovative young Kenyan called Jared H. Babu a micropigmentologist, this service is now available in Kenya. And you can hardly find it anywhere else in Africa outside South Africa.

The story of how he came across this business is telling.

It all started when he got an opportunity to travel to the United States with a relative who wanted him to study the finer details of a product that he had secured a distributorship for. It was for bullet proof car tyres. So while Jared was in Los Angeles studying the finer details of the car tyre that can withstand any automatic weapon bullets without getting deflated, he decided that he would keep his eyes open for a woman’s product that would do well back home in Kenya. Now this is very interesting because we all know that when most Kenyans land in Western countries they are solely focused on how they can stay on (mostly as illegal immigrants) and look for a job to get rich on. This young guy was instead looking for business opportunities to take back home with him.

He found it in semi-permanent make-up and trained for a year and a half to graduate as a certified permanent cosmetic professional. He now offers this service to enthusiastic ladies dropping in at his premises at Old Mutual Building on Kimathi Street. He can be reached on +254 722-691272. Or email:- tattooingwithstyle@gmail.com

Join me in playing a nice Nyatiti tune to honour this innovative Kenyan whose every effort should be greatly encouraged.


Are poor people fools?

When people talk, they will always let slip their real feelings and prejudices. A rather fascinating comment appeared in this blog that reflects the feelings thoughts and beliefs of many privileged Kenyans. They referred to the poor people of Kenya a some kind of idiots who don’t have the slightest clue.

Now this is a very widely held belief in Kenya amongst the political class. They believe that poor people are fools. I once heard this view expressed by a rich man’s kid who said something I will never forget. He posed the question; why don’t those poverty stricken Kibera guys just come into town and use their brains and hassle and make money just like everybody else? I laughed bitterly at this great naivety displayed. But after a while I realized that I was no better than this guy. I was assuming that everybody has been privileged enough like I have been to live virtually everywhere in Kenya amongst the stinking rich and also amongst the most desperate folks you have ever met.

Let me answer the rich kid’s question because know that there are multitudes reading this who would pose the same question. In many cases the Kibera folks have NOT had the same opportunities as many of us have had. And I am not talking about education only. There is the even more important thing called exposure. Of course folks like this rich kid’s dad are to blame. They have gotten rich stealing from the poor, like a vast majority of Kenyans. The recent scandal in the Ministry of education where the government is scrambling to do damage control is a perfect example of this.

Little wonder that recently while showing somebody around some leafy suburbs of Nairobi I remarked; “And this is where the thieves live.”

Join me will you, in beating drums of protest at those Kenyans who believe that poor people are poor because they are stupid. Who is more stupid here?

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Dark secrets of the presidency Part 11

Mystery of the bloodbath under Kibaki
One of the big mysteries of the Kibaki administration has to do with the ugly unprecedented post election violence of January 2008 shortly after the presidential elections results were announced.

Now everybody knows that it was President Daniel Arap Moi who literally invented tribal clashes. His motive for doing this was to speed up the fulfillment of his prophecy to Kenyans in 1991; “Multi-party itawachoma.” (multiparty politics will burn you to ashes.) Moi in bowing to pressure and allowing the re-introduction of multi-party democracy in Kenya in 1991 had bitterly warned Kenyans that it was not good for them, Lakini mtoto akililia wembe mpe (But if a child cries to be given a razor, give it to them so that they cut themselves and learn their lesson the hard way.)

There is overwhelming evidence (including the one given by former powerful minister of State in the office of the president under Moi, Burudi Nabwera) that the president was deeply involved in formenting and establishing regular tribal clashes in the Rift Valley. Nabwera toild shocked Kenyans through a press statement that Moi personally imported bows and arrows into the country from a certain Asian nation. These crude weapons were then distributed on the ground and the people provoked to “remove the enemy.”

I happened to be in Nakuru (playing rugby) during the height of the tribal clashes under the Moi regime in 1992 and I bumped into a friend of mine whom I had not seen for many years. He worked for the airforce and flew helicopters. We caught up on a lot of things over a few drinks and then I suddenly asked him what his mission in the Rift Valley was all about. I will never forget the look on the poor guy’s face. This chap was actually a great friend of mine and we had no secrets between us. But that day he looked aside avoided eye contact and said that his mission was top secret and there was no way he could discuss it with me. A chill went up my spine watching him squirm in his seat. He behaved in the right way not telling me anything. But his squirming spoke volumes.

Anyway back to what I was saying. By the time Kibaki took over as president, Moi had fine-tuned his tribal clashes game in the Rift Valley. Remember that these so-called clashes only emerged just before a general elections ONLY.

Any fool in Kenya had this information and the great mystery on my mind to date is did Kibaki guess what the consequences of a stolen election would be on the ground that Moi had cultivated in the Rift valley for a number of years? Did the intelligence community and security forces in the country not guess what would happen in the Rift Valley? I ask this because even the response by the government initially mainly focused in Kisumu while parts of the Rift Valley went up in flames. In fact things got so bad that it was the Kenya Army which was sent into the Rift Valley together with the GSU. That is very telling because this has never happened before in the history of the country. That a civilian problem necessitated the sending in of the military. Not only that. What was the Ugandan military doing in Kisumu and Eldoret?

I would like to give President Kibaki the benefit of the doubt and assume that he did not guess that there would be any serious problem in the Rift Valley because I don’t want to believe that he did not care. But it is strange how the president would not have a clue when ordinary folks like me knew and cringed when the election results were announced.

Somebody somewhere has to answer for all the unnecessary deaths, rapes and maiming of innocent Kenyans that went down. I don’t want to believe for one minute that all those fellow Kenyans died in vain.

Meanwhile the scene inside State House shortly after the troubles in the Rift Valley erupted is interesting and rather instructive.

It is said that the president took the first few calls from the then secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The calls were calling for his urgent action because the international community was very concerned about what was happening in Kenya. It is said that the president was rather casual and saw no need for concern or panic assuring Ms Rice that things were under control. And yet it was obvious that they were not.

Shortly after that, the president stopped taking the calls even as Ms Rice desperately tried to reach him again.

Admittedly, here the president cannot take all the blame. He received lots of help from the Bush administration to rig the 2007 elections and this must have been one of the reasons why the calls annoyed him. If you are short of evidence to point to Americans fully backing Kibaki in his evil deeds, then ask yourself why the World Bank was still doing deals with Kibaki’s Finance Minister Amos Kimunya in late Decemeber when intelligence reports on the ground were saying that at the very least it would be a close election. More accurate reports pointed to a Raila Odinga win by a landslide.

And then also remember that the Americans were the first and only Western nation to congratulate Kibaki on his re-election. They later quickly withdrew this congratulatory message. Don’t ask me how one withdraws a congratulatory message because I also have no idea how it is done.

American had many reasons not to want a Raila Odinga win at all costs. One of them was the suspect secret funding of ODM from certain Arab nations linked to terrorism. But as usual the Yankies greatly underestimated the cost that would have to be paid on the ground in terms of the innocent blood of Kenyans being poured for them to fulfill their desires.

(To be continued)

Dark secrets of the presidency will continue on Thursday right through to the end of the holidays. However it will be interrupted tomorrow by my weekly column Drums and Nyatiti. Meanwhile I take this opportunity to thank all those wonderful Kumekucha readers who sent me messages of goodwill over the Christmas period. I was very touched reading each and every one of them. Thank you very much my brothers and sisters.

Get a Free copy of almost the entire book Dark Secrets of the Kenyan Presidency

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Dark secrets of the presidency Part 10

Proud Makerere Don

Despite being President Moi’s Vice President for 10 long years, it is rather obvious that Mwai Kibaki learnt very little or nothing from his long stint as VP. Very much unlike Moi before him.

One thing that was always very clear during Kibaki’s campaign for the presidency was that he thought of Moi as an uneducated fool who ran a government full of fellow illiterates who had never gone to school and there was therefore nothing to learn from him. This is the arrogant attitude that Kibaki carried with him to State House in January 2003. This was further confirmed by an insistence on CVs before any public appointments would be made. There was no doubt that the idea here was to catch people who had no university education since this appears to have been the minimum bench mark that Kibaki had set in his early months as president of Kenya. Not only that, the president had his preferences in Universities with UK universities and Makerere being at the top of his list.

The speech Kibaki made at Uhuru park on being sworn in as president was even more telling. He clearly emphasized that the era of road side directives and appointments was over.

Again one his close aides, Kiraitu Murungi put it even more bluntly when he arrogantly said in a speech;

“We want Moi to retire to his Kabarak home and look after his goats and we will show him how a government should be run.”

What must have been going through Kibaki’s mind was that he was taking over from illiterates who knew nothing and with his credentials and those he would appoint the whole mess would be magically wiped out literally overnight. It was a very simplistic view which the president no doubt regrets to this day.

In retrospect Kibaki had a lot of grand ideas for Kenya. But historians will record that virtually all of them had one thing in common they reeked of great naivety. I was at a meeting at Ufungamano house, Nairobi where Kibaki was addressing Christian professionals and he emphasized that the tax which was then being collected by the Moi government was more than enough to run government and take a lot of services to the people. In the same meeting Kibaki took time to emphasize to his audience that he lived in Muthaiga had lived there for a very long time. In all my years of following politics in Kenya I have never heard another leader emphasize their residence. You be the judge of what that was all about but in my book there is an overwhelming stench of pride and arrogance here.

It is one thing to seek to be a reformist but one needs to understand the system that they are seeking to change much more deeply than Mwai Kibaki understood the Moi prtesidency.

How could somebody be in government so long and even be Vice president for a decade and still be so naïve? I will leave that one for historians to answer but my opinion supported by a lot of evidence is that the problem is the man’s arrogance. The truth of the matter is that the more arrogant you are in this life the less you end up learning. And it does not matter if the knowledge is staring you right in the face.

Granted, people all over the world approach high office with many grand expectations that are usually quickly deflected by the cold reality on the ground. In other words the job always looks much easier than it really is. Still having said this it is obvious that Mwai Kibaki was an extreme case of a very naïve person who had to make way too many adjustments even to be able to have a stable administration.

This is the reason why very early during his administration a sizeable number of Kenyans were predicting that he would not make it to 2007 when the next general elections were due.

Even more dangerous was the man’s way of dealing with any crisis. I have a theory that a contributing factor to this attitude had to do with his first marriage. On countless occasions Kibaki got locked out of his own house at night by his wife Lucy, leaving his bodyguards and minders in an awkward position. To deal with his wife Kibaki’s approach was always to ignore the crisis at hand and pretend that all was well. He would sleep in the uncomfortable environment of the car and would then behave like nothing had happened the next morning.

This attitude clearly seeped into the former Makerere don’s personal management style when it came to making decisions and here there are many instances that clearly illustrate this.

Indeed this attitude proved to be fatal.

I will give just two examples.

Had Kibaki dealt with the crisis over the memorandum of understanding and Raila Odinga more swiftly and decisively he would have quickly gained an upper hand over Raila Odinga. Instead he let the problem simmer until it became a major crisis that almost brought his administration to its’ knees. In any case it led to unnecessarily high tension in the country that climaxed with the referendum and prepared the ground for the post election violence of early 2008.

An even deadlier case was the beginning of the post election violence when intelligence reports came in clearly showing that the country was burning and yet there was unprecedented indecisiveness on the part of the executive. This wavering cost many Kenyan lives that would have otherwise been saved. To make matters worse the whole situation had been provoked by Mwai Kibaki himself in the first place. He did this by leaving it very late in the election to rig the presidential vote (more dithering on his part) and this made his actions rather obvious to the majority of Kenyans. This is something that the ICC and Moreno Ocampo should look into more deeply as they seek to punish the main perpetrators of Kenya’s worst election-related violence ever. They should also look deeply into the Raila Odinga brand of politics shortly after the 2003 elections.

Any manager will tell you that there are some decisions that if left too late weaken the impact of any move one may end up making later. The most recent example is the crisis at the Ministry of education where billions in donor funds has been embezzled. Even if Kibaki ends up firing the Education minister and the PS later, the impact will be almost zero now after all the pressure that has been brought to bear on his government.

Good managers will also tell you that on many occasions swift decisive action even when the wrong decision has been taken is much better than indecision.

This is the crux of the problem with President Mwai Kibaki’s leadership. And when you combine this with the unfolding political reality where there is a fierce struggle over the Kibaki succession, it is a recipe for disaster and unprecedented disaster for Kenya.

Get a Free copy of almost the entire book Dark Secrets of the Kenyan Presidency


(To be continued)

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Dark secrets of the presidency Part 9

Professor Kimya


Apology: I take this opportunity to apologize to all my readers for failing to make a post yesterday as I had earlier promised. It was due to unforeseen and indeed unavoidable circumstances. To partly make up for this, this weekend special posts will extend to Tuesday.


It has to be the most fascinating incident in the history of politics in Kenya. And it all happened at Kasarani Stadium sometime in March 2002. The occasion was a special Kanu national delegates conference called to pick the party’s presidential candidate for the elections later that year.

The meeting had created great excitement because everybody knew that Moi was not going to run again in 2002. And still most folks were putting their money on Kanu and so whoever was elected the Kanu presidential candidate on this particular day would without doubt end up as president. Or so they assumed. The reason was that senior political analysts knew that Moi always fixed the elections and he was bound to rig it in favour of the Kanu candidate.

And so with this kind of knowledge in mind the stakes were bound to be pretty high. And they were.

It is also important to note that prior to this historical Kanu delegates conference a number of people had been promised the presidency by Moi.

Raila Odinga had merged his party NDP (National Democratic party) with Kanu after being assured by Moi that he would the party’s chosen one for the presidency.

Kalonzo Musyoka after years of faithfully serving Moi had also been assured that the presidency was his for the taking.

Long serving Vice President Professor George Saitoti had also been assured that he would be the next president of Kenya. And what was more is that Saitoti had a precedent to support his bid for the presidency. After all Moi had been faithful to Kenyatta and had ended up ascending to the presidency. And Saitoti was more than faithful to Moi. It was almost amusing at public meetings whenever Moi mentioned Saitoti’s name, he would spring up to his feet at such lightning speed like a high school student vigorously campaigning to be appointed head boy. Saitoti knew how this pleased Moi a man who had never seen the four corners of an A-level classroom let alone a university lecture hall. It pleased Moi to no end that this extremely educated “professor” would jump up like something had bitten him, the minute he mentioned his name.

Still Saitoti had made sure not to take any chances and had spent a small fortune the previous night canvassing delegates from all over the country to vote for him. He assumed that the whole thing would be put to the vote.

Now the fascinating incident happened when moments after the delegate’s conference started Saitoti realized that his name was not even in contention for the party’s presidential candidate. Instead Uhuru Kenyatta was the sole candidate for the nomination. George just lost it then. Others would say that he went berserk. The good mathematic professor started shouting all over the place. His loud voice attracted the attention of President Moi who quickl barked a command; “professor Kimya” (roughly translated this means, “shut up professor”).

Saitoti ignored his master’s command and continued to make plenty of noise throwing his hands all over the place. Moi had to repeat his stern command and the third time he did so stood up and gave Saitoti the kind of look that young folks like calling “daggers”. Saitoti finally quieted down and sat meekly on his seat.

Now all this had taken place with TV cameras rolling. And the clip got through the “self censors” at the KTN TV station that evening and was aired. Kenyans stared at it in fascination. Most folks had never seen anything like this before. Not in the carefully choreographed Kenyan politics everybody was accustomed to. Especially where the president was involved.

Actually the incident highlighted the desperate power struggle that had been going on for the presidency which had started as early as after the 1997 presidential elections when everybody knew that Moi was not going to stand again for president. Some of those desperate for the presidency had even figured out Moi’s biggest challenge in leaving the presidency and had spent fortunes reassuring his Kalenjin community on the ground that all would be well with them if they became president after Moi. I am of course talking about people like Kalonzo Musyoka and Raila Odinga.

Moi’s challenge was to leave the presidency and stay out of prison and still have the vast fortune he had accumulated as president intact. Some of his close advisors advised him against leaving the presidency and put considerable pressure on him to stay on at all costs. They even created viable plans that would have allowed him to almost legitimately stay on in power. But once again Moi was too clever for most folks. He had made up his mind to leave the presidency and had carefully devised an exit strategy that would keep the country together and allow him at the very least a quite retirement. In doing so he took most of his opponents and many Kenyans completely by surprise.

Even more surprising was Moi’s choice for successor. He had settled on the rookie Uhuru Kenyatta son of Kenya’s first president Jomo Kenyatta. Actually his choice was not surprising if you understood that above all else Moi wanted to protect his wealth. Uhuru had inherited a lot of grabbed property from his father (the first president of Kenya). In wanting Uhuru to be his successor Moi was sure that whatever happened Uhuru would not come after him without badly exposing himself and his family. It was as simple as that.

Moi’s plan would have succeeded except for one small detail that went badly wrong. Moi assumed that in the same way that the Kiambu mafia had been forced to accept him as president after Kenyatta’s death, there was little that other pretenders to the throne would do to stop Uhuru Kenyatta. The mistake made here was to fail to recognize the fact that a lot had changed since 1978 (24 years earlier). And even when George Saitoti defected to the opposition shortly after the Kasarani incident, Moi ignored the move as being of inconsequential. And indeed in a way it was. Saitoti has always struggled to win back his parliamentary seat in Kajiado let alone having any kind of national support that one could speak of. But what actually changed the whole equation was the defection much earlier of Raila Odinga. The man had the organizational ability to turn tables on Moi as he was to prove.

Most analysts believe that Moi had grown a little too overconfident for his own good and this too was a major contributing factor to the big defeat he was to suffer in 2002.

All eyes remained focused firmly on Kanu and few Kenyans paid attention to the developments in the opposition. After all many had already written the Kenyan opposition off. They had failed to unite and agree on one candidate since the advent of multiparty politics in 1992. Most people including Moi himself were sure that the greedy lot who all wanted to become president would never agree on a single candidate for president. Again this assumption was correct except for one little incident that happened at Uhuru Park when Raila Odinga stood up to address the mammoth crowd that had gathered. Everybody was wondering who the candidate for the star studded opposition line up would be. Many expected it to be George Saitoti others even thought it would be Raila Odinga himself. Moi’s think tanks (he had several) were busy mapping out a strategy for either of these front runner candidates. After all everybody knew that Kenyans would never accept another Kikuyu for the presidency and in fact saw a great weakness in Kanu’s presidential nomination. The Kikuyu’s had the numbers but one needed the other 41 tribes as well. All signs within Kanu were that Moi was preparing to take on a non-kikuyu candidate on behalf of his protégé. It is important to note here that although Saitoti is a Kikuyu (his real name is George Njuguna Kinuthia and he changed to it to Saitoti to facilitate higher education at a time when the colonial government would never have approved a Kikuyu for higher education out of the country).

The Kenyan opposition in the run up the 2002 elections showed a resolve to get their act together this time round from very early on. Three significant opposition parties led by the late Michael Kijana Wamalwa, Charity Ngilu and Mwai Kibaki had merged and indicated that they were determined to field one opposition candidate to face Kanu. Still they were clearly not strong enough to topple the formidable Kanu political machine. When the Kanu rebels led by Raila Odinga and George Saitoti joined them, things changed. Still it looked like the whole game plan would collapse the minute they would have to name a single opposition candidate amongst them. This looked even more unlikely with characters like Raila and George Saitoti. Moody Awori, William Ole Ntimama and others now in the mix.

All that changed with a single statement from Raila on that memorable day in Uhuru Park, Nairobi. Raila captured the mood of the crowd perfectly. Having been outsmarted many times before by Moi Raila was very determined and focused on defeating Moi at all costs. His single statement: “Kibaki tosha” changed everything. Thus history repeated itself. Just as his father had stood up at the Legco to pour praise on Kenyatta in the 1950s and demand for his release before independence and had by doing this handed over the presidency to Kenyatta when he was not even in contention, raila had dome a similar thing for Kibaki. Raila’s statement offered Kibaki as the compromise candidate in the “star-studded field” and made all the difference. But Raila had not chosen Kibaki by accident. It was a shrewd move to neutralize the influential Kikuyu vote by splitting it between the two Kikuyu candidates. The good unintentional thing here was that the presidential elections was de-tribalized, which was critical for such a sensitive election but postponed the problem for much later in 2007.

Simeon Nyachae who had expected to make a strong bid for the presidency left Uhuru Park in a huff and mounted a solo bid for the presidency which predictably went nowhere. But the other main contenders realized that it was impossible for them to contest Raila’s “Kibaki tosha statement and quickly cooled their heels.

And so that is how Mwai Kibaki became the third president of Kenya. For the first time in history Kenya had a popularly elected president who had been elected in a competitive atmosphere.

Few would have imagined that his election was the beginning of major problems and that Moi’s steady but firm (and at times dictatorial) hand on the leadership of the country would be sourly missed.

To be continued.

Get a Free copy of almost the entire book Dark Secrets of the Kenyan Presidency

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Making quick cash for Christmas: Kumekucha’s Nyatiti and drums weekly (every Tuesday or Wednesday)

The Nyatiti is a wonderful musical instrument that is perfect for singing praises and honouring somebody and it is my African instrument of choice to honour the kind of Kenyans I meet and feel proud to be a Kenyan. On the other hand the drum can be used for many things. Drums are beaten before some executions which is what I wish I could do to some of the Kenyans I meet, but for now drums of protest will do. Welcome to Kumekucha’s brand new column that puts personalities, faces and real life incidents into nationals of the great sleeping giant of a nation called Kenya. Every Tuesday or Wednesday only here in the most popular blog on Kenyan news and politics.


Ingenious city council askaris making money for Christmas
If you did not know it, City Council askaris these days arrest wananchi very frequently and not just hawkers. Many of them carry a special card that tell you (in case you did not know) that a city council askari can arrest you and get you locked up in cells pending your appearance in court. For a long time now they simply wait for you to spit on the pavement and quickly approach you and arrest you for the offence under the numerous city by-laws which are dreamt up of frequently and implemented by individuals at the city house of corruption.

But Nairobians have become wise and it is very difficult these days to catch people littering or emptying their dirty saliva on the streets. And so the clever moneymakers have dreamt up a brilliant new strategy. Now you can imagine the hustle and bustle that Kenyans are going through doing last minute Christmas shopping and errands. The city council has constructed certain barriers and rails to stop people from crossing busy roads at certain places. Some people have the habit of jumping over these railings to avoid the slow moving crowds on the city pavements.

City council askaris simply wait for you to do this and before you know it you have been arrested and bundled into a lorry to be transported to dirty stinking police cells where you will rub shoulders with carjackers and child rapists amongst other hardened criminals. But actually this is not the point of the whole exercise and only a handful get to the cells. The whole idea is to generate cash. A Kumekucha informant who was arrested yesterday stood at a distance after his release and observed something really fascinating. NOT everybody who jumped the railing was being arrested. Schoolboys are notorious for this and the askaris in plain clothes were ignoring them. Midddle aged folks and people who looked like thye had a lot of cash in their pockets were promptly being arrested. You can guess why. So that they remove a hefty bribe of Kshs 1,000 or 2,000 to avoid the police cells. In a space of about 10 minutes the Kumekucha informant saw at least 5 people being arrested. That is 30 every hour and a staggering 240 on a good busy day like yesterday. Multiply that by an average of Kshs 1,500 and what do you get? Kshs 360,000. Enough money to make Christmas very merry for quite a number of city council askaris, don’t you think?

Beat drums of protest with me at the corrupt and rotten system that is Kenya.


Can Aids be cured?
I remember the days, during Moi’s presidency, when Kenyans used to say that Aids was Kanu propaganda. Now we all know somebody who is suffering from this terrible disease that has no cure. Or does it?

A Kumekucha informant was referred to a herbal clinic in town which has got a record of literally bringing people back from the dead. Aids patients in the last terrible stages of the disease and too weak to even walk on their own have been brought to this clinic and given herbal treatment and within a very short time have recovered their health. Incidentally the same clinic also has herbal treatment for dental problems including turning brown teeth into white in no time at all.

Everybody knows that herbs work and so join me in playing the Nyatiti for the rise of herbal treatment in Kenya.


What are your plans for 2010?
As we head to the end of the year, this is a good time for reflection. You need to analyze what your weaknesses and shortfalls of 2009 were and find a way to improve in 2010 so that the coming year is much better for you.

A publishing company based in Nairobi is offering a wonderful package of 9 books at only Kshs 1,350.

The 9 books are;

1. Time Management
2. Sterling Success
3. Business Tips (265 of them)
4. The power of concentration
5. Public speaking
6. Power to change your life
7. How to study
8. The cure for ageing
9. The ABC of investing

I have browsed through the books and started reading some of them and they are great. Get these wonderful self help books for yourself.

I now play the Nyatiti in praise of this company and all those other small and medium sized companies out there in Kenya doing innovative things. These guys are the real engine of the Kenyan economy.

Breaking News: Blog claims that Jimmy Kibaki will run for Kieni seat

Monday, December 21, 2009

Dark secrets of the presidency Part 8

The darkest and most dangerous secrets of Moi’s administration
The truth is that Robert Ouko did not lose his life only because of the careless comment by the Americans. Actually the American incident triggered something that was already in the works. Ouko actually died because of a woman.

Moi did not live in State House with a wife. Indeed he had abandoned Lena Moi years before in the late sixties (this is another long story that I will tell towards the end of this post). For such a powerful man to have NO wife in State House is asking for trouble. Trouble of the woman kind. Wives protect their husbands from more dangers than men will ever admit or even realize in 100 years. And Moi was after all only human and not a demi-god (if you half-believed some of the songs that were being sang in his praise). What started as an exercise to boost Moi’s self confidence and help him settle into the presidency escalated dangerously and hopelessly out of control. In fact at one time one of his cabinet ministers Peter Oloo Aringo from Nyanza (then a minister of education) stood up in public and called Moi “The prince of peace”. Those who have read the good book are aware of the fact that Jesus Christ is referred to as the Prince of Peace.

And so you can be sure that Moi was vulnerable to all sorts of advances from women who came into contact with him. One such woman was a Swiss national who originally hailed from Germany by the name Marianne Brinner. Ms Brinner had actually had an affair for some years with Njoroge Mungai a member of Kenyatta’s deadly inner cabinet. Things went sour in the relationship when Mungai asked Ms Brinner to marry him in a traditional African ceremony (since Mungai was already married in church.) Brinner took counsel from the Germany embassy in Nairobi where she was told that it would be a deadly error to get married to Njoroge Mungai a man who was deeply involved in the politics locally. That was sound advice for somebody who understands Kenyan politics but Mr Mungai took it personally as some kind of rejection from Brinner. And so he never lost any opportunity to make her feel jealous by arriving at functions with all kinds of stunning looking young ladies at his side. Brinner decided that she needed to exact some long-lasting revenge and looked around for the person who would make Mungai feel most jealous if she started an affair with them. By the way all this information about Brinner’s motives is from her own confessions to this writer and she even once had a blog where she announced it all to the world. Ms Brinner’s eyes landed and rested on Daniel arap Moi who at the time was president of the republic of Kenya. They say that if a man wants a woman chances are high that he will fail, BUT if a woman wants a man, God help the man!!

And so a secret love affair between Moi and Brinner commenced. It is instructive to note that neither ended the affair. It was in fact Nicholas Biwott who organized for Brinner to be deported from the country without Moi’s knowledge. Moi was angry but later realized that Brinner would have been murdered if he insisted on her returning. Biwott’s motivation as you may have guessed was that he did not want any competition when it came to influencing the president and Brinner had already demonstrated that she was capable of getting a lot of donor help for Kenya which was corruption and kick-back free. The very opposite of what Biwott had in mind.

Before Brinner was deported, Biwott warned her several times. But the really unfortunate incident came when Biwott launched an illegal prostitute’s ring in Mombasa and Moi only later discovered what was going on. The scheming Biwott knew Moi was very angry and was going to end his highly lucrative operation in Mombasa and so he organized for one of his best Ugandan sex goddesses to visit State House and the president. And so by getting Moi involved, the crafty Biwott bought insurance to ensure that his illegal business in Mombasa that mainly targeted American sailors was safe. Biwott also made sure that Brinner heard about this little caper and that is how the unfortunate chain of events that led to the murder of Ouko was launched.

Brinner became very close to Robert Ouko and shared this information with Ouko and somehow Biwott became aware of the fact that Ouko knew the kind of secret that Moi did not want to get out at all costs. And so when clashes between Biwott and Ouko intensified, Ouko’s assassination was just a matter of time.

On the day Ouko died, Biwott had informed the president that Ouko was planning to leave the country and then tell the whole world the story of corruption in Moi’s government as well as the saga about Ugandan women visiting State house. Actually it was true that Ouko was planning to quietly slip out of the country through Uganda and trusted a fellow Luo Hezekiah Oyugi to help him in doing so. Moi was livid and ordered Ouko to be picked up. One of the people who picked up Ouko was Oyugi and the foreign minister though he was being assisted to flee. Instead he ended up in the hands of security personnel taking instructions from Biwott. Biwott ordered them to interrogate and beat him up. By the time Ouko was brought before Moi at State House, Nakuru, he was in very bad shape. Moi ordered Prof Sam “100 million education fund disappearance” Ongeri (who is a medical doctor) to examine him. Ongeri advised that unless he was taken to hospital pronto he could easily die. Clearly it was going to be a big embarrassment to have a foreign affairs minister in such a sorry state in hospital, but Moi would have preferred that to having the man’s life ended. That was when Biwott took a revolver from one of the policemen on the scene and shot Ouko in the presence of Moi. Moi was dumbfounded.

Political assassinations were not really Moi’s style (although a few happened in his watch they were nothing when you compare them to the ones that happened under Kenyatta). And that is why those who know Moi well have always found it difficult to believe that he had anything to do with the Ouko murder. But now you know exactly what happened. You be the judge of how responsible Moi was in the whole affair.

Let me wrap up this weekend’s post with the sad Lena Moi story. Lena was a simple Kalenjin woman who refused to change who she was. Let me elaborate that a little. When Mama Ngina was married to Kenyatta she had long and traditionally severed ears hanging beyond her shoulders. She actually had to go for a very expensive surgical procedure to restore her ears to normal. She took to her new role well and was trained to be a sophisticated wife of a president. Seeing Mama Ngina a few years into the Kenyatta presidency you would not have believed that she was the simple woman from the village that Kenyatta had married. Lena Moi on the other hand was a very different kettle of fish. She never fitted into public life and the result was that she embarrassed Moi many times during state functions.

Things came to a head one day during a dance at State House. Moi was still VP then and had been having an affair with a Kikuyu policewoman for sometime. She had been invited to the state function and since Lena did not dance, Moi unwittingly took to the floor with his [policewoman girlfriend. Now Lena had already been informed about the affair and when she saw her husband on the dance floor with the said woman, all hell broke loose. President Kenyatta quickly saw what was happening and tried to save the situation by asking Lena for a dance. Lena stubbornly refused. Now you don’t refuse a dance with the president of the republic of Kenya. You just don’t.

What irked Moi even more was the fact that the Kiambu mafia had a field day trading jokes about the whole affair and making great fun of the VP. It was too much for Moi. He took Lena to one of his farms and abandoned her there. He supported her financially but never went to see her again until shortly before her death around 2005 when he was no longer president.

Read more on Lena Moi plus rare picture

Get a Free copy of almost the entire book Dark Secrets of the Kenyan Presidency

Interview with Marianne Briner (Plus her pic) on information that cost Dr Ouko his life

(To be continued next weekend.
Don’t miss the shattering climax of this red hot series where we dig into Moi’s last years in power and the blundering Kibaki years that followed which caused unprecedented bloodshed in the country. We also reveal how and why Moi launched the tribal clashes that culminated in the 2008 blood bath in the Rift Valley. Do go upcountry for Christmas if you must but make sure you carry a phone that is web enabled. That way you will have much more hot politics to discuss over the holiday with your extended family.)


Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Dark secrets of the presidency Part 7

A New Moi is born
After the bloody botched 1982 coup, Moi completely changed.

Time magazine had reported during the week of the coup that Daniel had survived the lion’s den referring to Moi. Indeed he had and clearly he was not taking any more chances after that.

But first Moi quickly “divorced” two of his three wives, the Kikuyu ones of course. Namely Charles Njonjo and GG Kariuki. He then went on to dismantle every centre of influence and key contact that was ever linked to Njonjo. But not before destroying the man politically in public by instituting what must be the only successful commission of enquiry in the history of Kenya. In this particular commission the report was not allowed to gather dust in State House. Barely a few weeks after the end of the enquiry Moi acted on it and pardoned Njonjo. But the damage had been done and his mission accomplished. To his credit in forgiving Njonjo Moi must have realized that there was a lot he had to thank the man for. Including the fact that he helped him survive the tumultuous 12 years he went through as Kenyatta’s VP.

Moi then exercised his immense executive powers and called for a snap election in 1983 where he was careful to ensure that no Njonjo man came back to parliament. Parliamentary elections in a few constituencies had to be rigged but generally it was a very easy mission because the Kenyan public was very much outraged at the sheer arrogance of Charles Njonjo and in many parts of the country was not prepared to vote for anybody who had had any links to the man.

And so you can now understand why Nicholas Biwott became so powerful during the Moi post-1982 era. Actually he remained the only close confidant to the president and proceeded to use his position to amass the kind of fortune that left all corrupt senior officials before him looking like jokers. One of the very early “cash cows” engineered by Biwott was the Turkwell Gorge project. Much has been written and said about this hydro electric project. An engineer closely linked to it once jokingly told me that it was “a great project” because Kenyans were going to show the world how to generate hydro electric power from sand. In the end the ecosystem of a large area was changed and many ordinary folks were left without water so that some waters could be diverted to run the Turkwell Gorge turbines.

But back to Moi, the man truly started to follow in the steps of Kenyatta (early in his presidency Moi had promised to follow the Nyayo—which is Swahili for footsteps—of Kenyatta). Just like Kenyatta had made all his decisions with the nightmare of a military coup hanging over his head, Moi now started to rule in much the same manner.

Some insiders insist that a close confidant and friend of Moi for many years called Mukaru Nganga summarized and simplified the famous political book by Machiavelli called The Prince. They add that Moi went everywhere with summary and frequently consulted it as he ruled Kenya with an iron Machiavellian hand. The man became a master of the game and christened himself the professor of politics.

Where Kenyatta had been old and sickly, Moi was still relatively young and extremely healthy. One of the reasons why Kenyans immediately felt a difference in leadership when Kibaki took over was because of Moi’s routine. Moi would get out of bed at 4 am and religiously start the day by reading all the 3 daily newspapers at the time. Coupled with the intelligence reports he received regularly and the numerous ordinary folks he kept contact with, it was a lot more difficult for the kitchen cabinet to mislead Moi as Kenyatta’s close aides had often done to him.

By the time Moi was settling down to breakfast at about 6 he had a fairly good grasp of what was going on in his area of jurisdiction.

To understand this better it is useful to go back to 1958 and the days of the first African leaders to be elected to the Legco. Moi had been a teacher and reluctantly agreed to go into politics. As the representative for the vast Rift Valley region, he took his job very seriously. He would travel constantly all over the Rift Valley actively seeing to the welfare of the people who had elected him. As president we see exactly the same trait and he traveled to every inch and corner of the country and also kept himself very well informed on exactly what was going on.

But many times over confidence leads to arrogance and arrogance inevitably leads to terrible mistakes. As Moi looks back at his presidency today there is no doubt one thing that keeps coming back to haunt him. One regret that he has that troubles him greatly. And that is the murder of his foreign affairs minister Robert John Ouko. The story of Ouko is how something very petty can escalate and cause murder to be committed. The good book tells us that the very first murder in the human race happened when Kane was jealous of his brother Abel after his sacrifice was favoured by God over his. In other words the motive of that murder was jealousy. Did you know that to date that is still the leading motive for most murders?

The whole Ouko affair started on a trip to the US after a careless comment by the Americans that Ouko would have made a much better president than the blundering heavy-accented Moi. That comment made Moi very angry and it was that anger that set in motion a chain of events that led to the gruesome murder of a spineless politician who was absolutely no threat to anybody. Read exclusive Kumekucha interview with John Troon who investigated the Ouko murder and got so close to the truth that an attempt was made on his life.

Get a Free copy of almost the entire book Dark Secrets of the Kenyan Presidency

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Due to unavoidable circumstances I will be posting part 8 of this weekend special on Monday morning (Kenyan time). Sorry folks, big emergency.

Dark secrets of the presidency Part 6

Not President for 12 hours
One key nagging question remains unanswered and a closely guarded state secret. Who was the mastermind behind the August 1st 1982 botched coup?

For the first time, I shall attempt to answer that key question and clear the mystery which has been hanging since that fateful August day. Before you hear what I have to say I suggest that you read this earlier Kumekucha post on the 1982 coup for some fascinating basic details first.

To answer the question that I have started this post with, we need to look for key suspects first.

The Kiambu mafia? Yes. They were still very much around and still whispering amongst themselves that Moi’s presidency was a passing cloud. They were also still scheming but were doing it very quietly. Admittedly, this group of ruthless thugs had realized that with Kenyatta dead, it was a totally different ball game and all their venom was gone. Although the group qualifies as suspects the truth is that they were still running around aimlessly like a chicken that has just been beheaded. They were hardly capable of pulling off such a daring scheme as a military coup.

Charles Njonjo? Yes. He was most responsible for putting Moi in power. However he was still a very ambitious man who wanted nothing short of the presidency for himself. There is evidence that he had started getting impatient with the pressure the president was receiving from his kinsmen. Assuming that Njonjo wanted the presidency how would he have gone about it? Constitutionally he could NOT remove Moi from office. However in the unfortunate incident of a coup that ended with Moi dead, it was possible for him to take charge in the chaos on an interim basis and then simply repeat some of the moves he had pulled off to get Moi confirmed as president. I am afraid that if one examines the politics of the day carefully, Njonjo emerges as a prime suspect despite his many denials over the years.

There are several reasons that point to Njonjo.

He was Moi’s chief advisor on security matters at the time and prior to August 1st 1982, rumours had been going around for days in Nairobi that a military coup was in the works. Did this information reach the streets and fail to reach Moi? That is extremely unlikely. So why did Moi not take this information seriously and at the very least leave the country? The only plausible answer to that is that his advisors must have reassured him that all was well. The intention was to make sure that Moi did not escape.

Secondly it is standard procedure that when you crush a coup you MUST ensure that you have dealt with the chief architect. The only way to effectively kill a snake is to crush the head. Now don’t tell me it was the most senior private Hezekiah Ochuka. There was no way such a junior officer could plot a successful coup in Kenya at the time. In any case I will tell you in a moment how he got involved.

Thirdly Moi’s actions in the months and years after the coup point to Njonjo as the main culprit. First there was a commission of enquiry into the conduct of Njonjo where all links to the 1982 coup were carefully avoided.

After that came the snap 1983 polls that was mainly designed to get rid of the vast and wide Njonjo influence in national politics.

The coup would have been successful, there is no doubt about that, except for one small detail that went wrong. Those who plotted it did not keep things quiet enough. The result was that word got out and then the great Kenyan disease took over. Some people somewhere got greedy and launched a coup to pre-empt the better organized coup by Njonjo and company which was to have taken place a few days later. The assumption that the organizers of the pre-emptive coup made was that since most of the military had given the Njonjo coup a nod, they would join in their pre-emptive one believing that it was the same coup brought forward. By the time they realized what was really happening it would be too late. Ad so who was the main mastermind behind the pre-emptive coup? Evidence suggests that it was a group of radicals mainly hailing from the Luo community and Raila Odinga was amongst them. In fact analysts suspect he may have been one of the key people behind the daring plan that almost worked.

Ordinarily military coups do not involve civilians but the August 1982 was a very unique one and this is probably another reason why it did not work. Civilians hardly have the discipline of military people. Apart from Raila and others the botched coup also involved students of Nairobi University.

The other thing that went wrong was the fact that the Air force was used without incorporating any other unit of the Armed forces and without appreciating the “politics” in the military. Generally Air force soldiers are much better educated folks than the rest of the military for obvious reasons and over the years this has given them a superiority complex that has really irked the rest of the military. And so you can imagine the reaction when the rest of the military heard that the coup had been executed by the cocky air force chaps. They just could not take it lying down. That had to be one of the great motivating factors for the rest of the army to decide not to join in the Air force-led coup.

And that was the key decision that changed everything. The army stormed the city centre and went into KBC to gleefully deal with the cocky air force chaps who had taken it over and allowed University students to go on air on national radio to announce that the dictatorial regime of Moi had come to an end. Incidentally the use of the word dictatorial was laughable because we have already seen in this series what kind of president Moi was. However there is a useful aside I cannot resist getting into here. Yesterday the Daily Nation carried an engrossing piece about how Moi used to have fighter jets escort his aircraft whenever he was coming back into the country. Actually this was not Moi’s idea but the idea of his closest aides and more specifically his three wives. The trio was trying very hard to get Moi to settle into the presidency and realize just how much power he wielded. In any case the story about the jet fighter escort has been confirmed by one of Moi’s mistresses and I will get into that later in this series.

By the end of the day August 1st 1982 many bodies were strewn on the streets in Nairobi and Moi was giving a press conference on national TV to thank the loyal military for the good work they had done. Once again fate had decreed that Moi would be transported back to Nairobi hidden away for his own safety. It is believed that Moi was brought back to Nairobi inside a stuffy tank and surrounded by heavily armed soldiers in an operation that was code named by the military, Operation Maji Machafu. This is Swahili for “dirty or contaminated water.”

Senior private Hezekiah Ochuka who had been chosen by the coup plotters to front the take over fled to Tanzania where he was later arrested and returned to Kenya. A court martial quickly found him guilty and he became one of the very few Kenyans who actually went to the gallows during Moi’s 24 years in power. At least Ochuka went to the grave proud of the fact that he was president of Kenya for 30 chaotic minutes. Sadly the key players of the pre-emptive coup and the main coup all went scott free. That’s the sad story of justice in Kenya for you.

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Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Friday, December 18, 2009

Dark secrets of the presidency Part 5

Strange presidency
What is the difference between a novel and a movie? Well, a novel tells or narrates and a movie shows. That is why a boring movie is the one where there is too much narrative (telling) and a fascinating one is where you know the characters by what you see them doing. Basically you understand the story from seeing. This is why making silent movies (without sound) is an ideal way to train a budding film maker.

The following eye witness account of an incident involving President Daniel arap Moi somewhere in Machakos in 1979 is worth recounting here because it “shows: a lot and is a fabulous way to commence this weekend’s posts.

Moi had take over the reigns of power on August 22nd 1978 and had been confirmed as president of Kenya before the end of the stipulated 3 months period on October 10th 1978. Early in his presidency Moi had launched a massive campaign for reforestation and soil conservation in the country. He had even gone as far as forming a special permanent presidential commission on soil conservation and had appointed Kisii politician and former Nyaribari Chache legislator Zephania Anyieni to chair it.

On this particular morning the president was somewhere in Machakos helping build gabion reinforcements to protect the already badly eroded hill side. The exercise involved a long line of people passing along heavy stones which ended up in the president’s hands and he would toss them into the wire mesh. There were a couple of other people at the end of the line throwing the stones in. A large crowd had gathered to witness this curious site. Until then Kenyans were used to a laid back president who was greatly feared and rarely seen in public. Now they had a president who worked in the hot sun with ordinary folk. The exercise continued for at least 2 hours from 11 until almost 1 pm. By this time the hot Ukambani sun was beating down ferociously on the president and his large and extremely dark frame was drenched in sweat. Yet he showed no signs of quitting.

Kenyans at that time knew very little about Moi apart from the fact that he was the Vice president who spoke with a strong Kalenjin accent. We shall discuss later the implication of this accent and the image it portrayed in the minds of Kenyans. For now the point I wanted to make is that very few would have known about Moi’s extremely harsh upbringing meant that he would walk for many kilometers going to school with a heavy suitcase (really just a metal box suitcase) on his head. The walk would take him over 5 hours. Just try and picture that.

And so standing under the extremely hot Ukambani sun tossing big stones around was no big deal. And he would have continued for many more hours except that something happened that hot afternoon.

Some of the stones being passed had sharp edges jutting out of them and while lifting one, Moi cut his fingers and blood started flowing out. What followed was pandemonium. The president’s security detail quickly surrounded him and somebody started barking instructions as policemen rapidly spoke into their two way radio. It seemed that the president’s entire motorcade did not have a first aid kit (at least in those days). Within minutes an ambulance arrived on the scene at high speed with sirens blaring. The president received some first aid and was quickly ushered into his limousine and whisked away.

The president’s security detail is supposed to protect his Excellency at all times but they do like to dramatize things a little sometimes, mainly for effect and that day they succeeded big time.

But the main point here is that Kenya had a very different kind of president and he would not have been more of a contrast to his predecessor. Kenyatta was commanding authoritative and a big bully sometimes. Moi was reserved humble and almost ashamed to be president.

I can hear you asking me how Kenyatta was a bully sometimes. I will give you an example. The old man was fond of calling security meetings involving police bosses from all over the country. He would usually call them for a serious dressing down whenever crime seemed to escalate. On one such meeting he started the proceedings by saying: “I called you all here on very short notice deliberately to see who would fail to come.” After the old man had finished his dressing down of the top cops, a sumptuous lunch would be served and then he would take a photograph with them and bid them goodbye. Those were some of the things that made him very endearing to people despite his ruthlessness and that of his close lieutenants.

But back to Moi. The new president still rode in his limousine with his “3 wives” namely Charles Njonjo, GG Kariuki and Nicholas Biwott. Some analysts believe that these were the real presidents of Kenya in those days and no executive decisions were made without this council of elders. Moi was still terrified of the Kikuyu and in particular the Kiambu mafia and insiders say that he spent many months thinking of ways of neutralizing them or at least keeping them in check. At that time there were no political detainees in the country because Moi had released all of them and it was clear that he greatly detested Kenyatta’s strong arm tactics of ruling and was looking for a different way to rule, if he survived that is.

One of the early ingenious schemes that the new president was advised to follow (it is not clear by whom) was to appoint his people (meaning people he could trust) to be deputies in major institutions he wanted to keep a close eye on, especially in the security forces. It was a very quite way f spreading his influence. The deputy head of any institution is bound to be very much aware of what is going on within the institution. Later this tactic was modified and the deputies were always members of the president’s Kalenjin community. But this was after the failed coup of 1982 when as I have said before a new and very different Moi emerged. But in those early days Moi still kept Kenyatta’s appointees more or less in place, changing only the Police commissioner amongst a few others. You can read about the fascinating way in which Bernard Hinga was removed from police commissioner by Moi HERE in an earlier Kumekucha post.

For this reason Moi relied a lot on the AG whom he inherited from Kenyatta and the man most responsible for his ascension to the presidency, one Charles Mugane Njonjo. But already there was pressure from his Kalenjin community and the elders within the community to the effect that he was too trusting of Njonjo. After all Njonjo was a Kikuyu and it was known that they could not be trusted. There is evidence that some of the pressure was coming from one of his “3 wives” who also hailed from the president’s Kalenjin community. Namely a man called Nicholas Kipyator Biwott. Biwott had worked for Kenya’s first agriculture minister Bruce Mackenzie as a personal assistant and had as a result gained numerous useful contacts. Mackenzie was actually a spy and operative for at least two different foreign powers. The Israelis dreaded Mossad and the British Mi6. The connection with the Israeli’s seemed to have rubbed off on Biwott and not only did he end up getting married to an Israeli woman but Biwott’s personal security detail is and has always been mostly Israeli. Interestingly there is plenty of clear evidence to suggest that Biwott also used personnel from that country for his dirty jobs locally like getting people killed. Many different sources concur that the killings of people involved with the Ouko assassination was fulfilled mainly with help from his Israeli security personnel.

It is instructive that Bruce Mackenzie did not die a natural death but was actually assassinated during the Kenyatta presidency and when he was no longer in the cabinet. He went to visit Uganda’s president then, Idi Amin Dada in Entebbe on a trip in which the two were supposed to mend fences. Mackenzie was well received and Idi Amin gave him a gift of some sculpture which he carried back to the plane with him. The gift actually contained explosives which went off when the small plane was in the air coming back to Nairobi, killing Mackenzie. It was clear that the man greatly underestimated Idi Amin and paid for it with his life.

Despite the pressure Moi did not act at all. He remained a quiet humble president who still had no political detainees.

As the year 1982 reached the midway mark, Moi started receiving a lot of reports from the intelligence community about heightened political activity in the country. But his closest advisor on security matters, one Charles Mugane Njonjo reassured him that all was well. After all what could people do apart from make noise and harmless political plots? The presidency was powerful enough to easily deal with any such threats as Njonjo had already displayed many times before. And so Moi ignored his Kalenjin kin and some people say, even his own instincts.

Indeed it is not too difficult to believe that Moi’s instincts had helped him survive the 12 horrendous years as Vice president. If there is something about Moi’s character that few can argue about, then it is his ability to survive. His instinct appear to have been key in this. And so it is safe to assume that his instincts must have been screaming at him that a storm was brewing in the horizon. A storm that would seek to take his life and in any event one that would cause a lot of Kenyan blood to be spill.

To be continued: In the next post I discuss untold secrets of the 1982 coup

Get a Free copy of almost the entire book Dark Secrets of the Kenyan Presidency

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

FPE Funds: Vultures Mauling Carcass Kenya

The hyenas have struck at the Ministry of Education by looting donor funds meant for free primary education. The heartless wolves won't care less even if their selfish acts will see more than 8 million children drop out of school.

That the government has been used as a cash cow by fraudulent civil servants is not legendary. But seeing senior officers at the ministry's headquarters squander money meant for the poorest is cannibalism taken too far.

Well, the thieves may have just bitten more than they can chew. And Kibaki is livid with rage at their audacity to steal such large amount organizing and attending phantom seminars and conferences. You can only imagine how many such evil schemes these fraudsters successfully executed without being caught.

Leaves you asking where are our values as a country and society if we can chuck out food from a starving Kenyan? No superlative constitution can legislate human values. No wonder these officials have no qualms formulating policies for public schools while sending their own kids to private schools.

Begging thieves
Add this obtuse heartlessness to government officials stealing bags of maize and beans meant to feed the starving in Rift Valley and you get what constitutes our warped sense of financial success - HELL FOR LEATHER.

We are such shameless begging thieves. It had to take donor UK's actions of withholding further funding before the so-called leaders react. So much for hollow sovereignty and flag independence.

And true to our unique template Professor Ongeri and Mutahi won't take personal or official responsibility. Welcome to Kenya where everything goes.



Special announcement:
Cancel all your dates this weekend that will keep you far from the web. Chris continous with his groundbreaking series; Dark secrets of the Kenyan presidency. If you thought the Kenyatta secrets were hot then you will faint when you read the Moi ones starting tomorrow.

More good news for regular visitors to Kumekucha. Starting Tuesday Chris will launch a new business and social series to highlight heroic deeds and unique stuff Kenyans are doing all over the world. He will focus on the small man who hardly has a chance of ever getting major media coverage. There is a lot Kenyans are doing quietly from a great herbal service that has a track record for saving lives of people suffering from Aids to a small publishing company that has launched a very useful stimulus package that will make 2010 a great year for anybody who gets these 9 books and practices everything in them. Much more to look forward to only here in Kumekucha.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The mess ODM is going to get us into

I have been talking to quite a number of “horseless” (don’t belong to any political party or tribe, at least in their thinking) free thinkers in recent times and I have to admit a lot of what they are saying has started making a lot of sense to me.

Currently the ODM and PNU arms of government are trying to reach common ground over controversial parts of the constitution. ODM wants both a president and Prime Minister with no clear final authority. They want a powerful parliament that will be more or less the final authority.

For starters such a system of government will NOT work. It has NEVER worked anywhere else in the world. It is really bizarre that a country where the current constitution has not worked is confident that a hybrid system will work. HOW????

Have you ever heard of any organization that has no clear hierarchy of authority? Can you imagine a company with a figurehead managing director and a powerful general manager? Where does the buck stop? When the board demands an explanation the MD will just shift blame to the GM and vice versa and nothing will ever get done because nobody is accountable.

In other words our current grand coalition government system is much better because although we have two principals we all know who the real boss is don’t we? Still the truth is that they have had lots of problems. Now you try and imagine a constitution that has given both equal powers? Chaos!!!

Secondly if you were a rich millionaire and wanted to bribe your way through the system, which system is easier to compromise? A powerful president or an entire parliament? Now before you rush to draw your conclusions let me warn you that you have to be a Kenyan who understands our system well to answer this question correctly. To an outsider the answer is obviously one individual, the president. To Kenyans who know better and have carefully observed what has been going on behind the scenes with both the last parliament and the current one, the answer is different. Firstly a president is very difficult to access. On the other hand parliament is sooooo easy to access. All you need to do is show them the money. If you doubt what I am saying just do your careful investigations and find out how Ruto defeated a censure motion against him. Secondly it is much easier to nail a president who was compromised than it is to nail an entire parliament that was bribed.

Let me cut to the chase. The international community is convinced that all we need in Kenya is a brand new constitution. They have spent millions to sell this idea to the Kenyan public and the result is that today the ordinary mwananchi on the ground now believes that all their problems will disappear magically and overnight if a new constitution is enacted. Do you guys know that when Kenya got her independence most Kenyans were sure that they would move from Korogocho to Muthaiga right away and many things would be free? I kid you not. The donor community had better start allocating cash for dealing with the dangerous hopelessness Kenyans will end up with after the passing of a new constitution assuming that one is passed.

The bottom line is that the ruling class in Kenya is already designing ways to beat the new system. So in fact things will be a lot worse if a new constitution is enacted.

My suggestions is that if we must have a new constitution, then retain a powerful president and get rid of the Prime Minister nonsense. Reduce the powers of the president if you must by getting parliament to approve key appointments and big decisions. Otherwise what is best for Kenya is to retain the status quo. It is our best bet for dealing with the ruling class.


P.S. For democracy to prosper we have to deal with poverty first. Democracy cannot come before we have dealt with poverty. Read history. It did Not happen in Britain and it certainly did NOT happen in America. So what makes you think it will happen in Kenya? Carefully examine the great emerging economies of today like Singapore. They did it with a strong benevolent dictator ready to make tough decisions. How the hell do you make the kind of tough decisions we need in Kenya with democracy and a bloated system of government where nobody has the final authority?