Golden rules you need for a come back

Many of the most sensational comebacks have been in the world of sports. I am sure you know many and I would advice you to study them very closely because the same rules apply to a come back in virtually any field or calling in life.

Let me for a moment focus on a sporting come back I am very familiar with. Diego Maradona. Down and out and literally dying as well as being a cocaine addict to boot many people believed that Maradona went to Cuba to die and not only to escape from his tax problems. But in 2005 he literally bounced back from the dead and started a successful career as a football administrator at a leading club in Argentina. This come back led to his being appointed the Argentine national soccer team coach in 2008.

But the 2005 effort was not the first time Maradona whom some consider to be the greatest soccer player of all time (not this blogger my money is on Pele) was making a come back in difficult circumstances. After sensationally winning the 1986 World Cup for Argentina there was probably nowhere else to go but down. By the time the 1990 World Cup came along he was overweight and nursing a serious ankle injury. The speed, agility and dribbling were all gone but amazingly even though he hobbled along most of the time, he was still extremely effective and made a huge difference taking Argentina all the way to the finals. The man re-invented himself completely and concentrated on his positioning and pinpoint passes to tear apart the best defenses in the world and win crucial games for his country. This confirmed his status as a soccer genius.

It can’t be done if you don’t understand “your sport” like the back of your hand

Maradona’s soccer career has some important lessons for any come back attempt. The first is that you MUST understand your business, your sport or your vocation better than the back of your hand. There are no two ways about it.

Diego Maradona would never have achieved what he did without his deep knowledge of the game. If your come back is in business then you must understand that business extremely well and that includes the rapid changes that technology has brought about in many industries.

Luckily we are in the information age and getting information to make you an expert is easy, even if you are not one at the time you begin your research for your come back effort. Find one source of information I strongly recommend for anybody attempting a come back in business HERE.

You must re-invent yourself

If you understand your vocation deeply then re-inventing yourself like Maradona has done successfully again and again becomes much easier. Let’s go back to boxing now and compare Mike Tyson to other boxers like Mohamed Ali and George Foreman. Both these men managed to make successful comebacks. They came back as slower and less fit boxers but what mattered and counted in the end was the fact that they re-invented themselves adequately to be able to make a mark. Tyson it seems is less knowledgeable and this has no doubt been a great hindrance in any come backs he may have wanted to execute. It seems that he is only one kind of boxer and has found it impossible to come up with a new tactical approach or style that re-invents his game.

Most of those who fail in their come back bids are guilty of trying to do the same old thing using the same old tactics. This will not work. You will need to completely re-invent yourself. YOU MUST to stand any chance of success.

Finally whatever happens never ever give up. NEVER. Try again and again secure in the fact that some of those who went before you and became the greatest men in their time did so after failing so many times that failure almost became their second name before they finally made it. Just make sure you learn all the lessons you need to learn from every single failure. I can sense your doubt at this last statement I have made and so I will close my series this weekend with an example.

Abraham Lincoln is considered one of the greatest presidents the United States has ever had and is still an inspiration to this day to many seeking leadership under difficult circumstances. And yet he started off with very minimal education. He had only one year of formal education in his life and then what followed were more failures than most human beings can take in two lifetimes.

List of Lincoln's failures

1831 - Lost his job
1832 - Defeated in run for Illinois State Legislature
1833 - Failed in business
1834 - Elected to Illinois State Legislature (success)
1835 - Sweetheart died
1836 - Had nervous breakdown
1838 - Defeated in run for Illinois House Speaker
1843 - Defeated in run for nomination for U.S. Congress
1846 - Elected to Congress (success)
1848 - Lost re-nomination
1849 - Rejected for land officer position
1854 - Defeated in run for U.S. Senate
1856 - Defeated in run for nomination for Vice President
1858 - Again defeated in run for U.S. Senate
1860 - Elected President (success)

Read more about Abraham Lincoln

Thanks for keeping me company through this weekend and I wish you the very best in your come back. Hang in there!!

Go back to Part 1

Two things you must do to execute a successful come back

A reader’s comments on Tyson in my last post pretty much sums up what I was going to say in the first couple of paragraphs of this fresh post. Basically the point is that whatever you think about the former heavyweight boxing champion, there is no denying that he is a survivor. He must have gone through hell just looking at what he had to do and what he told his interviewer recently.

The reason why I have focused on Tyson for these articles is because his life illustrates many important lessons that we need to look at to plot our own comebacks.

Stop playing to the gallery

If you listen to Tyson you will quickly realize that one of his major problems was playing to the gallery.

He is not alone. Most people have lost fortunes just because they are busy showing off their success and in the process pride quickly slips in and they start thinking that they are gods and that nothing can defeat them. That is usually the beginning of the end.

In your comeback bid it is important to respect the success you had and it is also critical to be humble.

Ignore the gallery forever. You are not making a come-back to show people who you are. You are making the come back for you and you alone.

One great weakness I have noted in young Kenyans is that they take failure very personally and have the mistaken view that everything they touch should succeed at the first try. The result is that they will forever be frightened to try new risky things that have a high chance of failure and therefore success or getting back to the top remains an unfulfilled dream.

Listen to the wise words of the billionaire co-owner of Google Inc. Sergey Brin;

“The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first.”

How are you going to make a come back when you are still warily looking up over your shoulder to the gallery wondering what people are thinking as you fall again and again in the process of your trying to get up?

But remember that the world is changing too rapidly

I know a few people who have attempted a come back by trying the same old thing again and again expecting different results. The person was trying to revive a business that went under. This is in fact the definition of insanity, that is trying the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. And yet the market had changed dramatically indeed that is one of the reasons why they had gone out of business.

What you must do is try a new approach, a new angle that appreciates your reasons for failure the last time.

Make no mistake about it the main reason why a come back is such a difficult thing to accomplish is because the ghosts of your past will not leave you alone and will constantly burden you and pull you back down.

Read part 1

Read 3rd and final part

Weekend special: Have you learnt anything from the Mike Tyson story?

One of the reasons why this blog continues to attract such huge traffic from all over the world since its’ inception in 2005 is because of the trouble I take to listen. I mean really listen to what people are saying.

Try it for yourself the next time you have a conversation, because the rewards are immense. In my case people are always amazed at how I constantly seem to have my hand on the pulse of the nation and in some cases the pulse of other distant lands (like the time I predicted here the correct winner of the US presidential polls when the primaries had barely began).

From really listening to people one of the things I have picked up in recent times is that most people these days feel that they have had dramatically better times in the past and are almost down and out just now in retrospect. This is not only true in Kenya but virtually all over the world.

While this may appear to be obvious considering the downturn of the world economy in recent times, there are other extreme cases of people who were once rich but are now are paupers and even beggars. An excellent example here is some of the internally displaced persons IDPs who emerged from the disputed presidential elections of 2007.

The first thing you need to know is that a vast majority of people who lose large sums of money and are forced to change their lifestyles usually don’t survive. They just die… and I am not kidding. So the first thing you must know when you see anybody who has fallen from riches to rags still in good health is that they have to possess a certain amount of strength that must be admired before anything else.

This weekend we shall delve deeply into the come-back game and what it takes. Perhaps you are reading this and are deeply in debt not knowing what the future holds for you, if you indeed have any future. Take heart. My mission this weekend is simply to inspire you and help you focus on the stuff that really matters for your great comeback. Everybody loves a come back story but the truth is that they are very few around. Hopefully after this set of articles things will never be the same again for you and we will have many more come back kids around.

We shall start this series with the life of a man who has never made it back and is still struggling even as you read this. I believe that by examining his life and what is going on with him, we shall not only set the right mood but also learn tons of valuable lessons.

I am talking about former boxing heavyweight champion of the world Mike Tyson. This man once had millions of dollars in his account. For instance the Tyson and Holyfield fight of June 28, 1997. It was the most lucrative event in history and held that record until 2007. The bout drew such interest that it grossed a cool $100 million. Tyson received $30 million and Holyfield $35 million—the highest paid professional boxing purses ever for the next 10 years.

But amazingly Mike Tyson lost it all and has been reduced to a virtual beggar. At one time he featured in porn movies just to put food on the table.

Most of you reading this would swear that if you ever made half of $30 million you would be much wiser and be set for life and you would never lose it. Hold your horses and learn something from the life of poor Mike Tyson. I promise that you will not be so cocky at the end of this series of articles.

Let us start with some quotes from a recent interview the legendary boxer gave that give us a clearer insight into the life of this broke legend;

It's just a simple question of humility. If you're not humble, life will visit humbleness upon you. I'm a really damaged human being, and it's still such a struggle, but I'm going to fight to the end this time…

… I'm not a pacifist and never will be. I still get angry, and I still scream. I can talk about humility, but I'm not humble. I mean, if you say, "I'm humble," you've just contradicted yourself. But I'm trying to be, man, I'm trying so hard.

… If I was going to medicate, I'd just smoke a joint. Nah, it's trauma I'm dealing with. And it's this fucking ego of mine.

Q: So what were you thinking when you bit him(Holyfield fight)?
Mike Tyson: I wasn't thinking. I wasn't training for that fight. I was on fucking drugs, thinking I was a god. I should've been home with my family, man. My kids.

Q: What's the story behind your Mao tattoo?
Mike Tyson: I read his book when I was in prison, man. Down in the hole. They thought they were punishing me in that little room—no toilet, no bed. I got myself put down there so I could read Chairman Mao and not have to deal with all that prison bullshit. The thing that stuck from his Quotations book: "No investigation, no right to speak." If you aren't going to look deep, just shut up.

I got no money. I'm not a glamour guy anymore. I got friends who've got money, so it looks like I've got money, but I don't. All the money I had, forget it. I never had anything, never had a stitch on me that felt like freedom. But to have somebody by your side, win, lose, or draw. My wife's lived with me in places I wouldn't take a shit in. I wouldn't be a prostitute in some of the places my wife and I have slept.

- Mike Tyson –

Read part 2.

This government of Kibaki and Raila

The coalition government of Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga believes that it has done everything humanly possible to deal with the current hunger crisis in the country. After all we are told it is the worst drought in 60 years, that is not their fault is it?
The government spokesman representing the government of Kibaki and Raila went on national TV yesterday and with a straight face told Kenyans that the good government has no record of any Kenyan deaths as a result of hunger. That amazing TV broadcast was beamed into parts of Kenya where they were burying casualties of the current hunger. Before you bury anybody you need a burial permit which is usually obtained from the local chief in remote areas of the country. On that burial permit you have to state the cause of death. So this information has yet to reach the good government headquarters in Nairobi where there have been rains in recent days. So maybe the good government of Kibaki and Raila is wondering where the drought came from.

Either that or the government is grossly ignorant and incompetent. They can’t blame the death of Kenyans on nature when nature gave us a bumper harvest last year at a time when everybody knew that El Nina was coming.

But wait a minute, ODM diehards will tell you that it is the PNU side of the government that has fallen asleep on the job. Odd because none less than the PM himself the leader of Ohhhh Di EMMM who blasted the local media not less than a day ago for unfairly targeting his government which has done everything humanly possible to deal with the drought crisis.

PNU supporters will tell you that it is the ODM “jaruos” messing up the government. They will even point you to the most corrupt minister currently being from the ODM side. Last weekend some PNU geek spammed this blog with messages appealing to me to write an expose on Immigration minister Otieno Kajwang and his corrupt ways. The chap made it impossible for readers to focus on a thoughtful weekend special on embattled media magnate Rupert Murdoch. What they didn’t know is that what was breaking news to him is an old tired tale on Kumekucha (just search the site and see for yourself from previous posts). Anyway to PNU diehards all the good things are attributable to their crowd and all the bad ones to ODM “jaruos.”

Meanwhile there are other pressing and more urgent issues at hand. Like re-branding political parties in readiness for the 2012 polls (ODM Kenya did that this week shortly before the Mutua fellow told us that nobody is dying from hunger).

The good cabinet of Kibaki and Raila is also busy “editing” bills handed to them by the CIC and inserting clauses to deliberately cause ambiguity so as to delay the implementation or to protect themselves from the fire that is coming from a fully and properly implemented new constitution. Indeed the busy cabinet in an effort to quickly dispense with the issue of starving Kenyans hurriedly approved the importation of GMO maize into the country. They really don’t need to investigate how safe those food are because they themselves and their good families will not eat GMO (or so they think). Tip from Kumekucha: avoid GMOs like the plague including those abnormally huge bananas you see in the market these days, if anything make efforts to start planting your own food. I kid you not!

Meanwhile one of the members of the executive Hon Raila Odinga will seek your vote to be president of the republic of Kenya on the grounds that he has played a key role in bringing about many of the changes you see today including the new constitution that is causing the political class sleepless nights and some of them to pass waste in their clothes (excuse my crude language).

Welcome to the banana republic of Kenya where there is no evil which is impossible. And where no leader in their right minds will take resposnibility for anything. (Why do you want to blame Prof Ongeri for something that his juniours did?)

P.S. Statistics clearly show that there is usually a very high increase in gory and extremely bloody road accidents whenever the general elections are around the corner. I am not superstitious but I am not blind either.

Politics of starvation in Kenya

There are several instances where journalists have seen starving children in the course of their work and their lives have never been the same again. Some went as far as abandoning the profession and others even committed suicide.
If you didn’t know it even with the horror of starvation and drought we have seen in the news so far, there has still been plenty of editing in the images that many Kenyans are now seeing coming in from Somalia and the refugee camps within Kenya. Not to mention the starving Kenyans in many parts of the country. There are limits to what you can transmit in front of the dinner tables of Kenyan families taking in a meal as they take in prime time news.

Still even with the censoring, what has been beamed has evoked strong emotions and mostly very angry responses from the people. In my view the voters are getting even angrier against their government and the current crop of political leadership. And with good reason.

Two years ago it was public knowledge that we were expecting the El Nino phenomenon where we would get abnormally high rainfall to be followed by abnormal drought (La Nina). It was just a simple thing to plan ahead and save lives but instead all the thinking and resources went to fighting the ICC and Moreno Ocampo amongst other idiotic projects.

And even now the government response has been extremely slow, mostly too little too late and what is happening is that we are building up to a much bigger crisis down the road.

You see the hunger crisis will place additional pressure on food prices and this coupled with the weakening shilling could lead the country to some serious food riots before the end of the year. Food riots can be pretty ugly and if there is anybody in authority reading this then they should wake up and realize that the current fire fighting efforts are not enough and somebody needs to urgently plan ahead for the more serious crisis coming. Can we forget about manipulating the ICC for a minute? This is so serious that if nothing is done and there is no divine intervention than there will be no country left to fight to lead and manipulate.

Although experts are saying that the current drought in this part of the world is the worst in 60 years, the truth is that the people we call our leaders have done nothing over the years to help starving Kenyans when the rains fail all too frequently. Yes, Kenyans die of hunger almost every other year and that does not receive any media coverage so don’t fool yourself that this is the first time in 60 years that Kenyans are dying of starvation. In fact it would appear that the political class thrives on hungry citizens. Indeed the government has always used food hand outs to retain complete political control of large chunks of Eastern province, mostly Ukambani so much so that it will take many decades to get this handout mentally out of the psyche of Akamba people. Indeed William Ruto and Daniel arap Moi (by the way did you know what Moi's most guarded secret is?) used this little piece of information last August to straddle the Kamba community and get them to vote strongly against a constitution that was for all intents and purposes in their best interests (more so for them than for many other communities in the country). But that is a story for another post.

The bottom line is that the government has absolutely no excuse.

What the next government needs to do (we have completely given up on this excuse of a government) is to pursue serious rain harvesting initiatives (bore holes deplete the under ground water table and cause much more serious long term problems). Did you know that a country like Egypt which is virtually all desert and has only one great river grows surplus food? Take my word for it if you still don’t get it, Kenya should never have a food crisis, even if we had a 5 year drought.

Evidence that angry Kenyan voters will cause shocks in 2012 polls

The poll carried out on Citizen’s Sunday Live last night must have surprised many…

But not regular readers of this blog.

The poll question to Kenyans was whether they would vote for Mutava Musyimi as President. A simple yes or no answer was required. A staggering 92% said YES.

But I have no intention of bragging and so I will explain what is happening here to my newer readers.

It's official, Mutava Musyimi is the man to beat for President

My regulars will remember that in the run up to the 2007 General Elections I kept on talking about Kenya’s angry voters. Angry voters are dangerous and unpredictable. In those elections candidate Raila Odinga had many odds against him, more than most Kenyans realize. Indeed Eldoret North legislator William Ruto kept on telling him that he was unelectable and should give way to another ODM candidate. Raila was adamant and insisted that he was the democratically elected ODM presidential candidate. Others like Kalonzo Musyoka could not take it and abandoned Odinga running away with the ODM Kenya registration certificate. You know the rest of the story.

What Ruto and Musyoka saw was not an illusion but the harsh reality of what Jomo Kenyatta’s government bequeathed to Kenyans. A deep hatred and suspicion of anybody from the Luo community. The whole anti-Luo community hate campaign was launched by Kenyatta’s inner circle that saw the community as the main threat to their dream of “the presidency never crossing the Chania River.” That Chania river divides Kiambu Kikuyu and Nyeri Kikuyu meaning that the whole evil plan was to not only retain the presidency of Kenya amongst the Kikuyu community but specifically in Kiambu where Kenyatta and his inner cabinet hailed from.
The threat was provoked by the likes of Tom Mboya whom the Kiambu mafia assassinated and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga who was very lucky not to have been assassinated.

And that is where the stories about Luos not being circumcised originated from (President George W. Bush is not circumcised either).

Anyway back to what I was saying about 2007, those who knew this history well would have speedily agreed with Ruto and Musyoka. I would also have agreed except that I noted the pulse of the nation and this phenomenon of angry voters. Predictably those angry voters ignored past history and voted in Raila Odinga, circumcised or not.

The news I have for you is that those same voters are angrier this time. And last night the first real evidence of what I have been harping on about here presented itself.

So my message to all those analysts busy talking about tribal equations and those politicians like Ruto, Uhuru and Kalonzo busy doing tribal arithmetic is that they should head back to the drawing boards pronto. Kenyans are about to elect the most unlikely president ever.

As for now Mutava Musyimi is the man to beat. I love this… don’t you?

Breaking News: Power rationing to start this evening in Kenya
Read the statement from KPLC CEO

The rest of Murdoch’s fascinating tale

As you must have realized already, Rupert Murdoch’s story is much more fascinating than any yearn that was ever spun in any of his top selling tabloids. It is the kind of story that one can learn a lot from. Above all it brings the current controversy threatening his empire into perspective.

Indeed the current happenings will hardly surprise anybody who knows Murdoch’s past.

Murdoch’s story is also extremely useful to anybody with ambitions for making money online. As we shall see later in this series, Murdoch saw the emergence of social networking sites online long before Facebook rose to fame and he even put his money into his hunch by purchasing MySpace for a figure most though was ridiculously high.

Murdoch’s story is also a must-read for Media practitioners and publishers anywhere in the world. The amazing launch of Australia’s first national newspaper, The Australian amid the phenomenal logistical problems involved in nationwide distribution is a fascinating and instructive chapter of this magnate’s story. More so when you realize that the paper made huge losses but was kept going.. why?

Then there is the spectacular purchase of the News Of The World amid serious competition from his rival Robert Maxwell. This was followed by the birth of The Sun. My series takes a very deep look into what really made this paper Murdoch’s biggest money-spinner (to date). Can such trashy stories make a man a fortune?

That battle with Robert Maxwell almost cost Murdoch his entire empire because the banks moved in and for a moment it looked like it was the end for the boy publisher. Even his rival Robert Maxwell faced with financial ruin committed suicide and left his crumbling nightmare in a mess. But Murdoch bounced back somehow. Quite a story that episode.

Then despite his sensational failure in the United States, Murdoch created at least one successful publication in that country. The story behind it is equally fascinating.

All this cannot be published here in Kumekucha but you can catch it all delivered in your email every two days until the end. It is not free but I have a fascinating deal for you. Get the details NOW.

Thank you for keeping me company this weekend, it was a real pleasure for me.

Go back to part 1

Smart management behind the trashy stories

As the 1950s drew to a close Rupert Murdoch remained a small time emerging newspaper publisher in Australia with no representation in Sydney, the biggest city in the country.

The big two publishers in Sydney behaved like a cartel and were determined to keep out any outsiders looking to enter their lucrative market. Murdoch made several attempts in vain but as 1960 beckoned his luck started to change. A publisher serving mainly the outskirts of Sydney was willing to sell and Murdoch used a friend to make a bid keeping the real identity of the person behind it a secret until the deal was sealed. Cumberland Newspapers, the group he purchased distributed about 400,000 newspapers weekly in the suburbs. It was not exactly the kind of thing he was looking for but at least it gave him a foothold into Sydney. Early in 1960 his big break came. The Mirror newspapers were up for sale. This consisted of an evening daily and a Sunday newspaper published in the heart of Sydney. It also gave him printing plants in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.

It is said that Murdoch did a jig when the deal went through and could not stop telephoning his close friends in excitement. This was an important step in his bid to establish himself as a major newspaper publisher in Australia. It marked the moment when he joined the big leagues proper.

On entry into this market, he was determined to be the top circulating newspaper in Sydney. Murdoch’s impact was felt almost immediately. Sensationalism and vulgarity became the trade mark of the Sunday Mirror. PROWLER STRIPS WOMAN NAKED. BANNED SEX BOOKS, FREE FOR SOME. GANG RAPES GIRL 10. WHIPPING FOR HUSBAND-WIFE’S RAGE. WHY MY SON IS A KILLER-MOTHER’S STORY. GIRL 13 RAPED 100 YARDS FROM HOME.

The daily was not much different although an effort was made to cover plenty of politics and to write intelligent editorials.

But his efforts did not stop there. He was constantly searching for promotions to boost sales. For instance he serialized new books. Circulation and profits climbed steadily.

But Murdoch’s success was not just in the content of his newspapers and in promoting them. One of the key things is that he understood the newspaper business much more than most people understood it. Many times his rivals underestimated him and dismissed him as a publisher of trashy articles for the masses. But behind that facade was a very well run business with a management system that worked.

For instance there was the Blue Book. Other newspaper groups had monthly reports, Murdoch’s blue book was weekly. Every week every property owned by Murdoch had to send in their figures to him. That meant that if there was any problem developing (e.g. increase in costs in a certain area, circulation drops etc) it was noticed right away.

To this day these weekly figures still come to Murdoch weekly from all over the world.

Read the next part

Go back to part 1

Love affair with America

Rupert Murdoch’s love affair with the United States is fascinating and fairly educative to any entrepreneur even today.

He started going to the States very regularly in the mid 50s. His biographers all agree that at this point in time he did not even dream of ever owning any media property there let alone becoming a citizen in order to do so. His main interest in the US was to get ideas. Whenever he got back to Australia his luggage would be packed with magazines and newspapers that he had collected to mine ideas out of.

Admittedly there was a lot happening in the US in the 50s. The emerging super power by 1959 was seeing the average American family spending 6 hours daily, 7 days a week watching TV. Australia was of course several years behind and so it was easy for Murdoch to pick up ideas and simply re-create them back home. If anything his greatest gift has always been his brilliant flair for spotting trends in popular culture.

Back home in Australia Murdoch’s involvement in Adelaide’s first TV station to go on air, Channel 7 meant that he collected a lot of programming and also got ideas for TV back home. For instance he copied the TV Guide in the United States and created a replica in Australia.

At this point ideas for newspapers would have been limited. Newspapers in the United States are very different from anywhere else in the world in that they rely very heavily on advertising and therefore tend to have many more pages and one often has to look for the editorial amongst the tons of advertising and advertorials.

There is an interesting aside here from the Kenyan media scene where after years of building a name and revenues based on circulation, a very deliberate decision was made in the late 80s to transform the business model at Kenya’s highest circulating newspaper, the Daily Nation to rely much more heavily on advertising. Rates were jacked up and state-of-the-art colour presses that could reproduce colour advertisements quickly and cheaply were installed. There are those who argue that this was a mistake because the newspaper lost a huge opportunity to grow its’ circulation and collect enormous revenues from the rapidly growing Kenyan population over the years. If you look at the circulation of this newspaper it has actually slightly dropped over the years. And this has nothing to do with competition and even less to do with the advent of technology. Neither can really be blamed for the lost opportunity.

Other observers acknowledge that this was the smartest move to make at the time because the country was going into a lot of political uncertainty and continuing to rely so heavily on circulation would have been a mistake and the kind of risk that share holders would have cringed at were they given the facts.

This is an interesting debate because Rupert Murdoch’s empire was built mainly from the huge circulation. His most successful newspapers as we have already seen were hardly the kind that any serious business would want to do an advertising campaign in. Especially what he managed to achieve in the United Kingdom from The Sun and News of the World. We shall take a detailed examination and analysis at his acquisition of those properties and how they operated later in this series, but for now looking at Murdoch’s balance sheet at the end of 1983 clearly gives us the answer to any argument one wants to have on circulation versus advertising revenues.

The biggest cash cow in the entire Murdoch empire that year (as in all other years) was The Sun which earned a staggering $50 million in 1983 and 40% of News Corporations’ (Murdoch’s umbrella company for all his media properties) total operating worldwide profits. 70% of The Sun’s revenues were from circulation and NOT advertising.

Go to the next part

Go back to Part 1

Murdoch journalism is born

The small afternoon newspaper that Murdoch started with was the Adelaide News which is the property he inherited from his father.

Murdoch joined the newspaper and put his energy learning the trade by being involved in virtually every aspect of the newspaper from advertising rates to the actual production and printing process as well as editorial. But more significantly it turned out to be the battle ground for his first real newspaper battle and no doubt played a big role in shaping the fighter in Murdoch that was to be seen in later years fighting for the control of newspaper properties against great odds.

It was not an easy one for the man who was quickly nicknamed “the boy publisher” having arrived at the newspaper to take over his inheritance at the tender age of only 22. The tiny newspaper was under serious threat from its’ much bigger competitor, the Adelaide Advertiser. Indeed the bigger paper which was part of a large group was determined to take over the tiny annoying competitor and Rupert’s mother had already received an offer to sell off the newspaper to them but young Rupert could hear nothing of it. He was rather emotional about the whole thing seeing it as an attempt to discredit the memory of his father who had only died so recently.

Rupert Murdoch in the early years

But even at that tender age and with all his inexperience Murdoch injected a number of interesting ideas and was a key member of the team that survived that first battle. I use the word survive because the nasty circulation war that ensued cost both newspapers a lot but considering that the News had such limited resources in comparison, it was a very commendable show.

Murdoch did not quite destroy the competition completely but a compromise was reached which eased the pressure and saw the two arch enemies own one Sunday newspaper together where they shared the revenues on a 50/50 basis.

Another interesting aspect that came out of this first newspaper project for Murdoch was his propensity for cost cutting. The Adelaide News already had a very lean staff and there are those who felt that it would have done well with more staff. Murdoch went in the opposite direction and still constantly looked for ways to cut down on costs even further.

The other important development is that the young Murdoch started developing a relationship with a bank which was to prove to be critical to his newspaper career. He found the National Bank of Australia as the bankers of the Adelaide News, but they were also bankers to their competitors, The Advertiser. Murdoch switched bankers to the Commonwealth Bank and developed such a close working relationship that he was able to get credit at very short notice for many years as he relentlessly built his media empire.

As the 1950s were coming to a close the Adelaide News was making enough money for Murdoch to consider the first acquisitions, which he did against the wishes of some on the board who were much more cautious. Still he won approval to acquire a weekly woman’s magazine called New Idea published in Melbourne and his second newspaper The Sunday Times published in Perth, Western Australia. To acquire the newspaper he put up his first newspaper as security, a very risky financial move because if his new acquisition had gone wrong, he would have lost everything. Not only that, Perth is 1,400 miles (not kilometers) away from Adelaide and yet Murdoch wanted a hands on approach to enable him turn around his second newspaper even as he kept a close eye on his first newspaper. Every Friday he would fly down to supervise his Sunday newspaper and his ruthless reputation now started to take shape. For instance his Sunday Times staff would work on the paper but the minute Murdoch would arrive straight from his flight he would take a look at the front page and tear it to shreds. Thus work would start all over again on the front page. The newspaper became much more sensational and circulation rose. Indeed many observers are of the opinion that it was in Perth that Murdoch journalism was truly born.

The hallmark of Murdoch journalism and what built his empire may be difficult for many to accept. It was the exaggerated story filled with invented quotes. Boring news service copy was completely re-written into lavishly sensationalized articles. The signature would be the blood-curdling headline. Sample one of Murdoch’s best selling headlines in Perth; LEPER RAPES VIRGIN GIVES BIRTH TO MONSTER BABY.

It was also in Perth that Murdoch developed his aggressive newspaper promoting skills.

The quick success of the Sunday Times sparred him on and thus started the rapid expansion and acquisition of other newspaper properties.

Read the next part

Go back to part 1

Rupert Murdoch: Where it all started

From left to right: Rupert Murdoch aged 5 years old with his father Keith Murdoch, about the time he was working his first newspapers in Australia and finally how he looks like today.

To understand Rupert Murdoch the media mogul and what makes him who he is today it is important to go back to the 19th century and to a time when he was not even born. We need to understand the life and times of one Alfred Hamsworth billed to have been the greatest publisher who ever lived.

Who was Hamsworth and what is his link to Murdoch?

Hamsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) was the major inspiration in the life of Rupert’s father Keith Murdoch. When the older Murdoch was working on behalf of the Aussie government in London he spent a lot of time with Murdoch and learned a lot about the newspaper business which he later went back home to apply. And as he did so this knowledge and information was passed on to the young Murdoch and is very evident in the younger Murdoch’s media career as we shall see later in this series.

Hamsworth’s most powerful newspaper principal was simplify, clarify, explain. Born in 1865, he came on the scene when newspapers were more like text books on medicine. Articles were written for detail and one had to painstakingly read through thousands of words to understand the content. With the strong traditions and class system in Britain it would have been an insult to suggest to any editor at the time to make his newspaper or articles more readable for the uncouth masses. Hamsworth saw only the money that could be made from reaching the masses.

Alfred Hamsworth

The foundation of his newspaper was a dirt-cheap weekly called Answers to correspondence (later shortened to Answers). The format was simple. Each article started with a question and was followed by the answer written in a simple easy to grasp way that had yet to be seen at the time. Sometimes the questions were picked from topical issues and at other times they were just based on the other powerful emotion successful publications exploit in prospective readers, namely curiosity. “Can a clergyman marry himself?” “Do Dogs commit murder?” are two examples that were big sellers at the time. This small pamphlet was a sensational success even as the then mainstream press ignored and laughed at it. Circulation steadily rose to 200,000 copies weekly.

But Hamsworth real money-making genius emerged from the fact that he realized that the material he produced in Answers could easily be recycled again and again by simple changing the headline and re-writing the articles from a different angle but based on the same researched material. This could be done almost endlessly and so he launched numerous other cheap papers like Comic Cuts, Illustrated Chips, Forget me Not, Home Chat and so on. By 1894 the total circulation of all his papers was 2 million copies a week and Hamsworth was rapidly becoming a very wealthy man. And that was the year that his inevitable shift away from the ‘gutter press’ to the mainstream media happen.

A newspaper called Evenings News was in serious financial trouble and on the verge of shutting down. Hamsworth purchased it and using the same tactics that had built his gutter press empire to such phenomenal success he turned it around instantly into a great success. In 1896 he founded the Daily Mail which sold 400,000 copies on it’s first day of publication.

Hamsworth’s guiding principle was simple but revolutionary in his time. He put it thus: “For a newspaper to pay it must deal with what interests the mass of people, give the public what they want.”

If you were to pick up any copy of Rupert Murdoch’s most financially successful newspaper over the years, The Sun you would see this simple principal in every article, every headline and every photograph including the notorious page 3 naked model. Simply put The Sun is successful because it gives the people what they want.

Hamsworth is the foundation of Rupert Murdoch’s phenomenal media empire which was built from scratch. Murdoch started with one very small afternoon newspaper in Australia which he inherited from his father and as we shall see throughout this series, that is the simple principle he copied and put to work.

Admittedly there was also a lot of financial smarts which can still be applied to any business today and we shall examine those as well. Indeed what Murdoch did can still be done today albeit on the information super highway. Because even with all the technology available now the basic fact that information is the most powerful and lucrative commodity on earth is still very much true.

Read more on Hamsworth

Read part 2

The Ruto Curse

There are several methods that ignorant and naïve Kenyans use to judge human character. The most popular is how much money somebody has to their name. If you have money then you are a very clever person and a person to be trusted, so the reasoning goes. And true to form those mostly with ill-gotten wealth always say the right things to neatly complete the façade that is their so-called image.

But inevitably somewhere down the line they will do something stupid that will bring out their true character for all and sundry to see.
Character should always be judged by a person’s actions and not what they say or claim to be.

There is a national leader called William Ruto who has been traversing the country reassuring Kenyans that he is bringing to them a new non-dictatorial brand of leadership to Kenya that understands the problems of ordinary folk. Make no mistake about it, this man Ruto is a schemer par excellence.

In my book he would have been a person to trust had he resigned from his party post in ODM the minute he fell out with the party leadership. Instead he officially remains one of the two deputy party leaders even as he goes round the country trashing his party and selling instead his new party, UDM.

This is the same William Ruto who not too long ago held the entire country at ransom negotiating a common position for the purposes of passing a new constitution but the minute the very document he had negotiated had been published he emerged as it’s most passionate critic leading the no campaign to defeat that constitution.

Raila supporters believe that their leader can do no wrong but it is as clear as day that the man who wants to be the next president of Kenya made a very grave mistake when he hesitated to act decisively against Ruto right at the beginning of this rebellion and instead opted to treat him with kid’s gloves hoping for reconciliation. Clearly this only fed on Ruto’s ego and the rebellion has now grown much bigger than the small bush fire that would easily have been put out at the beginning with minimum casualties.

As you read this Ruto and company are plotting to pull the rug from under ODM by resigning from the party en mass causing Raila to lose his premiership which the national accord pegs his majority party position to. Read the story HERE.

Interestingly Ruto and his allies have been telling Kenyans that ODM is a dictatorship for wanting to force them out of the party. Insinuating that Raila would not have been labeled a dictator had he stuck to his previous pussy-cat-lame-duck stance of doing nothing against Ruto and company.

What I find even more interesting is the language used by Ruto and company in their public meetings. Kindergarten stuff if you ask me. Statements like “they will do us nothing” would hardly be the kind of language I would expect from a national leader who seriously wants my vote for the most powerful office in the land.

Indeed Ruto is so busy currently spreading his poison that it is easy to forget that he still has a very serious unresolved matter before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

I know many of my dearest readers admire this Ruto man but to be honest he always leaves a bad taste in my mouth every time I come across his name.

I end this Ruto post with a fascinating comment by one of my readers in a previous post referring to the aftermath of the punch up in State House involving William Ruto and a respected Kalenjin politician at the time Chesire;

The "Statehouse Punch Up" ended up in William Ruto being cursed by concerned elders from the Rift Valley.

The curse came to be known as "The Chesire Curse" with an elders' clause; "the arrogant and disrespectful young man (Ruto) will only see the inside of the '1907 government house' as a messenger or visitor or an outsider, and never as the main man incharge for as long as he's involved in politics".

The curse couldn't be undone since the offended elder, Chesire, passed away before any attempts were made by both sides in terms of reconciliation and cleansing rituals for Ruto.

Call it supersititious if you will, but time will tell whether the curse was a deserved response to some of the angriest implications of Ruto's role in the "State House Punch Up".
Read more about Ruto and Moi secrets.

Kumekucha’s Weekend Special is BACK with an unusual but very topical subject. Rupert Murdoch started with a small afternoon newspaper in his native Australia and single-handedly built the colossal media empire that is now under threat. Kumekucha brings you all the inside never-before told secrets that reveal the true character of this media mogul and the bizarre methods he used to grow newspaper circulations. No media practitioner should miss this amazing series. And nobody who wants to understand the evil ways of the media worldwide should fail to read How Rupert Did IT and Did Everybody In only in Kumekucha this weekend. Is Chris qualified to write this? Well he has been carefully following the man’s career over the last 30 years. What he produces is unforgettable. See you here tomorrow (Saturday 23rd July 2011).

What Kenyans Don’t Know About How Terror Wins Elections

I can always tell when I strike a raw nerve somewhere in the big fat bodies of the kings of impunity. Judging from the threats and angry messages I have received after my previous post, there are obviously people who are very determined that nobody should link violent crime and terror groups to elections just now. I can guess the reason. It is so that Kenyan voters never realize what is happening until it is too late. Ask yourself the following questions which I have asked in this blog before; - Is it a mere coincidence that tribal clashes/politically instigated violence started for the first time when multiparty politics was re-introduced into the country with the repealing of the infamous section 2 a? - Is it a mere coincidence that tribal clashes/politically instigated violence usually break out on the eve of general elections, like clockwork and without fail? 1991, 1996, 2001, 2006 and the most violent in January 2008? - If tribal clashes/politically instigated violence are as a result of competitive politics causing politicians to incite the people, does it mean that before 1991 we did not have competitive politics in the country?

- Is it a mere coincidence that most senior government officials and even opposition politicians shoot from hip when it comes to commenting on other national issues but when it comes to Mungiki violence and even most political violence, the silence is deafening? 

 - If it is true that tribal clashes/politically instigated violence is the handiwork of various individual politicians with loose mouths (and not the work of high powered politically organized crime), why were there no tribal clashes/politically instigated violence in the run up to the referendum on a new constitution in 2005? And yet tensions were so high? The saddest thing is that many Kenyans do not know what political violence achieves. What is the point of killing and terrorizing your would-be voters, they wonder? Actually Kenya election violence is never an accident and the people behind it are not fools. 

Here is what violence achieves; 

 a) Your opponent's voters are forced to relocate from the place where they need to be to vote. In many cases your core supporters remain. Those who remain who are not with you, can hardly make an objective choice when their priority is to stay alive. (This is one reason why the law should be changed to allow people to vote from anywhere). 

 b) In the ensuing violence and the chaos that follows there is nobody to stop you "importing" thousands of voters to win the election for you. 

 c) Violence spreads fear. The idea is to create very serious fear, then come in and quell the violence. It is then very easy to convince the voters that if they don't vote for the "people who quelled the violence" then the violence will return if the other side wins. 

d) It becomes easy to collect voters cards from those who remain in return for their lives and security. 

e) It becomes impossible for any candidate to sell their agenda to the electorate. In brief election violence and intimidation works. That is why people use it. When you are seated in safety in that posh apartment in some smart neighborhood or in some foreign country, it is impossible for you to understand what it is like to live in constant fear of your life in your own country.

  Are bank robberies linked to election war chests?

Are Mungiki Back?

Any journalist who has worked on investigative stories will tell you that not all investigations for stories get completed successfully.

For weeks now I have been following up on what I think is a big story albeit very scary news. I would hate to be the one to alarm my readers for nothing and so I have resisted the temptation to do a half-baked post without the concrete evidence to back it up.
Still this news is so important and secondly after the killings in Meru recently there is a clear trend and so I have decided to go ahead with this post and give you my dear reader the little information that I have so far and let you make your own decision as to whether my haunch is correct or off the mark, even as I continue to do more digging. The decision is entirely yours.

Since the beginning of this year there have been very strange killings happening around the country but mainly in Central province and its’ environs that have the Mungiki trade mark written all over them. Indeed in some cases locals have clearly pointed out to the authorities that the killings suggest that Mungiki are back. Nobody wants to even consider that possibility and so these voices have been muffled. Even reporters and editors have been quick to edit the Mungiki link out of these stories dismissing them as unsubstantiated claims.

But on the ground many Kenyans are living in great fear for their lives. A case in point is Muranga where a headless body of a woman was recently found. The body of Julia Njeri was dumped along Nguthuru-Muruka road and was discovered early in the morning. Residents suspected that Njeri was murdered elsewhere before her body was dumped beside the road. The head is yet to be found. Residents have been living in fear since then. See a video of this news report HERE.

I have followed several other very similar killings since that Muranga incident in May with the latest being the blood letting incident in Meru. Read the story HERE.

In my view this is all very worrying bearing in mind that we are headed for the most competitive general elections in the history of Kenya. Less competitive elections in the past have shed lots of blood and so what should we expect this time? Less blood-letting or more?

Of course we also know that Kenyan politicians are a superstitious lot and ritual killings to complete witchcraft spells to win elections are usually common as we head to the elections with plenty of killings, disappearances and bizarre road accidents. However we also know that the killer Mungiki gang is usually most active as we head to general elections.

Does the Mungiki terror group have any chance of resurrecting after the bloody so-called shut down by former police commissioner Major General Hussein Ali and his hit squads created to do just that? Read all about these hit squads and other unpublished secrets, like how all the dirty money was made by Kenya's top 5 wealthiest families, now. As I have said many times here before, wiping out every suspected Mungiki member in site is not the way to deal with this kind of problem. It is a case of dealing ruthlessly with the symptom and then cheating yourself that you have cured the disease. Besides those with good memories will remember that the Prime Minister Raila Odinga promised to negotiate with the group not too long ago, meaning that Mungiki is far from being extinct.

And so clearly anybody who thinks that the Mungiki are dead and buried would be gravely mistaken. Still experts on these matters consulted by this blogger are of the opinion that it is unlikely that the Mungiki would have recovered enough organizational teeth to carry out the killings across such a wide area of Central province. To be honest I personally disagree.

So the mystery remains; what are the bizarre killings all about?

Mechanics Behind Raila Odinga’s Surprise Running Mate

There is no potential presidential candidate for 2012 at the moment that has a more organized think tank than the Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

What is a think tank and how important is it to a Kenyan presidential candidate?

When faced with the biggest challenge of his long political career in 1991 president Daniel arap Moi was advised to constitute a think tank specifically tasked with keeping him in power at all costs. This is the group that devised several schemes including what later came to be known as the Goldenberg mega-scandal. Goldenberg was of course designed to raise the cash required to get Moi re-elected in a very hostile pro-reform environment mostly rooting for the opposition. Uhuru Kenyatta, the project presidential candidate of 2002 was also birthed in the confines of a think tank working on a viable exit strategy for Daniel arap Moi. Don’t laugh because it almost worked. Had Raila Odinga not led the revolt within Kanu that dramatically strengthened the opposition, we would be talking a very different story today.

Musalia Mudavadi: Never cut his political teeth in the trenches

Think tanks have decided the outcome of an election many times and there is no doubt that the candidate who finally makes it into State House as the fourth president of Kenya will have an excellent think tank carrying him there.

But critical to any think tank this time round will be its’ ability to appreciate the mechanics of the new ball political ball game in town, courtesy of a new constitution that is already being billed, one of the best anywhere in Africa.

This is precisely the reason why information leaked to this blogger recently about the kind of direction Raila Odinga’s think tank is taking should be of great interest.

Raila’s team is of the opinion that women voters can be used to turn the tide in their favour and are determined that Raila’s running mate this time round should be a woman.
The most influential voters at the grassroots have always been known to be women. But sadly they hate to vote for one of their own. However if somebody managed to package a presidential candidate whom they were sure would champion their interests there is little doubt that they would enthusiastically support such a candidate.

This is why if Raila’s closest advisors have their way, his running mate in the coming elections will be from the fairer sex.

The name that keeps on cropping up is that of Charity Ngilu. The advantages of madam Ngilu being Raila’s running mate are many but the most obvious one would be that she would neutralize any support that Kalonzo Musyoka may claim to have in his Ukambani backyard.

Still there are those who are sure that Kalonzo Musyoka is a non-starter in any presidential race (including yours truly) and so any serious contender has no business wasting their time crafting a strategy to deal with a non-entity when real emerging opponents are in the horizon. And that is why chances are extremely high that if the PM will ends up choosing a female running mate then he is bound to choose a political nobody who has the ability to attract young voters and repackage the Raila ticket as a somewhat youthful progressive new beginning team.

So… what about Musalia Mudavadi?

For those in the dark, Raila’s closest advisors have always considered Musalia Mudavadi more of “a passenger” than an asset within ODM and specifically in their candidates’ quest for State house. The coming general elections will no doubt be the most competitive ever witnessed in these shores. Nobody can afford to even consider having passengers in the periphery of their campaign team, let alone as their running mate.

There are those who remember that Musalia Mudavadi’s lukewarm political career was launched when former president Daniel arap Moi hand-picked him to replace his father, Moses Sabstone Mudamba Mudavadi, the man said to have given Moi a promotion in the days when he was a teacher, a gesture that Moi never forgot and it also launched a close friendship. Read more in my Dark secrets book. The point is that the younger Mudavadi never really cut his teeth in the trenches of political initiation but instead had everything delivered on a silver platter by Uncle Dan.

Musalia cannot even deliver a fraction of his own Luhya backyard at the moment and so it would hardly make any sense to have him as a running mate. Nothing personal, it’s just business.

Can a man who used violence to try and take power be allowed to be president of Kenya?

The new constitution (what Kumekucha calls the wild hungry animal loose in Kenya today) is great because it gives great power to the people. But with great power comes great responsibility.

One of the responsibilities that the Kenyan people will have to speedily learn how to handle is that of making their own decisions on character, something that was previously done on our behalf, for better or for worse, by the corrupt political class.

And even as Kenyans vet judges and other personalities for sensitive public office they will also have to carefully vet various other characters for the highest office in the land. Yep. Although the presidency is not as powerful as it once was it is still powerful enough to cause concern on whom we want to occupy the office.

Revelations that came out of the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission sitting in Bungoma a few hours ago (Sunday) are extremely shocking to say the least. These revelations highlight the role of the man who won the disputed 2007 general elections and the current Prime Minister Raila Odinga in the failed bloody 1982 coup attempt.

The 1982 botched coup is still shrouded in mystery to this day (although readers of my land mark book Dark secrets of the Kenyan presidency GET IT FOR FREE NOW have had a head start with lots of information that has never been in the public domain). But what emerged from the TJRC for the first time on Sunday is a clear link between the leader of the failed coup senior private Pancreas Ochuka and Raila Odinga. According to Retired Kenya Air Force officer Maxwell Kivihya, Raila met Senior Private Hezekiah Ochuka several times at a house on Fourth Avenue Ngong Road in Nairobi. Ironically not very far from then President Moi’s residence at Kabarnet Gardens off Ngong Road.

It has always been a mystery as to how such a junior officer as Private Ochuka would have led a coup (although there is a precedent in the Liberian case—see my earlier post).

Other shocking revelations from the Bungoma TJRC hearings:

• A day after the abortive coup, former president Daniel arap Moi ordered that all Kenya Air Force men be rounded up and taken for hanging at Kamiti Prison. The directive was effected and servicemen and officers were locked up at Kamiti, Naivasha, King’ong’o and Shimo la Tewa prisons.

• President Moi appointed Brig Kibwana and Maj Musomba to conduct interrogations and torture of the Air force servicemen.

• Four categories of KAF airmen emerged during their arrest: those with prior knowledge of the coup, some of who escaped to Tanzania; those without prior knowledge, but who were imprisoned or hanged without legal processing and representation; those who stayed in prison, but could not be charged for lack of evidence and were later freed due to international pressure; and those who were charged and acquitted by the High Court.

• He also named a Lt Mwambura, Cpl Odero and Cpl Oriwa as some of the key players in the coup attempt that resulted in the loss of 300 lives, half of them university students and civilians.

• Only a quarter of the airmen who knew of the plot raised the alarm at the Eastleigh and Nanyuki barracks and took up arms in readiness for the next order, said Mr Kivihya. Cpl Odero ordered his men to go to the Nairobi CBD and wait for the next order, which had not come by the time loyal forces from the Kenya Army caught up with them. A few KAF airmen who had been taken to Broadcasting House were killed there by Kenya Army men.

What this blogger has revealed in the past that nobody else has ever discussed was the fact the retired President Daniel arap Moi opted to listen to an impassioned plea by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and as a result spared the life of Raila Odinga. Jaramogi thus owed a huge debt to Moi. There is plenty of evidence that the politically sly Moi cashed in on this debt many times in the years that followed. This blogger cannot help asking questions like; did this debt help Moi in dismantling the formidable Ford juggernaut which if it had been allowed to stay intact would have without doubt removed Moi from power in 92? The original FORD members split into two major factions; Kenneth Matiba went with most of the Kikuyu vote to Ford Asili and this is what inspired Kibaki to form his Democratic Party (DP). While Jaramogi formed Ford Kenya with Wamalwa Kijana, Gitobu Imanyara and others.

So to answer the question posed at the beginning of this post. Bearing in mind that the Moi government was just a continuation of the Kenyatta regime by the time the coup was attempted in 1982, what Raila did was what any freedom fighter would do. Indeed Mandela did the same in South Africa. But it is a very close call indeed considering how young the Moi government was at the time.

But what everybody agrees is that the events of August 1982 changed Daniel arap Moi forever into a dictator proper.

Past Kumekucha posts on the 82 coup attempt and its' political implications:

82 coup unanswered questions linger

Coup plot revelations by Raila himself

President for 30 mins and the chaos of 82 coup

Another non-commissioned officer in Africa whose coup was successful

…but he ended up dying a terrible tortured death

Even as Kenyans focus on the events of August 1982 with new revelations by the TJRC in Bungoma, analysts will want to shift their attention to another coup in Africa also carried out by low-ranking soldiers that was unlike the Kenyan case, successful.

Top photo; the dramatic beach execution of President Tolbert's entire cabinet, below: Video footage of president Doe 10 years later being tortured and then killed.

Actually the Liberian coup of April 12th 1980 by 18 plotters (all non-commissioned officers) that brought master sergeant Samuel Doe to power (less than a month before his 29th birthday) is without doubt the bloodiest ever recorded in recent history.

The coup toppled 66-year old president William R. Tolbert Jnr who was immediately executed by one of the 18 (Harrison Pennoh, who later proved mentally unstable). The rest of the avialble cabinet that was captured were all executed in a very sick firing squad along a famous beach in Monrovia.

But 10 short years later President Samuel Doe was himself tortured and then executed on video tape. The video footage is still doing it’s rounds to enthusiastic audiences in Monrovia Liberia even as you read this. I carry some of the photographs from the video on this page. The most sickening cannot be published here and I have been forced to make it available only to my raw notes subscribers. President Doe's torture video showed his ears and fingers being hacked off and finally his naked dead body (hardly pictures I can publish here). 

But questions linger. How was it possible for such a young junior officer in the military to seize power without any backing from a more prominent person. Ochukah in Kenya had backing from Raila Odinga. There were rumours that Doe had backing from the Americans but even then military analysts marvel at how he would have pulled off such a thing.

But even more startling and unbelievable is how President Doe was captured by rebels while still in office with hardly any shots fired. The superstitious point to witchcraft having played a major role in both cases.

Here is the full gruesome details of the life and times of Master Sergeant Samuel Kanyon Doe;

Samuel Kanyon Doe was born on May 6 1951 in Tuzon, a small town in Grand Gedeh County, in the Southeastern part of Liberia. His parents were poor and uneducated and belonged to the Krahn tribe. Samuel Doe had only accomplished primary education when he became a career soldier because of lack of other job opportunities. In October 1979 he was promoted Master Sergeant in the Liberian Army. He was in his 4th high school grade and attending night school classes when he and a group of soldiers seized power, assassinated President William R. Tolbert, Jr., and established, for the first time in Liberia’s history, military rule over the country. It was April 12, 1980.

Since Samuel Doe was the highest ranking non-commissioned officer of the 18 plotters, all but him ordinary soldiers, he became Chairman of the People’s Redemption Council (PRC) that was created.

The military coup is still shrouded in lots of mystery and surreal happenings. People talk about them on the streets of Monrovia today and link it all to witchcraft and the popwerful magic behind President Samuel Doe that turned against him in the end.

But even the non-superstitious are hard pressed to explain the strange happenings For example how did preparations for the coup go unnoticed, given the fact that there was considerable political tension and also in light of the well-staffed U.S. Embassy in Morovia (over 500 people). Samuel Doe was not a publicly known figure in Liberia before April 12, 1980.

The military take-over, labelled ‘a revolution’ by the 18 soldiers was extremely bloody by any standards and toppled the Government of William R. Tolbert. The 66-year old President was then savagely murdered by private soldier Harrison Pennoh, who later proved to be mentally unstable. Within weeks all of the cabinet that was available at the time of the coup had been put on trial and sentenced to death. They were all publicly executed on a beach near Monrovia.

Head of State - Samuel Doe at numerous occasions reiterated the army’s pledge to return to the barracks but it was the usual populist talk by military dictators who get usually quickly get addicted to power. In reality Doe increasingly surrounded himself with members of the (small) Krahn-tribe. The US was greatly relieved when Doe maintained the country’s pro-Western stance and the bloody butcher was even invited at the White House. It was here that President Ronald Reagan made his historic blunder when he cordially greeted the man ‘Chairman Moe’ when he warmly shook his hand. Liberia received more political and military assistance from the US in the decade of Doe’s rule than it had ever received, despite an increasingly deteriorating political climate and human rights record.

When in July 1985 the ban on politics and political parties was lifted President Doe created his own party, the National Democratic Party of Liberia (NDPL). He was the NDPL’s candidate for the presidential elections slated for October of the same year. The elections were neither free nor fair but Doe was declared winner with nearly 51 percent of the poll. There were numerous accusations of fraud and indications that the opposition Liberia Action Party (LAP), led by Jackson Doe (not related), was the real winner. The international community did not react, the US State Department ‘was pleased’. Dr Samuel K. Doe – he had received an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Political Science from the University of Seoul during one of his numerous visits abroad – was sworn in as Liberia’s 20th President, and First President of the Second Republic, on January 6, 1986.

One month after the elections Doe’s former right hand, Commanding General Thomas Quiwonkpa led an armed invasion from Nimba County, in the north of the country. Soon the rebels were in Monrovia where they attacked the Executive Mansion. Two years earlier, Quiwonkpa, who hailed from Nimba County, had been accused of an attempt to overthrow the Government but was granted clemency. This time, during the November 1985 revolt, he was killed, his mutilated body publicly displayed. The excessive and brutal reprisals of the Krahn-led Liberian Army against the Mano and Gio, in Nimba County, proved to become important stepping stones to the civil war that officially began in December 1989 – also starting in Nimba.

On Christmas Eve 1989 an alliance composed of Americo-Liberians and Mano and Gio people, united in the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPLF), invaded from Cote d’Ivoire. The NPLF was led by Charles Taylor, a corrupt former civil servant under Doe, who was born from an Americo-Liberian father and a Golah-mother. An internal rift between the Americo-Liberian and tribal fighters in the NPFL resulted in a split led by the mentally ill ‘General’ Prince Johnson, from Nimba County, who created the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia. The Liberian army was soon losing control over a large part of the territory and Doe asked Nigeria’s president Babangida, with whom he presumably had common business interests, for support. In August 1990 the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) sent a 4,000 men peacekeeping force to Liberia, known as ECOMOG.

On September 9, 1990 President Samuel Doe, on a visit to ECOMOG-headquarters in Monrovia, was captured by Prince Y. Johnson. How this could happen is still unclear. Doe was tortured, mutilated and finally brutally killed by Johnson and his men. All gruesome details were videotaped. The tape later found its way all over West Africa and the world. Images of the videotape shocked the world. In the confusing period following Doe’s assassination, the psychopathic Prince Johnson claims to have been acting President, for three months, before the arrival of the Interim Government of National Unity (IGNU) headed by Professor Amos Sawyer.

Read also;

How taxes brought down a very powerful government in Kenya: The most important article you will read about Kenya's immediate future

Edwin Sifuna: A Remarkable Transformation within ODM's Political Landscape

Raila Odinga on Caroli Omondi hypocracy: Did you send him to vote yes on the finance Bill 2023, he asks voters 

Why investors are fleeing Kenya leaving the numbers of the jobless rising steeply

What happens to your body after you drink too much Coke

Truth be told, there are few things I love more than a Coke, usually cool. I even drink the stuff when it is as cold as it is at the moment in Kenya. For those who want to recognize Kumekucha Chris a sure way to do so is to look out for somebody coming out of a supermarket (usually Tuskys) already drinking their one litre Coke in a plastic bottle. I am just addicted to Coke.
So why am I writing this article? Because I have tried very hard to make the following information make me stop my Coke habits and mostly I have failed. And so in a last desperate attempt I have published these facts in Kumekucha hoping that this will trigger enough warning bells in my brain to help me stop. Let's hope it works for me and those of you out there who are cokeholics like I am.

If you usually gulp down too much Coke chances are very high that you could develop heart disease. According to a study published in 2007 in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association, subjects who drank a soda every day over a four-year period had a 25% chance of developing high blood sugar levels. The Nurses’ Health Study found that women who drank more than two sugary beverages per day had a 40% higher risk of heart attacks or death from heart disease than women who rarely drank sugary beverages.

It is also rather obvious that you’ll be fatter and you don’t need any research findings to tell you that. All that sugar will definitely bulge out in various parts of your body. Still (for those who want documented research) according to research in the Nurse’s Health Study, which monitored the health of 90,000 women for eight years, drinking a single soda every day of the week added 10 pounds over a four-year period.

This next one is pretty scary. Chances are that you’ll develop diabetes. In the Nurses’ Health Study, women who said they drank one or more servings a day of a sugar-sweetened soft drink or fruit punch were twice as likely to have developed type 2 diabetes during the study than those who rarely consumed these beverages. Again the main culprit is all that sugar.

Generally speaking, you’re bound to be less healthy ion many other ways. Several studies, including the 2007 study published in Circulation, suggest that diet sodas have some of the same effects on health as regular sodas, despite having none or very little of the sugar. Why? Drinking soda is typically part of an overall lifestyle that’s not very healthy: We know you don’t like us to compare drinking caffeine and sugar to substance abuse, but when it comes to your lifestyle, some think that soda is just like a gateway drug.

There. So after writing all that angry stuff about drug dealers it seems that I am a junkie after all. Ishindwe!!!

I had matumbo for Christmas... and no soda

The Mutula Kilonzo you don't know