Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kiwete met President Obama last Thursday. Their discussion focused on East Africa’s regional security and anti-terrorism.
So we still brag being the biggest and most developed economy in Eastern Africa? Well, that brinkmanship and bravado will soon be so hollow just as our penchant to brand primitive wealth accumulation as industry.
Look no further than Tanzania. We may be more English than them but not when it comes to values. And the world has taken notice. Forget about the balderdash of going east.
President Kikwete may have relinquished AU's chairmanship to one Leader Gaddafi in January. But he remains the new regional anchorman and he has earned his mantle. You remember Bush sent him with NO-BUSINESS-AS-USUAL and the scoundrels were left with no choice but to listen.
Wetangula must demand apology from Kikwete after the Tanzanian President discussed Kenya with Obama. For the records, Kikwete has held regional brief for Kenya more than twice in less than four years.
The global village knows our deceptive ways inside out. No amount of proxy diplomacy by Kalonzo will wash. Waxing plastically patriotic cannot fool the world about our national vices. Instead we only fool ourselves by seeking Kikwete’s indulgence just as Kalonzo did early last year when embers of the inferno were sky high.
Bastardizing democracy
Obama’s choice of Ghana as his first African destination is neither accident nor coincidence. True he may trace his roots here in Kenya, but Obama is too smart to fall for our gimmicks lest he leaves our borders reeking DECEIT by association with our plethora of vices.
It is cheap escapism to mount Mutua-like defence that we don’t need nods from outsiders. We are best known for living serial lies and in study fortress of denial.
As Dagi Kimani aptly puts it the greatest and most costly lie to yourself is the belief that your ethnic community is more hardworking and more honest than the others. If that were so, how come you as person and your community chopping heads for money?
Make no mistake, Kenya’s present gatekeepers won’t barge in their stranglehold to keep Kenyans hostage. Even the murderous social upheavals like Mungiki will not make them reflect on their selfish schemes to bleed Kenya till her last drop.
Meanwhile the hitherto derided neighbour next door is laughing all the way to the bank as the world seeks her hand in efforts to mend broken Kenya. And before we know it we will be eating from the hands all the LESS-SOPHISTICATED Tanzanians thanks to our national twin vices of DECEPTION and FRAUD.
The ultimate prize of bastardizing a people’s democracy is incalculable.
A story attributed to Kofi Annan about the Kenyan election has been making the cocktail circuits of Geneva since last year. Kofi Annan quoted as saying thus:
ReplyDeleteKofiAnnan: The ODM tell me that they believe they won the election fair and square, but that the PNU stole it from them.
KofiAnnan: The PNU in retort say that they stole the election fair and square.
Folks, Kikwete, Mkapa, and Annan all know who stole the election and that is why they have ZERO respect for Kibaki and PNU.
What happened to thee envelope? I thought we were supposed to end IMPUNITY?
ReplyDeleteTaabu aka TeacherT,
ReplyDeleteGreetings from sunny MIJINJO-hii nchi uhuru hata kama wajaruo are mad.Our president(M7)is a (ex)soldier mta do??
Nyinyi wakenya!mlifikiri ati Obama ni wenu peke?hata Yesu Kristo alisema mamake na ndugu zake ni wale wanafuata mila za Babake binguni
Obama's bloodline may be in Kenya but his heart and eyes on the world and especially the african continent are on those countries whose leaders are on the right side of history.
His family can always be flown to America to join him hata kama ni secretly
I think we need to wisen up a little bit. This is yet another crappy screed from those who never came across Thomas Jefferson's statement that 'the man who reads nothing is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers'.
ReplyDeleteDo not get me wrong, President Kikwete is worlds apart from President Kibaki. Kikwete is the epitome of what a modern President should be. He is a great President while Kibaki can only be referred to as a mediocre one.
But so was Mwalimu Nyerere vs President Jomo Kenyatta, so was Mwinyi/Mkapa vs Daniel Moi. All these facts should also remind us that the blame is not entirely on our Presidents, it is on us too. This just tells you Tanzanians are, by and large, a more civilized people than Kenyans. A President can only be as primitive as his people, at least most of the time.
Now about Presidents Kikwete and Obama meeting, well, it is a statement on the respect the American government and the President himself have on the value system of the people of Tanzania. It is an endorsement of the mature and democratic politics and governance Tanzanians have chosen to adopt. But it is not new. Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush have done it before. They have snubbed Kenya and visited Tanzania. It is naive and childish to imagine that President Obama's dalliance with Kikwete is anything new just as it is naive for Kenyans to expect Obama to treat Kenya any preferentially. Even if we had conducted ourselves in a manner that is above board, the Americamn President does not lead a bunch of village elders. He leads a government of smart people who will not allow him to reduce the plattform of the American Presidency to a level where a country like Kenya occupies a special corner in his Presidency. Kenya stands to gain directly from the Barack Obama presidency just as Ghana, Djibout, Ethiopia and Swaziland do.............
.........Now about Kalonzo Musyoka's meeting with Kikwete and Taabu's consumption of the Standard trash; honestly if both the Tanzanian PPS and the Kenyan VPPS did not disclose what was discussed between the two, where do these people get this information that the meeting must have been about President Kikwete's impending visit to the White house? As in a smart newspaper columnst would write, "according to sources A, B and C, the Kenyan VP met the Tanzania President and specifically discussed A, B and C". I mean just reporting that they met, acknowledging ignorance of what was discussed and then going ahead to add what you IMAGINE to have been discussed into the story and repackaging it as a factual one is not just misleading, it is dumb.
ReplyDeleteKalonzo Musyoka is the Vice President of Kenya, whether you like it or not. He does not need your permission to be Vice President. And as Vice President, he can meet any African President both on behalf of the Kenyan President and on behalf of himself. He can meet President Kikwete both officially and privately. He has had a well documented closeness with Kikwete with whom they worked together for five years as Foreign Affairs Ministers for their respective countries. So let us acknowledge that he can meet President Kikwete in State House Dar, and discuss a whole lot of issues, both governance and private issues. It is therefore improper to allow our obsession with Obama to cloud every little sense we got. It is the same nonsense that has led our newspaper writers, in their coverage of Raila Odinga's visit to the US, to spend so much time explaining that "it is unclear if Raila will be meeting the American President". This looks so much like the 'brand new toy' mentality. I mean we love Obama, but our lives do not depend on him. Come on!
And Taabu, Dagi Kimani's account of what constitutes costly lies was meant for those like you who still think that it is proper to demonise a whole community just because they refused to vote for your object of obsession. It is wrong, actually delusional, to harbor ethnic hatred and expect anything different in return. The best way to shut a bigot up is to extend bigotry to them especially when they are more deserving of it.
So chemical maize importer was the right person to meet kikwete?
ReplyDeleteActually Dagi Kimani's article is....disrespectful and makes a mockery of the many different struggles that Kenyans are grappling with. By no unique shortcoming of their own, many people may fail to see the big picture because they reach their conclusions based on their rather confined lived experiences, and from which they draw their cause-effect conclusions.
ReplyDeleteInstead of mocking them and suggesting that they're evading reality, it would be more helpful to EDUCATE them and to EMPOWER them. However, I do agree with Lie # 4 that there is a general impression that the constitution is the silver bullet that will solve ALL our problems. That myth must be exploded into smithereens.
WHY CAN'T MUTUA REPEAT HIS STATEMENT ABOUT OBAMA AS THE JUNIOR SENATOR FROM ILLINOIS?
ReplyDeleteVikii,i wonder what Kalonzo does for you tht other kenyans don't experience
Doesnt it mean something that at the time Kikwete was being hosted at the white house,our PM who demands equal powers to those of a president was/is on a self invited tour of the US and most likely wont set foot anywhere near Washington DC.Hope the guy doesnt throw a tantrum over there.'I demand to be accorded the same treatment as Kikwete,after all I have equal powers with Kibaki and therefore its reasonable to say I have equal powers with Kikwete or any other president'.Ha!
ReplyDeleteBarack Obama was an Illinois senator when Mutua nmade those comments. That is true and you can jump up and down about it.He was a fucking senator!
ReplyDeleteKalonzo does not do anything for me. But neither do President Kibaki, Raila Odinga nor any other politician. I have not been brought up being told any politician has a magic wand that can transform my life because there is none. That is what you need to learn. I got family and friends and I do not need a politician to do me any personal favors.
That said, I do not have to deny a fact that he is the Vice President of Kenya, whether he does me favours or not. And as Vice President he will time again meet Presidents. That will definitely happen as he goes about his duties. When he meets those Presidents, and anyone wants to report on the meeting, they need to quote authoritative sources. Anything else is speculation by a newspaper reporter than we should not take into as fish does to water. That's my point. I am not asking you to embrace Kalonzo, no just like those "other Kenyans" you talk of cannot convince me to embrace any politician. Democracy is about people making choices on who should be their leadrs and when elections do come some will vote for Kalonzo, some Saitoti, others Bifwoli Wakoli, others Raila Odinga etc. But this is not what this is about, this is not what I am talking about here. All I am saying is that nobody has any serious insider information about what Kalonzo discussed with Kikwete. And as far as I know he is not in a hurry to be seen to be or to seek to be close to President Obama. If he was, he would go to America, lobby for a Presidential appointment or even senatorial one with any of the two Illinois senators, take pictures with them and display them to the press at the JKIA. Kalembe Ndile and Raila Ofinga have done it before. So let us not demonise him for stuff nobody can prove. All this Obama dimension in everything leaders do is getting comical.
BREAKING NEWS
ReplyDeleteRaila writes protest latter to Obama aides.
After being frustrated by Obamas aides over his request to visit White house,Raila has now officially protested. Inside sources say that despite numerous attempts to try to meet Obama, his handlers have blocked him citing a lack of agenda. The aides insist that what Raila has alleged he wants to discuss with Obama can be discussed with other high level Govt officials and diplomats. It is not yet clear why Hon Raila insists on meeting Obama as he handles other crucial world issues from Iraq to Somalia, from global warming to increased poverty. To add salt to injury, other sources have stated that Obama has reffered Pres Kibaki and PM Odinga to Kikwete for his message to them.
Taabu, what do you mean when you use deception and fraud together? Fraud is done through use of deception. Its like saying cars and gearbox. When will you learn english? The message notwithstanding, your english is generally wanting for a writer. KK/ Chris please edit these articles
ReplyDeleteHillary Clinton was Junior senator from New York. Every state has two senators: Senior and Junior. It is just determined by who got in first. So mutua correctly refered to obama at the time. obama did not complain because that was his title. Today he is POTUS and mutua has to refer to him as such. Now was that so difficult to grasp?
ReplyDeleteNow why do i sense there is some disappointment phil may not be able to post here a picture of rao and his "kachini". Remember the one with brown. Folks americans have their interests and i dont think promoting democrasy is their biggest ineterst. So we dont have to be disappointed if obama is not coming here. Remember he will be in Egypt for a major speech on June 4. I dont think anyone can argue that egypt is more democratic than kenya. But it is a major power in the middle east.
Taabu,
ReplyDeleteThose who thought that Obama's election would make fish automatically jump from Lake Nyanza into their frying pans must be very disappointed. Na mambo bado!
When will our PM grow up and stop kumangamanga there in the USA hoping to be invited into the White House?
ReplyDeleteThe global village knows our deceptive ways inside out. No amount of proxy diplomacy by Kalonzo will wash. Waxing plastically patriotic cannot fool the world about our national vices. Instead we only fool ourselves by seeking Kikwete’s indulgence just as Kalonzo did early last year when embers of the inferno were sky high.
ReplyDeleteAs usual Kenyans handle things immaturely. Kikwete is a darling because they have gas, and they are the most stable country in East Africa at the moment.
ReplyDeleteWe nearly imploded and descended into civil war and people talk like it is foolish foreign policy 2 talk 2 him, whereas it is normal 2 look 4 a more stable ally.
In Kenya we behave like we are indispensable, yet we are so disposable we could be the next somalia, congo or Iraq if we dnt get our act together.
This cannot start on kumekucha because its becoming a haven for tribalists, bullies and people hell bent on korogaing things.
When we start having more constructive talks, things may change otherwise at the moment too many people in this place are saying very disturbing things!
Ati, as long as PNU stole the election fair and square!! This is way too funny. Mwambu, please keep it coming bro.
ReplyDeleteWakenya watambue Tanzania iko juu!!
ReplyDeleteKuna minong’ono nchini Kenya kwa sasa hivi kwamba eti Tanzania inaibuka kuipiku nchi hiyo katika mahusiano yake na Marekani, hali waliyoihusisha na Rais Jakaya Kikwete kuwa kiongozi wa kwanza Mwafrika kualikwa rasmi katika Ikulu ya Marekani na Rais Barrack Obama.
Katika minong’ono hiyo, Wakenya wanazungumza kana kwamba wanaonyana wenyewe kwa wenyewe juu ya Tanzania kuonekana bora mbele ya macho ya Obama kuliko wao kutokana na walichosema kwamba ni migogoro ndani ya serikali ya umoja wa kitaifa ambayo imejiegemeza kwa watu wawili, Rais Mwai Kibaki na Waziri Mkuu, Raila Odinga.
Magazeti ya Kenya yameandika kwa kina juu ya hicho wanachosema kwamba ni mwelekeo mpya wa Tanzania kuonekana kuwa karibu zaidi na Marekani kuliko wao. Wametoa hata mifano kwamba huko nyuma Marekani ilikuwa inaichukulia Kenya kama mshirika wa dhati katika ukanda huu.
Tunapenda kuweka mambo sawa katika hisia za Wakenya kuhusu nafasi ya Tanzania katika siasa za ulimwengu huu. Kwanza, kama wanajisikia vibaya mambo yao ya ndani kutokuwa sawa, hatuna cha kusema ila kuwapa pole na kuwatakia kila kheri katika kushughulikia matatizo yao kwa njia za amani kwa nia ya kujihakikishia ustawi wa taifa lao.
Lakini kama wanazungumza hayo wakiiangalia Tanzania kwa jicho la kidhalili, tunawaambia kwamba wamepotoka sana. Tanzania kwa historia yake tangu uhuru wa Tanganyika hadi leo ni taifa lililoweka alama katika siasa za dunia hii. Si taifa la kufikiriwa eti linachukua nafasi ya Kenya, kwa sababu katika mahusiano hayo Kenya haifikii Tanzania kokote.
Kwa kuwakumbusha majirani zetu Kenya juu ya nafasi ya Tanzania, historia yetu kama taifa inashuhudia uhodari na kujitoa kwa kiwango cha juu kabisa katika kujenga mahusiano ya kitaifa na kimataifa, ndani ya bara la Afrika na nje ya bara hili.
Ni Tanganyika ambayo baadaye ilikuja kuungana na Zanzibar na kuwa Tanzania ilikuwa tayari kuchelewesha uhuru wake ili kwa pamoja nchi za Afrika Mashariki, yaani Kenya, Uganda na Tanganyika zipate uhuru kwa pamoja.
Lakini zaidi, Tanzania ni nchi iliyojitoa mhanga kwa ajili ya kukomboa bara la Afrika. Ilitoa ardhi yake, mali zake na damu ya vijana wake ili bara la Afrika liwe huru.
Haishangazi kwamba Tanzania ni nyumbani kwa wapigania uhuru wengi na makao ya vyama vingi vya ukombozi barani Afrika. Viongozi kama Yoweri Museveni wa Uganda, Sam Nujoma wa Namibia, Laurent Kabila na Joseph Kabila wa Jamhuri ya Kidemokrasia ya Kongo (DRC) na vyama vyao vilivyokomboa nchi zao, waliishi na kujipanga kimapambano wakiwa Tanzania.
Katika kundi hili pia kuna viongozi kama Samora Michel au mrithi wake Joachim Chisano wa Msumbiji na vyama vingine vya kupigania uhuru kama Frelimo cha Msumbiji, Chama tawala cha Afrika Kusini cha African National Congress, pamoja na Pan African Congress, wote hawa walipata hifadhi Tanzania kuendesha mapambano ya ukombozi.
Wakati Tanzania ikijitoa mhanga kusaidia harakati za ukombozi wa bara la Afrika hasa kusini mwa bara hii, ikiwa ni moja ya nchi za mstari wa mbele katika kusukuma juhudi za Waafrika kusaka uhuru wao, Kenya haikupata kujitambulisha katika harakati hizi.
Wakati viongozi waasisi wa bara hili, kama Mwalimu Julius Nyerere akihamasisha Watanzania wafunge mkanda ili ndugu zao Waafrika kokote waliko wawe huru, Kenya wala haikuwa na taarifa zaidi ya kuwa na ushirika mzuri na waliokuwa wanapigwa vita kwa kukandamiza haki za Waafrika.
Kuanzia kwa Mwalimu Nyerere, kupitia kwa Ali Hassan Mwinyi, kwenda kwa Benjamin Mkapa hadi kwa Jakaya Kikwete, Kenya haiwezi kutaja viongozi wao wa kulinganishwa nao katika kutengeneza mahusiano mema na mataifa mengine ulimwenguni.
Kenya haina, si kuanzia kwa Jomo Kenyatta, kupitia kwa Daniel arap Moi wala kwa sasa Mwai Kibaki. Sisi ni taifa lililojipambanua tangu mwanzo kabisa kuwa dira, kioo na kiongozi wa harakati za kimataifa; Kenya hawawezi kujitutumua leo kusema kwamba tunawapiku kwa sababu daima tumekuwa juu, tena juu sana.
I LOVE YOUR ENGLISH THOUGH! You guys can really write!
vizuri kuanza
ReplyDelete