Archive for December 2008
By Muli wa Kyendo
This is season of goodwill. In the spirit of the season, I am wishing all those dear readers who have participated in the discussions in Afrowrite, a happy and prosperous New Year.
We in Kenya are starting the year with many hopes that a messiah will come and help our country to develop. Greed among our leaders is killing all of us. And we don’t know where to turn. We had hoped that the Messiah would come in the form of our opposition leaders. But we were wrong. We are only learning, as some vulgar people will put it, that everyone has a mouth and a stomach!
Poverty amidst plenty
Everyone tells us that our country is rich. In deed, it is so rich that everyone who hears of starving Kenyans covers their mouths with wonder. An example, we have so much maize and wheat that it is rotting in the fields. Farmers are every day complaining in the mass media that they have no market for their products.
Despite this, many Kenyans are starving. Those in urban areas and those in drier areas of the country do not have food. Many have the money to buy the food. Many have cattle they can sell and buy the food. But the government has regulations and rules that make circulation of services and products impossible. These rules ensure that all things are sold through a narrow band of middle-men and women—often well connected with the political elite.
This is just one example where very inept leadership is slowly and surely creating another Zimbabwe, if no messiah comes. Or if the messiah delays!
Happy and prosperous New Year to you all!
By Muli wa Kyendo
If you are working in Africa’s many urban centers, you are going to be travelling to your rural home to spend the Xmas with your family. You will have been saving bit by bit for this day because we, the average Africans have a few very important expenses for which we save our money.
One is to put up a rural house. If I am working I must upgrade my rural home from grass thatch to iron sheets. Otherwise, what am I working for if I can’t do that?! Don’t think it is that simple. Some of us have been building our rural homes since we started working and we are still at it. Every now and then we borrow a loan and add a few lines of stones or bricks before the money runs out. When it runs out, I have to wait for another year—may be two years—before I can get another loan. Many of us will finish our houses with our retirement money when we quit employment. That’s life!
The second thing we save our money for are funerals, births and circumcisions. It costs more than the average salary to have your son circumcised. Mostly, you will need a loan. Certainly you will do if you have two sons or more to be circumcised at once which often happens. These expenses cover not only the circumcisers fee, they cover dancers fee, the cost of rare, ceremonial foods like meat—a bull must be slaughtered! – and clothes. You provide the same things for funerals and births.
The third thing we save for is Xmas. Many of us take loans to go for Xmas—at home, in the rural areas! Whoever went home empty handed on Xmas day? The children need “ceremonial foods.” They need new clothes. We used to smell ours to see if they were fresh, starched materials. And we wore them fresh like that on Xmas Day, so that everyone who saw us would say, “Wow, I’ve never seen you in this one!” So attired, you are ready to eat all the things that you haven’t eaten throughout the years. And you are ready to roam around in your bright new clothes in the bright African sun until the second of January next year.
Well, it used to be fun for us as children. Now that it falls on me to provide the entertainment, I know it’s not fun, it’s an expense. But would I have it another way?
By Muli wa Kyendo
If, you are in Kenya and have a secret to help your friend to become a president, don’t do it. If you do, remember that tomorrow, when he is the president, you will be his target for elimination. That is the wisdom that informs our political class.
When Kenyans were oppressed by the dictatorship of former president Daniel arap Moi, the media became the focal point for the campaign to remove him from power. The media galvanized the opposition and pressured them to unite under former Vice President Mwai Kibaki—a man who had tried many times before to become president and failed. The media dressed him up and shepherded him into power.
But who became the biggest enemy, to Mwai Kibaki, the president? The media!
Ever since coming into power Mwai Kibaki and his entire family have been at war with the media. Kibaki has, at every opportunity, brought in laws that are against the media. The wife, Lucy Kibaki, has even walked into newsrooms in the dead of the night and dismantled cameras and other equipment, slapping journalists she didn’t like. The culmination was the night attack of the Standard newspapers and Kenya Television Network (KTN, Kenya’s second largest media house) by hooded hooligans in 2006. They disabled broadcasting equipment and burned newspapers.
Last year, in the General Elections, the opposition, led by Mr. Raila Odinga, posed as the best alternative to the Kibaki regime. The media once again came out in Raila’s support. And even when he was “rigged out” by the Kibaki regime, the media stood by him, forcing Kibaki to agree to share power with Raila. Now Raila is the powerful Prime Minister.
And now that he is in power, Raila, too, has joined Kibaki to oppress the media. The new Media Bill which allows the government to dismantle equipment belonging to “hostile” media houses, and to open individual letters and intercept emails, was passed by the two men! And not surprisingly, the two have remained mum even when chaos occur in front of their noses.
The media will have to look elsewhere, not upon these two men, if they are to survive.
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