Tribocracy:Democracy made in Kenya

By Kamal Ogudah
Via http://tomorrowspaper.wordpress.com/
Kenyans as individuals we believe our political system is a democratic one but if we look deep into our hearts it is never so, our politics is just but tribal alliances looking for supremacy over others and in the process forging alliances with other tribes for this cause in the end hurting development and having a divided nation, the tribes at the forefront of this new democracy are the ethnic groups that occupy the largest proportion of the pie chart that is Kenya, that is the Kikuyu, Luhya, Kalenjin, Luo and Kamba.
When ODM was formed chief among its manifestos was devolution many knew it for that among other things it stood for but look at it now a shadow of its former self and viewed as Raila’s party same as PNU which was an alliance that was made to help Kibaki back to power before the disputed general elections it was based upon what the president had achieved on his first term which ODM tried to counter accusing PNU of discrimination in public spending, nepotism and tribalism in public appointments which was true to some degree but some people viewed PNU as a party that was forwarding a Kikuyu agenda, looking at that time it was politics based on Kikuyu’s against other tribes this led to our country experiencing a major fallout when PNU stood tall despite a lot of alleged irregularities that finally precipitated into the PEV.
Our political parties are nothing but tribal supremacy vehicles non is based on ideals of any sort but on a certain leader or a click of them, right now we have the G7 alliance who after getting to hear what they stand for to be warranted to lead this country all I have heard is some whispers about it bringing youthfulness into our leadership and the youth that I know are not 40 plus years but we in college and the under 35 but the main thing I get from them is their differences with Raila I don’t really care if they like Raila or not that is their problem, what I really care about is when will the ‘northern frontier’ be made to feel like other parts of Kenya, after graduation what will they do for me and my comrades in terms of jobs and opportunities , water and housing in our informal settlements what will they do about it in short they need to start politicking with a manifesto or ideology in their heads not hate for Raila, Karua ,Kenneth or any other person harbouring a presidential ambition for that matter.
Tribocracy is what we enjoy right now from the mainstream politics to college politics, one influences the other and the other lives to the future cause that’s our future leadership it would be fit if University politics was like that of the 80’s and 90’s based on ideologies among other factors than what is happening now that which is based on tribal alliance, until then let’s live through this moment hoping Tribocracy won’t live forever though I have a feeling it will especially if the tribes with a considerable proportion in the pie chart that is KENYA will continue with the supremacy war of wanting to dominate, guilty being the five major tribes (you know yourselves)

Two Blind Mice and a Cat in Kenya's Politics

Kenya's political arena is pretty curious a theater, it is an arena in whose all players are animals, a circus with no very many wild animals without human handlers. The big jumbo takes a crap on the entrance to the circus, the monkeys snatch biscuits and bananas from the little children making them scream, Mr. Lion is sitting in a corner he gets bored wakes up 'susuus' on his tail and sprays everybody in the arena with caustic urine. The delirium ends befor it even begins.

However, the in the disorder that reigns in the whole arena the fact that the conductors to this crazy circus are two tiny mice one black, the other white and a cat. My community's elders tell me that a garden mouse produces a sound akin to an elephants trumpet. Somehow the chirps of this two mice brings some semblance of order. Other white queue behind the white mouse and black mice queue behind the black mouse (because i do not want to use Raila's allegory of a mice, a bell and a cat i will use my own.)

The files of mice are on their way to a grandma's granary, they both smell a cat or he whitish cat on the way. An argument ensues immediately.

Black mice: You should not have come he will see you, you are white remember.
White mice: Are you deluded, you should not have come you are black, remember, you stink too.

An acrimous shouting ensues between the white mice and the the black mice which inevitably wakes up the cat, he is blind too. He wakes, stretches smells a rat and runs like a commot sleep. The mice are baffled, What? they ask in unison.

A hidden fact to the mice though is that the cat a vegetarian, a strict vegan who does would not stomach the smell of mice meat. To him mice meat reeks like an open sewer, in fact it makes him stomach bloat, he is more at home chewing grass than running after mice.

Before i stray from an otherwise boring story, we Kenyans surely do not need two blind mice; Uhuru and Ruto and a cat Raila that does meat to lead us. For i am certain that we being the resourceful people we are will figure out how to live with one another in this jungle, what a peaceful jungle it is without mice and cats.
What a beautiful country we would have if we did not have a senile cat to lead us, oh what a country we would have if a Dutch mousetrap would catch the mice for us.

Ningeomaba Serekali

Flipping through the news channels in Kenya provides an important peep into contemporary Kenyan life almost synonymously characterized by tragedy upon tragedy. An irritable scene that almost follows all tragedies where TV cameras zoom in on destitute and desperate victims. In almost all scenarios the victims will most certainly say "sasa kwa vile kumenda hivi, sisi tungeomba serekali .................,"

The question that lingers though is, What should the government do for you or for us for that matter? In most cases the range of responses would be multiple and varied, yet non of this destitute Kenyans lack a basic understanding what government should do for them. Surely quality of life in almost all situations tend to improve when governments do less and less for its citizenry and let individuals lead rational lives.
Casing point refer to Hongkong's, Singapore's, and Dubai's phenomenal growth. Hongkong is synonymous with the absence of big government and the same could be said of the other countries.

When Kenya's government passed a law that restricts the Alcohol Control Bill "the mututho laws" it had been anticipated that they would curb alcohol related accidents. That though has not been so the recent deaths In Kiamaina in Nyahuru prove that that has not been achieved. What the government essentially did was to transfer the powers to kill Kenyans through brew from individual brewers to registered brewers who pay tax. The brew that kills Kenyans this days comes from document brewers and distillers meaning in itself that government lacks the capacity to regulate the Alcoholic Drinks industry however much it alludes it can do so. This shows a conspicuous lack of afterthought on the part of the government, afterthought though is a preserve of rational entrepreneurs. Politicians in Nairobi vehemently opposed the relocation of Sinai residents for apparent political gains. I wonder whether they have a disturbed conscious, for the blood in their hands.

If i were to find myself to in the glare of television cameras, i think this is what i would say "Ningeomba serekali iwache niwe,(I would request the government to let me be.")So Mr. Government Just let me be.

The Israeli-Palestinian Question; Israel's Threatened statehood

The world is seemingly on its edges, the revolutions in the middle east though provide something of problem for the Jewish state of Israel. Although the contemporary thought has been that the proposed Palestinian state's future is threatened the truth of the matter is that it is the Jewish state that is actually in jeopardy.

Well the events of the last few weeks have helped to unravel the travesty that belies the insidious Middle Eastern question. It all started when the Arab Spring started, when a new political order started permeating the Arab society; the ouster of Hosni Mubarak served to remove one of the few Jewish apologists in the middle east, then turkey downgrades diplomatic relations with Israel to the level of the second deputy over Israel's failure to apologize for the flotilla raid last summer. The 1 million night vigil by Israels over the increasing cost of living and the raid and plunder of the Israeli embassy in Cairo.

Whereas the Palestinian nation launches its bid for formal state recognition by the united states this October the underlying situation seems to reveal that it is the the Jewish state who should worry about its future under the turbulent socio-political situation in the middle east. For starters we have an Iranian state through its very hypocritical and nonobjective propaganda tool; Press TV (www.presstv.tv) broadcasting a cynical scene of a reporter with a cellular phone broadcast the plunder of Israeli Embassy by the Egyptians, and then we have the Israeli populace thinking that their most immediate troubles are not economic but rather issues of their posterity that is of the biggest concern.

With a new government in Cairo there is a high possibility that Egypt will re-open the Raff ah crossing, subjecting Israelis to a barrage of bombs from Hamas and Turkey threatening to break Israeli's Naval blockade of the Gaza strip.

The recent events foreshadow tough times for Israel, nestled within belligerent and anti Zionist countries we can only hope that a second holocaust does not occur again. For when the Israeli nation is annihilated for a third time we will definitely know that Jesus is coming back, and I am sure that Biblical Verses can be found to support this claim.

The condom ad, condom dispenser; what works in the Fight against HIV/AIDs

While in college, a while ago though I am informed by credible sources that the time is neigh and I am just about to receive the powers to read, I belonged to a Behavior Change and Communication Group (BCCG). In joining I Choose Life-Maseno Chapter I had not only submitted to my altruistic self but I had the noble goal of reducing the proliferation of miss-information with regards to HIV/AIDS and other reproductive health concerns especially so amongst a sexually active university studentship. Whereas I, at least had my eyes on the prize, and remained focused to what we stood for, I could not help but wonder whether what we were doing was working.

In Maseno University, for example I know for once that Condoms dispensers were available at almost all halls of residence and other strategic places like the University dispensary. Although a superficial examination of the practice would summarily gloss over the practice, I would not help but wonder whether that worked. I for one know that most campus students generally gave the brand of Condoms ‘Sure’ at the condom dispensers a wide bath preferring commercial brands like trust or Femiplan during coitus. Thus the condom dispensers were always stocked, save for some few weeks especially at the end of the semester.

Through my travails I visited a Nigerian University in Kaduna State ‘the famous Ahmadu Bello University apparently the biggest University in sub-Saharan Africa or so I was told’. Thus I was in a position to juxtapose the strategies of fighting the HIV/Aids scourge. Within the context of its environment famous Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) nestled deep in Northern Nigeria which is a region which runs on Sharia law, glaring differences to an anti HIV/AIDs strategy.

In ABU for example I know that Condom Dispensers do not exist and fronting a case for their existence would be tantamount to performing moral suicide. However emblazoned on various walls and boards were signs such as; ‘run for gold not for Aids, (A)bstain (B)e faithful (C)ontrol (D)iscipline’ the glaring is in the (C) which would stand for Condoms in Kenya and the (D) would be non existent.

Whereas the debate has raged on about dress codes in has be an emotive issue in Kenya, ABU has I a strict dress code which prohibits; mini-skirts, rugged jeans, sagging trousers, and bare back tops amongst other things. I for example, who suffers from the lack of a pronounced waistline was accused of sagging almost every other time, but I got away with it for the fact of being a foreigner. ABU has sign boards that have messages like ‘Decent Dressing is Devine Injunction.
Of course coming from a very secular environment which characterizes most

Institutions of Higher learning in Kenya I was in for a bout of Culture Shock.
Now that I am back in Kenya I can’t not help but wonder what works. At this point I would like to allude to a Tanzanian Condom advert where a Maasai father with a gorgeous beautiful girl, the Maasai father decides to hold a jumping competition for young morans to decide who was going to get betrothed to his beautiful daughter. In the ad there are typical Maasai’s who can jump real high and a fake Maasai from Dar who can barely jump, on his second jump a pack of Salama Condoms falls, the other Moran’s laugh at which point the father of the beauty comes up and holds the fake Maasai’s by the shoulder and says, ‘kama ni hivyo huyu kijana ndiye ni machagua aende na msishana yangu maana anajijua.”

Bitter-Sour Economics of Kenyan Sure.

The Bitter-Sour Politics of Kenyan Sugar.

The Kenyan sugar is peculiar; it has a bitter and sour taste. This is
especially so because Kenyan tax payers have been given the unholy
burden of subsidizing inefficient sugar farmers from western Kenya. Of
course from the government’s point of view this is ‘politically
correct’. This though stems from sheer shortsightedness when it comes
to economic policy making. While it is grossly amoral for Kenyan tax
payers to subsidize inefficiencies in production in the Kenyan sugar
belt in Western Kenya, the government does not think with its
rational head but rather with its ‘political head, read elections
2012’. Currently a two Kilogram packet of sugar retails for 370KSHs (4
US$D) which is by all means exorbitant.

The genesis of the problem though lies in the government’s appeasement
policy to sugar farmers and allied stake holders in Nyanza and Western
Province. In the year 2000 the government of Kenya applied for
safeguards to the local sugar industry by capping the net importation
of sugar from COMESA (Common Market for East and Southern Africa) to
200, 000 tonnes of sugar annually, domestic demand stand at 900,000
tonnes of sugar. Two years ago the Kenyan government sought to
increase the safeguards from the initial eight years to ten years;
this was in the hope of resuscitating the local sugar industry.
Whereas sugar importation was meant to off-set the balance in supply
of sugar to the market, inefficiencies, high overhead costs and low
production capacity by the local millers have connived to rob Kenyans
of their rights to extract value and bargain through free markets.

At a production cost of 45,000KSHs, (500 US$D) per tonne of sugar,
Kenya has the highest production cost compared to her COMESA peers
which stands at 20,000KSHs (US$D 200). The tragedy though is that the
Kenyan government has given all indications that it is going to seek
for an extension to the current safeguard that expires on February, 28
2012. This means that in meantime the Kenyan populace has to live the
idea of the massive bailouts to Kenyan Sugar millers which are debt
stricken, are going under and have the government as the main and the
principal shareholder.

Rather than make the tough decisions and give Kenyan consumers a
reprieve by allowing importation of sugar from the COMESA, bureaucrats
are not ready to perform political suicide especially as election year
beckons. This means that the Kenyans will make do with reduced
spending power for resources channeled towards purchase of sugar may
have been elsewhere or make do without sugar altogether. Kenyans on
their part are short unaware that the government is actively
responsible for high sugar prices, the apportion blame to blameless
traders not knowing that if Mr. Government were to keep his hands
where everybody would see them life would be sweeter. Ludicrous, isn't it.