To revive the coffee industry, we need a Marshall plan. The health of any industry is as good as the health of it key institutions.

Today, nearly all the key institutions in this sector are a pale shadow of their former selves.

And, nothing illustrates this point better than the present sorry predicament of the Kenya Planters Cooperative Union, the 70-year-old farmers’ company that used to mill all the coffee produced in the country.

When I started reporting coffee issues in the late 1980s, KPCU had a balance sheet size larger than most of these blue chip companies you see listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange today.

Coffee cooperatives were rich and powerful institutions, paying dividends and bonuses to farmers year in, year out.

The Coffee Board of Kenya, although State-controlled, operated more or less as a farmers’ company, the majority of its directors elected at an annual conference in which all coffee farming districts would be represented.

The Coffee Research Foundation was a well-funded, robust body conducting rigorous cutting-edge research on modern agronomical practices and passing it on to farmers. Ruiru 11, the pest-resistant seed variety was developed locally by our own researchers at this foundation.

I also enjoyed the politics. No crop in this country will give you better examples of how organised farmers can influence State policy or come together to resist interference into their affairs by power-hungry Government officials.

The Kenya Coffee Growers Association (KCGA) played a critical role on this score. Such was the influence the association commanded in the coffee industry that even in the days of the single-party dictatorship when what former President Moi said was law, coffee farmers would resist arbitrary Government decisions.

They had mastered lobby group politics and were always ready to confront and disagree with unpopular decisions by ministers of Agriculture.

I still remember how KCGA under the chairmanship of the late Zachariah Gakunju mobilised farmers in May 1987 to oppose a directive by President Moi to dissolve KPCU and to replace it with a proposed National Cooperative Coffee Union.

It was the regime’s way of eliminating or bringing under its control autonomous farmers’ organisations.

Earlier, the regime had dissolved the Kenya Farmers Association, which was a profitable body that had been created by European settler farmers in the colonial days to buy inputs in bulk and sell them at fair prices to farmers.

KCGA successfully organised the coffee farming fraternity to reject Moi’s proposal.

In March of the same year, the farmers angrily protested at an attempt by the Ministry of Agriculture to sack KPCU managing director Henry Kinyua and chief executive of the Cooperative Bank of Kenya Jason Kimbui from directorship of the Coffee Board of Kenya. Moi had to rescind the decision publicly.

Kenya's recent political imbroglio largely stems from a vigorous contestation between two paradigms of the nation-state. One group of the political elite promotes a model of the ethnic nation.

Jakob Rosel defines the ethnic nation as a closed nation premised on three assumptions i.e. (1) Mankind consists of different and easily definable peoples or ethnic groups which value and perpetuate their district identity. (2) The development of an ethnic identity best matures inside the group’s own controlled state. (3) The transformation of a people into a nation precedes and facilitates the conquest of its own nation-state.

Kenya’s other political elite supports a liberalised democratic open nation under which, to quote Rosel again, mankind is conceived as an aggregate of equal and free individuals who are unencumbered by tribal colour and loyalty.

Often, a leadership which envisions a democratic nation can be besieged by political entrepreneurs of the ethnic nation. These progressive rulers may then respond by veering towards the ideology of an ethnic nation and nation-state.

The Party of National Unity was, at the end of 2007, forced to oscillate between a democratic nation and an ethnic nation due to its competitors’ ability to mobilise key regional voting blocs against it.

Conversely, those who support the ethnic nation may lace their rhetoric with a commitment to championing a more inclusive democratic open nation. Thus vision, rhetoric and praxis are in incessant combat.

During the 1983 and 1988 elections, then President Moi adroitly isolated both the Kikuyu and the Luo ethnic nations and built a non-Kikuyu and non-Luo counterpart community and ethnic vote bank. Kenya was defined as the Kikuyu and Luo group on the one hand and the Rest.

In 2002, Kenya’s political entrepreneurs created the Kalenjin and non-Kalenjin split on which the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) was erected. Essentially the Orange Democratic Movement in 2007 strove to mobilise non-Gema voters as a single ethnic nation to defeat the so-called Mt Kenya region voters.

Clearly, the political party in Kenya is essentially the political competition vehicle of an ethnic nation or coalition of several ethnic groups which have loosely coalesced into one ethnic nation.

Mr Raila Odinga’s National Development Party’s merger with Kanu was meant to aggregate a Luo and Kalenjin (alongside Akamba, Luhyia, Miji Kenda, Arab and Taita) nation. This political union was eventually consummated in 2005, and, minus the Akamba, in 2007.

In 2007 again, DP, ODM-K and Narc Kenya unsuccessfully struggled to shed the ethnic tag. The events of December 2007 and January-February 2008 were a culmination of the transformation of social inequalities, cultural resentments and economic competition between ethnic groups through dangerous ethnic nationalism into politicised ethnic conflicts and, finally, civil strife.

Between 2003-2007, Mr Odinga was able to create an ethnic nation out of several ethnic nations because the peasants, workers and lumpen groups from each of these ethnic groups saw the possibility of their tribal leader ascending into the presidency.

Several ethnic groups which craft a coalition of ethnic nations expect that they will control the attendant ethnic nation-state. In 2008, for Mr Odinga, a sense of fair distribution of the ODM slate of appointments was thus critical to the rise of his political party within the Grand Coalition and into the future.

From 2003, President Kibaki decided to modernise Kenya on the basis of liberal democracy, the market and nascent welfarism. His notion of an open society saw him mobilise the country on a development agenda.

But this was temporarily challenged by the 2007 post-election crisis. Instead of receiving kudos for reviving Kenya, the ethnically inspired nation sought to reverse the gains.

Even when their respective lieutenants within the Grand Coalition Government are busy hurling brickbats at each other, the President and the PM have not exchanged unkind words since they went into the power-sharing deal.

The two men may be polar opposites in many ways, but they do seem to enjoy a personal chemistry that puzzles many.

While the President rarely calls Cabinet meetings, a fact that may reinforce impressions of a dysfunctional government, he hosts the PM for weekly meetings at State House.

The coalition often presents the picture of a fractured government made up of two deeply hostile camps pulling in opposite directions. This makes even more vital the roles played by President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga in keeping things together, and they have both been demonstrating at every opportunity that the coalition is united.

This is a scenario that confuses their respective sets of allies, many of who remain not only openly suspicious of the opposite side, but also worried that the two principals are leaving them out of the power-sharing equation.

In the Kibaki camp, for instance, many of the traditional political power brokers are openly resentful that they have lost out as the President comes to rely more and more on Mr Odinga whose clout is growing by the day.

Powerful politicians such as Cabinet ministers Martha Karua, Kiraitu Murungi and John Michuki might have thought that the entry of Mr Odinga into government merely gave them time to re-group and consolidate a hold on power while the newcomer played a peripheral role.

However, they have had to watch as Mr Odinga became the one to define the real role of the new Office of Prime Minister and firmly consolidate his own position within the power structure.

Then there are Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka of ODM-K and Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta of Kanu — the initial leaders incorporated into the PNU coalition to keep ODM at bay. The formation of the Grand Coalition reduced their clout in the Government dramatically.

Even the early tussle between Mr Odinga and Mr Musyoka over the pecking order is no longer an issue as the former has entrenched his position.

Within Mr Odinga’s ODM, there have been similar issues, and compatriots who at one time might have viewed themselves as co-leaders have had to adapt to the new realities. Key members of the ODM Pentagon controlling sizeable blocs, notably Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi and Agriculture minister William Ruto, are now seen as ordinary Cabinet ministers rather than regional kingpins.

Mr Ruto’s populous Kalenjin bloc, however, remains a problem for Mr Odinga who has to increasingly contend with accusations that he sold out once he ascended to high office.

In many ways, the entry of Mr Odinga into government might have been the best thing that ever happened for President Kibaki in his final term.

If anything he has become a key asset. On his overseas travels, on meetings locally with visiting foreign dignitaries and also from his close links with the diplomatic community, the PM has emerged as a most enthusiastic spokesman and salesman for the coalition.

As seen on his visit to he UK, Mr Odinga is always effusive in his praise of the President and the way in which the two of them are working closely to shape a new Kenya.

The President will not be a contender in 2012, and thus unlike some of his allies, does not see the Prime Minister as a threat.

I don’t know whether this has something do with the selection last year of our famous wildebeest migration as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, but we seem to have an affinity for all things GNU.

The creature President Kibaki cobbled together in the middle of his first term in an effort to keep at bay rebellious elements within the then governing coalition was a GNU.

Now as the President’s political camp jumps hither and thither like a headless chicken, some fellows have crafted their own GNU, the Grand National Union, in what is becoming an increasingly comic series of disjointed manoeuvres in the bid to have a footing come 2012.

I am not quite sure what the new GNU is supposed to be about, but it reflects the utter confusion in President Kibaki’s backyard as succession politics comes to the fore and every little grouping starts looking out for its own survival.

The President wants PNU, put together as a coalition of parties for the express purpose of securing his re-election in 2007, transformed into a united political party.

He failed with a move to unite the original Narc in a similar fashion five years ago, and there is little chance now that the PNU affiliate parties will agree to dissolve. If anything, they are all busy looking towards securing their positions post-Kibaki.

Hence Ms Martha Karua striking out on her own with Narc Kenya; Mr Musikari Kombo in Ford Kenya still signalling a determination to remain independent; Mr Mwangi Kiunjuri and others scampering towards the new GNU, and even President Kibaki’s own ‘‘original’’ party, the DP, indicating through its present leader, Joseph Munyao, that its wants to remain intact.

The source of everything seems to be the very early jostling for the Kibaki succession. There are indications that the President and some of his close advisors are trying to manage the process, but some are beginning to see the Head of State as largely irrelevant to shaping the future dispensation.

President Kibaki might not personally care too much as he serves out his final term, but it is apparent there are many around him who live in mortal dread of life without one of their own at the helm.

And here their limited thinking focuses not on how PNU, Narc Kenya, GNU or any of the other mutations can secure power, but how their region, Central Kenya, can remain in power.
They ignore the first unwritten rule of Kenyan politics: There must be some rotation at State House.

PRESIDENT KENYATTA COULD NOT be succeeded by a Kikuyu and neither could President Moi be succeeded by a Kalenjin.

President Kibaki was extremely fortunate to win himself a second term, probably with some sleight of hand, after having succeeded in turning most ethnic constituencies solidly against the Kikuyu. Anyone who imagines now that Kenyans would elect another Kikuyu to succeed him come 2012 must be on Cloud-Cuckooland.

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I always assumed that Prof Samson Ongeri was of advanced education. After all that professorship must have come from somewhere, and the man actually taught at university – medicine, no less.

And his medicine was the real thing, unlike that practised by the myriad ‘professors’ and ‘doctors’ in the classified pages who promise to cure you of cancer, Aids and every other disease known to humankind.

What are my reasons? In my days, we did not burn schools or ask for the principal’s head! We were good students: Not because of the caning, or because of effective parenting. We were good because we had hope.

I KNEW, FOR INSTANCE, THAT if I passed my examinations, I would amount to something. I, therefore, played my head off until the last year of high school. I was always number 38 out of 39. The boy at number 39 became a watchman, but he later started a small security firm.

As for me, I finally got serious with school and made it to the University of Nairobi. Here, we were pampered with ‘‘boom’’ and groomed to become the educated elite. We had four course meals, starting with soup and buns, ending with hot chocolate. For those who drunk, Serena was the place.

And then there was this guy called Abu. The man supplied us with every thing clandestine: from bhang to seditious literature from the Communists! When the administration tried to remove his kiosk, former president Moi had to intervene to save him – or so we believed! After an exciting time at the university, I was posted by the government as a District Officer (DO), given a Land-Rover, a driver, and a policeman with a gun.

This was a kali sana (tough)job, but I could not take it up because the university invited me to do a masters degree and teach at the political science department. My classmate at number 39 and I had realised the Kenyan dream. And what is more: although we were poor, we became something because the system was fair.

CONSIDER THE RIOTING STUDENT now. This guy has no hope, and no probable future. If he is from a poor background, his chances of getting out of the woods are next to zero. More so if attending university is his hope out of poverty

In a class of 50 students, only an average of four will make it to a public university. And of the four, only one will get a decent job. The others will scavenge for decent opportunities until ‘‘Thy Kingdom come!’’

Sad twist

But there is a sad twist for the poor regular student. The guy has to compete with students in the parallel programme. While a regular student is required to take a minimum of four years, it is possible for a parallel student to take a similar course for 2 ½ years.

In the end, the privileged student will be working for one-and-a half years before the regular student can finalise the same course. This is unfair advantage!

But what is the relationship between this and the riots? In my view, we are experiencing a state of social collapse. And the rioting students are just messengers sending us the early warnings. To cane them, jail them and expel their leaders is, therefore, unwise.

INSTEAD OF LASHING OUT AT them, we need to understand their anger. More fundamentally, we need to listen to their inarticulate point of view. In fact, I am persuaded that it has nothing to do with bad food, the fear of mock examinations, and all the excuses being pimped around.

These, in my view, are just the triggers. At the core of the riots is a deep concern for fair justice. And this is subconsciously linked to our politics. Consider a hypothesis with me.
The post-election crisis had two revolts: one from above and one from below.

The revolt from above was about power relations, while the one from below was about distributive justice. When President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga agreed to share power, the revolt from above ended.

THE POLITICAL ELITE WAS HAPPY and so it assumed that the rioting mobs were happy too. Well, they were wrong! The revolt from below had acquired a life of its own. And some of its foot soldiers were the rioting students.