A Political Kenya: Latest Politics and Kenya Economy News

On my part, I considered buying an illegal gun – even a bazooka. I was prepared to decimate any aggressor on my path, seriously!

Then I realised that I was not alone; most of my friends had the same ‘‘evil’’ thoughts. The intention, I must clarify, was not to protect our tribes. We wanted guns to protect our children.

But this good intention did not make us less mad. My buddies and I were as kukus (chicken) as the fellows who burnt a church in Eldoret. There is a twist to this logic though.

Are there chances that the country was not mad after all? That what we are calling madness was plain evil?

I ask this question because in politics, nature does not abhor evil, it actually embraces it. By extension, therefore, it assumes that all men are evil. And, given a dark opportunity, men will kill and maim illogically. In sum, men never do good except out of necessity.

If this is true, therefore, we must ask this question: was our January experience inspired by evil? In my view, it was.

But borrowing from the Roman experience, there was nothing wrong with this. Rome was built through riots, ruthless killings and savage confrontations between opposing camps.

In fact, lasting states are founded through violence and Kenya is no exception. Unlike Kenya, however, the Romans did not appoint irrelevant commissions to investigate the causes and effects.

Their focus was on the good generated by the violence. And this is where we have missed the point.

Despite the violence and the shake-up, nothing has changed. The January turmoil has not taken us to a higher ground as a country.

And this is probably because we stopped the struggle prematurely. Maybe the country was pregnant with something; a new order of things. And maybe the political shake-up was a sign that something new was afoot.

But we had to abort the emerging order in favour of power sharing. Now we have a ‘‘ceasefire’’ government that passes for a grand coalition; a forced ‘‘unity of opposites’’ that pretends to be one.

In a week of dramatic ironies Prime Minister Raila Odinga rounded up a bunch of ministers, permanent secretaries, and parastatal chiefs to meet private sector business leaders and dubbed the event historic.

Actually it was not. It may be the PM’s first meeting, but private and public sector leaders have met before, many times. The irony is that Mr Odinga is making the same promise the Government has made time and again, and never delivered.

The other irony was the rather sudden – some say unceremonious – exit of Mr Abdallah Mwaruwa as the managing director of the Kenya Ports Authority, and the installation of Mr Brown Ondego as the executive chairman of the epileptic Rift Valley Railways (RVR).

Three years ago, Mr Mwaruwa replaced Mr Ondego at KPA, and except for the rather loud excitement of his arrival at the expense of someone many assumed would continue in office, there has been very little heard of Mr Mwaruwa.

The fact that port efficiency has not improved beyond where Mr Ondego left it and, unlike his predecessor, Mr Mwaruwa has not been very adept at managing the PR side of things to look like he was doing his best, the assumption is that he has performed poorly.

The opposite will be true for Mr Ondego who, having spent the past two years or so at Grain Bulk Handlers, has been handed the anaemic railways to babysit. The assumption is that one is a performer, the other not. True? Not necessarily.

Neither of the two gentlemen would have fixed the woes at the KPA without extraordinary support by the Government. The key difference is that Mr Ondego was able to articulate the challenges and opportunities of the KPA more effectively than Mr Mwaruwa was.

Thus, the former was able to win over public confidence and inspire them to share the vision of where he wanted KPA to go. And I have no doubt that this is where Mr Mwaruwa would have wanted the port to go.

Simply put, the port has currently reached the zenith of its physical capacity and process efficiency. It can barely take in any more cargo, and it can hardly move the cargo any faster. Its storage capacity at the Coast and at its inland container terminal is exhausted.

Of course an effective manager can conjure up a trick of two to extract even a 10 per cent better efficiency all round. But that is not what the business leaders that shared tea with Mr Odinga this week want. It is not enough either for the eastern African hinterland KPA serves.

The level of competitiveness required now sees the port doubling its handling capacity and efficiency within five years, an expansion of the port all the way from Makupa to the Likoni ferry, setting up a free port zone and running a 24-hour operation.

If I recall correctly, this was the vision we applauded three years ago and I am very sure that Mr Ondego did not walk out of the MD’s office with it.

Is there such a side to her austere and arrogant persona? If there is, it will have to be made public and often for there is not much evidence of this when one mentions her or sees her on TV.

Recall that two Sundays ago I referred to her as tough-as-nails and that, of course, reminds me of somebody else -- former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Thatcher -- now Baroness -- remains for me a politician’s politician, one who presided over an era that saw massive change in British politics and especially economy.

When the Brits voted for Thatcher to be their premier in 1979, a local editor, Mr Chege Mbitiru, argued that she would protect them the way a hen protects its chicks.

The Iron Lady, as the Soviets called her, was to have a massive influence on British politics, especially her Conservative Party, economics and society as a whole. And she became a global player.

Under her leadership, the so-called special relationship between London and Washington flourished and there was, indeed, a special chemistry between her and Ronald Reagan.

Thatcher was a household name worldwide. Local humorist Wahome Mutahi, aka Whispers Son of the Soil, aka Wispa ole Soilo, promptly nicknamed his wife Thatcher. Many men followed suit.

Thatcher’s supporters among the Tories became known as Thatcherites and privatisation was well and truly entrenched as she pursued her goal of transforming Britain into a property-owning democracy.

When in 1991 Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Thatcher thundered that “you do no negotiate with an aggressor, you make him pay!”

When Saddam briefly used foreign nationals as human shields, Thatcher goaded him, calling him a loser who was hiding behind the skirts of women. Remember also that Thatcher had her own war, taking on Argentina over the Falklands in 1982.

And it was Thatcher who destroyed the power of organised labour in the UK, through tough legislation meant to limit strike action. Then she faced down and eventually won against Arthur Scargill when he called out the miners in the 1983-1984 strike.

Before Thatcher went into one election, her handlers worried that she was too stern a person; that she came across as hard as nails, uncompromising and off-putting.

I understand he has not quit willingly. It is part of a proposition which a group of local investors led by the Transcentury Group have made to the Government and the two international financial institutions supporting the concession.

KFW of Germany and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) had totally lost faith in Mr Puffet’s ability to steer RVR to profitability and operational efficiency.

Mr Puffet had to go because both the Uganda and Kenya governments were threatening to cancel the concession on the grounds of non-performance.

Clearly, the parties had come to the realisation that, as long as he remained at the helm, it was going to be next to impossible to unlock the billions of shillings which key international financiers had committed to the concession.

I understand that a group of local investors, including leading freight companies, have now decided to join hands with the Transcentury Group to raise fresh capital for the project.

The intention of the shareholders is to reach the capitalisation threshold big enough to make the international financiers comfortable enough to agree to unlock the funds.

But does RVR have a realistic chance of surviving?

It will all depend on whether Mr Puffet’s exit and the proposed entry of new shareholders will provide the assurances which long-term lenders such as IFC and KFW want.

The initiative by the local shareholders deserves our full support.

In hindsight, we should not have allowed these South Africans near the railways in the first place. This thing was a mistake right from the beginning.

I still remember how the initial signing of the deal with the Ministry of Transport had to be hurried to circumvent a case which the pensioners of the Kenya Railways Corporation had lodged in court against the privatisation.

It was to turn out later that Mr Puffet had snookered the two major shareholders in the winning consortium, Mirambo Holding and Prime Fuels Ltd by going ahead to sign with the ministry before concluding a shareholding agreement with them.

WE MARK THE TENTH anniversary of the August 7, 1998 bomb attacks with some rather interesting development in the war against terror in Kenya.

One of the most wanted criminals in the world, Fazul Abdullah, is believed to have narrowly escaped capture when police raided a hideout in Malindi.

That police just narrowly missed capturing the monster responsible for the twin suicide bomb attacks on American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and the 2001 attack on the Paradise Hotel near Mombasa, may well provide cheer that the war on terror is making progress.

Not so comforting, however, is the fact that the elusive Fazul got away, again; and, worse, that he apparently has been able to travel into and out of Kenya at will and may even have been plotting a new attack on the country.

The incident offers us a very stark reminder that the Fazuls of this world are right in our midst and ready to blow me, you and everybody else all to smithereens to score some demented political points.

At some point in the past, we may have viewed terrorism as something that afflicts foreign lands, the result of some dispute originating somewhere in the Middle East, one that should not bother us.

The facts, as we have painfully learnt, are rather different. Terrorism has come to our doorsteps and not just as some foreign import; it has it’s home-grown soldiers – for want of a better word – and sympathisers.

A quick look at arrested terrorist suspects since the bombings 10 years ago reveal that a good number have been Kenyan-born and bred.

Fazul and others of his ilk would not have been able to plant their deadly bombs and kill innocent Kenyans without plenty of local help. That he can find refuge and the freedom to operate in Kenya is testimony to the kind of local support networks in existence.

Our porous borders with the failed state and terrorist haven of Somalia, as well as historical ethnic and religious links stretching to the Middle East, make it easy for proselytisation and infiltration by which the warped ideology has made solid inroads into this country.

Whenever the country has been thrown into mourning after past terrorism acts, there has always been a grouping loudly cheering the infamy; holding up posters of Osama bin Laden and burning the Stars and Stripes though fellow Kenyans have been victims of a far away conflict they care a little about.

That is the kind of support that makes the war on terrorism difficult. And we are not here talking about some underground lunatic fringe, but very open and mainstream thinking.