DESTROY THE MAU, WIN ELECTIONS AND KILL THE PASTROLISTS!!

Listening to the dissonant voices coming from Rift Valley politicians on the question of the Mau Complex, one discerns a perfunctory lackadaisical reaction to a highly important national issue. The conservation of the Mau is not a sectional issue or a mere inter-communal conflict over land and water. The Mau Complex is arguably the most significant water tower in East Africa. It is the source of the Mara River from whence the world famous Masai Mara National Game Reserve derives its name. The Mara River which straddles several game parks and reserves across two states supports the most extensive ecosystem in the region, supplying water and other vital resources, offering a lifeline to thousands of pastoralists downstream and draining into Lake Victoria. Mau is therefore as important to Kenya just as it is to Tanzania and Uganda. The annual wild beast migration cannot be without the Mau. Every player in the tourism industry knows that the regional circuit cannot be complete without the Masai Mara and it riverine ecosystem. Ravage the Mau, and you will have killed pastoralism, tourism, irrigation, horticulture, hydro-power generation, investment ad infintum. I witnessed firsthand the effects of destruction when I visited Makalia Water Falls in Lake Nakuru National Park in April. A lifeless dry ford has now replaced the resplendent leafy fall I had seen in June 2004.
Whereas William Ronkorua Ole Ntimama and his compatriots Nkoidila Ole Lankas and Gideon Ole Konchella argue that they want to protect the Mau to save the pastoralists from extinction, Isaac Arap Ruto, Benjamin Langat and Magerer Langat claim that the former are driven by the desire for “political” rather than environmental conservation. Though Ntimama and his colleagues may be the wrong persons, sending the right message at the right time, Ruto’s assertion is the logic of absurdity only fit for the political gutter. Ntimama’s war dance does little justice either to the cause he is advancing for “his people”, but perhaps Ruto and his associates have a better, fancier solution.
Conservation and sustainable development are the very essence of inter-generational equity; the desire for self preservation and perpetuation, espoused by every society with a strand, claim or pretension to modernity. When resources are abundant different communities and societies share them in peace. When they are scarce, communities skirmish or go to war over them. For centuries now, peoples, nations and nationalities have devised competing strategies of war, assembled large armies and fought wars to protect or enforce territorial claims over vital resources. Any modern society must have in place a system for self preservation and perpetuation. Strangling the pastoralist communities in the Mara downstream is akin to self administered genocide against a part of our society. I know of no other greater justification for war than an actual threat of historical obliteration against a community. Further destruction of the Mau might provoke an inter-communal conflict in South Rift which will make the internecine communal conflicts over livestock and pasture in Northern Kenya look like child play. This will be the ultimate cost of bad and myopic leadership.
Legal compensation is now being hoisted as the only basis for negotiating a safe “political” exit out of the Mau quagmire. Procedure is the handmaiden of justice. If the initial excision and entry into the Mau was illegal and un-procedural ab initio, why should eviction be legal and procedural? No political platitudes, legal shenanigans or adhesion to ghosts of archaic medieval norms on the sanctity of title can justify the prelude of a slow but inevitable environmental genocide by one community against another. The perceptible message coming from the Kalenjin leaders is, “lets us keep our peasants (voters [sic]) in the forest, destroy the Mau and win elections, the pastoralists can go to hell”. Such reckless political grandstanding can destroy an entire community.
The Mau must be protected at any cost for posterity. It does no matter who has to lose or win elections; all unwanted settlers must get out of the forest now. Only the fauna and flora are fit to live there!

VIOLENT STRIKES IN KENYAN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Allow me to comment about the numerous violent strikes in secondary schools. I have served as a member of the Board of Governors in Public Secondary Schools since I was 27 years old. I was appointed a member of the Board for Giathugu Secondary School, Nyeri in 1999. In 2006 I was also appointed a member of the Board for Mweru Secondary School also in Nyeri. I am currently the Chairman of the Board for Mweru. Both schools have boarding facilities but have so far been spared the agony of violent strikes that are currently facing many schools.

My take on this matter is that 70% per cent of indiscipline in schools is a reflection of poor and irresponsible parenting. I have sat in many disciplinary sessions in both schools and amazingly noted that most parents support their teenage children even in clear cases where the children are involved in criminal conduct such as theft, drug trafficking and usage, assault or arson.

It is also very disheartening to note that many intellectuals, business leaders, managers and professionals have ignored, refused and neglected to participate in the management of public education institutions. Service in School Boards is not remunerated and consequently many people choose to stay away from it. I guess it is more pleasurable to spend time in bars and other social places, rather than giving service to the society. The result is that many public schools managed by old and unenergetic retirees, semi-literate businesspeople and other non-professionals. This has created a managerial gap in most schools since many of those old managers cannot cope up with the rapid social, technological, economic and cultural changes in our country. This is paradoxical since the recent changes in the Education Act and the newly enacted Public Procurement and Disposal Act require schools to be managed by person with a fairly good understanding of Public Finance and Institutional Management. School Boards with members who do not possess managerial skills, expertise and experience are a major source of discontent among students and parents. Parents usually oppose a school administration if they perceive it to be incompetent, opaque or unaccountable. Students on the other hand will engage in insidious conduct to protest against such managers. The protests have become more pronounced and dangerous since the use of corporal punishment in schools was abolished.

Parents are very quick to blame the school administration when things go wrong in a school, yet they shy away from making a conscious effort and practical contribution to the management of the institutions. If anything, boarding schools have become the euphemism for abdication of parental responsibility. They have become the place to abandon teenage children as parents pursue other more important interests such as accumulation of wealth. In my experience in the management of public schools, I have noted that parents regard teenage children as desired and necessary but ephemerally disposable "irritants". A boarding school is regarded as the best place to send recalcitrant teenage children to give parents space and time to chase other important things. This warped parental attitude is a major cause of indiscipline in schools since many irresponsible parents will do anything including bribing and use of threats to ensure that their children remain in boarding schools and away from home at any cost. Such parents seldom support the school administration in matters of enforcing discipline.

It is important for the government, parents, school managers and educationists to review the current system of managing public institutions to allow all the stakeholders to take up their fair share of responsibility. I also appeal to more professionals, business leaders, intellectuals and managers to be altruistic and agree to assume responsibility and spend their valuable time in running public schools. Let us all participate in building a better future generation.

Twitter: @DeCaptainCFE

SABA SABA: 18 YEARS AFTER KENYANS HAVE LITTLE TO CELEBRATE.

On 7th July 1990 Kenyans responded to a call made by politicians Kenneth Matiba and Charles Rubia and went to Kamukunji to press for constitutional, political-legal, social and economic reforms. Their rallying point was the demand for Kenya’s return to political pluralism, transparency and political accountability in the management of public affairs after decades of oppression and bad governance by the then intransigent KANU regime which had emasculated the civil and political rights of the ordinary people, denied press freedoms and failed to embrace social and economic reforms to cushion the majority poor from the effects of the World Bank and IMF driven Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). More than 20 (twenty) people died in the process and a few days later Matiba, Rubia, Prime Minister Raila Odinga and their lawyers John Khaminwa, Mohammed Ibrahim and Gitobu Imanyara were detained.

Although the last 18 years have witnessed key political milestones in our country, the ideals which Kenyans struggled and died for in 1990 are still a mirage. Kenya returned to political pluralism in December 1991 following the repeal of section 2A of the constitution. Multi-party elections were subsequently held in December 1992 and President Daniel Arap Moi and KANU triumphed against a fractious opposition. The same fete was repeated in 1997 but the opposition managed to secure an almost equal number Parliamentary seats with KANU at the backdrop of minimum constitutional and electoral law reforms enacted through the IPPG initiative. The opposition did not manage to force a paradigm shift in the management of public affairs since they remained divided and were almost always easily outmanoeuvred by Moi and KANU. By 2002 the opposition had a learnt their lesson. A united opposition christened the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) comprising of the National Alliance Party of Kenya (NAK) then led by President Mwai Kibaki and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) then led by Prime Minister Raila Odinga easily routed out and trounced KANU and Moi’s anointed heir Hon. Uhuru Kenyatta at the polls. NARC was elected on the platform of reform and Kenyans had high hopes that the coalition was the final catalyst for the social, political and economic reforms they had sought since 1990.

Apart from expanded political space and press freedoms, Kenyans have nothing to celebrate about Saba Saba. A serious attempt to entrench constitutional and legal reforms in 2005 became a cropper owing to political disagreements. Our statute books are rife with countless laws that confer state beauracrats with excessive administrative power. These beauracrats are no accountable to the people and often act at the behest of the whimsical interests of their appointing authority, cartels of financial racketeers and wielders of political influence. Bad archaic laws have created a beauracratic aristocracy which has grossly enriched itself at the expense of the majority poor. It is these beauracrats who commit innumerable sins of omission and commission and cause incredible suffering to ordinary citizens. As a result Kenya has an anachronistic political system in which the real power of the state lies in the beauracracy rather than in the elected representatives of the people. It is not uncommon to hear Cabinet Ministers lament that the government has failed to protect or help their constituents! The recent sale of the Grand Regency in contravention of the Public Procurement and Disposal and the Privatization Acts is a good example of beauracratic excesses.

Kenyans now live under the siege of common and organised crime. High levels of unemployment, social inequality and inter-generational inequity have seen the emergence of vicious militant groups such as the Mungiki, Sungu Sungu, Taliban and more recently the Sabaot Land Defence Forces (SLDF). Food security remains a pipe dream and just recently the media showed people in some parts of Kenya eating rats to survive. The judicial process and the criminal justice system are still highly steeped in archaic procedural practices which hurt and deny the poor access to justice. Quality health and education remain the preserve of the rich who can afford the fees charged by private institutions. The hastily implemented free Universal Primary Education (UPE) does not guarantee quality education for the children of the poor since it lacks appropriate ancillary structures. The newly implemented free Universal Secondary Education is likely to meet the same fate.

The culture of impunity continues to thrive. The rich and political elite still ride roughshod over the poor. Millions of Kenyans cannot afford decent housing or access cleaning drinking water whilst our leaders use colloquial language to oppose the taxation of their hefty incomes and allowances. Many Kenyans have and continue to die in the name of politically instigated ethnic clashes since 1991 and the Attorney General, Amos Wako is yet to put to account any single notable politician. Land, a basic factor of production which is at the core of these communal clashes remains an emotive issue simply because it is not easily and readily available to ordinary people. It has been reduced into a market commodity by an exploitative small minority that hoards it for commercial speculation rather than production for the common good of the people. The collapse of two stockbrokerages with millions of funds belonging to thousands of small-time investors at the Nairobi Stock Exchange and the massive pilfering of funds from poor people through fraudulent pyramid schemes are repulsive crimes against Kenyans. That the perpetrators of these scams are likely to go Scot free and continue to lavish in ill-gotten wealth is a clear demonstration of unbridled impunity in Kenya.

Without genuine constitutional and legal reforms, Kenyans will not get a political structure that produces transformational and compassionate leadership which does not seek power for the sake of power or for personal aggrandisement and the perpetuation of elitist minority interests. Only such leadership can formulate policies to create a system that promotes inter-generational equity and ensures equality and justice across the social strata. Then and only then will Kenyans have achieved the true vision of saba saba!