Club Afrika Blog

Apartheid had a role in making of history

2006-06-25T05:51:00.000-04:00

Writes James Kariuki

African-American Pan-Africanist, Molefe Ashante, often laments that Europe has robbed Africa of its history. The charge is an inverted vindication of the old adage that, as long as the lion remains the writer of history, he will always emerge the victor.

In complacency, Africans may uphold the position that apartheid deprived South Africa of the opportunity to make history. Yet, victimized South Africa was a vibrant actor in the global political stage. Indeed, it is arguable that apartheid pushed the country into the global screen radar harder than would have been otherwise possible.

For decades, apartheid’s oppression provided the cement to hold the rest of Africa together. Its collective humiliation was the one issue that Africa shared; a perverted contribution, but a contribution nevertheless.

The Organisation of African Union actually established the Liberation Committee whose mandate was specifically to provide full support to the liberation movements of Southern Africa. In context of the OAU, "unfreed" South Africa was indeed already shaping the collective foreign policy of the African states three decades before the demise of apartheid.

It is true that some African states were more anti-apartheid than others. Tanzania was clearly a leader of the pack. In endorsing the establishment of the Liberation Committee, President Julius Nyerere declared that his countrymen were "prepared to die a little" for the final removal of colonialism in Africa.

... continued

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African VPs are no longer the stepping mats of presidents

2006-06-10T05:41:00.000-04:00

Writes Dan Okoth

The recent acquittal of former South African President Jacob Zuma shows an emerging pattern of vice-presidents engulfed in the mire of political backstabbing and raw ambition.

African presidential deputies are not an enviable lot. In Kenya, former Vice-Presidents Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Josephat Karanja, George Saitoti and Musalia Mudavadi drank from the cup of sorrows, and it still overflows.

But the colourful mosaic of anguished vice-presidents and presidential challengers is evident in Africa’s other big names, including South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Sudan and Nigeria.

There is a link between VPs’ woes, extensions of presidential terms and the battle for survival by incumbent presidents. Sometimes, it also involves former presidents extending their hands from political oblivion.

In other cases, a conspiracy of silence, "higher authorities" and "fate" has helped to keep the Number Twos in their place better than any wily president could imagine.

In Kenya, President Kibaki has not said a word about the accusations of corruption against Vice-President Moody Awori. The allegations relate to the infamous Anglo Leasing scandal, in which Kenya is said to have lost billions of shillings in dubious security procurement tenders.

Botswana’s Festus Gontebanye Mogae is also silent about cries by MPs about vice-president Ian Khama’s authoritarianism. He recently threatened to dissolve Parliament if MPs did not endorse Khama’s presidential bid. Khama is also the minister for presidential affairs in charge of communications, the Botswana Defence Forces, police, the media and the civil service, leaving other ministers with little to handle.

In Sudan, religion and politics have blended into a potent mix that has sucked in the vice-presidency. President Omar Hassan el-Bashir has differed with his first vice-president Salva Kiir over proposals for United Nations forces to take over from African troops monitoring a truce in the Darfur region. While Bashir insists that such a proposal can only be considered after a peace deal is reached with the Darfur rebels, Kiir feels UN troops could go to Darfur even before such an agreement is signed.

... continued

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Why Obasanjo failed in bid to extend his rule

2006-06-10T05:12:00.000-04:00

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo’s backers had placed much hope on the international community’s support for his third term bid because of his economic reforms and his central role in resolving conflicts in Africa. But what he got was opposition every step of the way, writes Tony Eluemunor

Surprise! That is the word to describe the killing of Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo’s bid to prolong his tenure on May 16. Weeks after the bid died, Nigerians are still asking the question: “How was it killed?”

Granted that the President and his pointmen in the third term project that had heightened tension in the country had appreciated the fact that they lacked the two-thirds majority votes in the National Assembly to advance their bid, yet, such little matters made them even more determined to employ state powers to win legislators to their side.

It was for the lack of the required number of votes that the President’s supporters suspended, as it were, the administration’s much-touted anti-corruption stance and reportedly began to shell out bribes of over US$357,000 to each member of the House of Representatives and US$500,000 to each Senator. The true picture of the magnitude of the alleged bribery would only be appreciated if one considers that Nigeria’s House of Representatives has 360 members while the Senators are 109.

Where would the President’s men have got such a large war chest with which to prosecute this bribery war? No, the President did not need to raid the Central Bank of Nigeria, or to divert the proceeds from the excess crude oil revenue (whatever accrues to the nation that is above the budgeted figure. For the 2006 budget, the benchmark expected revenue is $33 per barrel, but oil has hovered around the $70 mark).

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2006-03-19T00:33:00.000-05:00

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2006-01-15T22:02:00.000-05:00

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2006-01-14T04:13:00.000-05:00

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Peer review is testimony that Africa has resolved to tackle its governance issues

2005-10-23T02:31:00.000-05:00

This article was written by Jerry Okungu on July 15, 2005

As Kenya prepares itself to be evaluated under NEPAD’s African Peer Review Mechanism, Jerry Okungu explains the purpose of review mechanism and points out that “the biggest challenge that NEPAD and the APRM should deal with in Africa is how to accelerate and give momentum to the continent’s reform and development agenda.”

As the G8 meeting held last week takes a back seat in the world’s news networks, here at home, Kenyans are bracing for their first Peer Review Process, an activity under the New Partnership for African development. This mechanism will make it possible for African countries that have subscribed to it to be assessed on their projected development goals as per their national policy programmes. The main purpose of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) is to foster the adoption of policies, standards and practices that will lead to political stability, high economic grown, sustainable development and accelerated sub-regional and continental economic integration through sharing of experiences and reinforcing successful best practices, identifying deficiencies and assessing the needs for capacity building for each participating country.

Like in all countries participating in the APRM, if carried out properly, the process should see improved governance for sustainable development in Kenya through review and adoption of policies and practices that will conform to the agreed values, codes and standards contained in the Declaration on Democracy, Corporate, Political and Economic Governance of the African Union.

Here in Kenya, a countrywide APRM activity has been activated that will see various drivers and stake-holders exchange views and opinions on the NEPAD-APRM process in eight provincial centers. The workshops have been designed to be all-inclusive in terms of provincial districts and various interest groups like the civil society, religious organisations, trade unions, the business community, NGOs, the political class, civic leaders and the public service.

The APRM itself has many phases of involvement. First there are the lead technical experts whose job will be to deal with the four areas that require technical expertise. Their primary role has been to develop various research instruments and supervise the fieldwork, gather data, analyze and produce a report on Kenya’s performance in the areas stated above. It is the report emanating from this field research that will guide the external panel of experts, led by H E Graca Machel into gauging Kenya’s reform agenda against the standards, values and codes set out by the African Union under its Declaration on Democracy, Corporate, Political and Economic Governance. Most Kenyans must be wondering what NEPAD is all about.

Traditionally, Africa’s development partners have been the wealthy nations of the West, most of whom colonised the continent in the past, and a few more advanced nations from the East whose interest in Africa has been more ideological than commercial. From the West, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Portugal readily come to mind. Others are United States, Canada and Australia, themselves former colonies of Great Britain. From East Europe we have had USSR, former super power during the cold war, China, Japan and a handful of East European states that used to revolve around the red bare.

Apart from bilateral trade and donor funding from the rich nations direct to their African clients, the same wealthy nations have over time set up funding and lending institutions that have grown over time into empires of their own. Such institutions that readily come to mind in the area of development are DFID of Britain, USAID of the USA, SIDA of Sweden, CIDA of Canada, GTZ of Germany, The World Bank and the IMF among others.

What NEPAD is championing is the philosophy of home grown partnerships as the primary concern as opposed to total dependence on foreign partners whose interests and priorities may not necessarily rank Africa’s issues on the top of their agenda. More so, the politics of foreign aid has become so lethal in recent years that some poor nations of the world have had their lifelines cut off due to political differences with the donor nations.

In creating NEPAD, African nations are being encouraged to cultivate domestic partnerships before venturing out. The more reason governments in Africa are being asked to rope in the private sector, the civil society, religious organisations, NGOs and the political class to join hands together and formulate policies that work well for their conditions. Involving all aspects of the society in policy formulation empowers every citizen and in the process every one owns the development process. The biggest challenge that NEPAD and the APRM should deal with in Africa is how to accelerate and give momentum to the continent’s reform and development agenda.

Jerry Okungu is the executive director of Infotrack and consulting

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US can't talk of terrorism when its killing civilians in Middle East

2005-10-14T18:09:00.000-05:00

Writes: Ken Ramani

At a recent regional conference of chiefs of intelligence and security held in Khartoum, Sudan President Omar el Bashir called for the proper definition of the term terrorism.

He argued that the current definition was relative and blurred to a point of causing friction among nations in the fight against terrorism.

Sudan’s Second Vice-President Osman Taha called for the removal of the country’s name from the United States’ list of sponsors of international terrorism.

Sudan has previously been accused of hosting Osama bin Laden, a suspected mastermind of the 1998 terror attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US.

Khartoum has also suffered America’s wrath, which saw its pharmaceutical plant hit by smart missiles on suspicion that it was being used to manufacture biological weapons, a claim Washington is yet to prove to date.

Osama, the defacto leader of the al-Qaeda Network, has become a walking nightmare to the terror-paranoid West. Despite the existence of 12 international Conventions Against Terrorism, there is no globally–accepted definition as countries continue to disagree over the politically-correct meaning of terrorism.

The United Nations says international terrorism and transnational organised crime are closely interrelated and connected, for example, through trafficking of drugs and arms, and money laundering. To the UN, a comprehensive programme to counter international terrorism would be more effective if it was coordinated with the struggle against transnational organised crime.

The African Union Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism, however, defines a terrorist act as any act which is in violation of the criminal laws of a State and which may endanger the life, physical integrity or freedom of, or cause serious injury or death to, any person...or may cause damage to public or private property, natural resources, environmental or cultural heritage...."

The 2003 invasion of Iraq by the self-appointed global policeman — the United States of America and its sidekick, Britain — amounted to an act of terrorism, in the strictest sense of the term, but the two countries won’t accept such definition! The two powers invaded Iraq on the pretext of destroying its suspected weapons of mass destruction.

If truth be told, Washington and London’s main intention was to oust Saddam Hussein, whom they regarded as a threat to their economic interests in the Gulf.

But when patriotic Iraqis took up weapons to liberate their country from American and British occupation, Washington and London justified their presence by claiming they were there to fight terrorism.

The two countries have since abandoned the line of argument of weapons of mass destruction and stuck with the purported "war on terrorism" against Iraqi freedom fighters.

This takes me back to President Bashir’s dilemma as to what, actually, is terrorism?

The destruction of Afghanistan by Americans five years ago is still fresh in our memories. Currently, Washington and London marines are committing serious human rights and war crimes in Iraq with abandon.

How the war on terror has been, and is being fought, has left many observers wondering what became of the West’s claim to respect of human rights.

Analysts argue that the resentment in the Arab world over the way Iraq and other Muslim countries have been treated has complicated the war on terror.

It has made Osama’s al Qaeda Network look like the only formidable body that, after the former Soviet Union and Saddam’s Iraq, can stand up to the US and smoke out its marines the region.

This would perhaps explain why few, if any, Arabs are willing to volunteer information on terrorist agents to the US, an arrogant and powerful country seen as only interested in installing regimes that will guarantee its continued exploitation of oil in the Gulf.

Closer home, it is not far-fetched to argue that terrorism still remains one of the main threats to the security, stability and well-being of regional countries. Countries perceived to be satelites of US and British interests are at a greater risk.

The terrorists have the determination and capacity to strike high profile targets anywhere, anytime, using newer and lethal means.

As the September 11, 2001, and recent attacks in Britain confirmed, no country is immune to acts of terror.

Experts point out that terrorism and transnational organised crime thrive in Africa, more so in the anarchic Horn and Great Lakes region.

A recent report titled "Why Fighting Crime Can Assist Development in Africa" by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) blames this on the vast geographical region and proximity to the Middle East and South-Asia.

The Middle East is perceived to be the epicentre of planning, training and funding terrorism as well as source of hard drugs.

The preponderance of Western interests in Africa has been both a blessing and curse to the continent.

The many European facilities and installations in the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa have become attractive and soft targets of belligerent groups.

It would make a lot of sense if the US and its partners in the war against terrorism changed strategy.

Bombing innocent civilians in the Middle East is drawing poor African countries into fighting the West’s own wars on our soil.

Like WWI, WWII and the Cold War, Africa is again being used to fight other people’s wars.

This is so because terror groups have little capacity to stage massive terror attacks in Western countries, compared to Africa — with its porous borders and poor mechanism to detect terror activities.

If our Parliament passes the controversial Anti-Terrorism Bill, Kenya will be one of the few countries to effect anti-terrosim laws in Africa.

The country will also benefit from the logistical support of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), a UN initiative to curb terrorism.

A pledge to fight terrorism is one of the 12 protocols that the Heads of State of ICGLR are expected to sign in Nairobi in December.

However, the regional countries making up ICGLR will have to overcome certain challenges for the initiative to succed. This is in recognition of the fact that although the countries subscribe to various sub-regional organisations, there is need to formulate mechanisms for cooperation to counter terrorism.

The Khartoum Declaration, in which chiefs of security and intelligence from 16 East African countries pledged to share information on terrorism activities, could be the best way to fight the threat, at least for now.

As Kenya’s chief spy Wilson Boinnet said, it is time to leave the seminar benches and be ready to engage true terrorists in street combat.

To me, the US and British soldiers in Iraq are worse than the faceless terrorists they are fighting.

The writer is a public relations officer in Nairobi, Kenya.

Article was originally published in The East African Standard
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Will the real Nelson Mandela step forward?

2005-10-01T19:21:00.000-05:00

By John Kamau

When he stepped down as South Africa’s first black president in 1999, Nelson Mandela baffled many world leaders who, had they been in his position, would have preferred to cling on — perhaps for life.

By quitting after just one term of five years, Mandela surprised even his former jailors, who coalesced around the now faded National Party (NP), and many wondered what a "New South Africa", as it was touted, would be without Mandela.

There was a good reason for that worry for Mandela had given a new lease of life to the Rainbow Nation and a chance to forgive and forget.

No man, he would tell his critics, had suffered more than he did during his 27 years in jail. Mandela has critics who do not think that he is the one who holds South Africa together. Allister Sparks, South Africa’s veteran commentator and the author of Beyond the Miracle, a book on post-apartheid South Africa puts it candidly: "To portray Mandela as the last pillar protecting us from catastrophe is absurd.

People have been making doomsday scenarios about South Africa all my life and I’m sick of them."

But Mandela has had no equal and still towers over the politics of South Africa like a colossus, long after he quit office. Still humble despite the accolades he has received (see separate story), Mandela is usually surprised by the kind of reception he gets.

"When I see the support that I get in cities I visit, I do not know what I have done to deserve this merit… All I can say is that this is not a tribute to an individual, it is a tribute to a country," he once said in Toronto.

As President, Mandela was much more concerned with the weakening Rand and some of his critics accused the Western press of failing to report on the real situation in South Africa.

But there are those who do not blame Mandela for failing the revolution.

In his book Against Global Apartheid, South Africa scholar Patrick Bond claims that enormous pressure was put on the ANC leadership to prove that it could govern with "sound macroeconomic policies".

"It became clear that if Mr Mandela tried genuine redistribution of wealth, the international markets would punish South Africa.

"Many within the party understandably feared that an economic meltdown would be used as an indictment not just of the ANC but of black rule itself," he wrote.

Caught in this dilemma, the ANC abandoned its policy of growth through redistribution and later on, under President Thabo Mbeki, adopted an IMF programme that included mass privatisations that saw the creation of a new black elite but led to mass layoffs and wage cuts in the public sector.

Indeed as late as July this year, as the G8 Summit prepared to open at Gleneagles, Scotland, we all listened to South African activist and former municipal councillor Trevor Ngwane — a key critic of Mandela’s — allege that Mandela had sold the South African revolution to Western capitalistic interests.

The discussion, hosted by the "War on Want - Make G8 History" campaigners, centred on privatisation and the big lie that was Tony Blair’s Commission on Africa report.

Ngwane, the chairman of the Soweto Anti-Privatisation Forum, took on Nelson Mandela — who was absent — and the African National Congress.

Given the aura that surrounds Mandela, only a few people have the courage to say that apartheid is not dead in South Africa and to blame it on political leadership starting with Mandela.

"Apartheid based on race has been replaced with apartheid based on class," Ngwane bellowed into the microphone. He has been taking on the new Rainbow nation via his Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee.

"When they disconnect electricity and water because of non-payments we reconnect them", he says.

Activists claim that they do it in the name of Nelson Mandela, who promised them access to basic services such as electricity and water.

"The ANC taught us these tactics," Ngwane once said after he was arrested and jailed for two weeks for leading a demonstration in 2002 against Johannesburg’s mayor, Amos Masondo.

Has the Mandela magic failed in post-apartheid South Africa? Internationally he remains an enigma and is still respected and controversial. Mandela has not even spared US President George Bush from criticism.

"Bush is now undermining the United Nations," Mandela told the International Women’s Forum after Bush started the Iraqi War. At that time Mandela said he would support action against Iraq’s former President Saddam Hussein only if the UN orders it.

"What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust."

Years later Mandela has been proved right and America is knee deep in a quagmire in Iraq as it fights an old enemy — the Al Qaeda — in a foreign country.

Unlike South Africans who can take on Mandela, world leaders shy from engaging him in any controversy.

On this occasion, spin-doctors in Washington were forced to respond with humility. White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer said: "Nelson Mandela was a great leader.

He remains a great man. [Bush] expresses his gratitude to the many leaders… who obviously feel differently than Mandela. He understands there are going to be people who are more comfortable doing nothing about a growing menace that could turn into a holocaust."

Even when Mandela twisted the knife by saying that all that Bush was after was Iraqi oil, Washington remained silent.

On Tony Blair he said: "He is the foreign minister of the United States. He is no longer prime minister of Britain."

Article was originally published in The East African Standard
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Should Africa Turn To China?

2005-08-15T06:50:00.000-05:00

Should Africa Turn To China?
Article by Dominic Odipo

"We need to recruit some of our most intelligent young graduates, teach them the major Chinese languages including Mandarin and then send them to China to study this Chinese phenomenon and advise us on how to respond. Like Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, our leadership needs to focus on China right now or run the risk of being overwhelmed from so far way by an economic juggernaut that is already rolling over the whole world."

The epicentre of our world is shifting. It is shifting from the great cities of Europe and North America to the new cities now rising in the People’s Republic of China.

It is shifting from London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Chicago and Washington DC to Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Nanjing. Events are occurring in China of such great magnitude that they boggle the mind. Like never before in history, the future of the whole world is being wrought by this giant of a country today home to more than one fifth of the entire human race.

From this point of view it makes little sense for Chris Murungaru, the Transport and Communications minister, to weep about being banned from British soil. In the emerging realpolitik and interessenpolitik — the politics of power and material interest — Britain will soon be history. In another 50 years, even the United States may have become history compared to the Middle Kingdom, this continent of a country in which modern civilization first emerged more than 5,000 years ago.

In his pace-setting and mind-boggling book, "China Inc.", American commodities trader and commentator, Ted. C. Fishman, has captured the emerging power of China as vividly and powerfully as no one else has yet been able to. Published only this year, "China Inc." is a fascinating and a must read for anyone trying to understand the world we shall be living in in the rest of the 21st Century. Mr. Ali Mwakwere, our foreign minister, should decree that every Kenyan Foreign Service officer reads this book for it does not matter where in the world you live today, China is at your door-step and your window-sill.

But first, a word about Wal-Mart, the American retail giant which is now the world’s largest company. To the Kenyan mind, Wal-Mart’s size and pace of growth over the last few years is hard to grasp. Like China, Wal-Mart shocks with its mere size. It is bigger than ExxonMobile, General Electric and General Motors and its annual sales now exceed those of its major rivals Target, Sears, Kmart, JCPenney, Safeway and Kroger combined.

Its 2003 sales, at US$260 billion matched the gross domestic product (GDP) of Switzerland, which will soon fall behind. About 14 million people shop in Wal-Mart stores everyday and its workforce of 1.4 million is the world’s largest for a private company.

What is the secret of Wal-Mart’s dizzy success? It the answer were to be reduced to one word, that word would be China. According to Fishman, perhaps up to 85 per cent of all the merchandise sold by Wal-Mart today is made in China. And China produces these goods at such rock-bottom prices and in such volumes that no other country in the world can be able to complete with it. It Wal-Mart were a nation, it would be China’s fifth largest export market, ahead of both Germany and Britain. Here-in lies the power, or the menace, of China. It is producing virtually everything at such low prices, with such quality and is such volumes that virtually no country in the world can compete with it. And it has so many people qualified and willing to work at such low rates that its competitive edge could last forever.

The country is home to about 1.5 billion people, about 1/5 of the entire human race. It has more people than the whole of Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Mexic and the whole of Central America combined. This makes it not only the world’s largest single market but also the world’s largest source of cheap labour. China has already become the world’s largest maker of consumer electronics and today pumps out most TVs, DVD players and mobile phones than any other country.

As Fishman puts it in "China Inc.": "China is ascending even higher still, moving quickly and expertly into biotech and computer manufacturing. No country has ever before made a better run at climbing every step of economic development all at once. No country plays the world economic game better than China. No other country shocks the global economic hierarchy like China."

Fishman continues: "Even a casual glimpse at the news tells us that something large is looming in China. The nation is making parts of Boeing 757s and exploring space with its own domestically built rockets. China has between 100 and 160 cities with populations of 1 million or more (America, by contrast, has 9, while Eastern and Western Europe combined have 36).

"China is buying oil fields internationally and also signing exclusive oil and gas supply deals with Saudi and Russian companies. China is buying the world’s scrap metal, as well as enormous amounts of steel, to fashion into products sold globally."

There are many other startling facts about China. Shanghai, its largest city and now also the biggest in the world, is building highways in the sky which are now the most advanced in the world. The Chinese economy has been growing at roughly 8 per cent per year for the last ten years, about three times the average growth rate of the American economy over the same period. This means that, given its vast potential, it is only a matter of time before China becomes the world’s biggest economy.

China currently consumes about 40 per cent of the world’s cement and 25 per cent of its steel. China’s economy has become so dangerously competitive that within only 20 years it could be able to manufacture everything at rock- bottom prices and thus make or break the economies of every nation on earth.

For Kenya, the implications of all this must be very clear. We need to shift our strategic focus from London, Paris and Washington to Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen.

We need to recruit some of our most intelligent young graduates, teach them the major Chinese languages including Mandarin and then send them to China to study this Chinese phenomenon and advise us on how to respond. Like Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, our leadership needs to focus on China right now or run the risk of being overwhelmed from so far way by an economic juggernaut that is already rolling over the whole world.

The writer is a freelance journalist and consultant based in Nairobi
Source: http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=26955

References

1. Will China Overtake the U.S.? Posner Comment
2. China and the world economy - From T-shirts to T-bonds
3. Why Is China Growing So Fast?: Click Here

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UK crippling Africa's healthcare

2005-05-27T18:37:00.000-05:00

UK crippling Africa's healthcare

The UK is crippling sub-Saharan Africa's healthcare system by poaching its staff, UK doctors have warned.

With the UK taking over the chair of the G8 in July, there is an ideal opportunity to stop the brain drain from poor to rich countries, they said.

The UK should encourage more home-grown doctors and limit the time period that overseas recruits can train and work in the country, they told the Lancet.

Financially compensating nations for lost staff will not work, they warned.

Brain drain

Nor will strategies that split the training of healthcare staff between developed and developing countries, according to Dr John Eastwood and his colleagues from St George's Medical School in London.

Industrialised countries like America and Britain must recognise that they have some responsibility for this crisis Dr Edwin Borman of the British Medical Association

He said: "One basic measure would be an agreement in consultation, with the World Health Organization, to establish a basis in developed countries for minimum annual numbers of health professionals in training.

"This would help to reduce developed country reliance on the investment in training made by developing countries."

Ethics

The UK does have an ethical code which means it will not actively recruit from certain developing countries, which includes sub-Saharan Africa.

However, healthcare professionals from these countries are free to apply for jobs in the UK.

In 2003, 5,880 UK work permits were approved for health and medical personnel from South Africa, 2,825 from Zimbabwe, 1,510 from Nigeria and 850 from Ghana.

Nearly a third of the doctors practising in the UK were trained overseas.

In comparison, only 5% of doctors in Germany and France are not home grown.

Dr Edwin Borman, chairman of the BMA's International Committee, said: "Shortages of doctors and nurses are having a devastating effect in the developing world.

"Sub-Saharan Africa alone needs around a million more healthcare workers, and unless the situation improves drastically rates of HIV will spiral, disability from childhood disease will rise, and thousands more lives will be lost.

"Industrialised countries like America and Britain must recognise that they have some responsibility for this crisis.

"At least the UK now has an ethical recruitment code, and we hope other countries will follow suit - but we also need to remove the financial barriers we have imposed on developing countries which are preventing them from investing in basic healthcare and training."

Progress

A spokeswoman from the Department of Health said: "The NHS leads the way in the ethical recruitment of healthcare professionals.

"The Department of Health has brokered a groundbreaking voluntary ethical recruitment agreement with the major players in independent sector healthcare.

"However, if healthcare professionals are determined to come here to work we cannot legally deny them that opportunity."

She said the government had provided £560 million over the last five years to support health and health systems development in Africa, including the training of nurses and doctors.

She said they were also putting huge investment into the expansion of UK medical schools.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/4582283.stm

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AIDS Now Compels Africa to Challenge Widows' 'Cleansing'

2005-05-12T01:20:00.000-05:00

AIDS Now Compels Africa to Challenge Widows' 'Cleansing'

May 11, 2005

MCHINJI, Malawi - In the hours after James Mbewe was laid to rest three years ago, in an unmarked grave not far from here, his 23-year-old wife, Fanny, neither mourned him nor accepted visits from sympathizers. Instead, she hid in his sister's hut, hoping that the rest of her in-laws would not find her.

But they hunted her down, she said, and insisted that if she refused to exorcise her dead husband's spirit, she would be blamed every time a villager died. So she put her two small children to bed and then forced herself to have sex with James's cousin.

"I cried, remembering my husband," she said. "When he was finished, I went outside and washed myself because I was very afraid. I was so worried I would contract AIDS and die and leave my children to suffer."

Here and in a number of nearby nations including Zambia and Kenya, a husband's funeral has long concluded with a final ritual: sex between the widow and one of her husband's relatives, to break the bond with his spirit and, it is said, save her and the rest of the village from insanity or disease. Widows have long tolerated it, and traditional leaders have endorsed it, as an unchallenged tradition of rural African life.

Now AIDS is changing that. Political and tribal leaders are starting to speak out publicly against so-called sexual cleansing, condemning it as one reason H.I.V. has spread to 25 million sub-Saharan Africans, killing 2.3 million last year alone. They are being prodded by leaders of the region's fledging women's rights movement, who contend that lack of control over their sex lives is a major reason 6 in 10 of those infected in sub-Saharan Africa are women.

But change is coming slowly, village by village, hut by hut. In a region where belief in witchcraft is widespread and many women are taught from childhood not to challenge tribal leaders or the prerogatives of men, the fear of flouting tradition often outweighs even the fear of AIDS.

"It is very difficult to end something that was done for so long," said Monica Nsofu, a nurse and AIDS organizer in the Monze district in southern Zambia, about 200 miles south of the capital, Lusaka. "We learned this when we were born. People ask, Why should we change?"

In Zambia, where one out of five adults is now infected with the virus, the National AIDS Council reported in 2000 that this practice was very common. Since then, President Levy Mwanawasa has declared that forcing new widows into sex or marriage with their husband's relatives should be discouraged, and the nation's tribal chiefs have decided not to enforce either tradition, their spokesman said.

Still, a recent survey by Women and Law in Southern Africa found that in at least one-third of the country's provinces, sexual "cleansing" of widows persists, said Joyce MacMillan, who heads the organization's Zambian chapter. In some areas, the practice extends to men.

Some Defy the Risk

Even some Zambian volunteers who work to curb the spread of AIDS are reluctant to disavow the tradition. Paulina Bubala, a leader of a group of H.I.V.-positive residents near Monze, counsels schoolchildren on the dangers of AIDS. But in an interview, she said she was ambivalent about whether new widows should purify themselves by having sex with male relatives.

Her husband died of what appeared to be AIDS-related symptoms in 1996. Soon after the funeral, both Ms. Bubala and her husband's second wife covered themselves in mud for three days. Then they each bathed, stripped naked with their dead husband's nephew and rubbed their bodies against his.

Weeks later, she said, the village headman told them this cleansing ritual would not suffice. Even the stools they sat on would be considered unclean, he warned, unless they had sex with the nephew.

"We felt humiliated," Ms. Bubala said, "but there was nothing we could do to resist, because we wanted to be clean in the land of the headman."

The nephew died last year. Ms. Bubala said the cause was hunger, not AIDS. Her husband's second wife now suffers symptoms of AIDS and rarely leaves her hut. Ms. Bubala herself discovered she was infected in 2000.

But even the risk of disease does not dent Ms. Bubala's belief in the need for the ritual's protective powers. "There is no way we are going to stop this practice," she said, "because we have seen a lot of men and women who have gone mad" after spouses died.

Ms. Nsofu, the nurse and AIDS organizer, argues that it is less important to convince women like Ms. Bubala than the headmen and tribal leaders who are the custodians of tradition and gatekeepers to change.

"We are telling them, 'If you continue this practice, you won't have any people left in your village,' " she said. She cites people, like herself, who have refused to be cleansed and yet seem perfectly sane. Sixteen years after her husband died, she argues, "I am still me." Ms. Nsofu said she suggested to tribal leaders that sexual cleansing most likely sprang not from fears about the vengeance of spirits, but from the lust of men who coveted their relatives' wives. She proposes substituting other rituals to protect against dead spirits, like chanting and jumping back and forth over the grave or over a cow.

Headman Is a Firm Believer

Like their counterparts in Zambia, Malawi's health authorities have spoken out against forcing widows into sex or marriage. But in the village of Ndanga, about 90 minutes from the nation's largest city, Blantyre, many remain unconvinced.

Evance Joseph Fundi, Ndanga's 40-year-old headman, is courteous, quiet-spoken and a firm believer in upholding the tradition. While some widows sleep with male relatives, he said, others ask him to summon one of the several appointed village cleansers. In the native language of Chewa, those men are known as fisis or hyenas because they are supposed to operate in stealth and at night.

Mr. Fundi said one of them died recently, probably of AIDS. Still, he said with a charming smile, "We can not abandon this because it has been for generations."

Since 1953, Amos Machika Schisoni has served as the principal village cleanser. He is uncertain of his age and it is not easily guessed at. His hair is grizzled but his arms are sinewy and his legs muscled. His hut of mud bricks, set about 50 yards from a graveyard, is even more isolated than most in a village of far-flung huts separated by towering weeds and linked by dirt paths.

What Tradition Dictates

He and the headman like to joke about the sexual demands placed upon a cleanser like Mr. Schisoni, who already has three wives. He said tradition dictates that he sleep with the widow, then with each of his own wives, and then again with the widow, all in one night. Mr. Schisoni said that the previous headman chose him for his sexual prowess after he had impregnated three wives in quick succession.

Now, Mr. Schisoni, said he continues his role out of duty more than pleasure. Uncleansed widows suffer swollen limbs and are not free to remarry, he said. "If we don't do it, the widow will develop the swelling syndrome, get diarrhea and die and her children will get sick and die," he said, sitting under an awning of drying tobacco leaves. "The women who do this do not die."

His wives support his work, he said, because they like the income: a chicken for each cleansing session. He insisted that he cannot wear a condom because "this will provoke some other unknown spirit." He is equally adamant in refusing an H.I.V. test. "I have never done it and I don't intend to do it," he said.

To protect himself, he said, he avoids widows who are clearly quite sick . Told that even widows who look perfectly healthy can transmit the virus, Mr. Schisoni shook his head. "I don't believe this," he said. At the traditional family council after James Mbewe was killed in a truck accident in August 2002, Fanny Mbewe's mother and brothers objected to a cleanser, saying the risk of AIDS was too great. But Ms. Mbewe's in-laws insisted, she said. If a villager so much as dreamed of her husband, they told her, the family would be blamed for allowing his spirit to haunt their community on the Malawi-Zambia border.

Her husband's cousin, to whom she refers only as Loimbani, showed up at her hut at 9 o'clock at night after the burial.

"I was hiding my private parts," she said in an interview in the office of Women's Voice, a Malawian human rights group. "You want to have a liking for a man to have sex, not to have someone force you. But I had no choice, knowing the whole village was against me."

Loimbani, she said, was blasé. "He said: 'Why are you running away? You know this is our culture. If I want, I could even make you my second wife."

He did not. He left her only with the fear that she will die of the virus and that her children, now 8 and 10, will become orphans. She said she is too fearful to take an H.I.V. test.

"I wish such things would change," she said.

Author: SHARON LaFRANIERE
New York Times

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Jerry Okungu - On Dr. Robert Mugabe, President of The Republic of Zimbabwe

2005-05-08T13:46:00.000-05:00

OPINION - ROBERT MUGABE, PRESIDENT OF ZIMBABWE
By Jerry Okungu in Nairobi, Kenya

As an African who grew up during the struggle for liberation of many modern states in Africa, it may not be easy for me to discuss Robert Mugabe in the context of his current political inclination and his relationship with powerful western nations like the United States of America and Britain.

If Idid that I would be missing the point and missing out on the big picture all together.

For starters, which Mugabe are we talking about here? Mugabe the freedom fighter, the statesman of his earlier years as a renowned articulate African spokesman or an ageing and ailing Mugabe who rediscovered his revolutionary streak to revolt against neocolonialism in his twilight years?

Let us look at the old and much maligned Mugabe in the context of Tony Blair and George Bush, his most outspoken critics. What do the duo criticize him for? That he has disenfranchised white farmers in Zimbabwe by repossessing tracks and tracks of their land for redistribution to black Zimbabweans. The other charge is that Mugade is an undemocratic tyrant who has repeatedly rigged the elections against the more 'credible' opponents in the eyes of the Western powers.

Let us take the first accusation that he has grabbed white men's farms and given them to his fellow freedom fighters. If my memory does not fail me, the struggle for liberation in Zimbabwe, like Kenya and other British colonies in Africa before it was a struggle to liberate the native and get back land forcibly acquired by the colonial master.

Africans in Zimbabwe, like in Kenya hated the fact that they had to squat in their own ancestral lands just because some white foreigners with guns came and displaced them and turned into farm slaves for a daily loaf of bread.

This colonial strong man mentality did not manifest itself in Africa alone. Indigenous Americans, commonly referred to as the Red Indians, the Asian Sub Continent and the Aborigines of Australia suffered the same fate.

The John Wayne Macho Man syndrome that drove the colonialist to massacre and burn rebellious villagers in the name of new order and new wealth exploitation.

If Mugabe finally forced Ian Smith out of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence(UDI) of Southern Rhdesia and finally forced the then toothless British government to come to the negotiating table, the mere fact that he did not get everything he wanted was no excuse to stop pursuing the ultimate goal for which millions of Zimbbweans lost their lives in the firsat place

In Kenya, the land issue was so lethal that it forced the British government to lend Jomo Kenyatta cash so that Kenyatta could buy White farms for distribution to the landless peasants. For Zimbawe not even this token arrangement was made.

On the issue of Mugabe being branded a tyrant, who is not a tyrant in this day and age? Haven't the Israelis been killing Palestinians in their own homeland for nearly sixty years? Didn't George Bush and Tony Blair lie to the world that Saddam had weapons of Mass Destruction and used terror and firepower to massacre thousands of Iraqis?

Who rigged the elections in Florida in 2000? Was it not George Bush and his Governor brother? A day after the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon was a blaze with remnants of the previous event, who was dining out a Saudi Diplomat and Osama Bin Laden's cousin on the veranda's of the White House?

Mugabe may be a tyrant and a despot, but where white tyranny has passed by, nothing is left standing! Better the devil you know, than the angel you are not sure of.

Jerry Okungu - Executive director of Infotrack, marketing and media consultants - Nairobi, Kenya.

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Kenya's First Lady, Lucy Kibaki Runs Amok!

2005-05-04T05:20:00.000-05:00

Kenya's First Lady Runs Amok!

First Lady disrupts Diop's party
Story by JOHN MUCHIRI and PHILIP MWANIKI
Publication Date: 05/01/2005
Source: http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=1&newsid=48098

First Lady Lucy Kibaki

First Lady Lucy Kibaki dramatically disrupted a farewell party at the Nairobi home of outgoing World Bank country director Makhtar Diop on Friday night.

An angry Mrs Kibaki invaded the house demanding that the loud music be switched off.

At that time musicians Mercy Myra, Eric Wainaina and Suzanne Kibukosya were on stage entertaining the guests.

A confrontation ensued as Mrs Kibaki engaged Mr Diop and his wife in an angry exchange.

At one time she told Mr Diop that no man in Kenya has dared talk back to her.

Mr Diop, who leaves the country today, is a tenant of the Kibakis in the exclusive Muthaiga neighbourhood.

He rented the house lived in by the First Family for many years until President Kibaki was elected and moved to State House.

The family built another house in an adjacent plot where the First Lady sometimes stays.

Mrs Kibaki was protesting that the music was too loud. First signs that there might be trouble were seen in the afternoon when technicians and musicians were setting up and testing the sound system. Mrs Kibaki came over and ordered them to dismantle everything.

They only resumed after Mr Diop consulted State House and told them to proceed. Then at night when the party was getting into full swing, Mrs Kibaki stormed in accompanied by bodyguards, demanding that the music be switched off.

Singer Eric Wainaina recalls: "I was still on stage preparing to do my second song when she turned up. She had like five bodyguards and ordered the music to be stopped from playing. It was so embarrassing since she is the First Lady and even diplomats had been invited.

"She could not listen to anyone, not even to Mr Diop himself. In fact she started asking irrelevant questions such as ‘who is your mother?’ It was so bad. What she was wearing was not very clear to me, but it looked more like some blue track suit or pyjamas."

Mercy Myra concurred, telling her version of the same incident, and recalling how Mrs Kibaki came in at around midnight yelling at the guests to leave.

"She shouted at Mr Diop that he would not be allowed to disrupt her peace just because he is leaving the country," Mercy said.

Some of those present witnessed Mrs Kibaki trying to unplug the music system and shouting that "This is Muthaiga, not Korogocho".

She told the guests that they could go and continue their party in Korogocho, one of Nairobi's biggest slums.

She paid no heed to Mr Diop's explanations, even as the World Bank executive tried to tell her that he had informed President Kibaki about the party, and the president had no problem with it.

Mrs Kibaki came to the residence three times, ignoring angry party goers who started singing in defiance. On her last call at around 1.00am, she was denied entry by the security guards and went away.

Two of her children, Judy and David, were present at the party and tried to calm down their mother without success.

Mr Diop is an amateur musician and jazz enthusiast and often joins jam sessions, with his bass guitar, at various city clubs.

His farewell party had been billed a "wild" affair and guests included various local musicians and other celebrities, as well as World Bank staff, diplomats and NGO staff. A few government officials were also present, including Investment Secretary Esther Koimet.

Many of the guests are regular patrons of Club Sikiliza at Gigiri area where Mr Diop plays the guitar.

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Listening for the Sounds of Africa

2005-05-01T01:06:00.000-05:00

Listening for the Sounds of Africa

In my youth I used to listen to shortwave news in the evening when reception was best. I would get updates via the BBC, Swiss and Austrian Stations, Radio Moscow and, of course, various German stations; all of them putting me in touch with the world both near and far. Oh-- I almost forgot, there was the AFN Network, the US Armed Forces Radio in Germany, and even though I did not speak English at the time, I enjoyed listening to the music they played!

In those days, I would be resting in my bed, listening to hours of news via shortwave radio, especially when I came down with scarlet fever and was confined to my room for months. It was then that I learned something of the art of listening to the news and just letting it soak in, making mental notes; taking in history as it was being made. I became a news buff and today I am an avowed newsaholic, especially regarding news from Africa.

Before the Internet, my favorite news source was the shortwave radio stations from around the world. I was always on the lookout for a better Grundig Shortwave Radio that would put me in touch with news that one could not hear or read locally.

When I went to Africa, my Grundig radios came along (three left my suitcase in a mysterious manner at Jomo Kenyatta Airport). I would spend many a night in Nairobi, Kampala, and Kigali, or at the UN camp in Lokichoggio underneath a clear African night listening to BBC or Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, or some other far off place that brought news from afar and often about the very place where I was at that moment in time.

Nowhere else in the world did I find a deeper interest for the latest news as amongst the Southern Sudanese. Everyone, who was someone, had a shortwave receiver. Morning coffee, showers, breakfast, all accompanied by BBC World Service bringing the latest updates from around the world, Africa and including what was happening in the Sudan.

I am still listening to radio from far away, but now I do it via high speed Internet access allowing me to listen to radio programs about Africa or from Africa. The sounds are great! On BBC I can listen to musical presentations from Kampala, or a play written by a retired man in Nigeria. It is a far cry from my scratchy Grundig reception but times are changing. Today I can listen to the sounds of Africa while sitting at my computer or in my bed with my laptop, reminding me of those early days of my news addiction. It is a delight to hear the ideas and input of Kenyan, Ugandans, Ethiopians, all while sitting near my computer or simply doing my chores and hearing some new song with a haunting melody that reminds me of driving through the majestic Rift Valley of Kenya, or coming down toward Lake Victoria from the Highlands.

It is good to listen to African sounds, African voices, and African ideas. Maybe, just maybe, all those who want to "fix" Africa and its problems, maybe all those with their so-called "solutions," have not been listening to Africa and its people.
Just recently, Sir Bob Geldof, of Live Aid Africa fame, made some comments about why President Museveni should not run for a third term. Geldof said that his admiration for Mr. Museveni's fight against poverty and Aids had now been lost.

"Get a grip Museveni. Your time is up, go away," Geldof said at the launch of the Commission for Africa Report, which is supposed to map out how best to raise living standards in Africa.

Ugandans took offense and thousands protested Sir Geldof in the streets of Kampala and rightfully so. It seems that most of the time the West comes with "Father knows best" advice, but does not take the time and effort to listen. After all, the Western mindset assumes that Africa had no history until the colonial powers came to enlighten the uncivilized savages of the continent by bringing "civilization." It would be quite a shock for many of those so-called discoverers to discover that the oldest human beings have been found in East Africa and that history started in Africa.

As European nations colonized Africa, anything African was considered inferior to European ways. Some used religion to subjugate the African people causing Jomo Kenyatta, the first President of Kenya to say, "The missionaries came with the Bible in their hand and we had the land. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed, and then when we opened them, we had the Bible in our hand and they had the land." (One will not encounter many atheists in sub-Sahara Africa. Africans have embraced Islam and Christianity. In fact, African Christian Churches are now evangelizing the West by starting churches in the USA and Europe.)

If one looked more closely, when those early explorers, missionaries and merchants set foot on Africa, there was not just a loss of land. A greater loss had begun much earlier to the Mid-East and East, but the Europeans used Africa as their manpower resource to staff their plantations in the new world of North and South America with African slaves. The nations of the Caribbean and the Americas imported millions of slaves from all over Africa, causing a people drain the world had never seen before or since. Africa not only lost millions of its people to the slave trade, people from many different tribes and kingdoms, that had existed for centuries before, but Africa lost with its people, its heart and soul, its self-respect. Africa was subjugated by other powers at home and abroad from Charleston South Carolina to Rio de Janeiro. No one listened to the cries of Africa for years to come, Africa cried from its soul, but its cries were ignored.

If you look at how the present states of Africa came into being, many of the present problems have to do with the way the map was drawn at a table in Berlin far from Africa. Far from the tribes and kingdoms such lines would separate, far from the families that were now part of different nations. Certainly no one was listening to Africa back then.

As I write this newsletter, Tony Blair's Commission on Africa is publishing another European report on Africa. A lot of good things have been said and written by Africans and non-Africans alike, yet if you would ask people on the streets of Africa, you would find a bit of skepticism. They have seen many important people come to Africa to write reports, take pictures, give interviews and fly back home without listening to the average person on the streets of Africa's cities.

Africa will not change, unless one listens to Africa, listens to what is really needed instead of our Western solutions based on a world model that does not take Africa's needs, resources, and of course its people into consideration.

When one listens to Africa, one hears that the world needs to buy the products of Africa at a fair price, eliminate Western subsidies to American, European, Canadian farmers in order that the African farmers who receive no subsidies can compete in the world market on a level playing field.

I pray for the day that the riches of Africa's earth will no longer be extracted by foreign companies and processed in the West or East. I hope for the day that African leaders will no longer take out the billions of dollars and put them into Western banks, but instead take that money and invest it in Africa s schools, industries, factories, and its people and their well-being.

Africa does not need Western pity, but Western respect. Change in Africa will take time. It has taken the West many years and a few wars to live in peace; it will take a few more years in Africa. Changes are taking place on a daily basis in Africa. Democratic elections are taking place everywhere, we only read about those things that go sour. The cell phone is revolutionizing Africa. Farmers are using it to check on the present prices of their crops, people are staying in touch. Email at the Internet cafes of Africa is keeping Africans in touch with relatives; the wealth of the Internet comes to Africa through those screens throughout the larger cities in Africa.

Countries like Uganda are prospering with an annual growth rate of over 6 percent. New shopping centers are popping up yearly and the Ugandan middle class has choices. Africa is changing from within.

Africa is reclaiming its soul, decolonizing its heart and mind, and the day will come when Mother Africa will be made of nations that are listened to and have the respect as an equal at the global table. I hope I live to see that day.

Today I listen to the sounds and happenings in Africa from a distance, I listen to the heart of Africa via the letters I receive, the news I read, the literature of African writers, and I like what I hear, I enjoy listening to Africa. Try listening to Africa; it might give you a whole new perspective as to what Mother Africa is really like.

Author: Jon Blanc - Jon owns and runs Kabiza.com. Jon's site presents Africa in a balanced, un-biased and optimistic style. His website is not so much about the scenic wonders and wildlife, but about the heart of Africa & its people. Click here to enjoy Kabiza.com

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Milton Obote: My Story

2005-04-11T19:54:00.001-05:00

Milton Obote: My Story

Dr Apollo Milton Obote tells his story about his his rise and fall from power – twice as president. In his story Obote narrates to Andrew Mwenda about the attempted assasination on him and the coup that took place in 1971 and how he fought Idi Amin; about how he dealt with the East African Federation after independence and his role in the formation of the Organisation of African Unity.

Dr Obote tells Andrew Mwenda about the pre-independence struggle and the beginning of Uganda’s suffering; Obote tells the story of his childhood, and how he ended up becoming a politician; about the 1985 coup and how he escaped to Kenya.....and much much more!

Dr Obote's story is currently being serialized in The Uganda Monitor at this location: Uganda Monitor Serialization

Very Good Reading!

EXCERPTS: MILTON OBOTE - MY STORY
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Part 1: How I escaped after 1985 coup
In the first part of the series, Obote talks about the 1985 coup and how he escaped to Kenya.
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How I escaped after 1985 coup By Andrew Mwenda “I am not going to move again; I fought Amin, I do not want to fight again. I am going to die here.”

Political Editor Andrew Mwenda interviewed Dr Apollo Milton Obote from his home in Lusaka, Zambia in September-October 2004 for a special autobiographical series on the exiled former president and UPC leader. In the first part of the series, Obote talks about the 1985 coup and how he escaped to Kenya.

ob1: VICTORY: After hearing there was a coup underway, Dr Obote left Kampala on the night of July 27, 1985 and arrived in Kenya the same day (File photo).

HELPED: Former Kenyan President Moi assisted Obote for the first few days he was in Nairobi

FRIENDS? Dr Obote contacted the late Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda for asylum in their countries

I had learnt about it over many weeks that there was a political crisis involving the army. The first ominous sign came when I was in Mbale on the Co-operatives Day. There was some movement of the army in Kampala.

Paul Muwanga, [the Vice President], issued a statement in which he referred to “uncoordinated troop movement.” The troop movement apparently was about soldiers who were trying to cause the coup. They had organised support weapons from Mbuya [barracks] to move to Kampala.

[Brig.] Smith Opon Acak, [the army Chief of Staff] stopped it and then they started hunting for him. That’s why Muwanga referred to it as “uncoordinated troop movement.”

After Mbale I returned to Kampala and appointed Brig. Livingstone Ogwang to investigate the uncoordinated troop movement. However, because my advisors like [Gen.] Tito Okello and Paulo Muwanga were involved in the coup plots, Ogwang was frustrated; his inquiries went to nowhere. Bazillio [Okello] had been on leave in the north. Bazillio had found the Acholi trying to raise a militia against cattle rustlers from Karamoja and he joined them; it became his pre-occupation.

Then Muwanga then came to me and said Tito Okello should go and bring Bazillio Okello back to Kampala. I agreed and Tito went but he never came back. And when he did, it was with the invasion army, the coup army.

Then the late Henry Tungwako Deputy Minister of labour and the late Kasande came to me from Fort Portal and told me that the commanding officer there, an Acholi officer called Maj. Okwera had called Museveni’s rebels and handed over the town to them, then travelled to Kitgum to join Bazillio.

I told them that Okwera had been killed on his way to Kitgum by Bazillio’s troops who mistook his convoy to be Opon Acak’s convoy. In spite of all these happenings, I was not afraid of a coup. I was busy organising for the December 1985 elections and I was confident UPC would win. The victory would put the coup plotters in a difficult position of attempting to overthrow a government with a renewed mandate.

On the night of July 26th, 1985 I was in my office in Kampala, reading a World Bank report about prospects for oil in Semliki. I was trying to write a cabinet paper on it. The World Bank report said there was oil in Semliki, and our job was now to exploit it. I now had to get the Cabinet know about it, and then to approve what we were going to do about it.

Now, the problem about Semliki is that part of the oil was in Zaire.

That is when Muwanga rang me saying something was happening in Kampala; that he had sent his staff and found that all army officers had deserted their offices or stations. It was 1 a.m. on the morning of Saturday July 27, 1985.

I called [Chris] Rwakasisi [state minister in the president’s office in charge of security] who told me that Muwanga had called him and told him the same thing by telephone.

I said, “Rwakasisi, Milton Obote is not going anywhere; if there is a coup, they will have to come and kill me here.” Then I moved from my office at Parliamentary Building to Nile Mansion. Muwanga rang again and said, “Don’t remain in Nile Mansion and don’t go to Parliament Building, the thing might be serious.”

I called Rwakasisi again and a few other staff. We went to the home of my personal doctor, Henry Opiote, in Kololo. It was now 2 a.m. I did not go to my home in Kololo because Rwakasisi advised that it would be the first place the coup makers would attack.

At Opiote’s home, I told my colleagues that, “I am not going to move again; I fought Amin, I do not want to fight again. I am going to die here.”

ENCOURAGED: Chris Rwakasisi

ALERTED: Paul Muwanga

DESERTED: Tito Okello

Rwakasisi said a very memorable thing. He said, “No, we have to get you out of here, out of this country because if you are alive we can fight back, if you are dead we cannot fight back. So we are going to drag you out of here.”

Then I began to yield my position. The issue was where do we go? We could not go to Entebbe airport and use the presidential jet because it takes a lot of time to prepare to fly a plane. We would have had to wake up the pilot, then taken time servicing it, fuelling it and we did not have all that time.

We also decided that we could not take Mutukula road because that too was risky. We could not travel to the west because beyond it there was Zaire and Rwanda and we were not sure about those either.

My plan was to travel to Soroti where we had a strong militia we had trained to defend the people there against Karimojong cattle rustlers.

We never discussed this, but we all agreed to travel eastwards. We had five cars and a Land Rover.

Dr. Opiote sat in the lead car, me in the second car, and the other cars including that of Rwakasisi followed behind. But somehow it seems, because on our way out we passed by Rwakasisi’s residence, he possibly fell out of the convoy to pick one or two things, inform his family and all. But as far as we were concerned, we thought that he was with us as we hit Jinja Road.

It was about 4 a.m. We had radio calls in the car and Dr. Opiote was monitoring what the Okellos were discussing. So we knew they were looking for me, and they had ordered all roadblocks to arrest me.

When we reached the roadblock at Mukono, we were stopped. The soldiers started asking: “Who are you, where are you coming from, where are you going?” They were asking Dr. Opiote who was in the first car, while I sat in the second car behind.

Opiote showed them his identity card and told them that “Mzee has asked us to go and bring Mama Miria who is coming back from Nairobi.” He told them we were late because Mama was anywhere now at the border (Malaba).

The soldiers were suspicious and asked more questions but after some time they allowed the convoy to continue. They did not know that I was seated in the next car behind.

Dr. Opiote even lied to them that “Please be ready when we are coming back; we are supposed to be in a hurry; the president is waiting for us in Kampala, so when we come please give us clearance immediately.”

Surprisingly, the soldiers did not bother to inspect the cars to see who was in. When we reached the roadblock at the bridge in Jinja, we were again stopped and the same questions asked, and the same answers given.

The soldiers there also allowed the convoy to continue without checking who was in the car.

We had heard the roadblocks being put on all roads with orders to arrest me and I knew there were problems but we had to be humble. I had advised my security staff not to oppose anybody, not to confront the soldiers at roadblocks. It was now coming to 5 a.m.

Released at Jinja bridge, we continued on our way eastwards. Now, as we were speeding up, time was not on our side. We were getting late.

When we reached the roundabout near Jinja town, I asked my driver to go into Jinja town instead of going straight along the highway to Tororo. I wanted to create a diversion so that if anyone was following our convoy, they would get lost.

Dr. Opiote did not know this and his car proceeded alone. I think when he realised we were not behind him he turned and came back and joined us along the road where we had stopped to wait for him.

Now, there is a road from Magamaga, which goes to Busia, which I wanted him to take. So when Opiote came back I asked him if the driver knew the road from Magamaga to Busia. He did not. I had campaigned all over Uganda, so I knew the road. I wanted to avoid the main road to Malaba because since we had told soldiers at roadblocks in Mukono and Jinja, I was suspicious the Okellos would learn that I had escaped from Kampala and follow the convoy.

So I changed my plan of going to Soroti. We took that road from Magamaga to Busia and arrived in Busia town at about 6 a.m.

At the border a soldier tried to block our exit by closing the road because they had already learnt of the events in Kampala. Other soldiers just shoved him away and opened for us and we entered Kenya.

We had no money, no passports, nothing. My staff only told the Kenyans that “the president wants to enter” and they allowed us.

While we celebrated our narrow escape, I was downhearted because of the coup. Dr. Opiote had just returned from America and he had some dollars in his pocket. Other people who were with us had some money. So we bought gas and hit the road to Kakamega.

The Kenyan border security had informed the government of our coming. We were taken to a government lodge where I contacted President Moi to let him know that I was in his country and that I was running away from my own country.

Moi asked me to stay in the lodge and promised to contact us later. I think we stayed there for the whole day and night. President Moi made arrangements for me to meet him for breakfast the next day in Nakuru.

So we spent the night in Kakamega. Very early in the morning, about 3 a.m., we left for Nakuru and we arrived there at breakfast time.

I had breakfast with Moi and his Minister for Foreign Affairs. I briefed the president during breakfast about the coup and I requested him for asylum. Moi was very clear; he said, “This is a British orchestrated coup.”

Now unfortunately as we were talking, his minister left the table and went to ring Nairobi reporting to the British High Commissioner what his own president had said. The minister was called Elijah Mwangale.

So after breakfast, the president told me my request to be in Kenya will be considered by the cabinet. Meanwhile I had to go to Nairobi to stay with my friend Kitili Mwendwa.

So I left the president in Nakuru and I drove to Nairobi to stay with my friend Kitili Mwendwa. When I got to the home of Kitili Mwendwa I found Mama Miria was already there. She was in the house.

Mama had been in Nairobi attending a women’s conference and was planning to return to Uganda that same day. I briefed her about what had happened, and about the fate of our youngest boy, Ben, who was in Entebbe and another one, Tony, who was in Namasagali.

My first plan was to contact my friend, [President Julius] Nyerere. I called his home in Musasani, Dar es Salaam and he was not there. I called State House, they said he was not there. I asked his staff to ask him to call me in Nairobi. He did not! I have never heard from him since.

I felt betrayed by my friend Nyerere because he abandoned me.

Then I contacted President [Kenneth] Kaunda [of Zambia] who told me to wait; he was going to send me his ambassador. The ambassador came that same evening to Kitili Mwendwa’s home and I asked for asylum verbally and then the High commissioner asked me to put it in a short letter, which I did.

Kaunda first sent word that the aircraft was coming. The aircraft arrived and we left for Lusaka, about 100 people. Apparently when I left Kampala, word got spread out that I had gone to Nairobi, and people just took off by plane, buses, by road, by various means to Nairobi.

Many of them knew Kitili Mwendwa was my friend and they flocked to his home. But the majority were accommodated by the government at the Police training school.

I came to Zambia. I was met by the Secretary General of the party, Grey Zulu, because President Kaunda was in the northern region closing the conferences of his party.

I was taken to a government lodge, which became my home for about two years before I came to the current house where I am staying.

Kaunda returned, we met, we prayed. I briefed him and like Moi, he said this was a British coup. So I remained in Zambia until now, from August 1985.

One thing is for sure though, I have never taken a drink since I came to Zambia and this year I have also stopped smoking.

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Part 2: I come from royal ancestry
In the second part of this series, Obote tells the story of his childhood, and how he ended up becoming a politician...
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I come from royal ancestry
By Andrew Mwenda

I was born on 28th December 1925. I grew up in Akokoro City in Lango. I call it Akokoro city because Idi Amin told Americans that Obote spent all the government money building a city in Akokoro.

The Americans went there and did not find a city. They only found a village with destitute villagers. My father was Stanley Opeto and my mother was Priscilla Aken Opeto.

My father had another wife; she had three children, one son and two girls. My mother had five children with my father, and I grew up with two brothers. My mother’s first two children were girls and they both died in infancy. So when I was born, they wanted to organise a ceremony in order to undo what made the other two girls die. My grandfather, Ibrahim Akaki, said no. He was called Iburahimu Akaki.

THE START: Obote’s interest in politics begun when he left Uganda and went to Kenya and joined the Kenya African Union (KAU) File Photo)

He was a Christian and all his sons were Christians. The one who made him Christian was called Isaac who married a woman called Rebbeca and his first son was called Esau. My father was a Gomboloola chief.

My grandfather Akaki was the King, who even served as a general in Kabalega’s army. Initially, Akaki had his own army.

Later, he went to Bunyoro and he became a general in Kabalega’s army. So when the British came to look for Kabalega and Mwanga, my grandfather said, “You come to my place”.

So Kabalega and Mwanga came to Akokoro. My father fought alongside them against the British during the resistance to colonial conquest.

As you may have read from history, Kabalega was arrested in Lango.

So you can see the unity of the African peoples’ which the colonialists distorted and today’s politicians promote divisions between northerners and southerners.

That is my ancestry. It is a royal ancestry as you can see. I began school at the age of eleven when I joined catechism class to get baptised. I studied there for one year, got baptised and then went to Ibuge Primary School, 16 miles from Akokoro at the age of twelve years.

I used to go for catechism class by bicycle. Very near our home, there were leopards. One such morning we were going on two bicycles. The road was blocked by leopards. So we alighted, waited, but the animals were not moving. Then somebody came from behind and said: “Leave the leopards. Let us pass through the bush.” We passed through the bush with our bicycles and we went to school.

BEST FRIEND: Zikusooka

FELLOW POLITICIAN: Tom Mboya

HELPFUL: Obote during a visit to India. An earlier visit to the country had Obote meet people who were supporting the liberation struggle in Africa (File photo).

On another occasion, I came back home on holiday. I had a friend called Lesley Okao who was very fond of animals. He was a trapper of animals. I was fond of animals because between my father’s place and my mother’s birthplace there were plenty of animals on the road.

So every time I had travelled I used to see those animals and spend hours looking at them. I used to go with Lesley Okao to the bush to trap animals.

One day I was going to his place, then I saw a waterbuck. I saw a python catch the waterbuck and was winding it’s self around it. I went to Okao and reported to him. He came and killed the python, and took the waterbuck home for food!

Another time we were swimming at River Nile and standing next to me was a young girl of my age. She was taken by a crocodile! I was also a trapper of birds. I would climb up a tree to trap birds and two incidents happened. Once, I fell from the tree and broke my right arm, I became left-handed. Another time I climbed the tree on top of a nest of an owl; the owl came and nearly did away with my eyes.

At my primary school at Ibuge, I did class one and class two. I did not do class three and class four. I was selected to sit class five entry exams and I passed and was sent to class five at Boroboro Primary School near Lira.

In Lira, I stayed with my uncle, Yakobo Adoko, father of Akena Adoko who was county chief. I did class five and six. In class six I was given a recitation on Parent’s Day. I was the District Commissioner, so I did that recitation in English and all the Gombolola chiefs were there. The chiefs used to sit with the DC to select two boys to go to secondary school on a Lango scholarship.

I was not selected by the chiefs. They said my father was a Gombolola chief, he could pay. The two chiefs, one was the chief of Maruzi which is part of Akokoro, the other was another chief from another part of Lango. They plotted to get rid of my father. That same week they wrote a letter to the DC asking for my father to resign office. So my father lost his job because of my performance in primary six.

When he was Gombolola chief of Akokoro, he used to produce cotton. And every January and December part he used to deposit part of his earnings with his brother, Yakobo Adoko. So when he lost his job, he told me, “Don’t worry, I have been giving my brother money for years, let us go and see my brother, he will pay for your secondary school.”

The father of Adoko Nekyon was Ezekiel Akaki. Nekyon’s grandfather is the brother of my grandfather. He was number two to my grandfather. Nekyon’s grandfather was called Opeto and my father was named after him. After Boroboro, I went to Gulu High School where I did Junior one, two and three.

I performed very well because I was on top of my class every term. Even in primary I was always on top of my class every term. I was never number two or number three, I was always number one.

I passed on top of my class at Gulu High and went to Busoga College Mwiri in 1946.

Gulu High School used to send students to Nabumali High School near Mbale. I did not want to go to Nabumali High School because in Lango they wanted somebody to pass and go to Makerere. The last Langi to go to Makerere was in 1941 when we were joining Gulu High School. That was the first Langi to go to Makerere.

From there onwards they wanted someone to go to Makerere. Lango sent very brilliant boys to Nabumali but they did not pass to Makerere.

So I wanted to change and go to Makerere, so I chose Nyakasura School. However, that year Nyakasura had no teachers and could not take any students into secondary. We were all transferred to Mwiri and Budo.

My headmaster at Boroboro was Stanley Owiny, and at Gulu High School, Stanley Moore.

My favourite teachers at Gulu High School were Elisa Lakol and Reuben Anywal.

My favourite teachers at Mwiri were F. D. Cotts, the headmaster, Nabeta, Frick and Nsajja, our mathematics teacher. But it is Cotts, who influenced me most. He was a very good man. He even taught me classics, Plato. We used to read Plato in secondary four.

Again throughout my stay at Mwiri, I was on top of my class every term. It is only when I came late for secondary four, I became number two at the end of the term. I was again number two in secondary six, final term.

One day I was playing tennis when I saw my friend Wilson Aguma go to the dispensary.
Then I heard a very great yelling then I ran and found Aguma down with the nurse crying, both of them were crying.

OLD BOY: Obote greets students of Busoga College Mwiri. He was one of only two students who were admitted to Makerere University from the school in 1948 (File Photo)

The nurse had poured something in Aguma’s eyes. I think it was acid. Frick came, put Aguma in his car we went to Jinja hospital and I was in Jinja hospital for two weeks. That term I was second in my class. That is why the head of the class in academics is written on the board, so I was not on the board.

I was in Mwiri from 1946-1947 and then I went to Makerere.

Only two of us passed from Mwiri to Makerere, Tibamanyire, a Munyoro boy and me. My best friend in Mwiri was Zikusooka, and Luba both of whom later became engineers, Luba for Kampala City Council. Zikusooka remained my friend, and I even appointed him minister.

My other classmate was Muwanga, who became a forester. I do not know where Muwanga is now.

I went to do intermediate at Makerere and studied political science and geography although my favourite subject, history was not there. I was given a scholarship by Lango Local Government to do law at Khartoum University. I was the first Langi to pass to go to Makerere since 1941. That is why I won a scholarship to go to Khartoum.

I left Makerere voluntarily, although some people say I was dismissed because of a food strike. I was a participant in the food strike, but I did not lead it. I was given a scholarship starting with 1948, about June-July in Khartoum.

When Makerere begun in March I did not go back because I was waiting to go to Khartoum. However, I got a letter from the secretariat in Entebbe written by the former DC in Lango saying that my scholarship could not be entertained. The British did not want me or someone from Lango to go and study law at that time. I rebelled. I went to Kenya.

The people I studied with at Makerere were Martin Aliker, who remained a close friend and was best man at my wedding.

Others in my class were Lameck Luboowa and many others. I came back from Kenya and went to Jinja, got a job with Mowlem, an Italian construction company as a general clerk, accounts clerk.

I was twenty-seven years old by this time. So I went to Jinja, I did this work. So 1952, they transferred me to Nairobi, exactly what I wanted. Remember that in 1952 the Uganda National Congress (UNC) was formed. We from Jinja under Lubogo went to Kampala as Busoga delegation. I was therefore a founder member of UNC.

When I went back to Jinja, I was transferred to Nairobi, I think of involving myself in politics. I worked in a place called Kabete near Nairobi. Then I was transferred to Mt. Kenya, a very cold place to work. Then I decided to leave Mowlem because I wanted to do correspondence courses in Nairobi. I got a job with an oil company called Stanbak, which later changed its name to Mobil.

By this time, I had a grudge with the British government. They refused me to take my scholarship in Khartoum. So I joined the Kenya Africa Union (KAU). I had friends in KAU like Odede whom I had studied with at Makerere. I met Paul Ngei, a Mukamba. He later became a minister in Kenya.

I also met Argwings Kodhek. I met Tom Mboya and we became great friends. Then I met Oginga Odinga. Jomo Kenyatta was in jail. Tom Mboya was later killed in 1969. I did not attend his funeral because I was in Zambia when he was killed.

As a close friend who was head of state I got in touch with his family and they advised me not to go for his burial because it was suspected that there was foul play, that it was a political assassination.

In Kenya, I became the chairman of Kaloleni Social club. It was a social club of mainly KAU members mostly.

Our job was to do politics when politics was not allowed by Africans. We used to invite Europeans to lecture to us and then we put questions to them. That way we got around to discussing politics.

I decided to leave Kenya in 1956 because there was a movement in Uganda on land.

The British government wanted to change land tenure in Lango from communal to private ownership. Lango people were very opposed to it. The UNC in Lango was very much opposed to it.

So UNC got in touch with me and they said the minister was going to Lira to launch the private land tenure, and UNC had organised protests. They asked me to join in the demonstration.

So I left Nairobi suddenly, without even saying bye to Kaloleni Social club.

I went by train up to Tororo, then by bus to Soroti, then another bus to Lira. I was welcomed in Soroti by the Lango leaders of UNC including their chairman, Ben Otim, whom I had left at Gulu High School. From there we went by bus to Lango where I arrived after the demonstration had taken place the previous day. Before I could even settle down, I got arrested the next day by the colonial police on accusation of leading the demonstration.

I was handed over to the DC who decided to take me throughout Lango to address people about Land tenure.

The British wanted me to promote private land ownership. I went throughout Lango with the DC but he did not know that I was well known in the district. I had been the last person from the district to pass exams and go to Makerere, so my name had been spread all over Lango.

Later the British released me and I joined active politics in Lango. I had saved some money from Kenya. Frederick Gureme said I went abroad and I got some money from communists, I never did.

So I began preaching Self Government Now. I immediately became a key leader within UNC! In Kenya just before I left for Uganda, I was the representative of UNC so they selected me to go to India. So we went by ship to India to Bombay. From Bombay I went with some Kenyans by air to New Delhi where we met Nehru, who was very close to African politics.

From there we flew to Cairo and I met Nasser. Nehru and Nasser were supporting the liberation struggle in Africa and the Third World. The UNC had a good policy of “Self Government Now; One Man One Vote”.

We leave Cairo by ship back to Mombasa after which I left for Uganda.

Meanwhile in Lango, the member representing the district in the Legislative Council was Yakobo Omwonya, one of the Lango people who was the first to go to Makerere and did commerce. He wasn’t effective in the Legco, so we put pressure on him to resign. He resigned and the district council had to elect a new representative.

I stood against three other people: the late Okai, Okello Odong and someone else whom I cannot remember. I beat all of them hands down, and went to the Legco and I set it on fire.

The records are all there, you can find them. I transformed the Legco from a timid talking shop into an effective assembly.

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How UPC was formed
In this third part of our series, Dr Obote tells Andrew Mwenda about the pre-independence struggle and the beginning of Uganda’s suffering.
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How UPC was formed
By Andrew Mwenda

Some time in 1960, a decision was taken to merge the UNC with the Uganda Peoples’ Union led by Rwetsiba. A decision was made and the Uganda Peoples’ Congress (UPC) was born.

In this third part of our series, Dr Obote tells Andrew Mwenda about the pre-independence struggle and the beginning of Uganda’s suffering.

When I joined the Legislative Council (Legco), it was a timid talking shop. I immediately set out to make it an effective assembly to voice the concerns of the African people. My first task was to link the members of the Legco with the wider community of the people of Uganda in the districts.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED: Andrew Mwenda interviews Milton Obote and his wife Miria last year in Obote’s home in Zambia.

FRIENDS: Obote and Sir Edward Muteesa chat. Obote first met Sir Edward through a lady called Kisosonkole, Muteesa’s mother-in-law (File photo).

Obote stands as Idi Amin (L) and Oryema (R) salute. Obote had no idea of events that would unfold when he suggetsed Amin be reprimanded only for murdering some Turkana (File photo).

We started mobilising for a constitutional conference. Although I was new in the Legco, I immediately stood out because I had a message: Self Government Now! It was the Uganda National Congress (UNC) message, but my job was to exploit it, and I became its voice and people wanted to hear it.

The Legco had great debaters like George Magezi from Bunyoro, John Babiiha from Tooro, John Rwamafa from Kigezi.

There was also a conservative fellow from Buganda, I forget his name, he was a very great fellow, but he was not my friend. There were very few black people in the Legco at the time. The majority were white and Indian. But we formed a formidable opposition.

The white people would sit on the government side. Some Indians would sit with us on the opposition side, others on the government side. The Indians with us on the opposition side included Madhvani, Varghi and Patel.

One issue dominated the Legco in the early years of my service there: the enguli issue.

People in Luwero and around Bombo were distilling Waragi from bananas.

The British colonial government was totally opposed to this and were using chiefs to stop people from distilling or drinking enguli on grounds that it was crude.

However, the real reason was to make Africans drink bottled alcohol from British companies. That is how colonialism had killed local African industry. I immediately took up this issue.

You can cross check with the records in the parliamentary records of the time. I stood firmly arguing that instead of ransacking people’s homes, burning down their bananas plants and jailing those who drink enguli, government should instead refine it to remove its health hazards.

I also promised that if an African government took over office from colonial rule, and if I were to play a key role in such an African government, we would build a factory to refine enguli into a healthy, non-crude drink and bottle it. And we did it. The first UPC administration built a factory and you can now drink Uganda Waragi. Meantime, problems began within the UNC. Jolly Joe Kiwanuka wanted to lead the party.

However, Ignatius Musaazi was the leader but Jolly Joe did not respect Musaazi. Musaazi was a nationalist, a very intelligent man, but unfortunately he was a gentleman, he was not aggressive. Now Joe Kiwanuka went to Moscow and got some money. He went to Cairo and collected more money.

Then he went to London and bought a lot of goods, presents for himself and his girlfriends. He had many girlfriends. He put some money into in his newspaper, The Daily Express which we wanted very much, but he was using the paper also against the party and its leader Musaazi.

Musaazi made a mistake when he said that is communism money. This gave Joe Kiwanuka an excuse to break up the party.

John Kakonge

Grace Ibingira

WARNED: Sir Walter Coutts

I had made a good impression in the Legco, so the elected members elected me to be their leader in 1958. The next year, the UNC called a delegates conference in Mbale. I was not in Mbale personally because my father was sick in Mulago. It turned out that the delegates did not want Musaazi because of the propaganda by Jolly Joe. On elections day I was elected president of the UNC in absentia.

Jolly Joe sent Paul Kiggundu and a lot of other people to take me to Mbale. So they came to my house at Naguru very early in the morning, said I was wanted by the delegates in Mbale.

They did not tell me I was elected until we were on the way. I went to Mbale and the first thing I told Jolly Joe: “I want to talk to Musaazi first.” I was loyal to Musaazi and I respected him. I asked him if he approved me replacing him and he said he was happy about it but warned me against working with Jolly Joe. I went to the conference and accepted the post.

I immediately set out to organise the UNC from being a party of members of the Legco into a party of the people. My first task was to organise the office of the UNC itself because there had been no office. Together with Abu Mayanja, we set up an office in Number 1 Entebbe road building.

Abu was the first secretary general of the UNC and we were very great friends. Up to now I consider Abu a great personal friend.

He is a very brilliant man and I did not have a problem with him.

So together with Abu, we mobilised the party by taking it to the grassroots and people received us well.

The colonial government tried to stop us when we began to open district, country and gombolola branches across the country. This was because when we called a meeting, people would turn up in thousands. It was now time for the Wild Commission on the constitution of which I was a member. We toured the country gathering evidence for constitutional advancement. I would send a message ahead in a district that, “The commission will be in your district on this day, I want you to organise yourselves, take the following demands to the commission,” and it was very impressive. Members of the commission found that people were demonstrating.

John Kakonge had just returned from India and I had appointed him to conduct inquiries about what we were doing in the Wild Commission.

He found that while the grassroots in the whole country supported UNC, UPU got members of parliament elected by district councils.

Abu Mayanja had left us and gone to Mengo to be a minister. He had been invited for a tour of the US and while he was there, Muslims wanted him to be minister at Mengo. We wrote to Mayanja asking him not to accept. Mayanja wrote back and said this is a good thing, he will work from within.

Sometime in 1960, a decision was taken to merge the UNC with the Uganda Peoples’ Union led by Rwetsiba. A decision was made and the Uganda Peoples’ Congress (UPC) was born.

Prior to the conference for the merger, I had been in office with John Kakonge and I began to feel sick. I was taken to Mengo hospital where they found I had been poisoned. So I did not attend the delegates’ conference.

I was elected president of the new party in absentia and George Magezi Secretary General. I do not remember how, but later Kakonge took over from Magezi. Kakonge was a good brain and a committed nationalist.

We began to prepare for elections leading to self government. Buganda had been a headache to the British, they insisted on indirect elections to parliament through the Lukiiko.

When the British refused the demand, Buganda boycotted the elections. When we went into elections, Mengo was effective in organising the boycott since less than 10 percent of the registered voters turned up. Although DP won the election with a majority of seats and formed government, UPC polled more votes and formed a vigorous opposition. Some DP MPs like Senteza Kajubi were elected with 80 votes.

I regret to say that DP failed to make itself an effective government.

They could not articulate their programmes. We had powerful debating power with people like Aggrey Lanyoro, George Magezi, Rwamafa, John Babiiha, Mathias Ngobi, Cuthbert Obwangol, John Kakonge, Felix Onama, and me. I must also say that Cuthbert Obwangol was a difficult man, but a very dedicated nationalist.

I first met him in Nairobi when the British refused my scholarship in 1948. Onama was good when talking about an issue he understood well. Later we were joined by Grace Ibingira.

He was a brilliant and articulate lawyer, but also a royalist who had a private agenda. In Ankole, for example, he thought UPC should win, but Bahima should rule.

DP had failed to be an effective government. I was determined that UPC should lead the next government. But first we had to ensure that there is another election before independence.

Since Buganda had on instructions from Mengo boycotted the 1961 elections, we had a good argument that we cannot go into independence with a minority government elected by default.

I also realised that we had to listen to Mengo demands if we were to ensure a united Uganda into independence. Ben Kiwanuka (I do not blame him, but I blamed him at the time) said, “Look, the Kabaka knows where I am, if he has got any problem he should contact me.” He said this to Uganda Argus Reporter.

So we picked it up and said “A commoner saying Kabaka should go to him.”

Although Ibingira in his books has claimed that he is the one who initiated talks with the Kabaka that is not true at all.

The UPC-KY alliance was a matter of discussion between Muteesa and me only. Even UPC central executive committee did not discuss it. I used to report just the outcome. I had known Sir Edward Muteesa for sometime, having been introduced to him for the first time by a member of Legco called Kisosonkole, now she is dead. She was Muteesa’s mother-in-law and a South African married to chief Kisosonkole. She had been nominated by the governor to the Legco.

I went to see Muteesa in Bamunanika with Abu Mayanja. This one Abu can confirm. That was the first time I met Muteesa and we become friends. Ibingira did not play any role in the UPC-KY alliance that I know of. Later, Muteesa claimed that during the discussions I promised him that if UPC and KY came into government, I would resign my job as prime minister and let him appoint whoever he wished to become prime minister.

How can I, a leader of a national political party make such a promise to a chief of a regional party?

Secondly, the constitution was clear: the leader of the party with a returned majority after an election would automatically become prime minister. Didn’t Muteesa know the constitution? I did not promise Mutesa anything, if anything it was Muteesa who promised me everything.

UPC and Mengo had a common cause: we both wanted DP government out of office. Our dilemma was how we get rid of DP. Mengo wanted to have indirect elections to the Lukiiko, UPC wanted direct elections.

By the time the talks began, KY had not yet been formed. In fact KY was formed as a result of the talks so that Mengo can have an organisation structure to relate to UPC. I told Muteesa that KY is in Buganda, it will win parliamentary elections hands down, don’t shame yourself with indirect elections. Muteesa did not want any vote to go astray.

He wanted Mengo to have all the 21 seats in Buganda. UPC did not even promise to support the proposal for indirect elections. We only promised we would not oppose it during the Lancaster House talks.

At one time during the talks, DP walked out of the conference over this issue. If there is any concession that UPC made to KY, it was that we would not field candidates in Buganda for elections to the Lukiiko.

As a result of the UPC-KY alliance, UPC actually lost a number of seats in Toro, Ankole, Bunyoro and other places. In the April 1962 elections, UPC got 37 seats, DP gets 24, KY had 21. If UPC had not allied with KY it would have won more than 50 percent of the seats in parliament in April 1962.

I had been prime minister for only a few months when Governor Sir Walter Coutts asked me go to State House. He told me the story of the murder of the Turkana by one Lt. Idi Amin.

Sir Walter told me about the inquiries made by the Kings Africa Rifles (KAR) in Nairobi about these killings and the case against Idi Amin. Sir Walter was the commander in chief of the KAR.

The GOC as I understand it found Amin guilty and sent the file to the commander in chief to confirm the sentence of dismissal.

Sir Walter sought my opinion whether he should confirm the sentence or not.

I regret to say to say that part of Uganda’s suffering today can be traced to the opinion I gave Sir Walter. Even now I cannot explain how I came to give that opinion for it does not fall into the various decisions involving loss of human life which I made subsequently or made before the opinion was given.

I advised that Amin be given a severe reprimand.

After I had given my advice, Sir Walter told me that an officer like Lt. Idi Amin was not fit to be in the KAR; the case against him should have at least have had the sentence of imprisonment and that I was wrong to advise that Amin should not be dismissed.

Then Sir Walter added “I warn you this officer could cause you trouble in the future.” I remember that warning word for word except for the word “could” about which I have some doubt whether Sir Walter said would or could.

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I did not sabotage East African Federation
In this series, Obote talks to Andrew Mwenda about how he dealt with the East African Federation after independence and his role in the formation of the Organisation of African Unity.
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I did not sabotage East African Federation
By Andrew Mwenda

In this series, Obote talks to Andrew Mwenda about how he dealt with the East African Federation after independence and his role in the formation of the Organisation of African Unity:-

Trouble at home

Immediately after independence, we faced three major challenges: the East African federation, the organisation of the army, and the lost counties of Buyaga and Bugangaizi. Regarding the East African federation, there have been claims from people like Museveni that I am the one who frustrated it because I wanted to be a big fish in a small pond.

The East African federation could not have been sabotaged by me.

We were talking about two federations at the same time, Buganda federation within Uganda, and the East African federation.

There were problems in Kenya and Uganda which frustrated the drive towards the federation.

Obote and Peter Otai at an OAU summit in Addis Ababa. Behind them are Julius Nyerere, Robert Mugabe, Robert Ouko and Kenneth Kaunda. The OAU was formed in 1963 at a conference of leaders in Addis Ababa (File photo).

LEFT TO RIGHT: Godfrey Binaisa, Cuthbert Obwangor and Ignatius Musaazi. Binaisa was addressing the closing of UPC Buganda region annual conference (File photo).

I do not remember the factors in Kenya.

However, in Uganda, the UPC had come into government in an alliance with KY which was rabidly opposed to the East African federation.

Remember that the first time the British proposed an East African federation, there was a stand off with Mengo and the Kabaka was deported.

I find Museveni’s reasoning myopic because he tends to personalise obstacles to decision making in Uganda under my administration to me personally.

As prime minister of a political party in a coalition government, I could not make decisions without bringing different interests into agreement. In fact even within the UPC itself, there was no consensus about the East African federation. For example, Adoko Nekyon, Felix Onama and Cuthbert Obwangor were opposed to the idea but I now forget on what grounds.

The second challenge was the army. Immediately after independence in 1964, the army mutinied.

We had to call in British troops to cool it down. Secondly, within a few years of independence, Grace Ibingira with Edward Muteesa began working closely with Brig. Shaban Opolot, the army commander, to overthrow the government.

Ibingira had his own brother, Maj. Katabarwa in the army. Ibingira accuses me, in his books, of refusing to promote people like Major Karugaba because they were Catholics.

But I promoted many officers like Brig. Okoya who were Catholics. It was Ibingira in the UPC government of 1962 who had ideas about the army.

Ibingira had started in London to pick up boys from Ankole and send them to military schools including his own brother Maj. Katabarwa. Ibingira picked up about five Ankole boys to go to military colleges.

In 1964, I supported Muteesa to become president.

Mutesa knew very well that the constitution of 1962 mandated the government to hold a referendum in the lost counties for people to decide whether they wanted to remain under Buganda administration, return to Bunyoro or become an independent district.

So Mutesa wanted Buganda to retain the counties.

He began to frequent the counties and settle Baganda ex-service men there with the hope of increasing the numbers of Baganda in order to create an artificial advantage.

To ensure fairness, government declared that only those who were on the voter register would participate in the referendum. In fact Muteesa one time went to one of the counties and shot people, Banyoro, dead.

Although some unscrupulous authors have accused me of promising both Muteesa and the king of Bunyoro to help them win, in a game of double dealing, that is entirely untrue.

I published all my positions, even in the UPC manifesto of the 1962 elections on the issue of the referendum. Muteesa was not a fool. Neither was Omukama a fool to see a referendum and they say Obote said “I will do this for you”.

The referendum was held as per the constitution towards the end of the second year into independence and people voted by overwhelming majority to go back to Bunyoro.

I understand the difficulty such a referendum presented to Sir Edward.

Although he was president of Uganda, he was also Kabaka of Buganda.

Under the constitution, he was supposed to sign the results of the referendum in order to bring them into legal effect.

His dual role as president of Uganda and Kabaka of Buganda made this more difficult and he refused to sign. I do not blame him at all.

PORTRAIT: John Kakonge lost his post of Secretary General of UPC

Obote and his wife Miria at a function in the 1960s. The couple got married in 1963

The constitution also said in the event the president fails to ascent to a bill, the prime minister can. So I signed the results because I knew that was the best way to help Muteesa out of a difficult situation.

How could a Kabaka of Uganda sign away part of his kingdom to go to another kingdom?

Some people have written saying this was the beginning of the break-up of the UPC-KY alliance. The UPC-KY alliance did not break-up. It ended in a marriage because by 1965, 16 out of 21 KY members of parliament had crossed to UPC. Therefore by the time the dissolution was officially announced, there was little left of KY.

Muteesa and Ibingira deliberately encouraged KY members in parliament to cross to UPC in order to increase the number of UPC parliamentarians who would support a plot by Muteesa and Ibingira to get rid of me. So it was not done out of good faith.

I was to comment on the 1964 UPC delegates’ conference which has been a subject of much writing and much misrepresentation.

I have been accused of siding with Ibingira to remove John Kakonge from the office of Secretary General. I was sick. I don’t know if Dr. Gesa is still alive but he will tell you that I did not attend the conference. I opened the conference and I went to bed. William Nadiope who was vice president of the party in collusion with Ibingira decided to have delegations which they financed.

Nadiope took the whole of Busoga, thousands of people, to Gulu. Kakonge did not know that this group had been financed by the CIA.

Kakonge’s group was accused of being communist with me in it, but Kakonge did not know.

They even gave him a CIA girl, Peace Corp volunteer to date so that they could spy on him. When it came to the conference, Nadiope and Ibingira had filled it with their supporters and they used this numerical strength to defeat Kakonge. That is how Ibingira used CIA money to become secretary general of the UPC.

If you read Ibingira’s writings, he admits that he was plotting to remove me also from being party president so that Nadiope could take over the leadership of UPC.

Formation of OAU

In the meantime, we had other foreign affairs issues to deal with other than the East African federation. This was the height of the cold war and the world was divided between east and west. I took a strong Pan African position in favour of a continental union.

In May 1963, I arrived in Addis Ababa where the first conference of leaders of newly independent states was going to take place.

Africa had been divided between two groups: the Monrovia group composed of conservatives, and the Casablanca group composed of the progressive radical.

The Monrovia group was opposed to Nkrumah’s proposal for an immediate creation of a union government for the whole of Africa.

On the first day I arrived, my friend Kwesi Ama, a Ghanaian came to me and said Kwame Nkrumah, the president of Ghana wanted to have lunch with me and that I should ‘expect a bomb shell’. I had met Kwesi Ama in London.

He was my friend and was Nkrumah’s ambassador to London. Nkrumah was the leader of African progressive opinion. We all admired him immensely.

I personally admired Nkrumah immensely. He was an illustrious leader. He shaped African liberation and gave Africa a voice in world affairs. He supported liberation struggles all over Africa. So meeting him was a great honour and opportunity. People like Patrice Lumumba, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, all progressive African leaders looked to Nkrumah.

When we sat down to lunch, Nkrumah told me there was no conference. “You should go back home.” He said the Monrovia group had already sabotaged the conference. I told him that we should not go back home. We should put our case to the conference on the need for African unity.

And I told him that as far as I could see, there was possible success if only we could reorganise what we wanted the conference to do. Nkrumah said we wanted All-African Union Government.

I told him that given the polarisation, we could not achieve that.

Although we could present our case for immediate African political union, we had to be careful because we could not get the majority needed to see it through.

So we had to argue our case as a bargaining tool to get the conference to form an organisation that would work towards the creation of a continental government.

I also told Nkrumah that while a continental union was a great idea, we could not wish it. We had to put in place an organisation to work towards it.

During the conference, Nkrumah made a great speech on the need for a union government for Africa.

He called for a constitution for an African continent government, a common market, an African currency, an African monetary zone, an African central bank and an inter continental communication system. I stood up in the conference called for the creation of a strong Pan African executive and an African parliament to which all African governments must be prepared to surrender their sovereignty.

This position was supported by Madibo Keita, president of Mali; Sekou Toure, president of Guinea; and the president of Egypt, Gamer Abdel Nasser. All these were my friends.

My call for immediate unity was tactics. We used the Nkrumah stand to bring others opposed to African co-operation to agree that a compromise meant building an organisation to promote the ideals of unity.

Later in the conference, I suggested that since African unity cannot be achieved overnight, let us put in place an organisation to work towards the realisation of that goal.

This was a compromise position between ‘unity now’ and the extreme position by people like President Tsiranana of Malagasy Republic (now Madagascar), Balewa and others against African co-operation.

Then Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria took to the floor with a moving call for African liberation. He pledged 10,000 Algerian volunteers to free African nations still under colonial oppression and white minority rule.

“A Charter will be of no value to us,” he said, “and speeches will be used against us if there is not first created a blood bank for those fighting for independence.”

I stood up and offered Uganda as a training ground for African troops to be used to liberate African countries from colonial rule and white minority rule.

Then Sekou Toure suggested that we fix a date after which “if colonialism were not ended, African states would expel the colonial powers.”

Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal and Nyerere stood up and made strong recommendations on building capacity to liberate the whole of Africa.

Finally we agreed to the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) whose mandate it was to end colonial rule and work towards unity.

Marriage to Miria

At the end of the conference, Nkrumah was impressed by my contribution and he cancelled his flight back to Ghana and instead came with me to Kampala where he planted a tree.

That same year I married Miria and we spent our honeymoon in Ghana with Nkrumah. In 1965, I together with Nkrumah and Nyerere took a strong stand against Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Southern Rhodesia now Zimbabwe.

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The birth of a republic
In this series, Obote talks to Andrew Mwenda about the 1966 crisis
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The birth of a republic
By Andrew Mwenda

In this series, Obote talks to Andrew Mwenda about the 1966 crisis

Let us come to the gold allegations motion introduced by Daudi Ochieng who was a KY member of parliament and also a personal friend of Muteesa.

Ochieng had introduced that same motion in October 1965 and the UPC parliamentary group and the cabinet had refused to support it because it had no substance.

In early 1966, he resubmitted the same motion. It so happened that I had organised to go to West Nile on tour. Again the UPC parliamentary group discussed it and rejected it. I offered to cancel my going to West Nile and be present in the House to discuss the motion but my colleagues said I should go.

Dr Obote says Sir Edward Muteesa and Grace Ibingira tried to use the army to change the government in 1966.

Now, up to that time, any resolution by the parliamentary group was never changed by cabinet, never! You don’t have backbenchers saying one thing and the front bench saying another thing.

I left for West Nile the next day, January 31, 1966. Ibingira and group waited for another cabinet meeting on February 4 where they agreed to support the motion.

That same day they contacted Ochieng to present it again in my absence.

Ochieng accused me, Onama and Nekyon of looting gold and ivory from the Congo with Amin. He also accused Nabudere of organising an army to overthrow the government of Uganda, in collusion with Idi Amin and me.

The motion was presented in parliament, debated and passed on February 4. However, the resolution did not censure me as prime minister as some people have claimed.

It only called for the suspension of Idi Amin and recommended the appointment of a commission of inquiry by the prime minister into the allegations raised by Ochieng.

Most UPC parliamentarians were confused by the actions of the front bench, led by Ibingira, and abstained.

Kakonge took a firm stand and in a moving speech opposed the motion and vetoed it. All this was illegitimate political action by Ibingira and group, and I would have handled it politically if something else had not happened.

On February 5, Onama who was Minister of Defence tried to suspend Amin as directed by parliament but found the action against the law and instead sent Amin on a short leave. While still in West Nile, Muteesa and Ibingira realised that parliament had not censured me.

So they could not constitutionally use the resolution to remove me from office. They decided now to use the army to change the government.

Working closely with the army commander, Brig. Shaban Opolot, the plotters sent Maj. Katabarwa, Ibingira’s brother to where I was in West Nile with orders to bring me back to Kampala “dead or alive.”

Unfortunately for the plot, it was leaked to me and when they reached me on February 6, they were disarmed and asked to deliver the message. They said Opolot wanted me in Kampala urgently.

I returned to Kampala on February 12 and Opolot claimed that Amin, who was his deputy, had planned to kill him. Amin also accused Opolot of planning to kill him. There had been a number of plots involving Muteesa and Ibingira on the one hand and Opolot on the other.

I summoned Opolot and the Inspector General of Police, Erinayo Oryema and asked them what was happening. Oryema said he was summoned by Kabaka Muteesa, the president and told that something was going to happen. When Oryema asked Muteesa what was going to happen, the president replied, “You go and find out.”

As Oryema left, I got a report that Moroto barracks was emptied. The army had left driving to Jinja. So I sent a word to Jinja. When they arrived in Jinja they were arrested. And they said they were going to Ankole to do a training exercise.

ARRESTED: Grace Ibingira

ACCUSED: Felix Onama

I called Opolot who said he did not know anything about it. However, I knew that Opolot was the one who had ordered this army movement.

On February 9th, Muteesa called the British High Commissioner and asked for massive military assistance including soldiers, arms and ammunitions through a certain company.

When I asked Muteesa why he had made such orders, he said it was a precaution against trouble. I asked him, “Trouble from whom and against whom?” He just waved me to silence.

Although he was president, head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces, Muteesa did not have powers to order for arms. All these factors convinced me that Ibingira, Muteesa and group were not relying on constitutional methods in their political struggle against me.

On February 14th, I called a cabinet meeting and asked all those ministers who believed Ochieng’s allegations against me to resign from cabinet and no one did. I proposed to cabinet that a judicial commission of inquiry be appointed to investigate the allegations and cabinet unanimously adopted the proposal.

Because Ibingira and Muteesa were using the army, I decided to take decisive action.

On February 22 1966, I called another cabinet meeting, mainly with a view to get the coup plotters and arrest them since the best place to get all of them at once was at a cabinet meeting.

During the cabinet meeting, police (not the army) entered and arrested Ibingira and co-conspirators – George Magezi, Balaki Kirya, Mathias Ngobi and Dr Emmanuel Lumu.

On February 27, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Basil Bataringaya, appointed a judicial commission of inquiry consisting of Sir Clement de Lestang from the East African Court of Appeal, Justice Augustine Said from the High Court of Tanzania and Justice Henry Miller from the High Court of Kenya. Wako Wambuzi was secretary to the commission.

This was a truly independent commission since all the commissioners came from outside of Uganda. I personally testified to the commission as did Amin, Onama, Nekyon, Nabudere and all others.

The commission found Ochieng’s allegations baseless. There was the problem now of Muteesa and his involvement in the coup plot. I sought the advice of my Attorney General, Godfrey Binaisa QC. Binaisa was among the best legal brains in the country and I trusted his professional advice.

He told me that given what Muteesa had done, asking for military assistance, I had to suspend him from being president of Uganda.

Binaisa also told me that the only way I could suspend Muteesa was to suspend the constitution itself.

I had worked hard to hammer out the major compromises that made the 1962 constitution. I told Binaisa, “That constitution was my very child. I cannot become its killer.

“You do not have to kill it,” Binaisa advised, “it is already dead, as dead as a door nail, killed by Muteesa when he asked for arms from the British government unconstitutionally. All you have to do right now is to burry your dead child as decently as possible.”

There was no constitutional way out, so on February 24, 1966 I called the press and suspended the constitution and hence the posts of president and vice president.

On April 15, 1966, I introduced the 1966 constitution in parliament whose only difference from the 1962 constitution was to merge the office of the prime minister with that of the president. There were 55 votes for it and only four votes against.

Events were moving fast at this time because six of the 21 members of KY in parliament refused to swear allegiance to the new constitution.

On May 20, the Lukiiko met and passed a resolution saying that, “This Lukiiko resolves not to recognise the government of Uganda whose headquarters must be moved away from Buganda soil.”

The motion was passed after intimidating everybody else at Mengo who wanted to oppose it by using the mob to lynch them. I retained calm amidst this extreme provocation from sections of Mengo.

On May 23, we arrested three chiefs – Lutaaya, Matovu and Sebanakita and detained them for organising rebellion against the state.

There were reports of unrest in some parts of Buganda. I think some police stations had been attacked by thugs while others had thrown logs of trees to block roads in Makindye.

Later in the day, I was having lunch with Muwonge of Bugerere, Odaka’s father-in-law Kavuma and Prince Badru Kakungulu, the uncle of the Kabaka discussing the situation.

We heard gunshots. Oryema came and said that Amin was shooting at the Lubiri. I ordered for Amin who was called. He came and I talked to him alone.

He told me there were reports that there were a lot of arms inside the Lubiri and when I sent an army contingent to verify the reports, they were shot at and they responded. I ordered him to stop immediately, but by this time Muteesa had fled.

For the next nine months, we worked within cabinet on proposals for a new constitution.

In early 1967, these proposals were published for the public to make comments on them. The government revised the proposals by incorporating some of the reactions from the public.

Parliament then constituted itself into a constituent assembly and freely discussed the new constitution as the records of parliament attest.

The new constitution came into effect in September and abolished federalism, monarchies and made Uganda a republic.

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I left Amin to pull the trigger

Dr Obote talks about the attempted assasination on him and the coup that took place in 1971 and how he fought Amin.
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I left Amin to pull the trigger
By Andrew Mwenda

Investigations in both the attempted assassination on me and the murder of Okoya were leading to Idi Amin by the time I left the country for Singapore in January 1971

During the 1969 UPC delegates’ conference, we invited delegations from other countries like Zambia, Tanzania, Congo and other countries.

President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia was there and so were Presidents Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Jomo Kenyatta and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. Some of them were my friends, very close friends like Kaunda and Nyerere.

On the last day of the conference I escorted the presidents back to Entebbe to take their flights to their respective countries and I returned to the conference to find that a resolution had been passed declaring Uganda as a one party state.

At the conclusion of the conference I rejected the resolution because it was not part of the party programme. The party was solidly behind multipartyism.

After the closure of the conference, I walked out and I saw somebody aiming a gun at me. After that I do not know what happened because I was shot at: I broke my tongue, broke my teeth, then I was taken to Mulago hospital.

BETRAYED: Obote (centre) walks with his wife Miria and Amin at a dance in Lugogo. Amin took over the country when Obote left for Singapore in 1971.

At Mulago Hospital as I was walking in I met Rwetsiba coming out of the building, I did not greet him. I had no teeth, I had no mouth; I could not talk, but he did not know.

I saw him clearly, he saw me clearly. Rwetsiba went to Uganda Club. He met some people who told him there had been an accident in Lugogo and I had been shot.

He said “No, the president is at Mulago I met him there. He is okay and he is walking and it seems he had gone to see somebody there in the hospital.”

It caused a hell of trouble because people wanted to lynch him.

At Mulago a nurse nearly killed me! When I was waiting at Mulago, my sister-in-law Mey, came in my room. There was another nurse in the room. I know her but I won’t mention her name.

This nurse prepared an injection for me. Mey was looking at it.

When this nurse tried to give me the injection, Mey jumped up from her chair, got hold of the needle and they fell down both of them, breaking the needle.

My wife Miria was still at home in Kololo. I was operated on and now I still have a tongue to cause people like Museveni trouble. I was in the hospital for about three weeks.

While still in the hospital, my vice president, John Babiha, who was an excellent debater and the best Minister for Animal Husbandry ever in Uganda took charge of the country.

He declared a state of emergency all over the country, because since 1966 it had only been obtaining in Buganda. The government also arrested many people like Dan Nabudere and Benedicto Kiwanuka.

All those were done the very night of the (attempted) assassination by cabinet, under Babiha. I was in hospital, virtually not operating at all.

The state of emergency in Uganda was declared to be reviewed every three months. It was just natural to leave it for three months when parliament could review it.

This was the time when we had declared a move to the left, and some people wanted to force me to stop the move to the left. The attempted assassination did not intimidate me.

I am a politician. I do things I believe in. So I cannot just change course because someone tried to assassinate me. After the attempted assassination, Idi Amin who was army commander went missing.

He did not come to the hospital to see me. He did not attend subsequent defence council meetings. Later, there was a meeting of the defence council where I heard that his deputy, Brig. Okoya, accused him of cowardice and desertion.

A few weeks later, Okoya was killed. Investigations in both the attempted assassination on me and the murder of Okoya were leading to Idi Amin by the time I left the country for Singapore in January 1971.

In 1970, I reorganised the army, just an ordinary reorganisation, which took two years to implement, even to announce.

This action was not aimed at Idi Amin. In my absence when I was at Entebbe Airport seeing off visiting presidents, Amin apparently made a very moving speech at the UPC conference.

I was told about that and later I heard the recordings. It was very moving. It was in support of UPC. But after the attempted assassination, Amin had disappeared! He was not to be found anywhere.

When I retuned to office from Mulago, Amin came to my office and said the normal things: “Oh, thank you Mr President, glad to see you.” I began to suspect that Amin was up to something. Why did he disappear the night of the attempted assassination?

Before I left for Singapore, I called Amin and the minister of Defence Felix Onama to my office. The Auditor General had issued a report to the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, where he said Shs2.6m in the defence budget had not been accounted for.

So, I told Amin and Onama that I led a clean government; the AG had found money missing from the Defence ministry. I told them to find the money by the time I return from Singapore and restore the account.

HELPING HAND: Obote usually turned to Presidents Nyerere and Kaunda for help. During the 1971 coup, Nyerere offered him asylum and advice on consolidating manpower (File photo).

David Martin, in his book General Amin, said I loaded the gun, put it on my head and left Amin to pull the trigger, which I suppose is correct.

The Israelis were also involved in the coup of 1971. When Gen. Nimery came to power in Sudan in 1969, relations between Uganda and Sudan improved.

The OAU had pronounced a new policy on mercenaries not being tolerated in Africa.

The Israelis were using mercenaries to destabilise Sudan, which they considered the soft under belly of the Arab world.

So the Israelis were financing the Anyanya rebellion in southern Sudan in order to tie Sudanese troops down in the south so that Sudan could not play a major role in the Arab-Israel conflict.

In 1970, we arrested an Israeli mercenary, Steiner, and we deported him to Sudan where he was due to testify in court, a factor that would have exposed Amin’s involvement.

Another factor leading to the coup was the British. I did not want to go to Singapore. At that time there was what was called Mulungushi Club composed of Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda and we used to coordinate our policies, particularly foreign policies very closely.

There was a conference in Singapore of the Commonwealth countries. Since I did not want to go to Singapore, I had to go and tell my colleagues why. I didn’t want to go to Singapore because one, there was going to be elections in Uganda around April; two, I had to complete presentation or writing of the five year development plan. The second five-year development plan had been completed in 1970. 1971 was the introduction of the third five-year development plan.

I went and reported these things to my colleagues. However, during this time, the Labour Party under my friend Harold Wilson had lost power to the Conservatives under Edward Heath.

Heath immediately announced that Britain was going to resume arms sales to South Africa, which arms would be used to fight the ANC who were fighting against apartheid.

I did research on the nature of arms sales by Britain to South Africa and its likely implications on the liberation struggles in the whole of southern Africa.

I presented the research to my colleagues who included presidents Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and the leader of the ANC, Oliver Tambo.

Having presented to them the research we had made on the British arms to be sold to South Africa, they understood my difficulties and requested that since the research could only be presented by me at the Commonwealth conference, I should go to Singapore and present the research.

They also argued persuasively for the need for a united front of progressive African leaders in Singapore. I reluctantly and in the interest of African liberation decided to go to Singapore. I left the country on January 11, 1971.

In Singapore, I presented my case in a moving speech. Two or three days later, Edward Heath, the British Prime minister made a statement saying: “Those who are condemning the British policy to sell arms to South Africa, some of them will not go back to their countries,” and I understood it to refer to me. I could see no country that presented a stronger case than I did about sale of arms to South Africa.

Secondly, events were unfolding in Uganda. First of all Chris Ntende who was permanent secretary in the Ministry of Internal affairs arrived suddenly in Singapore. His discussions with me could not give me exactly what was happening.

So I rang Babiha, and rang Basil Bataringaya, the Minister of Internal Affairs. They said there was an attempted coup but they had incapacitated it. I asked what specific action they had taken.

They said Amin had planned to assassinate me upon arrival at the airport, but they had taken care of that. Secondly they said they had alerted loyal army officers. I told them that was very little, too late. “Oh dear, Oh dear,” I told them on phone, “it’s already too late, it’s already too late!” and two hours later, Amin’s tanks surrounded parliamentary building and began to shell it.

Later, Bataringaya rang me from Kampala and told me that the coup had succeeded. Amin had said the army has asked him to take over government. I called my delegation to my room and briefed them about the situation back home.

I said, “Loyalty to me personally ends here. When we are free either in Bombay or Kenya, you will decide for yourselves what to do, go back to Uganda or go to exile with me.”

I had decided to go back and handle the situation myself. So I flew to Bombay. From Bombay we contacted President Nyerere who was on a state visit to New Delhi. I was disgusted! It was a terrible shame! I was also worried about my family.

In New Delhi, President Nyerere asked that I go and meet him there. So we flew to New Delhi. In New Delhi he told me: “You go to East Africa, from Nairobi go to Dar-es-Salaam, I will find you there.’
I got back to Bombay and flew back to Nairobi.

In Nairobi, we were taken to hotels, I was given one hotel and my delegation was given another hotel. In my hotel, I divided my people into two groups.

One group close to me, I directed them to ring various numbers in Kampala. Ring so and so, ring so and so, ask what is the situation of the coup, can it be altered?

The result I got was that there were many reliable army officers and the coup could be altered.

I started sending loyal staff to town to look for vehicles. I asked them to give me money so that we could pay for the vehicles.

We had mobilised six vehicles to drive to Tororo when all of a sudden, Kenya authorities stopped anybody from leaving my hotel.

The key was to return to Eastern Uganda where we were assured that we could get into the barracks and we made plans to get into the barracks.

But Kenya stopped us flat. Nobody left the hotel, our telephones were cut off. I decided to go to Tanzania quietly.

In Tanzania, I was given a state welcome. Prime Minister Rashid Kawawa received us and took me to state house. A few days later President Nyerere returned and told me that what we lacked was manpower.

If we could get manpower, he could train any number. I assured him that I could raise manpower. Then I flew to Nairobi to inform President Kenyatta about the circumstances of the coup, then I flew to Addis Ababa to talk to Emperor Haile Selassie. I wanted their support to reverse the coup.

Kenyatta just said he understood but that I should be careful about a war. Emperor Selassie also said the same thing. He said we should avoid a war. However, Siad Barre, the president of Somalia, even without consulting me, sent a delegation to Nyerere that the coup should not be let to consolidate.

He said he was ready to send troops to Tanzania from where they could launch an attack on Uganda. I liked it very much and Nyerere agreed but somehow Somali troops never arrived in Tanzania.

Then in March I was woken up at night and told that a delegation from Khartoum wanted to meet me. I met the delegation and they told me that they had instructions from President Nimery that I should go to Khartoum.

I packed up and we flew that same night to Khartoum. I remained in Khartoum for more than a year. I met President Nimery who was with his advisers.

I presented my case that I wanted to use southern Sudan to enter northern Uganda, contact UPC members, raise an army send them in Southern Sudan and attack Uganda.

They discussed it, and then said it was not possible because southern Sudan and northern Uganda areas were occupied by Anyanya under Joseph Lagu. When they said that one, I said I wanted to meet the president alone.

It was agreed. So we adjourned, afterwards I was allowed to meet the president, I told him my case.
I said if one area is under Anyanya there was a possibility of raising an army through Koboko market which is in Southern Sudan but is attended by Uganda, Sudan and Zaire. A very big market!

So I said I could go there with his staff, enter the Koboko market, meet Ugandans there and see whether we could use the facility as a way to get into northern Uganda, Arua in particular.

This was agreed. So we made preparations to go, and I flew with seven people to Koboko market.

When we were there we nearly caused security problems. When Ugandans saw me, they were celebrating in the market on the Sudanese side of the border.

I would send people to call them out. So I reported to the Sudanese and they found that it was possible to raise an army through Koboko market, send people through Koboko and bring people through Koboko, which I did and I raised 900 people.

From West Nile, Acholi (Kitgum and Gulu), Lango, Teso, Bukedi, Bugisu, Bunyoro.

In the next series, Obote talks about fighting Amin in the coup in 1971.
Follow the rest of Dr Obote's story in The Uganda Monitor.

Comment below and/or discuss this article at: Club Afrika Forums

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Lessons For African Governments

2005-01-28T01:59:00.000-05:00

January 22, 2005

OPINION

LESSONS THAT AFRICAN GOVERNMENTS HAVE TO LEARN FROM AMERICA WHEN IT COMES TO PUBLIC APPOINTMENTS

Kenyans who watched CNN's Inside Africa program last Sunday evening must have been a happy lot. I was happy too because a group of young Kenyans did us proud. Inside Africa cameras caught them articulating their views on HIV and Aids to none other than Collin Powell, the outgoing Secretary of State of the United States of America. Listening to their eloquence through my satellite radio, I was convinced that in the youth of this country, there is potential for world-class leadership if only they were given a real chance to realize their capabilities. And Powell seemed to be thoroughly impressed by them.

Which brings me to my next point. In the dying days of Powell's role as America's international diplomat, he has been a frequent visitor to Nairobi, not because terrorists have bombed us. He has seized every opportunity to be here whenever there was a major break through in the peace negotiations among warring parties in the DRC, Sudan and Somalia.

Now that his time is up at the White House, another African- American in the name of Dr. Condoleezza Rice is poised to replace him. And had it not been for the in-depth probing and tough talking of the democratic senators at her confirmation hearing, she would have assumed office soon after George Bush's inauguration.

Whether Dame Condoleezza Rice will be more useful and more sympathetic to the land of her ancestors is not the subject of this discussion. If anything, she has been described as being too close to George Bush for comfort and Europeanist in training and ideology.

Dr. Condoleezza Rice's confirmation hearing came a few weeks after that of one Gonzales who was also nominated by Bush for the office of Attorney General. The two hearings, if one watched them live as I did, had one thing in common. The senators sitting around the table, Democrats and Republicans projected a sense of purpose and decorum. They were civil and respectful but tough. They asked sensible questions, turned the professional and career records of the candidates upside down, all in an attempt to confirm that these candidates were suitable for the positions they were vying for.

For Gonzales the sticky point was that as legal advisor to President George Bush, he had advised that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to Afghanistan and Iraqi detainees because terrorists were not considered prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. In the opinion of some Senators, this could have been the reason there were tortures and mistreatment of detainees in Iraqi prisons and other detention camps by American soldiers. And there was evidence that the man was caught with his pants down for having given the President wrong advice.

As for Condoleezza Rice, her problem arose as a result of being George Bush's National Security Advisor at a time when Americans invaded Iraq in pursuit of Weapons of Mass Destruction when in fact there were no such weapons. But tough Condi was not about to be put down. She eloquently told the Senate Hearing Committee that invading Iraq had more reasons going for it other than Weapons of Mass Destruction. In her opinion, Saddam was a dangerous tyrant who had used weapons of mass destruction on his fellow citizens, had invaded Kuwait, launched scud missiles against Israel and had strong ambitions to revive his nuclear programs after the Gulf War had destroyed his facilities and installations.

Watching Condoleezza Rice's performance at her confirmation hearing, one was left with the feeling that she was a perfect combination of brain and beauty, a basic prerequisite in American politics. Equally important, she displayed a vast understanding of international issues and was pretty focused on international democratization and liberty for all around the globe.

She let it be known that it was the duty of Americans to make it possible for every individual anywhere in the world to "do business in the city square," an American way of saying that human beings have a right to transact business anywhere freely without intimidation and harassment within the law.

As much as she would focus her attention in the fight against terrorism globally, she was determined to find a lasting solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict through dialogue rather than monologue with world leaders.

Equally important for her would be closer working with the United Nations agencies, NATO and other important international institutions. She made it be known that she would drive an American international policy with substance and her closeness to Bush would most likely make her more effective on the international arena. It was not lost on observers that she had very little to say on Africa beyond remembering that the US was dealing with terrorist situations in Kenya and Somalia.

Having listened to Dr. Rice ahead of the Bush inauguration, one was left with this eerie feeling that her utterances at her confirmation hearings were too similar to George Bush's speech to be mere coincidence! Did Bush and Rice discuss their foreign policy and write the President's speech together?

Having said that, what lesson do we learn from this process for our governments in Africa? The most obvious lesson to learn from this system is the transparency that accompanies public appointments. What the American system is telling us is that there is nothing really wrong with appointing relatives and friends to critical public offices. Just appoint them if they are experienced, qualified and can pass the litmus test of the Senate Confirmation Hearings.

There is one fundamental thing that these hearings do to people who offer themselves for appointments. It lays their lives bare. As the Senate Committee prepares for these hearings, the media are given the leeway to dig up every possible dirt in your life from childhood to the present, whether you were abused as a child, grew up in a broken family, smoked marijuana at one point, your academic records, which schools and universities you attended, your academic performance, your marital status, whether you are a serial lover, adulterous or have been alcoholic at one point. Other issues that may come up are whether you served in the military or dodged drafting when you should have served in the armed forces. Every thing is laid bare including whether you have been caught speeding or driving under the influence of alcohol.

In other words, this process is not for weak at heart or the faint-hearted. A few nominees have been known to bolt out at the last minute on realizing that their dark past would come to light with devastating consequences for their families.

In a nutshell, what the Americans are saying is that they don't have to have angels appointed to critical public offices that have a lot of responsibility and massive impact on the lives of Americans. But, one thing is for sure, such positions are not meant for obvious and known crooks, drug dealers, pirates, scoundrels, thieves and moral decadents. A measure of decency is a requirement. Secondly, other than decency, merit is mandatory.

Yes, our leaders in Africa must stop the habit of appointing relatives and friends in positions of responsibility without probe and clearance from our respected public institutions. These people must convince our societies that they deserve such high positions, even if they are relatives and friends of the man in power.

The only dilemma for Africa is that we in most cases elect scoundrels and known thieves in to political leadership in the first place. Once we have done that we have in a way confirmed to them that their character is just fine with us. The next thing we know is that our public service systems are bloated with birds of a kind

Can the African electorate stop bad leadership in its tracks before it is too late?

Jerry Okungu
Director
ACEMEPA - The African Center for Media and Political Analysis
Nairobi, Kenya

Contact Jerry Okungu
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Return to Multi-Party Politics in Uganda

2005-01-28T01:48:00.000-05:00

January 21, 2005

OPINION

THE CONSEQUENCES OF A RETURN TO MULTI-PARTY POLITICS IN UGANDA

In late last year when I visited Uganda on a similar mission, I wrote an article, which was published in the local dailies in Kenya and Uganda. In that article I argued against the revival of federalism in Uganda as was advocated by the current crop of Baganda political leadership. That article earned me the wrath of a section of Ugandans in the Diaspora, more so those Ugandans who were not happy with NRM's rule in the last two decades.

At the risk of facing a similar hostility, I feel it is my duty to discuss the salient issues facing Uganda today as the country prepares for the first multiparty elections in 20 years.

The challenges that will confront them in 2006 will more or less be the same challenges that neighboring Tanzanians and Kenyans faced in 1900 and 1992 respectively.

One other reason that compels me to write this article is the interest that I, as an East Africa have in a peaceful transition in Uganda politics. As citizens of this region, we are going through a meaningful and methodical process of integrating out three countries by the year 2013.

For us to succeed, our political systems have to be harmonized. The African Socialism of Nyerere, Obotte's Common Man's Charter and Kenyatta's Capitalism ruined our Community in the 1970s. We don't want to go that route again with discordant political systems yet pretend to be working towards regional political and economic integration. This is why Uganda's 2006 multi party elections must succeed for all of us in the region.

Under the National Resistance Movement, Ugandans have known relative peace and reconstruction after the destructive and violent period when Idi Amin and Milton Obotte ruled the country between 1971 and 1985. The only reason they have known relative peace despite the unending rebellion in the North is because the rest of Uganda was devoid of party politics. Like in Kenya between 1969 and 1992 or in Tanzania between 1967 and 1990, Uganda enjoyed the luxury of a one-party political monopoly.

In the Kenyatta and Moi eras, soon after absorbing the only opposition party KADU in 1964 and proscribing rebellious Jaramogi Oginga Odinga's Kenya Peoples Union in 1969, the ruling party Kanu held sway over the land. This meant that any person who wanted to participate in active politics whether at the local or national level had the only recourse, to join the ruling party Kanu. Because of this scenario there were no parties formed along ethnic lines like we have in Kenya today

In Tanzania, after the Tanganyika African National Union merged with Afro Shirazi Party of Zanzibar to form Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) that effectively established the political union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar to be later known as Tanzania under Julius Nyerere, the CCM's grip on power was unshakable.

Nyerere went beyond the call of duty as the founding father of the nation. He built a strong foundation for a united nation and gave a multiplicity of tribes in Tanzania one language that they speak to this day. In East Africa today, Tanzania is the only country where tribalism is scorned. In Kenya and Uganda ethnicity is a cherished political enclave, revered as a fertile breeding ground for future tribal chiefs masquerading as national leaders.

In 1991, at the height of the clamor for political pluralism, Kenya's former president warned that although we were agitating for multi-partism, the same multi-partism would usher in tribal politics of unmanageable proportions. He maintained that parties would be formed along tribal lines that would dangerously undermine the unity and peace that Kenyans had known for three decades.

We didn't believe him then. And even if we did, we didn't care one bit because we were simply tired of Moi, Kanu and their excesses in power. Today, all major parties in Kenya; Democratic Party, Ford Kenya, Ford Asili, National Party of Kenya, Liberal Democratic Party and even Kanu are seen and touted as tribal political parties.

As Ugandans gear up for the first meaningful multi-party general elections next year, they must be prepared to follow the path that Kenya followed if the political events in their country is anything to go by. Like Kenyans, they are a fractured nation to be polite.

In the words of one Conservative Party member in my workshop in Kampala recently, he had the courage to tell me to my face that Uganda was not a nation but a country. This gentleman had the honesty to acknowledge that Uganda was as divided as ever along tribal lines and that parties being formed now for next years' elections would fall in the same pattern. And to vindicate him, my Ugandan colleague and fellow facilitator at the same workshop challenged their party's national outlook when 100% of the men and women sitting in front of us were all from the same ethnic community.

Which takes me my next point.

As we struggle to build institutions of democracy and good governance in our three different states in the region, what do we do with our ethnic allegiances in Kenya and Uganda? Do we continue to pretend that we are tribe-less when in fact we live and breathe our ethnicity day in day out? Why don't we come to terms with our condition and accept the inevitable that we are a multiplicity of cultures and are in reality nation-states within a state?

If we did this we would be more honest with our selves and consciously build on the ideology of unity in diversity that our ethnic condition has availed to us.

Let us face it; we are no French, Italian, German or the English who have some semblance of homogeneity through a common language and culture. The closest we have of the French and the Italians in our region are our socially advanced brothers next door in Tanzania who set out to build a united state at the dawn of independence and succeeded.

The concept of unity in diversity has worked for and served the United States of America and Canada very well. In these two great nations, one is never ashamed of her or his ethnic origin. They are free to say they are African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Irish-Americans and Americans of Hungarian or German origins. This honest statement of fact has never let them down. Recent examples can be given of Arnold schwarzenegger, a Hungarian who migrated to the United States at the age of 15 but now Governor of California, the largest and most affluent state in the United States. Recently, Barrack Obama, an American of Kenyan origin was elected one of the fewest Black Senators to the US Senate after exploiting his Kenyan humble origin to its fullest. He wanted to prove to the Americans that America was really a land of opportunities for every race on earth.

Yes, Ugandans will go to the polls next year in a liberalized political environment under a very interesting scenario. It is so typical of Kenya that it doesn't even look funny.

If the elections are held in June 2006 as proposed, then the parties being formed and registered now have about 18 months to set up their structures, organize election machinery and raise funds. Like in Kenya in 1991, most of the political parties, save for the old Uganda Peoples' Congress, Forum for Democratic Change and the ruling National Resistance Movement have no offices to operate from.

In reality therefore, most parties being formed in Uganda will find a very hostile and bumpy playing ground where the moneyed and well-structured bigger parties will have a field day.

But even with the Forum for Democratic Change and the Uganda Peoples Congress, the real test will be how to match the endless resources and machinery of the incumbent.

The plot may thicken if President Museveni, commonly referred to as M7, decides to run for the third term despite the requirements of the present constitution. If he does run as a sitting President, he will disorganize and maul the rest of the parties one by one because he has the most visible brand image, a formidable grassroots network, the means and the where-with-all to do it.

Some of us will remember how in 1992 and 1997, Moi won two consecutive elections as a sitting president. And how did he do it? He legally used state resources to campaign for his party because he combined his campaign trips to the nation's provinces with his state duties as head of state and nobody could legally fault him for that. More importantly, he held the instruments of power and authority, therefore, wherever he went, he was the biggest news of the day.

A divided and fractured opposition, led by Jaramogi Odinga, Kenneth Matiba and Mwai Kibaki, no matter how popular, had no chance in a million as individual parties to defeat Kanu. It took ten years of multi-partism for Kanu to lose its grip on power, and only after the opposition came to its senses by accident, and united their numerical strength against Kanu.

As Ugandans go to the polls next year, is there a chance they will learn a lesson or two from their neighbors who have gone through the same process in the last fifteen years?

They have Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia to learn from. These are the neighbors that have managed the transition from a one party system to multi political pluralism through the ballot.

Jerry Okungu
Director
ACEMEPA - The African Center for Media and Political Analysis
Nairobi, Kenya

Contact Jerry Okungu
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A Pastoral Letter To The Kenya Community Living Abroad

2005-01-28T01:13:00.000-05:00

January 24, 2005

OPINION

A PASTORAL LETTER TO THE KENYA COMMUNITY LIVING ABROAD

Dear Kenya Community Abroad,

In late December last year, I wrote an article in the Standard Newspaper arguing that you had no business lecturing us what to do with our condition back home because you were not best placed to tell us what to do with our politics, our poverty and even our corruption.

I am most pleased that most of you read the article, circulated it, responded to it, sometimes emotionally and negatively, other times logically and positively. Whichever way you read and understood the article, I sincerely thank you all for having found time to contribute to the debate.

One other thing though, the article did exactly what it was intended to do: provoke discussion on this issue of Kenyans living abroad who have the ability to repatriate billions of US Dollars back home every year.

Of the 987 mails I received directly, I have selected to respond to those worth responding to. Some of these well-argued articles also found their way into the local dailies back home. They were responses from Mr. Al Kags, an official of Kenya Community Abroad, my long time friend John Mulla from Washington DC, Michael Mundia Kamau, Liz Nganga and Mr. Onyango Obbo of the Nation Media Group.

As your letters came pouring in, via almost every known discussion forum on the Internet, I was on holiday in North America even though a few of you thought I was in Nairobi.

Having read all your letters and articles, and having had one on one discussions with many of you in North America and Europe, I have realized, sadly but not surprisingly that the culture of intolerance that we forever accused the Kanu regime of, had been domesticated in our way of life as Kenyans, irrespective of where we live, our level of education not withstanding.

When I read some of the insults, others extremely personal, I remembered the 1980s when Moi introduced in the Kenyan politics what was called the Kanu Disciplinary Committee, headed by the late Okiki Amayo. What that committee did to voices of reason and dissent within Kanu left a permanent scar on the individuals targeted. Some political careers and businesses were ruined forever.

I also recalled in those heady days of political repression when free speech as a basic human right was alien to Kenya. Those were the days one Hon Kuria Kanyingi and Hon Mwenje led an onslaught on the late Josephat Karanja, then Vice President of Kenya on the basis of True-lies manufactured at the Kanu headquarters, simply because some one did not like Karanja as Vice President.

After fighting for so many years to regain our freedom of speech, why are we Kenyans so prone to remind ourselves of the dark days that we would like to forget? Why are we so intolerant of divergent views? Why do we yearn for praises and accolades that sometimes we don't deserve?

For starters, I make no apologies for every word I used in my article. If anything, the Standard Newspaper changed the headline and cut out a lot of detail. Never the less, the main thrust of the article and spirit remained intact.

Soon after the attacks came pouring in from self-styled experts on the Kenyan situation, I went to the Kenya Community website and was amused to find that the well publicized home coming AGM in Nairobi had been postponed due to logistical reasons. One of the glaring reasons you gave for the postponement was that arrangements at home had dragged on with confirmation from Kenyan authorities taking too long to materialize. Deep down in the cancellation note was buried a reference to some donor that had failed to honor the pledge to sponsor that homecoming!

I thought that was rather strange for two reasons: one, because the meeting, according to press reports, had taken place at Safari Park Hotel and, secondly, why would Kenyans living abroad, who send so much money home, look for a sponsor to foot the bill for their coming home?

In my categorization of Kenyans living abroad, I must confess I was not exhaustive. There are other groups that I did not talk about and I received so many calls from individuals asking me where they belonged.

For this inconclusiveness, I apologize to those Kenyans that have joined the ranks of the international Civil Service who live and work abroad, serving Kenya as diplomats or were recruited from home by United Nations Agencies, the World Bank, World Food Program, World Health Organization and a host of other private sector organizations.

Then there are a number of Kenyans who in the recent past have applied for US residency and have since transferred their skills and training to North America and are surely making their careers out there

For a start, let me state that there is nothing absolutely wrong with Kenyans working and living abroad. It is a choice that one who has an opportunity has to make.

For many years, Kenyans were accused of being too complacent and loved their home too much. Kenyans never wanted to go and live abroad. Therefore this development is welcome. It falls in the same pattern with what the West African States like Senegal, Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria have always done. Senegal for instance depends on human resource export for its economy back home.

Now that there are so many types of Kenyans living abroad, which category has a stronger membership in this body called Kenya Community Abroad? Are they the busy academics like Ali Mazrui, Ngugi Wathiongo or the international civil servants like Dr. Khama Rogo and Dr. Orinda?

For your information, Dr. Khama Rogo built a whole hospital and brought electricity to his village in Gem before he relocated to Washington DC to work for the World Bank. For the years that Hon Raphael Tuju lived in Washington DC, he quietly brought development to Rarieda and built his business in Nairobi without meddling in local politics

I will tell you that this type cannot find time to join a pressure group whose activities cannot be quantified as Michael Mundia Kamau puts it. A member of the Kenya Community Abroad based in Germany, Mickie Ojijo has confirmed as much.

Personally I have my relatives and friends living abroad in Europe, America, Canada, Asia, South East Asia and all. Every time this discussion about the Kenya Community Abroad crops up, they tell me they are not members. On asking them to tell me why they are not members, they are quick to remind me that they have no time for such.

Perhaps the idea of a Kenya Community Abroad is noble but the approach to recruitment and issues back home has not been well thought out. I know at one time, during the Bomas Constitutional Conference, a memorandum was received from this organization pitching for dual citizenship. Now you can only ask for dual citizenship from Kenya if you are not a Kenyan. Another time they suggested that they should have a special seat in parliament to represent their interests! And I say there is nothing wrong with that but please justify it.

If every time you wake up, you remind us that things have not changed, that our politics is bad, that the economy is not working, that we live with 6000 rats in our city and that we are still very corrupt, then why don't you pack up your bags and come home to fix things? Why criticize from a distance?

If you want to help Kenya, please by all means do so but spare us the moral high ground and stop lecturing us on how to run our systems back home. This is where we live and we hold no other passport of another foreign country.

Now I have it on authority that most of you who subscribe to Kenya Community Abroad are not Kenyans. A lot more of you are permanent residents who loathe relocating to Kenya because Kenya is very insecure and that street boys will steal your mobile phones! This, not withstanding the fact that every Tom, Dick and Kamau own a mobile phone, from Mama Mboga to Wanjiku and a Mathree Driver!

You relinquished your Kenya citizenships long time ago. Some of you cannot come home for reasons you very well know about. A lot of you have too much time on your hands, surfing the Internet and spending countless hours gossiping and rumor mongering.

I was amused to find that in attacking me, some of you went through all known search engines and attributed everything about any Okungu on the Internet to be linked to me. That was cheap. Those of you who did so were way off the mark and missed my point.

If you want to argue with me in the future on this subject or any other topic for that matter, please give facts on logic the way Al Kags, John Mulla, Michel Mundia, Liz Nganga and Onyango Obbo did.

If you are intellectually challenged, shut up.

Jerry Okungu
Director
ACEMEPA - The African Center for Media and Political Analysis
Nairobi, Kenya
Contact Jerry Okungu
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What To Expect From GW Bush's Second Administration

2005-01-28T01:02:00.000-05:00

January 20, 2005
Kampala, Uganda.

OPINION

WHAT SHOULD AFRICA EXPECT FROM GW BUSH'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION?

As the world waited with baited breath what George Bush's new agenda would be in the next four years, the American media was awash with speculations regarding what GW Bush would or would not do for fellow Americans and the rest of humanity.

The other day an American journalist with Voice of America called me to solicit my thoughts on what Africa should expect from G W Bush during his second term in office as the leader of the most powerful nation on earth.

What immediately came to my mind was the fact that the question itself was not right. It was too general to elicit meaningful response. I thought so because I immediately surfed the African continent and soon realized how diverse, balkanized and generally different Africa was from coast to coast, and to expect a general expectation from an American president was neither possible nor feasible.

Of the 53 states dotting the African continent, each one of them has a unique and special relationship with United States of America, the more reason the US has posted its ambassadors in all the key states it considers strategic for its economic and political interests.

Between 2000 and 2004 when two Americans presidents have visited the continent in the recent past, the choice of which state to visit in Africa has been as controversial as it has been telling. A mere inclusion into the itinerary, even if it has been for a few hours, has boosted the clout of that country, that such and such a country is more favored by the most powerful nation on earth than its neighbours. And true to expectations, such countries have ended up receiving more dollars for all manner of social programs than their neighbours.

In the recent past, such beneficiaries have been Uganda and the DRC in the East and Central Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal in the West Coast and South Africa and Mozambique in the South.

For the Arab North, Egypt has been an almost permanent beneficiary in the tune of three billion dollars annually since it signed a peace accord with Israel over two decades ago.

Extracts from numerous debates on American networks and leading publications have been very good pointers to the direction the new Administration policies would go.

Critics of the Bush administration are quick to point out that nothing substantial will change. The democrats opine that there is a very high likelihood that George Bush's past mistakes, especially with regard to the war in Iraq may go unacknowledged. That there is a strong probability that G W Bush will continue with his arrogance and scorn of world opinion on matters of international interest such as the war in Iraq and the Kyoto protocol.

War on terrorism will continue unabated with a possible invasion of Iran very early in the new administration unless it allows the Americans unlimited access to its nuclear facilities. This theory was given more credence when former Republican Secretary of State, James Baker conceded to Larry King on CNN that if America had to stop nuclear proliferations, then it had every right to start spying on Iranian nuclear installations now.

According to Hersh Seymour of the New Yorker newspaper, war on terror and the desire to control nuclear proliferations will necessitate American troops opening new combat frontiers not only in Iran but also in Syria and North Korea, the states America sees as rogue states and supporters of international terrorism

There is a chance the new administration will be heavily involved in the Middle East crisis now that Bush has hailed the democratic election of the new Palestinian leader.

Chances are that Bush will form a strong alliance with Ariel Sharon of Israel because the White House sees Sharon as a strong ally in the fight against terrorism.

Americans expect President George W Bush's speech to be that of a strong political agenda, not just rhetoric. As the President prepared his speech, he must have had to find the balance between domestic agenda and international obligations.

On the domestic front, Americans expected him to deal with the explosive National Social security issue, homeland security and the sagging economy that has resulted in loss of millions of jobs.

Listening to the incoming Secretary of State, Condoleza Rice during her confirmation Senate hearings, one got the feeling that there was no defined agenda, neither was there any meaningful economic policy focus on Africa. Africa, more specifically Kenya and Somalia only came in as she discussed terrorist bombings in the region and how the US was going to empower those regions in the fight against terrorism.

What even compounds America's focus on Africa is the tragic undersea earth quake that rocked several countries in the South East Asia, the Indian sub continent and parts of the East Coast of Africa killing nearly 250,000 people.

As it is, the Tsunami tragedy has got America and the rest of the developed world focusing on rehabilitating the most affected countries like Indonesia, Sirilanka and neighboring island states.

Fears are that, under the circumstances, Africa's perennial problems like debt relief, famine disasters and general economic assistance to the continent may not be priority issues for the new administration.

But what are the real issues affecting Africa that America should deal with? There many problems worsening Africa's economies, some of which have their origins in American politics back in the USA.

Whenever American embassies and installations in Nairobi, Casablanca, Cairo or Dar es salaam are bombed by international terrorists, angered by America's support for Israel or Iraqi invasion, the sequence of events is almost predictable. The State Department would issue travel advisory notes telling Americans and other European tourisms that destinations like Nairobi were dangerous spots resulting in the death of the tourism industry, loss of revenue and disastrous economic consequences for such nations.

America's wars in the Middle East such as the ongoing Iraqi invasion have direct impact on African states that rely on Arab oil to sustain their economies. Whenever such a war is on, crude oil production levels slump while prices shoot up beyond the means of struggling African states.

Right now Africa's problems are legion other than the usual non performing economies. The debt burden, the scourge of the Aids epidemic, ravages of malaria and other tropical diseases, annual floods and draughts that kill millions of people every year and the general inability to better manage disasters and the environment are some of the issues Africa would like to see America coming to their aid on.

Whether the new Bush administration will spare time and focus its attention meaningfully on African issues remains to be seen.

Jerry Okungu
Director
ACEMEPA - The African Center for Media and Political Analysis
Nairobi, Kenya
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The Bush Inaugural Speech

2005-01-27T22:31:00.000-05:00

January 20, 2005
Kampala, Uganda.

OPINION

THE BUSH INAUGURAL SPEECH THAT ADDRESSED THE WORLD MORE THAN IT FOCUSED ON DOMESTIC AMERICAN ISSUES.

Finally the deed was done. And the act was performed with pomp, dignity and lavishness that can only be found in America. Watching G W Bush's second inauguration ceremony on television thousands of miles away, one would have been easily excused for recalling the well-choreographed funeral of the late Ronald Reagan last year in his Simi Valley, California. Only that GW Bush's ceremony lacked the solemnity, the tears and a galaxy of international states men and women that graced Ronny's final moments.

One more thing, the Reagan funeral was devoid of boycotts, street protesters, anxiety and a politically loaded speech that dominated G W Bush's second inauguration.

In August 2004, when I wrote a piece on the Republican Convention and suggested that the drum beats of war had been sounded by the Republican leading lights gathered at Madison Square in New York, a few Republican friends I know thought I was being too alarmist.

This time around, President Bush himself laid it on the line for all dictators, tyrants and terrorist sympathizers to see and hear from the horse's mouth. America would go to war to any corner of the globe in the name of freedom and liberty for all mankind.

The Bush that spoke on Capitol Hill last Thursday was a different Bush of four years ago. This one was more internationally focused, less concerned with domestic issues and seemed to focus his attention on freedoms and liberties of all oppressed people around the world

The speech was tacit and devoid of humor or niceties. It seemed to specifically address nations that America considers repressive and undemocratic. One could easily detect that Bush was addressing Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Egypt, Syria, Cuba, China and a host of other nations that either support international terrorism or practice authoritarian forms of government

Back home in Africa, one could easily see Robert Mugabe and his Zimbabwe fitting the bill of dictators and tyrants Bush was talking about.

He was emphatic that the force of human freedom would defeat the intentions of pretentious tyrants who cherish mortal threats of terror.

He made it abundantly clear that he, like most honorable Americans was acutely aware that American freedom depended on freedoms and liberties of other nations around the world, a pointer to the fact that if there were tyrants in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Cuba and other kingdoms in the Middle East, they became good breeding grounds for anti-American terrorists.

In his own words, he stated that he was a strong believer in the American tradition that no man had the right to be master over the other and no individual deserved to be a slave. That individual rights, liberties and freedoms were sacrosanct as they were given by God.

He promised to seek and support the growth of democratic movements around the world. Looked at another way, Bush was in fact saying that should one country be seen to be tyrannical and suppressive to its citizens, America in future under Bush, would not hesitate to intervene materially and militarily as it has done in Afghanistan and Iraq of late.

On domestic issues, he mentioned in passing that his administration would provide higher standards of education in schools, promote home and business ownership, encourage retirement savings, free Americans from want and fear and condemned racial bigotry in America.

What did Bush not talk about?
Whereas he mentioned freedom and liberty thirty-six times in his speech, there was no single mention of Iraq or Iran. Also left out were critical domestic agenda like the sagging economy, loss of millions of jobs, illegal immigrants, gay marriages and abortion issues.

Conspicuously missing also were his thawed relationships with America's traditional allies like Germany, France and a host of other NATO allies that differed with him over the invasion of Iraq

Africa and its perennial problems were completely ignored but he made it clear that those tyrants that may grudgingly concede some form of democratic reforms would in future find no sympathetic year in Washington for the next four years.

Millions of illegal immigrants in America who expected a reprieve from Bush as he has stated in the past by formalizing their residency status in the United States also heard no word from the President on his pledge.

Other side shows that reminded us in Kenya of the booing of President Moi during the handover ceremony two years ago, was the booing of John Kerry, Bush's opponent in the last elections when he arrived, a pointer that some levels of pettiness are not unique to African societies alone.

On another note, one democratic senator was reported to have stayed home to watch The Titanic, the movie at home rather than attend the ceremony! Was this a case of sour grapes?

On a brighter note, Senator Barrack Obama, that American of Kenyan origin was there in full view of the entire audience and seemed to have attracted television cameras in more or less equal measure with Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

As for what Bush and Condoleezza Rice will do for Africa, we can only wait and see.

Jerry Okungu

Contact Jerry Okungu
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The Salon of News and Thought!

2005-01-14T03:32:00.000-05:00

This is a place intended for discussion of news events, worldwide, and a place for increased awareness of the World around us. It is also a place to express yourself about the subject(s) of your choice. Articles, Opinions and especially Comments are more than welcome. - Ali M.

Ali M Mamina Jr. of The Democratic Republic of Congo explores the issues: Go There

THE Kenya Community Abroad (KCA)

2005-01-13T13:10:00.000-05:00

January, 11 2005

Jerry Okungu's article titled "Kenya's spoilt exiles have nothing to give this country" in "The Standard" of 5th January 2005 ( Standard Archives ), was a candid and frank effort to address a subject that has been ignored for too long, and Jerry needs to be commended for this very brave move.

In a nutshell, Jerry stated that the huge Kenyan Community Abroad has and is not making any tangible contribution to the development of this country, a view that must be held to be true, in the absence of much to suggest otherwise.

The overall position of the entire Kenyan Community Abroad, needs thorough reviewing, overhauling and transformation, to immediately halt the monumental wastage in personnel, funds and resources. Other than a website( kenyansabroad.org ), KCA does not have any meaningful programs running either abroad or at home.

KCA was founded in March 1997 according to their website, but there is nothing to suggest that they have filed returns with the Kenyan Registrar of Societies for the past seven years, returns that would be invaluable in reevaluating the Gross National Product (GNP).

The failure by the KCA to compile and file authentic and credible Reports of their audited accounts and activities over the past seven years, makes nonsense of their claims that they have made immense contributions to Kenya's development. The KCA has not shied away from attacking purported exploitation of Kenyans by giant Multi-National Corporations operating in Kenya.

Whatever ills that the purportedly exploiting Multi-National Corporations stand accused of, they continue to make annual returns in conformity with the law. Other than making heavy contributions to the Kenya Revenue Authority in the form of a wide array of taxes, Multi-National Corporations continue to publish their annual audited accounts in leading Kenyan publications by way of full page paid advertisements, unlike the KCA which forever continues to freeload on complimentary slots in the same publications.

Sylvester Kitua in a January 10th 2005 rejoinder titled "Okungu knows little about the role of Kenyans living abroad" ( Read Article ), claims that that the entire African Diaspora annually remits back home an amount of US $ 80 billion.

Mr. Kitua does not quote the source of his figure, but even if one were to assume that only a minute fraction of this figure, say 0.1 %, is the Kenyan remittance, then this would mean that Kenya receives an annual amount of US $ 8 million (640 million Kenya Shillings), from the Diaspora, which is an outrageous misrepresentation. These kinds of funds would comfortably enable the KCA maintain a fully staffed and running National Office in Nairobi, fully staffed and running branches in each of the eight provinces of Kenya, and fully staffed and running sub-branches in each of the 70 districts of Kenya.

Additionally, Al Kags in a January 8th 2005 response titled "Kenyans living abroad are doing a lot for their country" ( Standard Archives ), claims that the number of Kenyans abroad numbers 1.8 million. Al Kags like Sylvester Kitua above, does not quote the source of his figures, but even if one were to assume that only a tenth of the 1.8 million Kenyans abroad are active members of KCA, paying an annual modest membership fee of US $ 20, then this translates to an annual revenue for KCA of US $ 3, 600, 000 (288 million Kenya Shillings), from membership subscriptions alone.

These kind of funds would comfortably enable the KCA maintain fully staffed and running Chapters in North America, Europe, Southern Africa, the East and Central Africa region outside Kenya, and Australia, where the bulk of the Kenya Community Abroad is situated. With these structures in place at home and abroad, the KCA should have been able to hold numerous awareness campaigns, workshops, seminars and road-shows over the past seven years, both at home and abroad. These assemblies would have succeeded by now in entrenching a much clearer understanding on living, studying and working abroad, amongst Kenyans back home.

The provincial and district KCA offices at home in particular, would have been invaluable and instrumental in coordinating and organizing relocation of numerous Kenyans to different parts of the world, to study, work or trade. KCA at large, would have succeeded in spearheading a massive socio-economic movement in Kenya through ideology, akin to the Robert Mugabe led Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), the Yoweri Museveni led National Resistance Movement (NRM), the Paul Kagame led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the Oliver Tambo led African National Congress (ANC), and the John Garang led Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM), all of which staged successful movements from outside their respective countries. Jerry Okungu is therefore fully justified in dismissing the Kenya Community Abroad.

KCA is just as bad as the current and previous Kenya governments that it continues to attack, Kenya governments that facilitated it’s very existence. Rather than build a vibrant Kenya Community Abroad, reports that continue to filter back home are of disjointedness and desperation. Five years ago, alarming pornographic images purported to be those of Kenyans in the United States, circulated extensively on the internet. Some of the images displayed nude individuals brandishing the Kenyan flag. The one known source of the pornographic images( Waone Warembo ), even mentions pornographic video tapes involving Kenyans.

Unconfirmed reports on a host of Kenyan websites manned from the Diaspora, suggested that the participants in the said pornographic video tapes, communicated in both Kiswahili and "Sheng". Further unconfirmed reports from the same said websites, also alleged that pornographic activities by Kenyans was also rife in Canada. The KCA has not made any indication whatsoever that it is investigating these claims and arranging to render assistance and remedy where necessary.

It is misplaced and unjustified in the extreme to make a blanket condemnation of all Kenyans abroad. A sizable number of Kenyans abroad are making useful contributions to themselves and those back hope. The policy of allocating huge funds and resources to settle huge numbers of Kenyans abroad for one reason or another ought to be however reviewed, if it is not bearing results. The huge funds and resources used to relocate Kenyans abroad, had rather be re-directed to the rehabilitation, funding, improvement and support of individuals and structures back home.

Michael Mundia Kamau
Nairobi

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Kenya Community Abroad - No Use To Kenya!

2005-01-12T01:35:00.000-05:00

December 31, 2004

OPINION - By Jerry Okungu

THE PARADOX OF THE KENYA COMMUNITY ABROAD: ARE THEY KENYANS LIVING ABROAD OR ARE THEY FOREIGNERS OF KENYAN ORIGIN?

Lately I have been following some interesting events that have been taking place in Kenya which have a direct impact on Kenyans like Senator Barrack Obama of Illinois, USA and a host of other foreigners who claim to be Kenyans and living in foreign lands across the globe, notably in Western Europe and North America.

The other day there was an important summit in Nairobi that was purportedly organized by a group in foreign lands known as Kenya Community Abroad in conjunction with the Kenya government. This summit, which was eventually opened by the Vice President of Kenya, Hon. Moody Awori, was apparently organized by the Ministry of Planning and National development. As high profile as the great gathering was, this most important event that was convened by, among others, our respected scholar, Ali Mazrui, all the way from New York, never got any meaningful pre publicity or open invitation so that our prodigal sons and daughters from the Diaspora could meaningfully engage their distant cousins back home on the all important subject of brain drain.

I am reliably informed that the organizers, those foot soldier functionaries of the Ministry of Planning and National Development wanted to avoid involving locals as much as possible because some chapas were involved! When one of the organizers was confronted at a local pub afterwards to explain why he declined to invite home grown intellectuals, academicians and entrepreneurs that had braved poverty, political torture, intimidation and dehumanizing Kanu regime over the years without the option of bolting out into economic exile like their cousins who were now gathering in Nairobi and being feted by the Narc government, the official hurriedly swallowed his last beer and vanished from the scene.

For starters, let me state some common facts about the so-called Kenya Community Abroad. This group was formed with all the good intentions any group of people, having alienated themselves from their roots would do for no other purpose except to satisfy their guilt, nostalgia and sentimentalism. And there are good grounds to argue this point.

Right now there are three types of Kenyans living abroad. The first group consists of those who left Kenya between 1960s and 1990s with all the good intentions of going abroad for further studies.

This group went to foreign lands at the expense of their poor parents and villagers who sacrificed every thing, chickens, goats and all to raise enough money to buy them tickets and initial tuition fees to go and study in various colleges in Australia, Canada, India, Germany, Russia, South Africa, United Kingdom, and United States among other destinations.

But as they landed in these hostile and foreign lands, culture shock and economic hardships both at home and in their new countries of abode made life extremely difficult for them. A number dropped out of college due to lack of fees, others opted to look for odd jobs to survive. As years turned into decades, with no papers or savings to talk of, their chances of returning home empty handed to face poor villagers back home became more and more remote. In the end, as they grappled with their new status as illegal immigrants and faced with possible repatriation to their homes, a number decided to look for partners of convenience to marry in order to legitimize their continued stay in their new countries. Marriage to foreigners demanded further concessions. Some of them would denounce their Kenyan citizenships to take up European and American naturalization citizenships.

Now, in all fairness to this group that left our shores at the tender age of 18, 19, 20 or 21 and are now in their 40s, 50s and 60s, how would we expect them to come and fit in the culture of turbulent and jobless Kenya? If anything, Kenya today is more foreign to them than their adopted countries. These are the people who have had more than a share of their marriages, have grown up families and in quite a number of cases are grand mothers and fathers. In my opinion this group has nothing to offer Kenya and neither does Kenya have anything to give them. The best option to deal with this group is to treat them as our distant relatives while at the same time we allow them to live in peace in their new found lands. They stopped being Kenyans along time ago.

The second group consists of those Kenyans who, having been educated locally and abroad at the tax payer's expense, found it difficult to realize their lifetime dreams of creating wealth and living better lives. They looked at the Kenyan economy, salary structures in the civil service and private sector. They compared their earnings with those of their counterparts in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, United Kingdom, USA, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Geneva and Germany. They found that the society back home had shortchanged them for their long sacrifices in the education system.

They bolted to look for greener pastures in these foreign lands and sooner, rather than later, relocated their entire families to the first world.

In my opinion, this lot belongs to the category of economic refugees that left the country voluntarily when Kenya needed them most. In their own words, they had to choose between country and cash. They chose cash. Among this group, a number have retired in their countries of adoption and have no intention of coming back home because their young families that left Kenya thirty or forty years ago now know no other home except New York, Geneva, London, Gaberone, Cape Town or Toronto.

The only reason some of them can come like they did recently or like when Ngugi wa Thiongo and Njeri returned home is when some one other than themselves is ready to bring them home for endless seminars to come and pontificate about their vast knowledge and contacts around the world.

And they return simply because some one is footing their first class ticket, a five star accommodation and a possible irresistible daily allowance in dollars that meets their newly acquired international seminar and conference circuits.

The last group consists of those Kenyans who fled political persecution, intimidation, discrimination and general frustration. These are the people one must accord the prestigious title of "political exiles" because circumstances forced them to flee their mother country and seek refuge elsewhere. But there is something curiously interesting about this group. When they fled, they didn’t move to neighboring Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Burundi or Rwanda. They chose New York, London, Bonn, Stockholm, Toronto, Oslo and Washington. And the reason was simple. These were the cities with economic and political clout to help them re-assert themselves so that their activism and continued support funds from their new masters of change in Africa could continue to flow. And this, they have done with a certain amount of success not for the rest of Kenyans but for themselves and their immediate families.

And as the struggle for reforms gained momentum back home, they remained conspicuously indifferent to the struggle for liberation claiming rightly or wrongly that the regime still targeted them for persecution. Ten years after the first multiparty elections and with Moi and Kanu, their most preferred persecutors out of power, some of them are still to find reason to relocate to Kenya.

Let us face it, the Mazruis and the Ngugis of this world have been out of this country for more than three decades. If they were in their thirties when they left Kenya, now they are in their sixties. If they were in their forties, now they are in their seventies. Some of their students like Prof. Chris Wanjala have retired. Very soon, the Ngugis and Mazruis of this world will be asked to hang their boots by their new masters due to old age. The law of natural attrition is also not on their side. How then, under the circumstances can we look up to them to influence the world on our behalf and help change our condition when in their prime, thirty years ago they never did it?

With due respect to the good intentions of the brainpower that gathered in Nairobi recently, with due respect to the founders of Kenya Community Abroad, there is not much that you can do to help Kenya as Kenyans because you are not Kenyans. But we are ready to welcome you home as our distant cousins, foreigners on our shores and benefactors to our poor villages just like any missionary white American from Nebraska, Alaska, Maine and Buffalo Bills in Colorado would. Welcome home!

The writer is executive director of Infotrack, marketing and media consultants, Kenya. Discuss this article in Club Afrika Forums and/or comment below.

Kenya's Wish-List 2005

2005-01-12T01:02:00.000-05:00

December 29, 2004

OPINION - By Jerry Okungu in Atlanta, Georgia.

POLITICAL WISHES THAT KENYANS MUST MAKE FOR THE COMING YEAR.

Normally I am never really good at picking up handouts dished out at conferences and workshops. I have not been able to do this because I always feel that after having listened to presentations, there is nothing really new I may learn for the detailed, sometimes irrelevant detail I may not find useful.

However, this time, while in Nairobi there was a folder I inadvertently collected without knowing or checking what was inside. When I did check it nine days later, I found one document that has since enriched my life and changed my way of looking at society beyond my own imagination

Reading this document through and through, I found myself thinking about our country Kenya, its political leadership and its politics. I realized how badly off we were in terms of quality leadership that can move this country beyond where we are today.

This document is a collection of quotable quotes from world leaders past and present.

It also extensively quotes and paraphrases a substantial amount of material that has been researched and collected by many UN agencies, international integrity and leadership development agencies in North America, Asia and Europe.

It is basically a summary of five values from a collection of writings entitled Leading Beyond Borders that every leader worth his salt in society has to master.

These five values under discussion in this 15-page handout are: Bridging, Dialogue, Integrity, Learning and Synergy

In this article I will only confine myself to the value of integrity in leadership.

In their opening statement when discussing Integrity, the authors quote two philosophers named Mac dePree in his book, Leadership is An Art and Ken Wilber, the author of No Boundaries. While Max dePree says that “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality", Ken Wilber tells us that, “ As an individual draws up the boundaries of his soul, he establishes at the same time the battles of his soul".

In the context of the Kenyan situation, it would appear that a wish for integrity among the political leadership in the coming year would be quite in order as this is one area where we find leadership most wanting.

In order to create leaders who value and prefer personal and national integrity, they must give priority to openness with one another. In giving priority to openness they will take responsibility not only to define the reality of their place in our political spectrum but to also understand the reality of the circumstances of our present society.

Beyond that, they will need to examine their inner souls- the bedrock of their desires and personal ambitions, determine the limits and opportunities available to them and prepare to balance the various conflicting interests paused by the unique circumstances that leadership has thrashed on their shoulders.

And what do our authors say in this great handout? They assert that, “ if we want short term safety, we build a wall between us and them. But if we want long term security, we create webs that connect us". And they give specific instances where nations that have attempted to erect walls as a form of security or even individuals who have erected walls around their homes in cities have always lived in fear of intruders and invaders. They cite the Berlin Wall that never stopped Communist insurgents and Western spies from infiltrating Cold war era opponents. The Israel I attempt to erect a wall between them and Palestinians living along the Gaza strip never gave them the security they desired. Instead, more suicide bombers have continued to blow up innocent Israelis inside Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and any other city inside Israel.

Like in Israel, the divided Germany and any individual that erects a wall around his home, walls will always place us in constant fear of being attacked by our enemies. As we continue to live in fear, we isolate our selves from our neighbours and communities because we are forever preoccupied with imminent danger. Yet, like in the barricaded Israel, apartheid South Africa or the Wall of Berlin, how many such barricaded homes in our city suburbs in Karen, Muthaiga and Lavington have been infiltrated by our enemies, who have robbed us, raped our daughters, mothers and wives and sometimes stolen and murdered us in cold blood?

Which brings me to another observation I have always marveled at in big cities in North America and Europe. In such cities, the really affluent homes are built in open space, literally fenceless and all one sees are endless well attended lawns and flowerbeds, yet even neighbors do not intrude into one another's privacy. They are at peace with one another and their environment. The good thing about this openness or open plan neighborhood is that if there is a disaster like an attack, a fire outbreak or an emergency that needs external assistance, access to the home is easy and fast.

During the Cold War, when Europe was divided between Communist East and Capitalist West, there was suspicion everywhere. Nuclear missiles from Moscow pointed at London, Paris, Rome and Washington while the Pentagon arsenals ominously pointed at Moscow, Havana and any other perceived communist threat to the civilized world. However, since the Berlin Wall came down more than a decade ago, and with Communism gone, Europe's unification has spread peace, stability and trust between former sworn enemies. Now they don't have to spy on one another.

A free Europe where there has been unlimited access to either country has cemented trust among former warring neighbors. This openness or connectivity can enable all of us as nations, communities or individuals to live safely and sanely in a globalized yet turbulent world.

What is the import of my argument on local politics? In Kenya today we have politicians who would like to build walls around their homes, constituencies, districts and even provinces. It is not uncommon to hear them announce to public rallies on roof tops that such and such a place is a Kanu, LDP, Ford Kenya, Ford Asili, DP, NAK or NARC zone.

Our leaders have not only balkanized and barricaded us, they have also gone ahead to put up fences and gates to lock us away fro the rest of Kenya.

As they continue to build walls around us, they shut us away from any other information other than the one they give us, to convince us that out there, in Nyanza, Western, Kisii, Central, Machakos, Meru, Mombasa and Rift Valley are our enemies, the real enemies determined to fish us economically and politically and if they had their way, they would eliminate us from the face of the earth!

In the end, this brand of political balkanization has bred mistrust, fear and hatred of unprecedented proportions. No wonder, whenever we have a little election even for a councilor, we turn polling booths into pitched battle grounds where once in awhile blood must flow and life must be lost!

Therefore as Kenyans during this season of forgiveness, we must wish that in Nyanza, the southerners like Dalmas Otieno, Owigo Olang and Tom Obondo should rethink this culture of us and them and reach out to Kajwang, Ojode, Okundi and Adhu so that peace, trust and integrity can return to our land.

If Orengo, Bishop Ondiek, Grace Ogot, Jakoyo Midiwo, Joe Donde can do the same, we shall sure say we are getting somewhere with the divisive Nyanza politics.

If Charity Ngilu, Kalonzo Musyoka, Kiema Kilonzo and David Musila can do the same for Ukambana, it will be one great step to national integrity.

If Karume, Uhuru, Biwott, Okemo, Kombo, Mudavadi, Joe Khamisi, Ali Makwere, Najib Balala and Mayor Taib can also see the light this season, then we can truly hope that the same spirit will flow through the veins of Simeon Nyachae, Omigo Magara, Kipkalias Kones and Orier Rogo Manduli.

This country needs healing, it needs its walls brought down, it need its many gates opened and more importantly it needs our leaders to redefine their individual realities and the boundaries of their hearts' desires so that we can all move together again.

The writer is executive director of Infotrack, marketing and media consultants, Kenya. Discuss this article in Club Afrika Forums and/or comment below.

Will our Tribal Leaders Emerge as The Conscience of The Nation of Kenya?

2005-01-11T23:52:00.000-05:00

December 28, 2004

OPINION - By Jerry Okungu in Atlanta, Georgia.

AS KENYANS CONTINUE TO WALLOW IN THE MIASMA OF POLITICAL INEPTITUDE, WILL OUR SPIRITUAL TRIBAL LEADERS EMERGE AS THE CONSCIENCE OF THIS NATION?

Luo Paramount Chief, otherwise known as Ker hit the nail on the head. Like millions of Kenyans he had had enough of divisive ethnic politics that has been the bane of social animosity and stagnation in this great country. He asked Raila and Kombo to be mindful of the welfare of Luhyas and Luos, the two communities that have coexisted, intermarried, shared culture, language, borders and trade for many generations. He implored them to unite rather than divide the two communities along hazy political lines.

This appeal is not only timely but also long overdue. More importantly it is an appeal, which should be given the national impetus to extend to all political leaders from every tribe in this country so that they may realize the perilous situation in which extreme partisan politics has placed Kenya.

Competitive politics, also known as multi party democracy has placed Kenya squarely where Moi had warned them it would. In his prophetic style, Moi predicted the return of divisive politics with the return of multiparty democracy. At that time we were too obsessed with Moi's disastrous autocratic regime that we didn't care whether he made sense or not. All we wanted was an end to monolithic KANU politics and Moi out of power.

Having gone through three multiparty elections since 1992, it is now an accepted fact that tribal politics has settled in and taken center stage. As we talk now, even a semblance of a coalition government that was ravaged by political vandalization into a government of national unity is a mere conglomoration of tribal political chiefs. Leading cabinet posts are shared among tribal political kingpins along with their leading supporters from their own communities, performance, suitability and competence not withstanding.

The culture of we and they politics is in control of our political landscape. As communities, we have barricaded ourselves into our little corners and found it safer to fence off others as outsiders who should never dare enter into our space. Our space is our special preserve only for our own tribes men. That is why Ford Kenya's Musikari Kombo must continue to see Raila as an enemy that cannot be trusted. That is why Kivutha Kibwana and Mungatana must slaughter a bull to celebrate the defeat of LDP- Raila's party in Kisauni. That is why perceived enemies of Karisa Maitha while he was alive had to be barred from attending his funeral. It is this political territorial fencing that prepared the bloody battles that protagonists had to contend with in Kisauni by- elections and the Kisumu West by –elections before it.

The sad part of this theatre of the absurd is that the leading lights of our political spectrum that this society looks up to and hopes to choose for the top leadership in the future are the worst perpetrators of this negativity. In broad daylight they preach one message. At nightfall it is a different message, more deadly. This doublespeak is the author of suspicion, mistrust, backstabbing and a series of betrayals that today dot our political landscape.

Our politicians have broken countless promises they made to each other, to the electorate and to any other constituency they might have promised anything. On the national level, the 500,000 jobs a year they promised, security for all, food security, poverty alleviation, a new constitution and zero tolerance on corruption have all been broken. At the personal level, equal distribution of cabinet and public service jobs, collective governance through an MoU and the Summit consultative leadership have all been dumped in favor of excessive centralized executive power.

The sheer number of consensus meetings on the constitution, whose outcomes have hurriedly hit the newspaper headlines only to come a cropper after subsequent backroom conniving and back stabbings have revealed endless naked betrayals in our midst.

In this kind of society such as ours, a few good, honest men and women are hard to come buy. When suspicion abounds, one never knows when the next snake is planted in his bedroom. We walk in fear. And as we make one step forward, we must continue to look behind our backs lest some enemy larking in the dark plunges a knife behind our backs. Ours is a tougher life than the life of inner city gangs in America's ghettos or Nairobi's Eastlands slums.

Yes, we beat Kanu at the 2002 General Elections only because several parties, fifteen of them combined to form a pre- election coalition. That coalition was nothing like we know coalition governments in civilized societies. It was an accident, a chance in a lifetime that may never be repeated again in our lifetime. It had nothing to do with the marriage of ideological beliefs. It had everything to do with tribal chiefs counting their ethnic votes they commanded and coming to the table to share the loot that we normally call the national cake.

At the end of the day each tribe clapped with glee that at last one of their own was at the high table eating and hopefully the crumbs would fall his or her way as the high table relished in rare wines, exotic spirits from far away lands and spare ribs of a tender kind.

Yes, as Kenyans continue to wallow in this miasma of political thuggery, tribal spiritual leaders like that great Ker of Luoland must come out of their cocoons in Ukambani, Luhyaland, Embu, Meru, Kikuyu, Masaailand, Girirama, Mijikenda, Taita, Pokomo, Turgen, Dorobo, Pokot and all the other tribes of Kenya and put sense and sanity back to our land. Left to the politicians, we shall as sure as sunrise, be heading for a bloody civil war in 2007. We cannot afford the balkanization of this country along ethnic lines as Musikari Kombo would want us believe.

On another note, how can such a strong party like LDP goof so many times in such a short time? Has something suddenly gone wrong with the party leadership? How could a party of that high visibility lose so many civic seats to its chief rivals including NARC and KANU?

But even more stunning and intriguing was the Vihiga fiasco where LDP's leading light, Musalia Mudavadi lost a chance of a lifetime to endear himself to his people just at a time when he was struggling to make a come back in politics. How could he let die a noble spirit of the Maragoli community that was the brainchild of his late father? How could he have debased such a unique cultural event that had carved a niche for itself in the national calendar simply because he had lost some parliamentary seat to another villager? If he thought his move was calculated to embarrass his political opponent, he was way off the mark. Those villagers, those ordinary peasants who had always looked forward for years to be entertained and feted once a year by the organizers of the festival will for ever remember Musalia's vindictiveness, not Akaranga's or Ligale's poverty or meanness. Some visions are too dear to be messed up in the quagmire of village politics.

And did I hear something to the effect that Hon Joe Khamisi never really supported nor campaigned for loser Joho in the Kisauni parliamentary by- elections? That Khamisi publicly or privately pressurized for LDP to back Mwaboza because Mwaboza was more popular on the ground? If that was the case, then LDP has a lot of soul searching to do and they had better do it fast.

In the last one month, LDP has created more enemies than they needed to create. At this rate there may be a need for a fresh look at the secretariat, the composition of its current think tank and strategic advisors to the top leadership. Either they have been asleep or have been busy misadvising or deliberately misleading the party leadership.

Time to crack the whip and effect drastic changes is now.

The writer is executive director of Infotrack, marketing and media consultants, Kenya. Discuss this article in Club Afrika Forums and/or comment below.

Death Squads in Police Uniform

2005-01-11T23:37:00.000-05:00

December 28, 2004

OPINION - By Jerry Okungu

DEATH SQUADS IN POLICE UNIFORM - A GLOBAL PHENOMENON THAT ONLY HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISM AND CIVIL RIGHTS AWARENESS CAN ELIMINATE.

I read with horror, thousands of miles away about the grisly murder that rocked my birthplace in Awasi town the other day. The murder of young Atito, in a most senseless manner by thugs in Police uniform defied common logic and conspicuously brought out the animal in all of us.

I may not have known the young man personally but the mere fact that this senseless murder took place right in my village and without provocation, right inside his home and at night, reminded me of the several unexplained murders that have rocked the cities of Nairobi, Johannesburg, London, New York, and Sao Paolo in recent history.

What made this murder most foul and gruesome was that it took place in a remote dusty town that hardly boasts the sophistication and crime levels of cities found in South America, North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. It also made another point- that none among us is safe anywhere, should the assassins decide to come after our lives. In other words it could have been me, you or any body else in Kapenguria, Kimilili, Kinangop, Koibatek, Maragua, Malindi, Migori, Suna, Suba, Longisa, Lumbwa, Londiani or Gatundu village.

Which brings me to my next point about the men in blue the world over and their penchant for brutality against the very people they are trained to protect.

The racist brutal beating of one black man called Rodney King in the city of Los Angeles by white policemen and subsequent acquittal of the same police officers by a white jury sent the city of Los Angeles in flames by an enraged black community. The damage that the riots caused to the city and the racial scar it left in the memory of the people of Los Angeles over ten years ago still lingers to this day.

During the South African trying periods of apartheid era, police brutality and deaths of black Sowetans including the massacre of school children in the 1976 riots was a way of life.

In South America, police have been known to shoot street children as a way of cleaning the streets of unwanted urchins.

Back home in Kenya, so often, from the days of the Starehe Boys police reserve,
Officer Shaw, many people, including university students have been gunned down and later branded car jackers and dangerous robbers. In most cases, after such senseless fatal shootings, the police have been allowed to conduct investigations in to their own killings.

At one point a minority race in Kenya almost singe handedly dominated what was known as the police reservists division. This community went on a shooting spree and killed hundreds of Kenyans in cold blood under the guise that they were fighting crime. No inquest was ever instituted to investigate these so-called crime busters' activities.

The murder of Atito raises many questions; some of which it is possible have been asked but for which answers may never come now or in the future. Yes it is possible that the men in uniform who went to Atito's home could have been real thugs in uniform and armed with guns. Yes, it is also true that Kenyan police have in the recent past been accused of hiring out their uniforms and guns in return for a share of the loot from known criminals. At times, the very police have formed terror gangs, some times in cahoots with local criminals that know and understand the local terrain. Yes, anything and everything is possible with the current police force we have in Kenya. Therefore the murder of Atito is the responsibility of the police force in Nyando, whichever way one would like to look at it. The thugs that gunned him down in cold blood could have come from Ahero, Awasi, Boya, Chemelil, Miwani or Muhoroni police stations, or an assortment of all of the above.

The few years that Awasi has had a Police Station; there was relative peace only because the then OCPD in Nyando, Chief Inspector Opiyo was an honest and a professional man. He never tolerated laxity, ineptitude, negligence or conflict of interest among his officers. He supervised the stations and police posts in his jurisdiction.

As soon as he left, police officers started indulging in matatu business, wholesale business- selling cement and timber, constructing warehouses, running beer halls and, rumor has it, that some of them even set up joint chang'aa breweries with local entrepreneurs!

Therefore, the killing of young Atito could possibly have been an act of revenge arising from business rivalry or a business deal gone sour.

When Paul Olando was the District Commissioner in Awasi and Opiyo was his OCPD, such police indiscipline, brutality and open involvement in business and criminal activities was unheard of. Because to do so would mean that they would not manage the matatu menace in the district and neither could they control illicit brewing, disorder and petty crimes, as they would be part of the syndicate.

Since Olando and Opiyo left the scene, the people of Awasi claim to have been left at the mercy of the law enforcement agency. It has been extortion, intimidation and gun-law galore.

If the Awasi killing has any lessons for the rest of the country, it is that this government has shortchanged us on the sanctity of human life. It has shortchanged us on a working justice system. It has shortchanged us on equality before the law!

How long shall Kenyans continue to die shameless deaths at the hands of paid public servants yet be unable do anything about it?

How can rampant corruption and brutality continue unabated so soon after police salaries were hiked at the expense of starving millions of jobless Kenyans, not to mention the hiring of General Ali from the military ostensibly to reform and instill discipline in this discredited force?

The point the Awasi residents' riots made was that this brutality needs rapid and forceful response. Yes the police may have the guns and the law behind them but then the courage of a community determined to change its condition can cause positive change in the entire nation.

It may be recalled that at the height of land clashes of the early 1990s, then believed to have been instigated by the Kanu regime at the time, the belligerents from the Rift Valley that invaded farms owned by the Luo Community in Muhoroni, Songhor, Fort Tenan and Koru sugar belt lived to regret when in broad day light, the warriors of Awasi invaded villages bordering Nyando District inside Rift Valley and punished the invaders most severely. After that retaliation, there was never another land clashes incident anywhere in Nyanza.

For those forces of evil that may want top disturb the peace and tranquility at Awasi, it is wise to remember that the residents of this region have lived with the enemy and fought running battles for four hundred years since the time of their local biblical equivalent of Samson of the city of Jericho, Lwanda Magere.

These people are hardened soldiers that find it difficult to run away from a battle no matter how powerful the enemy may be. They never shy away from dying like heroes in the battlefield for a just cause they believe in. The more reason the law enforcement agencies based in the district must act swiftly with fairness to bring the perpetrators of this last evil deed to book.

The effort to bring about understanding between the residents and the provincial administration has to be spearheaded by a proactive and visionary political leadership both at the local level and at the parliamentary level. Any lack of sensible political leadership as is apparent now can only worsen the situation. And that leadership must accelerate the building of strategic roads like the Katito Awasi by- pass, effective and accountable use of local taxation and efforts to attract investors in the town so that job opportunities can be availed to a growing number of youth in the district.

This leadership has to be provided on the ground, not from Nairobi or Kisumu. This leadership must be devoid of petty clannism or village mentality. We are all one district and each constituency must complement the other. This is the kind of leadership we would want to see MPs Peter Odoyo, Opon Nyamunga and Ayiecho Olweny provide for the people of Nyando.

The writer is executive director of Infotrack, marketing and media consultants, Kenya. Discuss this article in Club Afrika Forums and/or comment below.

Jerry Okungu - On Kisauni By-Elections

2005-01-11T22:51:00.000-05:00

December 27, 2004

OPINION - By Jerry Okungu in Atlanta, Georgia.

NOW THAT THE BRUISES AND WOUNDS OF THE KISAUNI BY-ELECTIONS HAVE BEGUN TO HEAL, IT IS TIME FEUDING FORCES WITHIN THE NARC COALITION CAME TO THEIR SENSES AND LEARN A LESSON FROM THE FALLOUT.

My late father used to tell me right from my childhood that one's mother would always be one's mother. That no matter how ragged, aged, ugly or deformed one’s mother was, she was still their mother.

Years later, I came to learn the import of his message. That in life, some conditions were irreversible and the earlier we accepted to live with them in our entire lives the better it was for us.

In mid October 2004, when one day I got really worked up against the unending squabbles in NARC over the Kisauni by- elections, I wrote an angry article warning NARC that the coalition would surely lose the by-election if it didn't put its act together. I gave reasons why they would lose, based on why they won the seat in 2002 in the first place.

I think a number of leading NARC officials read my article. Whereas many Kenyans responded to the article via numerous emails worldwide, there was deafening silence from the very people I had addressed in the article. In a way I understood their reaction to the article. May be I was too blunt for their liking. It hammered home so much that they didn't want to be reminded of. Perhaps they chose the easier option; to live a lie that all was well and that like in Kisumu, North Eastern, Naivasha and Narok or Kitale by-elections, they would weather the storm and reclaim the seat.

In mid November 2004, I was in Mombasa for a series of media and political party workshops. During that one week, I had an opportunity to mingle in down town joints and exchange ideas with the people of the Coast. What I gathered was not flattering and certainly would be disaster for the warring coalition partners. The tragedy of the unfolding drama was that the protagonists were so engrossed in their egoistical wonderland of political supremacy that they were virtually incapable of coming down to earth to listen to the voices of reason among the masses that they claimed to be fighting for.

For starters, the warring parties had failed to take cognition of the damage the two-year long quarrels in NARC had caused them. They failed to realize how the many feuds and battles they had fought among themselves over the new constitution, the failed MOU, the failed Summit and the many failed reconciliation and consensus retreats over this and that had devastatingly taken its toll on the dysfunctional coalition.

To make matters worse, the coalition had introduced new phenomena on the political scene never before seen in the days of Kenyatta and Moi. For forty years, Kenyans had been schooled believe in the art of collective responsibility by the cabinet. Cabinet ministers in Kenya had never been seen to quarrel, insult and hurl abuses at their colleagues in village barazas. Now, in Kibaki's rein, that was the rule rather than the exception.

This development had eroded the public confidence and respect that the Kenyan public could ever have had on their elite political leadership. Coupled with rampant corruption in Parliament, within political parties and ministerial scandals that kept on popping up from time to time, not to mention perceived biased public recruitment in the public service, NARC went to Kisauni a very tattered political outfit.

In the end, the drama and political pomp that preceded the by- election was merely a theatrical entertainment for the people of Mombasa. They turned up in large numbers at those LDP and NARC rallies, not to listen to the political rhetoric and make crucial decisions on their next Kisauni member of Parliament, but rather, to enjoy and witness live, the political theatrics and buffoonery that had dominated the Kenyan political scene for the past two years. In their mind of minds, the people of Kisauni had decided soon after Maitha had died, that they would go to the polls and elect a person of their choice to replace their fallen hero. To them the decision on who to elect was a local issue and they needed no advice from political tourists from Nairobi, Nyanza, Eastern or Rift Valley to tell them what to do or who to elect.

This is the reason major political parties that tend to be controlled by big tribes from outside the Coast faired badly. NARC, DP, LDP, Ford Kenya, Ford People, NAK and KANU, all met their waterloo at Kisauni on that fateful day on December 16, 2004. It was a reminder of the onslaught that Moi and KANU suffered at Kipipiri in the late 1990s at the hands of DP in Laikipia District in a similar by-election.

If Mungatana, Kuvutha Kibwana and Dzoro thought it necessary to jump ship and rally behind an independent candidate to vie for the seat after the flawed nomination process by big parties, it was not because they were political geniuses.

The victory that they so relished after the fact had nothing to do with their brilliance. It had everything to do with survival- self-survival.

Theirs can be compared to sailors in a sinking ship. When a ship is about to sink, it is those who first notice water seeping at the seams that normally raise the alarm. If their cries are not heeded by the captain and others, they may very well look for the earliest opportunity to grab the nearest lifeboat, rafter or any life saving device or even jump off the ship and swim ashore!

Kibwana, Mungatana, Dzoro and others never founded NARC, NAK, LDP or any of the big parties that carried them to parliament in 2002. They were foot soldiers walking along the road to Damascus who saw a bus coming and stopped to ask for a lift.

Luckily for them the bus was headed for Damascus and they eventually found themselves safely in the city. Once there, one had to give them good reasons why they would continue hanging around a bus with burst tyres, broken windows and a heating engine.

On the flip side, the humiliation suffered by LDP was of their own making. The law of natural justice expects that while two people are still married, there are house rules that for protocol purposes still need to apply. One such rule is that the house and all things in it shall continue to be jointly owned and used by mutual agreement. And that rules themselves shall be drawn after negotiated deliberations. That no one party shall unilaterally draw rules that will bind the other party.

In the case of LDP, it was pointless fielding its own known candidate and later masquerade him as a NARC candidate. The damage that the nomination process had done initially sealed the fate of whoever would emerge as the winner, should that winner be an LDP fronted candidate.

The perceived image of LDP is its own albatross around its neck. As much as the LDP Chairman and Secretary General are Musila and Kamotho respectively, both coming from outside Nyanza, the fact is that we have too many loose tongues in the form of Luo MPs who have made it their business to meddle and comment on every LDP issue. This primitive behavior is making the life of LDP leadership very difficult unnecessarily. If these busy bodies could just shut up for awhile, I am sure there are level headed party leaders than can give the party some respectability and clout on the political spectrum.

For example, was it wise to import political minions from Nyanza and Nairobi, most of them Luos, to go and camp in Kisauni when there were high profile and capable political heavy weights like Balala, Jo Khamisi and others to take care of campaigns on the ground?

What was the basis of those who did not even attend Maitha's funeral going to Mombasa to campaign for his successor?

So many uncalled for blunders were made in Kisauni that could have been avoided with all the attendant embarrassment that it brought on all stake holders.

I hope NARC learnt a lesson or two from this self-inflicted pain.

The writer is executive director of Infotrack, marketing and media consultants, Kenya. Discuss this article in Club Afrika Forums and/or comment below.

Welcome To The Club Afrika Blog !

2005-01-11T04:34:00.000-05:00

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