Nyerere Would Say the Same of Nation Years On

Ababu Namwamba

23 April 2011

opinion

Nairobi — Kenya has been repeatedly ranked among the most unequal nations in the world, a scenario best captured in the timeless words of JM Kariuki, who described Kenya of the 1970s as a country of 10 millionaires and 10 million paupers.

The only thing that has since changed is that today it boasts of 40 billionaires wallowing in obscene opulence amidst the sickening penury of 40 million indigents.

No surprise that a Gallup poll last week ranked Kenyans among the saddest people in the world — worse than Uganda, and in the same league as Chad and Haiti.

But how can a country endowed with such human enterprise, such diversity of natural resources, such strategic geo-political location, be so vulnerable to poverty and want? It is a paradox whose answer lies in toxic seeds planted at the birth of the State.

Mwalimu Julius Kabarage Nyerere was not playing games with words when he described Jomo Kenyatta’s Kenya as a “man-eat-man” society.

The humble neighbour, whose time as Tanzania’s founding president was dedicated to forging what is arguably Africa’s most cohesive nation, noticed very early indeed signs of our dysfunctional social formation where the privileged become more privileged while the indigent sink deeper in the mire.

It is the sad story of a beautiful national dream turned nightmare as passionately told by the venerable Jaramogi Oginga Odinga in his gripping epic, Not Yet Uhuru.

The nightmare of how scions of privileged home-guards and favoured colonial chiefs stole the independence dream and transformed infant Kenya into an ugly replica of imperialist theft, plunder, repression and exclusion.

Tragedy is that successive leaders have only succeeded in making the situation worse. Cheap politicking has become an obsession that takes precedence over everything else.

MPs are more likely to gather for some worthless rally than attend Parliament to debate the plight of citizens panting under the yoke of punishing inflation.

Only in Kenya do you get a leader whose constituency is host to thousands of IDPs wasting dear resources and time singing on the streets of a far-away foreign capital in a meaningless bid to impress some political godfather.

It is distressing that this dysfunctional system is sustained by the same suffering masses!

Ignoring the reality that the only two protagonists in Kenya are the Haves and the Have-nots, we allow ourselves to be herded into silly ethnic pigeon holes, where we suffer and die in penury even as we dance ourselves dizzy cheering our thieving, callous, cynical tribal lords of impunity.

Then we are buried in obscurity, leaving our children to inherit our miserable space in this vicious cycle of servitude. We see no shame in defending the indefensible.

We find no incongruity in fighting the personal duels of individuals who belong to no better place than a maximum security prison. That is why mobilising a citizen uprising in this country is so improbable.

Call a demo today against some thug, and he will get a bunch of tribal kin and hired surrogates to counter you with a more raucous pomp.

Until we recover our dignity, we will continue to be pawns in meaningless games of Tribal Roulette. Human dignity is your intrinsic worth. In the words of Emmanuel Kant, it is “above all price and so admits of no equivalent”.

The present challenge of spiralling cost of living transcends our narrow prejudices. Together, we must find both immediate and lasting solutions that can bring relief to all. We need well thought-out options, not knee-jerk reactions.

Indeed we do have some options that we can deploy pronto. The Finance minister can halve the Sh5 billion allocated to the National Intelligence Service in his current supplementary budget and apply the saved Sh2.5 billion to subsidise pump prices without inflaming further inflation.

The two principals can immediately trim Cabinet size to the constitutional threshold of 24, and apply the savings towards food subsidies. The taxation threshold for MPs can be broadened, and the revenue channelled to a subsidy fund to cushion the most vulnerable.

Long-term measures include diversifying the country’s energy sources beyond fossil fuels by exploiting the massive solar and wind power potential.

Investing in a solar panel assembly plant and requiring the Rural Electrification Authority to wire rural Kenya to solar power would drastically cut back on the demand for kerosene, while also saving our forests from logging for firewood.

Next Wednesday Parliament will debate my Motion recommending a Select Committee to concretise options that can get our country out of the rut.

It is my prayer that the House will stand up for Kenya, aware, as Dwight Eisenhower would say, that people who value their privileges above their principles soon lose both. Blessed Easter.

AllAfrica – All the Time